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TOPIC: NICOLAS Cage is quite the treasure hunter, even when he's not making big-budget movies for producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
NICOLAS Cage is quite the treasure hunter, even when he's not making big-budget movies for producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
The star of 2004's National Treasure and the new sequel, subtitled Book of Secrets, wanted to visit the German city of Goerlitz as a birthday treat last year.
Cage's interest was the city's link with philosopher Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), with whose writings he had become intrigued, but it was as Cage and his third wife, Korean-born Alice Kim, toured the nearby Franconian Forest that he uncovered his latest treasure.
It was quite magical,'' Cage says during an interview in Los Angeles. It was snowing and my wife and I thought we'd like to go for a ride in the forest and we were doing that, listening to some Bach while driving through the snow. There was a snow fox running and then I saw this little schloss (castle) emerge on a hill.
I thought about it later and called a real estate broker to find out about it and it turned out it was for sale.''
Cage, 43, who had previously bought a small island in the Bahamas, became the proud owner of Schloss Neidstein, which he says was built in 800, rebuilt during the 1300s and was once the family home of the Faber-Castells, renowned for the writing and drawing implements that still bear their name.
It was not a very expensive property by any stretch of the imagination,'' Cage says.
It has turrets and a well inside the house, which is interesting, but I want to make it clear this is not a gigantic place.
As you can imagine, not many people want to buy an old castle that's falling apart in the middle of a German forest. But I like Grimm fairytales and it's an ancient forest, so that's really why I did it. I just said, `Well, let's see what we can do with this'.''
Schloss Neidstein is now undergoing a major refurbishment and Cage is hoping to spend time there with Kim, their two-year-old son Kal-el and Cage's 16-year-old son Weston, from his relationship with actor Kristina Fulton.
Cage previously was married to actor Patricia Arquette and, briefly, Elvis Presley's daughter Lisa Marie.
I'm going to go there to stimulate my imagination and to be with nature and think about the past and read a lot of fairytales,'' says an unusually candid Cage.
I'll bring my family and hopefully my (eldest) son will be able to use the place for inspiration to write music.
His interests are in music and also writing. We've done a comic book together and he's more about the creative process. He doesn't seem to gravitate much to the material things.
The most interesting thing that I'm experiencing at the moment, that I think is a bit unusual for people my age, is that I have my older son going on 17 and really becoming a man, whereas my younger son has just turned two and he's really just coming into consciousness.
So I am having these two very important moments in their growth occurring simultaneously and I'm finding myself trying to go back and forth to make sure it's harmonious, and so far it's been wonderful.
The greatest joy I have is to see Weston holding Kal-el and seeing them together. They are my genuine treasures, so I have no complaints.
I don't really want anything and that's a happy place to be.
I'll say that I'm content. I don't want to say any more than that because you never want to jinx anything.''
With the original National Treasure grossing almost $350 million worldwide, there was no doubt the historian and treasure hunter Ben Gates would be back on the screen before long, with Academy Award-winning Cage filling his shoes.
Book of Secrets, with John Turteltaub again directing, reunites Cage with German actor Diane Krueger as archivist and Gates's love interest Abigail Chase; Justin Bartha as hi-tech wizard Riley Poole; Jon Voight as Ben's father Patrick Gates; and Harvey Keitel as FBI Agent Sadusky.
Added to the cast for the sequel is Helen Mirren as Ben's mother and Patrick's long-estranged wife; and Ed Harris as a black market antiquities dealer who brings a long-lost page from the diary of President Abraham Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth to Ben's attention.
The page implicates an ancestor of Ben's in the Lincoln assassination and the search for historical truth widens to a hunt for perhaps the most mysterious book on Earth and, from that, to a famed mythological treasure.
This movie puts us all on a ride, makes us feel like kids again, plus you get to learn a little bit about history, which is always a good thing,'' Cage says.
Unlike the first movie, filmed entirely in the US, Book of Secrets was shot in England and France as well as various US locations.
In London, Cage did some of the driving in a car chase sequence that features a Mercedes, a Land Rover, a double-decker bus, a London taxi and a brewery truck spilling barrels of beer.
I'm not a very good driver in England,'' Cage says somewhat sheepishly. I have trouble even walking across the street in London, so it was a challenge.
I really had to concentrate on those chase sequences because I was not comfortable with it at all.''
But he is up for even more challenges if, as expected, Book of Secrets performs well at the box office and a third movie is mounted.
I was always for the idea of this becoming International Treasure and if there is another one I'd like that to keep going,'' he says.
I want to see it grow into Asia and go into Africa and Australia and keep it expanding wider and wider.
I mean, the more people you can welcome to the party the happier everyone will be.''
National Treasure: Book of Secrets opens on December 20.
Cagefactor.com -> Nicolas Cage Forum -> Old Posts -> NICOLAS Cage is quite the treasure hunter, even when he's not making big-budget movies for producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
