Nicolas Cage wanted to drop a 'transcendent' F-bomb in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

In the new action-comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (in theaters now), Nicolas Cage drops what may well be the longest F-bomb in Hollywood history. Why? Great question, because director Tom Gormican tells EW that he certainly didn't ask the Face/Off star and Oscar winner to elongate the swear in such a dramatic way.

"That's not a direction I gave him," says the filmmaker, who co-wrote the script with Kevin Etten.

To back up a little, Massive Talent stars Cage as "Nick Cage," a depressed and down-on-his-luck version of the actor who accepts $1 million to attend the birthday part of Pedro Pascal's character, Javi, a crime boss and Cage superfan. Cage also plays "Nicky," a much younger and imaginary version of Cage who periodically turns up to criticize the middle-aged iteration.

"We were trying to dramatize the idea that there's this voice in all of our heads that is a younger, cooler version of yourself that is trying to influence you, perhaps in negative ways," Gormican says. "We thought, why not [make] that a physical manifestation, let's have Nick actually interacting with this, quote-unquote person."

"He's imagining these conversations with his younger self," says Cage. "When Tom sent me this script I [thought], yeah, we can [have] this almost Jekyll-and-Hyde polarity with the performance. That's really where my heart is with the film."

It is the younger and more unhinged Nicky who at the one point in the movie announces to his older self, "I'm Nick f---iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing-ow-wow Cage!" (We may have missed out a few I's there, but you get the picture and can check out the moment itself in the film's red-band trailer below.)

So how exactly did this moment come about?

"We call action on this thing, and we're watching the scene go down," Gormican recalls. "I have no idea what's going to happen. He just does it. We call cut and take off the headphones, and Nic gets up, walks over to the monitors where we're sitting, 20 feet away, and he looks at us, and goes, 'I wanted it to be transcendent!' I just started laughing and thought, you're not getting this with any other actor. It's truly incredible. And then he goes, 'That'll make them drop their popcorn.' And he walks back in and he goes, 'I need another one.' He gave that performance every single time, every take."

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