In a recent roundtable discussion, Nicolas Cage sat down with fellow actors Peter Dinklage, Andrew Garfield, Jonathan Majors and Simon Rex for The Hollywood Reporter.
At one point during the discussion, the tragic accident where cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, was shot by Alex Baldwin came up. And even though Cage expressed his thought on the matter in a very respectful manner, one cannot help but notice the subtle shade thrown towards Baldwin.
Nicolas Cage believes the responsibility lies with the actor
When the moderator brought up the topic, Cage explained that he believes “knowing how to shoot a gun” is one of the responsibilities of a “movie star”.
“I don’t want to cast blame anywhere, but I do think, and I’m not talking about anybody, but people don’t like the word movie star. We want to be humble actors. But a movie star is a bit of a different kind of presentation because you need to know how to ride a horse,” he explained.
“You need to know how to fight. You’re going to do fight scenes. You need to know how to ride a motorcycle. You need to know how to use a stick shift and drive sports cars, and you do need to know how to use a gun. You do. You need to take the time to know what the procedure is. Those are part of the job profiles.”
Stuntmen and movie stars should be able to do eachother’s job
Cage continued by saying that in today’s industry there is a place in production for stunt people to take over when outside expertise is needed.
“Now, the stuntman and the movie star are two jobs that co-exist, they co-exist,” he concluded. “Every stuntman needs to be a movie star and every movie star needs to be a stuntman. That’s just part of the profile… And that’s all I’m going to say about it.”
Peter Dinklage believes it is the industry’s responsibility
When he had finished speaking, Majors complimented Cage for speaking so “eloquently” and agreed with Cage’s overall ideas.
And Game of Thrones star, Peter Dinklage added whether the actor or stuntman knows how to shoot a gun, it is the industry’s responsibility to ensure that something like the Alec Baldwin incident never happens again.
“It can be avoided because look at what you can do with movies,” Dinklage explained “You know that also calls into question, are there too many guns in movies? We’ve all held guns in movies, probably, and I always think about that being anti-gun myself, but the character isn’t. That’s a very complicated thing. But that made it very clear that there has to change, like, now. One hundred percent.”