Nicolas Cage: I believe that there's a way to question authority with manners, with dignity. There's no reason to be rude about it. You can still say, "I want some clarity here." I don't want to get political, as I said, but yeah, the Book of Secrets, I don't know. It's an urban myth but I'm sure there are tons of things that are classified that we're not supposed to know for whatever the reason that we'd probably like some answers on, sure.

Q: How is it being involved in the Police documentary as a producer?

Nicolas Cage: Well, my partner, Norm Golightly at Saturn films is an enormous police fan. [Phone rings]. I beg your pardon, I thought I'd shut it off. It's actually my wife but I will get back to her.

Q: Take it.

Nicolas Cage: No, I know you want to hear me talk.

Q: So the Police documentary.

Nicolas Cage: Well, the Police interestingly enough have always had a part of my life, professionally as well as just as a young man growing up. When I first heard Sting's voice, I was in Napa Valley living with my uncle. It was the most unusual sounding voice. I almost thought he was chicano or something, the way he used his voice. It sounded like that and I was very curious. I liked the music right off the bat. Then I made Rumble Fish and Stewart Copeland was the composer, the drummer of the Police. I thought it was the best soundtrack of a movie I'd ever heard, outside of Nina Rota. I loved his music and then when I did Leaving Las Vegas, the first sound you hear is Sting. So it seemed like a good match. Now they're back and I think they're a very important band and one of the bands that kind of lent a soundtrack of a great portion of my life. That's why I got involved with that.

Q: How has being a parent invigorated your passion to do programming for kids, and how did new fatherhood change your perspective on your work?

Nicolas Cage: Children, especially from one to six, are so impressionable. The main priority is just make sure they're happy as much as possible. That's the job, make them as happy as you can possibly make them in my opinion, because we know as they get older, things start happening. There's pressures and there are hormones and all of that, so in the beginning you want it to be just how happy can you keep them for that wonderful, magical period of time? That means movies that are positive. He loves Yellow Submarine and he likes the Beatles and that music and the Wiggles and all that. That's great. There's plenty of time to discover the other stuff and I'm sure he will if he's like all the rest of us in my family. But in terms of choices, I try to make movies that will hopefully do some good for the whole family that way.

Q: What are the Cage family Christmas traditions?

Nicolas Cage: This year I'm going to do something new. I'm going to have a Dickens Christmas. I'm going to take everyone to England. I've never done that. I'm going to just walk around Bath and see how they celebrate the holidays because I've always fantasized about that.

Q: The best Christmas gift?

Nicolas Cage: Hands down the best Christmas present I ever got, because it was a tool to stimulate my imagination, my father was in Italy. He was on sabbatical and I had a little toy car that was being driven by Pinocchio. For whatever the reason, Pinocchio's head fell off the day before Christmas. I played with it a little too roughly. My father picked up the head and he went into the garden and he planted it. I thought, "Why are you doing that?" The next morning was this enormous thing that had grown in the garden. I ripped it open and it was a giant wooden Pinocchio. I was scratching my head trying to figure out how that grew. And then I started planting everything. I planted all my Hot Wheels. I had a little G.I. Joe slipper. I thought if I planted that, it would grow really big and I could put my sleeping bag in it. So he really got me thinking in an imaginative way at a young age.

Q: Could you talk about working with Helen Mirren and Ed Harris?

Nicolas Cage: Helen Mirren is someone that I have really admired ever since I saw her in Excalibur. That was the first thing I said to her. "I loved you as Morgan Le Fay." One of my most powerful crushes was Helen Mirren as Morgan Le Fay. She's really down to earth. I have to tip my had to her that she would win the Oscar in The Queen and then go and in the grand spirit of Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn go make an adventure film. To me, that shows a lot of spirit and a great zest for life and that she's willing to do that, jump around and wear the wire and all that. I love her for that. And she's funny. Within two minutes, she puts you at ease. She doesn't take herself too seriously and she makes you relaxed and you have a lot of great laughs together. I would love to work with her on every movie. Ed Harris I had the pleasure of working with on The Rock but we didn't have too many scenes together. He's one of those actors that's brutally real on film and you can't help but be blown away by his talent because of that. You look at his performance as Pollack or any number of his performances with the one he just did recently with David Cronenberg. He's always got this gravitas and this weight to him that is compelling. So when they said he was in the movie in the grand spirit of Jerry, he always casts the best actors, I knew we had the possibility of making something very, very exciting.

Q: Why Bath?

Nicolas Cage: Because when I'm in Bath I feel like I'm walking around a snow globe. I'm in this contained, beautiful historic universe. Everybody's really, really nice and I don't need to use a car and I can walk. The architecture is magnificent and it's like we talked about earlier, I feel that I'm in touch with the past and world events and that history. As I said, with a little imagination, I feel like I'm time traveling. I'm going to these other places and I'm learning something. It's helping me grow.

Q: What about the people there?

Nicolas Cage: I like the people there. The people are very friendly. I'm always excited to meet people and say, "Are you Bathonian?" "Why yes, I am."

Q: Will you have a Christmas goose?

Nicolas Cage: I'm going to try to have a Christmas goose, absolutely.

Q: What was the most challenging scene in this movie?

Nicolas Cage: Well, the most challenging sequence hands down was the platform, the balancing platform sequence because it was a mathematical, physical conundrum to act. I had to try to keep in my head what happens in terms of leverage and physics if you step here and he goes up there or she goes down there. It just was a mess. It actually had to be reshot once or twice to get it to make sense for all of us. So that would be the sequence that comes to mind as the most challenging.

Q: How long did it take to shoot?

Nicolas Cage: That particular sequence I recall being at least three weeks.

Q: Speaking of bands, how important is an ensemble cast in your movies?

Nicolas Cage: Well, I think it's a bit different in that on a movie, you have a lot of referees. In this case, everyone got along very well and it is an ensemble cast and it is something that it's a connection of playing off of one another and we've all grown to recall these characters and identify with them. But you don't have to write the music together necessarily. Sometimes you do but with a band, I think you can see why there's a lot of bands that break up or there's hardships because egos can get in the way Who's the leader or who isn't or who gets to get that song on the album or doesn't or who gets to have a guitar riff or doesn't. And you're on tour together so you're stuck on a bus for many, many days out of the year. That's a hard life to stay friendly and on good terms.

Q: Is the writer's strike affecting your work schedule?

Nicolas Cage: I don't have any definite immediate work plans at this moment that I would be able to speak with certainty about, so I'm wide open as far as that goes until I'm ready to go public with something. In terms of the writing strike, I'm not a patented writer or in the guild. If I had something that I was involved with, it wouldn't really affect me being that I'm not a writer.

Q: But production is being stalled.

Nicolas Cage: Well, it's made everything upside down in Hollywood. To answer your question, yeah. It's difficult because some movies can't get off the ground because they need to be tweaked, but I haven't had that experience yet personally.

Q: So the Pang brothers film is done?

Nicolas Cage: Yeah, the Pang Brothers film is finished but it's looking for a release. I like that movie but I don't think it's the sort of movie that's necessarily comfortable for studios or even American audiences for that matter. It's an edgy film. It deals with an interracial relationship and it has difficult subject matter but the Pang Brothers I think are gifted. The people that I consider my friends whose opinions I trust that I've shown the picture to think it's one of the best things I've done since The Weather Man, so they really like it. But who knows what's going to happen with that movie.

Q: What's it called?

Nicolas Cage: It's called Bangkok Dangerous. It's the weirdest movie I've ever made and I like that.

Q: Having a coup in the middle of it probably increased the weirdness.

Nicolas Cage: Yeah, it did actually. That was a bizarre experience. That's another matter but that was very strange. I like seeing cultures trying to communicate and trying to understand one another. I think it makes for interesting subject matter and that's why I made that movie.

Q: If you could do any historical mystery in any country, what would it be?

Nicolas Cage: To see Ben Gates try to solve? Jerry Bruckheimer already did a movie on Arthur but I would like to see him go back into those areas and domains and try to really locate the actual person behind Merlin or the actual historical person behind Arthur and really look at that. I'm one of those people that believes with every myth, there is a kernel of truth so I'd be curious to see how that could relate.

Q: What is it about working with Jerry?

Nicolas Cage: I think if you look at his logo, it's in the logo. He's always trying to capture lightning in a bottle or freeze lightning. He gets actors together whom he trusts and keeps you in a state of I call it a high wire state or no net productions where you never really know what the dialogue's going to be until the last minute. That's enormously frustrating. At the same time it give you a spontaneity and a buzz where everyone's charging and electric together. Then he captures it. I think the thought process is if it doesn't work, he'll do it again or he'll get more writers and he'll keep doing it until he gets it to work. But what is captured is a spontaneity or an energy which is a lot of fun to watch. I think that's why we keep working together, because I know he'll give me great actors like Helen Mirren and Ed Harris and he cares about the product.

Q: What about Voight?

Nicolas Cage: I always said if you're going to cast someone to play my father, cast the greatest actor in the world. When they said, "Well, how about Jon Voight?" I said, "That'll work for me." So I'm very happy about that.