Potential Actors for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent II

Last week The Hollywood Reporter broke a story that Lionsgate was in final negotiations for a film called “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” starring Nicolas Cage as Nicolas Cage. “The character is desperate to get a role in a new Tarantino movie while also dealing with a strained relationship with his teenage daughter,” writes The Reporter. “He also occasionally talks to an egotistical 1990s version of himself who rides him for making too many crappy movies and for not being a star anymore.” It goes deeper, and if you failed to pick up on the story being meta, don’t worry, because The Reporter deems it “meta” twice in the article so we’re all real clear about what this one’s after. The article mentions Jean-Claude Van Damme’s “meta” movie “JCVD” as a comparison, which I thought of too, though I also thought of something else, which you likely already assumed. I mean, franchises are all the rage these days. So let’s franchise “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” Let’s make it a series! Who’s next?!

Potential Actors for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent II

John Turturro

He’d go all in. He’d play to “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent”, believing whole-heartedly in it and agonizing under the weight of it, shouting at kids on the street who quote Jesus Quintana to him and moping in trendy coffee shops, until things take a Paul Giamatti in “Cold Souls”-ish turn where Turturro realizes his actorly cortex has been severed and must travel to deepest Belgium for repairs.

Matt Dillon

Now in his mid-50s, the real-life Dillon has become a real-life member of the real-life El Flamingo Club, playing gin rummy with retired investment bankers, spinning nostalgic tales of attending the Oscar parties in 2006 even as he frantically leaves voicemails for Kate Hudson that she never returns about “You, Me and Dupree 2”, all the while arguing with a version of his “Flamingo Club” character who keeps roasting him for coasting on past glories.

Wesley Snipes

Ok, can we talk about it now? You know what I mean (you probably don’t). I’m talking about the part at the beginning of “Zombieland: Double Tap” when the characters are hanging out at the White House and we see them writing up a Presidential pardon for Wesley Snipes. You thought it was setting up a Snipes cameo, didn’t you? I sure did! How did it not? Did they reach out to him and he said no? I don’t know, but I do know that everywhere I go these days – EVERYWHERE I GO – I see teens and twenty-somethings rocking 90s fashion and so I ask: if mom jeans are back, why isn’t Snipes? And so, in “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent II”, as he’s filming some straight-to-DVD action movie called “Variance”, he argues with versions of his 90s action movie characters, all of whom keeping pushing him to perform the stunts himself, shunning his stunt doubles, each stunt growing riskier, until, nodding to the end of “The Wrestler”, Wesley Snipes, as the first notes of “Bitter Sweet Symphony” rise on the soundtrack, jumps out of an airplane without a parachute to prove he’s still got it. (How did this get so dark?)

George Clooney

After everyone refuses to reassemble for “Ocean’s 14”, George Clooney decides to shoulder “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” alone and make “Ocean’s 1.”

Parker Posey

“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent II” is directed by Jim Jarmusch and finds Parker Posey road-tripping across to America to buy DVDs of all of her movies from failing video stores, placing each one in a designer knapsack, before arriving in California to triumphantly hurl the knapsack into the ocean.

Val Kilmer

If he’s become, shall we say, an eccentric recluse, the occasional public word from Kilmer nevertheless makes it clear his familiar cockiness has never really gone away. And his “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” might be something more like “The Weight of Massive Talent” where, evoking his own turn in “True Romance” as an Elvis ghost consulting with and giving confidence to Christian Slater’s character, he seeks not so much guidance as ratification of his own still considerable genius from his own Tom “Iceman” Kazansky as Kilmer self-finances a project in which be plays both William Clark and Meriwether Lewis.

Rachel Weisz

To my way of thinking, no one is more equipped to star in a sequel to “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” than her. Because I could really see her going through the frenetic motions of everyday Hollywood life and then getting a call from some mysterious producer about starring as Sherlock Holmes in yet another Sherlock Holmes adaptation only to find that she sort of becomes Sherlock Holmes for real in having to navigate the muck and mire of some faux investigation about the biggest Hollywood scandal ever that involves flashbacks and flash-forwards and ends with her, like, out beyond the reaches of the Solar System which I can’t really explain save for “That’s why we cast Rachel Weisz.”

Marion Cotillard

Whatever you do for Marion’s “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent”, please just base it entirely off this photo.

Harrison Ford

Disentangling himself from “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent”, Ford, taking counsel from his “Star Wars” self, tells everyone what to go do with themselves and then films a 45 minute documentary in which he builds an addition to his deck.

Amy Adams

“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” of Amy Adams leads to a social media mix-up in which she is inadvertently cancelled, leading to a race against time in which Adams must prove her cultural innocence before it’s too late.