A DATE WITH THE DEMON

then present that. Even on set, I’d go to fairly extensive lengths to stimulate my imagination and also the fear in the actors I was working with, so that it’d augment my own belief that I was this character. Otherwise it would’ve felt pretty ridiculous.’’

Cage painted his face with blackand-white skull makeup and put black contact lenses in his eyes. He wouldn’t utter a word on set, and he sewed magical trinkets into his pockets. It was all about convincing himself, those around him and, hopefully, audiences that Ghost Rider was something from another dimension, a spirit of vengeance.

“Some thought went into the movements,’’ he adds. ‘’I recall looking at cobra snakes and how they’d dance back and forth, side to side, to hypnotise their prey, and then they’d attack. I wanted the Ghost Rider to have moves like that, or to levitate in circles, anything that was just a little bit unexplainable, enigmatic and even slightly confusing, so that it’d be fresh, so that it would be outside of anything in your reference.’’ Was there ever a too far? “I think it’s no secret that what critics like to call over the top, for me, is actually surrealist, abstract expression, which I prefer to call outside the box,’’ Cage says. “For me to do that, in order to realise my abstract dream in film acting, and because I believe in art synthesis, which is that what you can do in one art form be it painting or music you can do in another, be it film acting or writing ... I have to find characters that provide a context with which the audience can still go with it and can understand where it’s coming from, to some extent.

“So Ghost Rider, particularly when Blaze is transforming from human to spirit of vengeance, it’s painful and you can see it in the movie, in some scenes where he’s morphing from skull back to human,’’ he continues. “Well, that pain and incredibly extreme situation liberate me to be able to become abstract in my acting and surrealistic and, therefore, it remains in context, remains conceivable to an audience. Not so much to a critic, but to an audience member.

“Now, that’s not to say that I need to do that all the time,’’ Cage hastens to add. “I can also be very subdued in movies and be more photo-realist. That’s a style, naturalism is a style, surrealism is a style. It’s what you

Stare the red asterisk on the nose for 30 seconds, then look up to the roof of your house or stare at any blank wall then keep blinking your eyes... you will see who’s dating with the demon choose to use. What’s interesting to me is that, if you’re eclectic, some people want to see the more abstract and extreme styles and some people want to see the more subdued styles, so it winds up (ticking) everybody off.’’

“The public’s been OK,’’ he says. “Critics can get (ticked) off. But there is a school of thought that says, if you’re (ticking) the critics off, then you’re probably doing something right.’’

It’s common knowledge that Cage is a major comic-book fan. He even took his name from a Marvel comic-book character, hero-for-hire Luke Cage. Asked if his inner geek gets a kick out of seeing himself as Ghost Rider, with flames shooting out of his head, however, Cage uses the opportunity to insist that some of his appreciation of comic books has been blown out of proportion.

“I don’t want people to think that a 48-year-old man is up late at night with a stack of Spider-man comics and a tray of lemon cookies,’’ Cage says. “I do have loyalty to my influences as a child. —