papapapaul @papapapaul - Twitter Profile

Twitter now allows 4 in-line images in one tweet. So, let me regale you with the story of when Nicolas Cage did on one of the greatest 4-film runs ever: • Leaving Las Vegas (1995) • The Rock (1996) • Con Air (1997) • Face/Off (1997) Cage went from winning Best Actor in "Leaving Las Vegas" — a role where he played an alcoholic screenwriter who drinks himself into the abyss — to three straight action blockbusters. Three straight action blockbusters in 2 years! How did this happen? Cage had actually agreed to do Michael Bay's Alcatraz escape movie "The Rock" before he did "Leaving Las Vegas". His original interest with action films was that he knew the Hollywood trade-off: make a blockbuster for the studio and you can get funding for your passion projects. "The Rock" ended up grossing $335 globally in the summer of 1996. Its box office was very competitive vs. other summer action films that year including "Eraser" ($243m), "Mission Impossible" ($458m), "Twister" ($496m) and "Independence Day" ($817m). After "The Rock" established him as an action star, Cage struck while the iron was hot. Jerome Bruckheimer — who produced "The Rock" with his partner Don Simpson (Simpson died during the film's production) — signed Cage on to do prison plane film "Con Air". Cage's performance in that gem has been meme'd into glorious oblivion. Meanwhile, Cage also signed on to do John Woo's "Face/Off". He co-starred with John Travolta and the film required both actors to mimic each other's mannerisms as the characters swapped faces and identities. Woo's gun-fu flick fit right into Cage's venn diagram at that point in his career. The role required (admittedly absurd) acting chops and matched his action star turn. "Con Air" and "Face/Off" were released three weeks apart in June 1997 and went on to make $224m and $246m, respectively. Cage had another decade of hits before things went awry (I mark the decline with 2007's "Ghostrider"). But no run ever matched this 4-film doozy.