USA: Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine's new film, "The Weather Man" premieres in New York City
Record ID:
219259
USA: Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine's new film, "The Weather Man" premieres in New York City
- Title: USA: Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine's new film, "The Weather Man" premieres in New York City
- Date: 26th October 2005
- Summary: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (OCTOBER 24, 2005) (REUTERS) ACTOR NICHOLAS HOULT POSING FOR PRESS **FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY** (SOUNDBITE) (English) STEVEN CONRAD, SCREENWRITER AND CO-PRODUCER OF THE FILM, "THE WEATHER MAN", SAYING: "Much of the writing was done in cooperation with Nick's (Nicolas) feelings about the character, you know, I just knew that he knew the guy and could make the guy super fun, a guy who's cracking apart publicly and falling to pieces in front of other people. He had a handle on that and, so, yeah, I was able to write knowing that he would be the delivery system for that."
- Embargoed: 10th November 2005 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Usa
- Country: USA
- Reuters ID: LVA3M632XBVAKUHX08EUFYHZGNSW
- Story Text: Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine, stars of the upcoming release, "The Weather Man", stole the spotlight at the New York premiere of the film on Monday (October 24). Held at the Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, the premiere attracted the main stars of the film but other expected celebrities gave the event a miss, perhaps because of the weather outside, which happened to be that of heavy rain. Cage's wife Alice Kim was at the star's side as he posed and answered questions. Cage emphasized the fact that when he received the script of "The Weather Man", he almost instantaneously related with the character of the recently-divorced Chicago weatherman, David Spritz. At the time Cage was also going through a divorce with his then-wife Lisa Marie Presley. "My first thing is that my company makes movies, we develop movies together to try to find opportunities to work with where I can express myself and whatever I've been going through in my life. And that movie when it came along was very timely because I had just gone through a divorce and I wanted to do something positive with the emotions of that, not negative. I didn't want to be - wallow in it. So, the character, David Spritz, who I play in the movie is going through divorce, the broken family, trying to put his family back together again and I thought that I had the right context to fill the character with because of my own experiences," said Cage. In the film, David is divorced, and unhappily so. Despite the shrill and condescending manner of ex-wife Noreen (Hope Davis, in a continuation of her role as a smug woman in "Proof"), he wants to get back together with her. He struggles just as fruitlessly to win the approval of his dad, Robert Spritz (Caine), a prize-winning novelist who might have a fatal illness. His son (Nicholas Hoult, the youngster in "About a Boy") is in counselling for marijuana use, and the boy's counsellor (Gil Bellows) shows signs of being a pedophiliac. Meanwhile, David's overweight daughter (Gemmenne De La Pena) feels sad and lonely most of the time. Speaking about his role as Cage's father in the film and responding to Cage's comments on their on-screen relationship reminding him of that with his own real-life father, Caine said, "I played it as though I was my own father because that's the relationship I know with a son. So, that's where he (Nicolas) got that from. I was really like - I was playing my own father in the movie, and so it came out very well with Nicolas." At the premiere of "The Weather Man", Cage had other reasons to be happy about other than the new film. His wife recently gave birth to a boy in New York City. The boy has been named, Kal-el, which happens to be comic book hero Superman's birth name. Explaining the motivation behind the offbeat name, Cage said: "We both wanted a name that was exotic and American and which stood for something good because our son is exotic, and he's an American and we both think he's good. It's simple as that. We just like the sound of the name." Meanwhile, director of the film, Gore Verbinski, spoke of the next important element in the film after that of Cage's brooding presence, the weather. "I think weather is a character in the movie. I mean that's, you know the - David Spritz, the world kind of conspiring against him and I think a lot of times we feel that, particularly now. It's almost biblical what's going on with the weather these days but I think, you know, he feels those currents and all that stuff moving. He's trying to predict and control it and he can't, he can't ultimately, nor can he control his, you know his family life, and the, and the kind of ebbs and flows of the emotional status of life," Verbinski said. Since the movie is set in Chicago and briefly in New York, winter weather certainly plays its role. Screenwriter and co-producer Steven Conrad carefully weaves the cold weather into the plot. Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael makes the audience feels cold as he finds genuine beauty in the patterns of clouds, ice on Lake Michigan and bundled pedestrian traffic on chilly streets. And production designer Tom Duffield contrasts the various environments of David's life, from the sterile steel and glass of his apartment, noticeably bereft of hearth and family, with the comfy digs of his former suburban house and his dad's well-upholstered mansion. This "weather" story releases in the United States on October 28th.
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