The actor himself and director Osgood Perkins talk about keeping the film’s elusive serial killer character elusive.
“It’s the equivalent of putting a warning label on a jar of nitroglycerin,” Cage says.
“The monster is a highly, highly dangerous substance.
Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe star in ‘Longlegs’.Neon
The way it’s moved, unveiled, deployed has to be treated very carefully.
He is going to change your reality.
agent who’s more in tune with the supernatural and the forces beyond our control than most.
Maika Monroe’s Lee Harker in ‘Longlegs’.NEON
Blair Underwoodplays Lee’s boss, Agent Carter, and Alicia Witt plays Lee’s mother, Ruth Harker.
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The effect is that you might constantly feel his presence, even when he’s not in frame.
Maika Monroe’s Lee Harker in ‘Longlegs’.Neon
NEON
The filmmaker admits he thought a lot about when to finally reveal Longlegs in full.
“Editing a picture is a nearly psychedelic experience,” he says.
“It really is because it’s so infinite.
I think we found the sweet spot.
This guy lives just outside the consciousness of our protagonist.
He’s there, but he’s totally not there, but he’stotallythere.”
The twist was that Cage also found a personal connection toLonglegs.
The actor, seen recently inArcadianandDream Scenario, remembers meeting Perkins for the first time at a restaurant.
Cage’s mother,the late Joy Vogelsang, struggled with schizophrenia and severe depression throughout his childhood.
The actor channeled a lot of that into the Longlegs character.
“I was coming at it from, what exactly was it that drove my mother insane?”
She would talk in terms that were kind of poetry.
I didn’t know how else to describe it.
I tried to put that in the Longlegs character because he’s really a tragic entity.
“That’s whatLonglegsis,” he adds.
“Sometimes you don’t know what lives there with you.”
He mentions his famous father, actor Anthony Perkins of Alfred Hitchcock’sPsychofame.
“I think that, as children, we know everything.
SoLonglegs, at its core, is about that.
The things that are under your feet are sometimes the hardest things to see.”
Tickets are now on sale forLonglegs, which Neon will release in theaters on July 12.
