“It was primal-scream therapy” – Nicolas Cage discusses that Prince karaoke performance

"The bar says 'no videotaping' and suddenly, there’s two different videos of you doing karaoke..."

Nicolas Cage has spoken out about his extremely angry karaoke rendition of Prince‘s ‘Purple Rain’ that went viral earlier this year.

Speaking in a lengthy interview with The New York Times in which he discusses (amongst many other things), searching for the Holy Grail in Glastonbury, spending $276,000 on a dinosaur skull that he later had to return, and the iconic ‘Not the bees’ scene from the 2006 remake of The Wicker Man, Cage said he was surprised that his rendition of the classic track, surfaced online in April.

“You go to a karaoke bar with a male friend in the neighbourhood, the bar says ‘no videotaping’ and suddenly, there’s two different videos of you doing karaoke. Who did that? Who exposed the videotape? Who sold it?” Cage said.

Advertisement

“But honestly, I wasn’t even doing that to sing. It was more like primal-scream therapy. It was a holiday weekend, and I didn’t want to go anywhere, but my friend who was with me said: ‘You can’t sit here in your apartment. You’ve got to go out’. So I went to the one place in my neighbourhood that I knew had no video recording, just to have some fun, and that became everybody’s business.”

Cage also explained that he had been through a break-up shortly before the karaoke session, seemingly referring to his “accidental” Las Vegas marriage to Erika Koike in March. He filed for an annulment four days later.

Elsewhere in the expansive interview, Cage talked about the much-memed clip from The Wicker Man, in which his character’s face is swarmed with bees.

“There are times when I’m intentionally being mischievous with a character,” he explained. “The Wicker Man is me playing with the situation because it’s so absurd. I could have had a little more help with that film. Initially I wanted them to leave me in the bear suit to burn me. That would have made the whole farce of the film more disturbing. Because of what I was trying to do there.”

Advertisement

In addition, Cage discussed the incident in which he spent $276,000 on a dinosaur skull, only to return it after discovering it was illegal.

“I bought it at a legitimate auction and found out it was abducted from Mongolia illegally, and then I had to give it back,” he said. “Of course it should be awarded to its country of origin. But who knew? Plus, I never got my money back. So that stank.”

He also revealed that he travelled to the town of Glastonbury to investigate a popular myth that it’s the home of The Holy Grail.

Cage added: “If you go to Glastonbury and go to the Chalice Well, there’s a spring that does taste like blood. I guess it’s really because there’s a lot of iron in the water. But legend had it that in that place was a grail chalice, or two cruets rather, one of blood and one of sweat.”

You May Also Like

Advertisement

TRENDING

Advertisement

More Stories