Don’t expect to pull off a Nicolas Cage film festival without him.
During the Alamo Drafthouse’s Cage-centric CAGED marathon this weekend in Austin, Texas, the man himself crashed his own festival. He closed out the annual event with a curious reading and a strange lot of handpicked films.
The Leaving Las Vegas actor presented and sat through Bangkok Dangerous, Joe, Bringing Out the Dead, Army of One, and Lord of War. He followed up the viewings with a 47-minute question-and-answer session.
But before he played host, the enigmatic actor provided the rapt audience with an enthusiastic 10-minute reading of The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe’s famed short story.
Alamo Drafthouse programmer and longtime fan Greg MacLennan was beside him: “This is and will always be the greatest day of my life, I apologize to my unborn future child,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
Correction: Cage read the poem at the beginning of the performance.