Cage enjoys making films of varied styles

TORONTO — Nicolas Cage figures he owes no apologies when critics gripe about all the Hollywood action flicks he’s done.

An Academy Award winner for “Leaving Las Vegas,” Cage says those commercial movies provide the freedom to do smaller, smarter films such as his offbeat cop tale “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.”

And he notes that his big-studio flicks, including the “National Treasure” adventures, also do something his critics overlook: entertain big, big audiences.

“I am eclectic, and I do like to make many different kinds of films. And it’s true that if you can have a certain level of bankability, you can get movies greenlit, movies that maybe would not have a chance because of the material. The subject matter is too edgy,” Cage, 45, said in an interview at September’s Toronto International Film Festival, where “Bad Lieutenant” played in advance of its theatrical release.

“But that’s not to denigrate the movies that I’ve made like ‘National Treasure,’ because those movies make a lot of people happy. They provide a ritual, if you will, for families to go and share something with their children. I feel that I’m applying myself in a very decent way to be able to make movies like that.”

Cage — who is suing his former business manager for $20 million, claiming mismanagement that led him toward financial ruin — has a busy release schedule to help restore his personal fortune.

He has three movies due out in 2010: the supernatural saga “Season of the Witch,” with Cage as a 14th-century knight transporting a woman whose sorcery is blamed for the black plague; “Kick-Ass,” an action comedy in which he plays a vigilante dad who meets up with a teenage superhero wannabe; and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” in which he reunites with “National Treasure” director Jon Turteltaub for a live-action tale that expands on the Mickey Mouse escapade in Walt Disney’s animated classic “Fantasia.”

Adapted from a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” stars Cage as a 1,500-year-old disciple of the wizard Merlin who takes on his own pupil to combat rising evil.

Cage said it’s another family-friendly fantasy tale, the opposite of “Bad Lieutenant,” whose explosive violence and extreme drug use are leavened by raucously twisted humor.

Directed by Werner Herzog, the film stars Cage as a New Orleans police detective traipsing about post-Katrina New Orleans, snorting, popping and smoking whatever drugs he can while threatening witnesses in pursuit of savage killers.

The film is not an outright remake of 1992’s “Bad Lieutenant” starring Harvey Keitel, but rather Herzog’s and Cage’s take on the idea of a cop without conscience, doing his job in a sometimes hallucinatory fog.

“While we were maneuvering the film into some very stark, dark, abysmal humor, black humor, I always sensed it would work, because sometimes I would see Nicolas Cage at arm’s length from me in front of the camera… and I was exploding in laughter,” Herzog said, adding that he would gag himself with a handkerchief to keep from disrupting the scene.

“He notices how I’m gagged and turning purple, and he adds something else, and the moment that we call ‘cut,’ I’m exploding in laughter. I knew it would come across to an audience in a similar way.”

“Bad Lieutenant” marked Cage’s first time back working in New Orleans since he shot his directing debut there with 2002’s “Sonny.” Cage said he was anxious about returning, because he had a life-changing experience in New Orleans during the “Sonny” shoot.

“In some ways, you could say that I was reborn in New Orleans, and I had this terrifying, mystical experience,” said Cage, who would not provide details about what happened.