Last week Sony put on a Ghost Rider event at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood. In attendance were a number of journalists as well as the stars of the film and Mark Steven Johnson, the writer/director. The purpose was to show us some footage and then we would get to do some roundtable interviews with Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes and Mark Steven Johnson.

The main reason I went to this was Nicolas Cage. Yeah I wanted to see some footage from the movie, but I was more interested in hearing Nic speak in a more intimate setting than what he did for comic-con lat summer. The room he did press in was filled to capacity and there was no way to get in any questions. But with this event I knew I would be able to, and since he hardly ever does roundtables, I really wanted to be there.

And I’m really happy that I attended. I found Nic really open and honest about how much the project meant to him and he spoke about his history with the comics and what he is working on next, likely a sequel to National Treasure. He also spoke on a lot of other subjects and answered a ton of questions as they gave us twenty-five minutes with each person (usually roundtables are about fifteen to twenty).

As I said in a previous article, they didn’t show us much footage but the stuff of Ghost Rider riding around looks pretty sweet. I’m sure the fans are not going to have a problem with the look as the flaming head and the bike look great on screen.

If you missed my article of the pictures from the event click here.

Click here if you want to listen to the audio of this roundtable.

Otherwise here is the interview with Nicolas Cage. Tomorrow night I’ll be posting either the Eva Mendes or Mark Steven Johnson interview so make sure you check back. Also this week is a bunch of interviews from the cast of The Holiday and Unaccompanied Minors. Ghost Rider arrives on February 16^th.

Question: Everyone knows that you love this genre, comic books, obviously since your son's name is Kal-el. Then you're doing this movie. How much of the tone did you set for this project?

Nicolas Cage: I was with the project when Steve Norrington was still attached to it and that was a much darker interpretation. David Goyer wrote that script and it was a good script, and I'm sure that Norrington would've done an amazing job, but I think that when Mark Steven Johnson came onboard and he wrote this version I think that it opened up the character to a wider audience. I wanted the kids to go see the movie. So, yeah, there are some scary moments in it, but more scary like a 1950's Vincent Price B-movie which is fun. I didn't want them to be too scared. So, the spirit of it is that I wanted to be very playful. There's a lot of humor in the movie. This character is absurd. He's an absurdist character and I think that's a good thing because that gives me a chance to bring comedy to it as well. He's not a chain smoking, hard drinking bad ass. What I wanted to contribute was that Johnny was trying to keep the devil away because he really is in trouble with the devil. So if that's the case then why bring him in. So he's trying to deflect and stay relaxed by listening to Karen Carpenter and eating jelly beans out of a martini glass and just trying to stay calm because he knows at any moment it can creep up on him.

Every Marvel character has a theme. Do you think Ghost Rider's theme is fighting personal demons?

Yeah. That's what is really exciting about it. In a way I could argue that the responsibility here is bigger than even the responsibility that I had with 'World Trade Center.' You could pick or chose whether or not you could take the kids to that film, but in this case the kids are going to want to go see 'Ghost Rider' and their minds are so impressionable. So what I wanted to make clear was that no matter how much trouble you get into you can always take a negative and turn it into a positive. That's the spirit of Johnny Blaze. He's a man who's dealing with the worst kind of trouble. His soul has been abducted by the devil. I mean, that's as big as it gets and yet he's figuring out a way to turn it around and turn it into something positive. I was thinking that with kids who might be going to the principal's office and they know that they're in a world of trouble they can find some way to make the best out of it and do something good from it no matter how bad it gets.

Aside from the superheroes to think about, a lot of Marvel characters are monsters. Were you into the monster books?

Yeah. Those were my favorites. I don't know why, but I just gravitated towards the monsters. I like 'The Hulk' and I liked 'Ghost Rider' the best. That's really where I got into reading. I just thought that it was such an exciting and complicated universe. I didn't know how something so scary could also be good. That appealed to my own complicated way of seeing things and made it unique. Even when I became a film actor I'm always gravitating towards characters that are grey. They're not just black or white. They're beleaguered and yet they're trying to do something good with whatever the trouble is.

Can you talk about your first experience with 'Ghost Rider,' when you first happened on it?

Yeah. I was living in Long Beach, California and I was about seven years old and I went around the corner to the market in the neighborhood and I saw it on the stand and there was this flaming skull and it was really comfortable. It was the first one. He was on the bike and he was coming right at you. I bought it and I took it home and I remember just staring at the cover in my room by myself for like hours. My older brother was like, 'What's the matter with Nicolas? He's been staring at this comic book for hours.' I don't know why, but I just thought that it was trippy and scary and cool. It appealed to me.

What was it that you identified with as a kid in particular?

Well, I think that I identify with him because he's a scary character and I was trying to comprehend how something scary could also be good, like I said earlier. As a boy I grappled with nightmares and things like that. So I was trying to get control of the nightmares by maybe making friends with them. So 'Ghost Rider' was like the perfect way to do that because here was a nightmare who was also a friend.

Question: Did you stick with it through the '90's when the character was resurrected and gave it a whole new look and stuff?

I did not. No, I didn't. Mark Steven Johnson did though. He was really aware of all of the different versions of the character. I was really about the '70's character that I read as a boy. That's what had stayed with me. I really like the iconography, the flaming skull and the leather jacket. That's the coolest image of all. I knew that when technology got to a level where it could become visually palpable that 'Ghost Rider' would translate really beautifully to film.

What was your initial reaction when you saw the final cut of this with all the CG inserted?

I was thrilled. I thought that Kevin Mack did a brilliant job and his whole team as well. It could've been really goofy, but instead it's gorgeous. I think that what he did with the fire, which we all know is the hardest thing to create with digital FX, is excellent because it's more real, and yet it's more than real. It's abstract and larger than life. Then to make a skull expressive is also difficult because there are no lips to move with. So you have to find ways of also making that expressive and he did a great job with that.

Mark said that was actually your skull they used for the CG. How was that?

[Laughs] Yeah. They had to do it digitally. They put the censors on me and they graphed my skull somehow with x-rays or whatever. I don't know how they do it really, but that's me which is kind of weird.

How long did that take them to do? How long did you have to be still for while they scanned you?

Well, you have to be still for a couple of hours and they have to scan the whole thing and get it.

How was it doing some of the scenes you did with a green hood and the green screen stuff?

There's no sort of way around doing that without feeling silly. It's silly. It just is.

Did you hold onto your original 'Ghost Rider' comic books?

I still have them, yeah. I kept those. I framed them and have them in a certain room in my house because I knew that this was somehow going to happen. So I want to hold onto those.

Have you shown them to your son at all?

Oh, yeah, my oldest son. My youngest son hasn't seen it yet.

Was going to work on this film different from all the other films you've done because of your love for this character?

It was because it was new. It's no secret that I've been trying to get involved in a comic book film for a while and for whatever reason it just kept not coming together and in this case it did. So this was the one that was meant to be. So I was really excited that it was this one because this one was personal for me. I gravitated towards 'Ghost Rider' as a child and 'The Hulk.' So I was thrilled to be doing it. Plus, I grew up watching those Vincent Price monster movies and I really loved the whole 'Monster Magazine' stuff that was out there back in the '70's and I wanted to bring that flavor to the movie as well where I would get really excited that I was making a monster movie. I hadn't done that before. It was something that was funny and scary.

In one of Mark's video blogs he called you a Lon Chaney. How does that feel?

Well, Lon Chaney was a genius and I don't compare myself to him, but I do aspire to want to use different looks things. I think that it's important to try and transform your face like Lon Chaney, or your hair or anything that you can use as an actor to create a new look. That's all part of your craft – your voice, the way that you move. A lot of times, many people, actors – and it's a choice – get stuck in one persona which has been proven to work for them. That's okay, and its fun even, but it would really bore me. So I think that what he was saying about Lon Chaney is that I want to try and create the whole character both physically and emotionally.

Has this quenched your desire to do a superhero movie or has it only fueled it to do more?

No, I'm satisfied. I think that this was the one, and I've done this now. So unless there was a really great script to a sequel I've probably done what I've wanted to do in terms of doing a comic book movie. I would come back and do another one if there was a great script attached to it.

Isn't there a comic book out there now that you're attached to in some way?

Oh, yeah. Well, my son Weston has developed a character called Enigma. That deals with spiritual elements also in New Orleans back during the Civil War. This is something that we went to Richard Branson's company with and Deepak Chopra who got excited by it. So they've committed to doing five issues of it. It's really Weston's character.

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