Director Tim Brown talks about what it was like directing Nicolas Cage for the upcoming film THE RETIREMENT PLAN

Writer and director Tim Brown he has worked on a few films in his career, but his latest film, The pension planhas Nicolas Cage as a star, so Brown is in a whole new league, and he sat down with Variety to explain what he learned from his lead actor. In the film, Cage plays a retired government assassin with a violent set of skills, who must protect his estranged daughter and grandson (played by Ashley Greene AND Talia Campbell) after finding themselves entangled with some very bad men (including Ron Perlmann AND Jackie Earle Haley).

When Variety asked him what he expected from Cage once he learned he had signed on for the lead role, Brown said:

My expectation was that he would become a complete professional and have everything under control. The day I have to have an ego and someone who has problems or really wants to oppose what I think… I don’t know what would happen, I’d probably say crazy [laughs]. It arrived fully prepared. Whatever my expectations were, he blew them away tenfold.

He went on to talk about what Cage added to the script and how he acted as a collaborator:

I think if I were making a meal, he wouldn’t touch the main ingredients, but he would come in and say, “If you add a little cumin to this, it’ll change everything.” I call it the “Nick Cage spice”: he would add something, and it’s because of an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema. Always extract from a file. I don’t think it’s any different than Quentin Tarantino pulls from files when he thinks about cinema and new ideas, because new ideas are just old ideas, recycled, rethought and repositioned.

The first time I spoke to him was when he sent me some notes on the script, just his dialogue, nothing else. He’s an exceptional dialogue editor, in the sense that I would exaggerate something, and less is always more. He would say something with a look. He’d rewrite a line and say, “Instead of saying a line, what if I just took a look at it?” So he adds these elements where he’ll change the script, but he won’t change the line.

Since Cage is a film historian, Brown discussed the inspiration behind Cage’s character and who he channeled when playing this role:

It was actually Leslie Howard as the Scarlet Pimpernel [from the 1934 movie of the same name]. It’s very specific. We would give films to watch back and forth: my influences, her influences. The Scarlet Pimpernel is a master of disguise in the film. At one point she behaves like a flashy boy, a rich playboy during the day. That night, he goes out dressed as an old lady to infiltrate the French troops to try to rescue these aristocrats and bring them to safety. You realize that Nic’s character in our movie is apparently a drunken beach bum, and then slowly over time, we move backwards until he’s in full uniform and wearing a bulletproof vest. We see him loading weapons and it’s like, “OK, this is the onion, and we peeled it and he’s a makeup artist and a disguise artist,” except he does it without wearing a mask.

Apparently Cage is an absolute pro when it comes to choreographing a fight scene. Brown explained:

It’s there all the time. The stuntmen do it first, they show everyone what to do. It goes to level. We didn’t throw it off a building or anything – it was relatively tame and shot up close. So it was right there. He has to have a photographic memory, because his ability to have someone describe something that has 15 different moves and they’ll say, “OK, show me, tell me.” Then he’ll do it and say, “I get it.”

There’s a scene where he loads weapons, and he’s done that a lot in the movies. He’s like a basketball player who shoots threes. We are amazed when they keep doing it over and over again, but he has been doing it his whole life. He comes with such a resume that he can just pull out his tool bag and say, “Yeah, I got this for you, no problem.”

As for what working with Nic Cage taught Brown as a filmmaker, the director said:

It definitely taught me a lot about dialogue editing, not to mention a lot. I think she helped me be less afraid of listening to other people’s advice about my work, because it’s only for the best. Put ego aside to some extent and allow yourself to be open to suggestions. He is bringing a wealth of knowledge and the intention is to help and improve everything.

What a great experience it was to collaborate with such a prolific and beloved actor as Nicolas Cage. The pension plan is in theaters now.