Meme Streets: A Bucket List for Nicolas Cage in Budapest

photo by Nicolas Gegin, via Wikipedia

Iconic, ironic, and sometimes bionic, actor and Oscar winner Nicolas Cage has been spotted around Budapest, where he is currently shooting his latest film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which he plays and actor named Nic Cage. Since he has so much time with himself, we thought we would make a list of things Nicolas, or ‘Nic,’ can do in his off hours. Based on his previous films, here is Nicolas Cage’s Budapest Bucket List.

One of Cage’s early roles was in Francis Ford Coppola’s ill-fated gangster/jazz film The Cotton Club, which centres on the 1930’s Harlem jazz scene. In the film, Cage plays Vincent Dwyer, based on Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, a NYC mafia hitman. While guns are highly regulated in Hungary, jazz isn’t. You won’t see ‘Bird’ or Chet Baker at the The Budapest Jazz Club—the city’s premier jazz house—but Hungary has a thriving jazz scene, due to the strong tradition of music education in the country. The Budapest Jazz Club a classy joint, and currently still open in the sexiest part of the inner 13th district.

In Gone in Sixty Seconds, Cage plays a street savvy car thief. He only deals in the fastest of cars, thrilling audiences with lengthy chase scenes. While racing in the streets is difficult on the tight, clogged Budapest streets, he can make his way out of town to the Hungaroring, Hungry’s annual Formula One event. Though he missed this year’s race, we are sure he could procure the track for private use. If he wants to lift a Trabant or souped-up Lada to race in, that’s up to him.

Cage won his Best Actor Academy Award for his role as an alcoholic ex film-producer who falls in love with a similarly damaged Vegas hooker, in Leaving Las Vegas. We don’t know much about prostitution, but if he’s looking for a place to down a few drinks, he is in the right city. We recommend he start off easy, at one of Budapest’s classy wine bars, to try some to the best, and best-kept secret, wines on the planet. Personal favourites would be Kadarka, in what was once the ‘Party District’ of the inner 7th, and the hipper, more local wine bar Cintányéros, in the rough and tumble outer 8th district.

In Adaptation, Cage plays a Charlie Kaufman-like screenwriter struggling with the adaptation of The Orchid Thief, Susan Orlean’s best-selling novel. Budapest doesn’t have many orchids, but is loaded with enough literary locations to satisfy any writer. Foremost, he may want to contemplate his word choices at The New York Cafe, the famous hangout from the Golden Era of Hungarian writers, in the early 20th century. Ornate and kitschy, one can brood of their next sentence for hours, provided they have the money to pay the bill.

In the National Treasure franchise, Cage plays Benjamin Franklin Gates, a historian charged with tracking down historical artifacts stockpiled by the cultish Freemasons. Hungary is home to few American national treasures, hidden or not. It does, however, have its own—foremost, the ‘Holy Right,’ the mummified hand of king Saint Stephen. For just a few hundred forints, in Budapest’s Basilica, you can activate a light that illuminates the disembodied hand of the saint, canonised in 1083, long before America was colonised.

That should be enough to keep the actor busy, though if he needs more recommendations, we are here, re-watching Wild at Heart, and other Cage-led treasures.

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