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Half Life

I never wanted to be an actor. Really. I was just a guy, a recluse who lived alone, a secret brother of a guy who acted, a cousin of another guy who acted, a nephew of the guy who made Apocalypse Now! I wanted to live away from the chaos, and if my family was anything, it was chaos.

So, when Nic came to me with the idea to act in a film with him, I said, ‘I don’t want to.’

‘Why? You’d be perfect. This could be a break for you.’

‘I’m not interested in a break. You got the break. I want to sit back and watch.’ Which wasn’t always true; I hated most of my brother’s movies. I didn’t want to act because acting looked like running and screaming like a psycho with your eyes wide open. You know, he used to do that as a kid, just scream and run around.

Mom would ask, ‘Nic, what are you doing?’

And he’d stop mid-scream and look at her. ‘I’m acting,’ he’d say, and then continue on in his scream. He said it was all about the scream. You had to get the eyes right, the angle of the head right, the mouth open just enough to be creepy but not open enough to look like you’re about to blow someone. He didn’t say that when he was a kid, that was older. So, no. I didn’t want to do whatever that was.

He called me again, but I resisted. I liked my comfortable life, its routines and privacy. I didn’t want to enter any world at all, let alone the world of glitz and glamor and cliché; I liked the quiet mornings and evenings. I decided a long time ago that I wouldn’t be in his shadow, that I wouldn’t be his imitation. I’d rather be nonexistent at the vineyard than get mixed up with TMZ and Hollywood.

He called me again and again I told him I wasn’t interested. But why did he keep calling me? And then I pictured it, him, unhinged on the other end of the line because he needed me for this. He needed someone to help him. That was a first.

It was Uncle Frank who convinced me.

‘Vic, I think you’d be perfect for this.’ And when the Coppola godfather says so, so it usually goes.

I called Nic a couple days later. ‘Alright, I’ll do it.’

‘Really? You’re serious?’ he said. ‘Vic, you’re not going to regret this. Oh man, this is going to be fun, really exceptional. A great film. You’re going to love Charlie. Genius guy. Meryl Streep is on it too. This is fantastic.’ I could hear the neck twitches through the phone.

‘Yeah. I’ll see you on set.’ And I did. I acted, and I have to say, I started this out with ‘I never wanted to be an actor,’ but I was meant for it. It was enthralling. And the perfect movie: Adaptation. This whole meta piece about Charlie Kauffman, the script writer, writing the film we’re watching with his ‘brother’ Donald Kauffman. It was genius. Closed set, intimate, and we nailed it. It was the perfect time to introduce myself into the world as an actor and not just Nic Cage’s unknown recluse twin brother.

After the film was released to glowing reviews and had some Oscar buzz for best actor, I was elated. My debut performance as Academy Award-worthy? I imagined the little gold man in my arms. Until his agent called me.

‘Vic, hope you’re well. I have some strange news for you.’

‘Uh, okay,’ I said.

‘Well, for Nic to have a real shot at the Oscar, he’s going to have to do it alone.’ The pause hung in the air as I processed what he said.

‘Maybe I’m not understanding.’

‘Did you see Dead Ringers?’

‘Yeah, of course. Cronenberg.’

‘Do you think Jeremy Irons would have got the Oscar if he didn’t play twins?’

‘I don’t think—’

‘He wouldn’t have. We’re trying to get Nic on superstar level, Vic. You can understand that, can’t you?’

‘He’s already got an Oscar.’

‘Yes, he does. But two would make him supernova.’

I paused, realizing this was no discussion at all. ‘But it’s a great performance. I nailed it.’

‘You did. You absolutely did which is why there’s a future for you in Hollywood. A big one. Trust me when I say this. But I’m trying to work one twin at a time, you understand? Let’s get him his, and then we’ll get you yours.’

‘What does Nic say about this?’

‘He’s the one who brought it up.’

In terms of cliché, my heart sank. I hung up the phone. He tried calling back, but it didn’t matter. I’d been outcast and there wasn’t anything to do about it. I tried calling some news outlets, but they said, ‘Uh huh, right’ at the idea that Nicolas Cage had a reclusive twin brother just like Charlie Kauffman had a ‘twin brother’ in the film. ‘We’re not interested in your pretentious meta bullshit, Cage,’ said another.

At our mother’s house, after a tense dinner, I asked him. ‘Nic, I know nobody’s going to believe me right now if I come and meet them for an interview, but at some point, they will. They’ll tell the world and this whole thing is going to blow up in your face.’

He just looked at me, unblinking. ‘Alright. What do you want, then?’ he said, like he was negotiating.

‘I want to act.’

‘Vic, you can’t—’

‘You know I can act. You saw it. You saw how good I was. You can’t take that away from me.’

‘Well, I could. Nobody even knows you exist. They don’t have to.’

‘No, they don’t, which is why I think we can split it.’

‘Split it?’

‘You can act in the big Hollywood movies, and I can do the artsy stuff. You can be bombastic and ‘full Nic Cage,’ and I’ll get us in the awards categories.’

‘Just like that, huh?’ he said with a smile.

‘Just like that.’

‘Alright, brother, you’ve got yourself a deal.’

We toasted with vodka and shot it. He shattered the glass on the floor and screamed.

And that’s how it went. Him doing National Treasure and me doing Matchstick Men. Me doing Lord of War and him doing The Ant Bully. Him doing Ghost Rider and me doing Grindhouse. Knowing: him. Bad Lieutenant: me. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: him. Kick-Ass: me. That one pissed him off, though. He asked why he didn’t get the comic book movie.

‘Because nobody even knows it’s a comic book movie.’

‘They do now, Vic. They do now.’

And that’s when I had the pyramid grave built in New Orleans. He thought it was fantastic. Of course, he did. If he loved doing all that National Treasure-Hollywood-pop-pap then he could be forever defined by it.

Sorry, if that sounds a little Nic to you. I can dial it back. I had it built, for us, really. At least, that’s what I told him. But it was for him. I even put some dumb Latin phrase on it: ‘Omnia Ab Uno.’ Everything From One.

I looked up at the vaulted ceilings of the LaLaurie mansion, his most recent obscene purchase, when he laughed to himself.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Everything from me,’ he said. ‘I mean, even you, Vic. Your whole career spawned from me. A lot of these films come from me. This is my universe and you’re stars swirling inside it like the toilet bowl of the aether.’

‘That’s coming from the guy who’ll be starring in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, which I’m sure will be a critical and commercial success of the magnitude of Good Will Hunting.’

‘You don’t have to be rude about it. I make money.’

‘And so do I. I put up the good stuff, you put up the crap. And it’s only your name that ever makes it on the calling card.’

‘Oh, come on. Is that what’s been bothering you this whole time? Your mopey mood?’

I tensed. ‘We have to time when we’re in public so paparazzi can’t figure it out. We live these weird lives that are only pieces of what they could be. We’re stuck.’

He shook his head, smiling and then laughing. He laughed that Nic Cage Laugh© we’ve all seen in the movies, that boiling, roiling, explosive laugh that ends in wide eyes and open mouth up at the sky and total chaos in the form of a human. That scream laugh he’d been practicing for decades. I waited for the tsunami of Nic to recede. His laughs bubbled down to chuckles to murmurs to tears, his hand on that massive forehead, the same one I got, and then just pure sadness. He whimpered and crumbled to the floor, lying on his back with clear streams down his temples.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry about everything, Vic.’

I knelt beside him. ‘Hey, it’s okay. I know you can get a little caught up in everything.’

He crawled on the floor to his glass of whiskey and finished it. ‘No, it’s not okay,’ wiping the dribble on his cheeks. ‘I should have never let you go on Adaptation with me. I should have just done it alone like all the others.’

That’s when I no longer saw my brother. That’s when I saw him for what he was: a man of theatrics, of performance, of ‘acting.’

I stood.

‘Don’t you see, baby brother? This is my fault. You should have been holed up in Uncle Frank’s vineyard like you always were. You should be out enjoying the weather and nature. Why did I drag you into this crazy messed up world? Why did I do that?’ He sobbed, ugly and insane.

I looked down at the man who was my brother, but now just a fake, a forgery, an imposter of me and what I could be, what I was. Like an animal groveling at the feet of its owner, he was nothing, a shell, a husk. I had eclipsed him, my days and nights in the shadows now bright and glistening. This wasn’t Nic Cage. This was a ghost.

When I walked to the kitchen, I grabbed a knife, a big butcher knife, but I put it back. That wasn’t me. I grabbed a bottle of wine instead.

I walked back into the living room, to the sobbing crude imitation of me rolling on the polished wood floor like a baby, and I hit him over the head.

His eyes stuck to mine, blood running down his face. Dazed, he mouthed ‘You.’ ‘You, you, you.’

I shook my head and quieted him. ‘It’s alright, Nic. It’s time we stop splitting.’ I hit him once more.

When I had the pyramid built, I wanted it kind of funky because it was New Orleans and weird and Nic was all on his National Treasure kick. I wonder if I knew deep down that I’d put him there, alive, and use that secret tunnel to feed him every now and then, to update him on his success. I couldn’t kill him, I just couldn’t. But I couldn’t let him be me either.

So, he went under the pyramid, beneath his ‘Omnia Ab Uno,’ howling in the night to haunt the cemetery, and I went to work. I was him, you see: Nicolas Cage, famous movie star. My agent couldn’t even tell the difference, not even a hint of suspicion with my uncanny ability to turn on Nic’s charm. And he never asked me about Vic, about myself and the promise to get him/me in the spotlight. Alice, Nic’s wife, didn’t flinch when her husband disappeared into a huge workload, barely home, so when we separated a couple years later, it didn’t matter. I was making art.

It’s funny to hear the theories about why I went independent. I told them it was because of the pace of Hollywood, and they seemed to miss the point that I wasn’t who they thought I was anymore. I was someone new. And of course a renaissance happens when I’m given full reign and not boxed in by my brother’s awful taste. No more Ghost Riders or National Treasures. Well, sometimes I’ll do some voice acting for the big animation. The Croods. Spiderman Noir was fun, leaning into the expectations of Nic Cage playing a noir character. Me playing Nic Cage. That kind of stuff.

But my heart is in the now. The weird. The offbeat. Joe. The Runner. Dog Eat Dog. Mom and Dad. Mandy. Color Out of Space. Those are my masterpieces. With more to come.

It used to bother me with his name up there on the billboards. NIC CAGE. Big old letters like that grabbing your attention to see me, or my brother, or whoever you think we are. But then I think back to that moment on the living room floor, disoriented, his eyes struggling to focus, and saying ‘You. You. You,’ and I get it now.

Me.

I’m Nic Cage. All you got to do is erase that first leg on the ‘N.’ You see the ‘V’? That’s me, hiding in plain sight, right in front of everyone. So, when I see the big billboards with his name on it, it’s mine. I just squint and tilt my head and erase that first little leg. Vic Cage starring in Prisoners of the Ghostland. It’s got a ring to it, doesn’t it?

And as far as loneliness, I’ve given love a chance. Erika didn’t work out, but Riko’s the one. Five marriages? No, two for me. Three for him. But what does it matter, me here and him shuffling around under that concrete pyramid?

It doesn’t. There’s no difference between us. We’re one in the same. There is no Vic, no other half, no struggle for dominance. There’s just me.

Nic Cage.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jake Zawlacki is a writer, translator, and scholar. His creative work has been published in The Saturday Evening Post, The Journal, Punt Volat, and The Citron Review. https://fripperyandflummery.substack.com

Images generated by Satan