Dear Nicolas Cage,

Remember when you made Face Off? Remember how you played irredeemable and evil-for-evil’s sake Castor Troy and also played uncorruptable and good-to-the-point of boring Sean Archer playing Castor Troy? Remember how you penetrated the one-dimensional caricatures of each to reveal that the one’s passion was passion-less, while the other’s dispassion burned passionately? And remember how you were smart and sarcastic and larger than life and sublime?

It’s true that by Face Off, I was already in love with you. You were my favorite: funny, interesting, smart, and, yeah, sexy. Every film you made was gold: Valley Girl, Raising Arizona, Wild at Heart, Honeymoon in Vegas. Sure I would have paid to see Face Off anyway because it was directed by John Woo and starred John Travolta, but Con Air? Con Air was all you. It’s true that I was confused as to why you would play the poorer southern version of Sean Archer and let your disturbing shlongy hair do most of the acting, and don’t think I couldn’t see that film for the conservative fantasy it was of racially-motivated, sexually-depraved criminal minds that justify America’s out-of-scale, completely dehumanizing prison industrial complex. Still, you had me because you’re you and Red Rock West kind of sucked it, but that was forgivable because I knew the real you and what you were really capable of.

A few lemons couldn’t tarnish your canon and I figured everything evened out in the end. Bringing Out the Dead sort of made up for 8mm. Not really, actually, but I was willing to entertain the possibility that you simply hadn’t read the script that closely (or considered how ridiculous was the premise that the more evil the pornographer, the deeper under the earth they must reside, and so to pursue the most evil of evil makers of snuff films, you would literally have to adventure to the earth’s core) and maybe you needed the money.

To be completely honest, I was a little worried, after 8mm, that something had happened to you and that you making sucky morality tales not because you were merely a tool of the corporate entertainment juggernaut, but because, perhaps, you actually shared those views. But Gone in Sixty Seconds alleviated my fears and renewed my trust in you.

And that’s really the point, Nicolas: I trusted you. I trusted you enough to see a movie about which I knew nothing other than it starred you, and you abused that trust. You stomped on that trust and kicked it into the dirt and spat on it. What am I talking about? I’m talking, Nicolas, about a little film called Knowing. Maybe you remember starring in it? As a MIT professor of astrophysics who is a rationalist and has rejected the religious beliefs of his preacher father? That is until your son receives a fifty-year old letter that predicts, in code (which you break ridiculously fast while drunk), all the world’s major and minor catastrophes? And then smooth black rocks start appearing all over your house and aliens start visiting your son? I would sound the warning “spoilers ahead,” except that nothing, Nicolas, could spoil that film any more than what happens next, which is that you break the last part of the code and figure out that the ultimate catastrophe, the one that’s going to wipe out all of humankind, is happening the very next day, which doesn’t give you much time to fix the problem, but you could have, Nicolas, fixed it and you didn’t, you didn’t at all and instead you send your son and a white bunny off with the Aryan N-aliens (yeah, we’ll talk about that in a minute) and then you cry on the ground and then you drive to your parents’ house and you and your family Christian embrace while your father reassures you that this isn’t the end and THEN the entire Earth explodes into a ball of flames.

What the F!!!? What exactly about that plot line did you think was okay? The whole world dies, and that’s it? Please do not try to tell me that that’s not really all there is because also your saved son now lives on Planet CGI Grass and you’ve found redemption because, frankly, it will break me. It has broken me. It’s broken us, Nicolas. Nothing you could ever do will make up for this. Not a thousand Face Off sequels or even you teamed with Mos Def in a re-make of To Sir, With Love.

Where does that leave us? It leaves us nowhere because there is no more you and me. I’ll still turn on hotel TVs with the hope that Con Air is playing, but I’ve moved on and I think it’s best if you just go with your new life and leave me to mine and we’ll just remember things as they were, when your sarcasm cut like a knife and the awesomeness of your driving skills alone could move a plot line forward.

Your once adoring fan,

k.