And all over a singing iguana.

Said reptile is a coked-up hallucination that sings Release Me (actually the voice of bluesman Johnny Adams), for the benefit of drug-addicted New Orleans police detective Terence McDonagh. Not originally in the script, it was one of those weird flourishes that makes Herzog Herzog.

Werner was very devoted to his iguanas, Cage said dryly at a TIFF news conference Tuesday. We had a midway wrap party and Werner was at the bar, very unsettled, because he might not get the three minutes of iguana time he needed, and he said he might never make another movie again. I thought that would really be a shame.

Added Herzog: I was grateful for Nicolas support because I felt the producers werent accustomed to things like that. Theyd made lots of action movies, Rambo and other things. And they would not tolerate more than five seconds of an iguana. And I felt if it was cut out, I really should stop making films. But I always knew after that, Nicolas would be a strong supporter.

Cages McDonagh is a bad lieutenant indeed (the movie actually has no connection to the 1992 Abel Ferrara movie Bad Lieutenant, other than the name which Herzog was against, but the producers had thoughts of a franchise).

In the course of the movie McDonagh robs nightclubbers, steals drugs from the evidence room, makes deals with mobsters to pay off gambling debts, and even holds an old lady at gunpoint.

It was quite clear to us that we were going to go as far as we wanted to go, Herzog said. Nicolas was going to be taken some place he had never been before. I knew that he would be in an intensity we hadnt seen yet.

We would do scenes in the so-called normal version, and I had the feeling there was something wilder. And I would turn to Nicolas and I would say, Well do it once more, but this time you should turn the pig loose.

Added Cage: I never agreed with that. I thought of him more a shark. But Werner has a fascination with pigs.

At the beginning, Herzog says he was so taken by Cages portrayal of a crazed cokehead, he was convinced the actor actually was on drugs.

It was an awful day, Cage said. It was one of our first scenes in the movie, and, method actors, we try to live in the imagination to make it real. So I would have this little vial of saccharine or something and I would take it and try to psyche up and totally create this imaginary world where I was high on coke. And Werner would say, Now Nicolas, what was in that vial?

And I said, Oh, man. Please dont pull me out of my imaginary... then I said, Its coke! And then he understood.

I was kind of appalled, Herzog said of the brief belief that his leading man was a drug addict. It was just a fantastic performance.

Not that Cage didnt know his stuff. Asked to compare his performance to his Oscar-winning alcoholic turn in Leaving Las Vegas, he said the process was quite different. In Leaving Las Vegas, I had a drinking coach, literally.

This one the process was a sober one. I looked at an impressionistic landscape from my past 25 years to give me some sense of where I wanted to go.

He drew from one such well in a scene where McDonagh divvies up a heroin haul with a drug kingpin, played by the rapper Xzibit, and hallucinates that a football player on TV has grown antlers.

That came from an actual experience, Cage said. A few friends of mine years ago told me they were watching a football game and they were all doing some drugs and they all had the exact same hallucination at the same time.

They all saw the football player grow antlers and score a touchdown. That story stayed with me for 20 years.

jim.slotek@sunmedia.ca