Before Nicolas Cage became Dracula in the film Renfieldthe North American actor had already experimented with the creatures of the night in the 80s. An experience that the actor remembers pleasantly, but that also caused him one of the worst sequences of his life, in which he actually ate two cockroaches alive.
The scene in question is from the movie. vampire kisses (Robert Bierman, 1989)which he co-starred with María Conchita Alonso (Pursued, predator 2). “I’ll never do it again”the actor recently confessed to Yahoo Entertainment. “I’m sorry I did it.”
In the original script, this scene simply saw Cage imitating Rocky Balboa eating raw eggs, but Cage found it all too bland. “I saw it as a business decision because when the roach gets in the mouth, people really react,” the actor then pointed out in the extras of the DVD of the film.
“I ate cockroaches twice because of a director’s joke”, the interpreter would then add, since the first take had already been valid for the final editing.
vampire kisses tells the story of a New York literary agent, who begins to behave strangely after a visit from a mysterious young woman. So this is over obsessing over the idea that she is a vampire and feeding on him. A film that has turned out to be an inexhaustible source of memes for Internet users and won him the best actor award at the Sitges festival.
Does history repeat itself in ‘Renfield’?
In Chris McKay’s new film, based on an idea by Robert Kirkman, the actor Nicholas Hoult, in the role of Dracula’s assistant, eat insects too. However, his experience has been very different.
“The best thing we ate were the crickets,” Hoult reveals. “The crickets tasted like smoked bacon and salt and vinegar. I love salt and vinegar so I was happy to eat crickets. From time to time you would have small pieces in your teeth. But, then the prop team was amazing they made candy roaches for me and They were delicious. Also, the worms were just gummy worms in Oreos crushed up to look like dirt.”
Although Cage points out his problems with the aforementioned scene from his past, he also defends that eating insects could “solve world hunger.” Everything if we left behind the social phobia towards them.
“They’re protein-rich, fat-free, nutrient-dense extreme, and just plain plentiful, because they’re everywhere,” declares Cage. We do not know if the North American will continue to eat insects in the future, but, of course, live cockroaches have abandoned their diet.
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