On a sunny, bustling late afternoon exterior a cinema in Soho, central London, greater than 100 individuals have gathered, a variety of whom kind of, for those who squint, look a bit bit just like the actor Nicolas Cage.
There’s a Elevating Arizona Cage, moustachioed and with a Hawaiian shirt. There are a number of Con Air Cages in white vests, one among whom has a toy bunny in a small cardboard field. A number of can genuinely declare an uncanny likeness to the actor; one or two others may uncharitably be mentioned to be nearer to Cage’s character in Face/Off, who surgically swaps his personal distinctive options for the face of another person – in that case, John Travolta – who appears nothing like him.
For a performer whose public persona is rarely lower than eccentric, a parade of a number of Cages may really feel completely applicable. The reason for this occasion is extra prosaic, nevertheless. The actor has a brand new movie out: The Surfer (“gloriously demented” – the Guardian), and as film PRs are studying, for those who’re after a burst of offbeat publicity lately, there’s no surer method to do it than with a supposedly spontaneous, designedly shonky superstar lookalike contest.
t“I’ve had an entire lifetime of ridicule and that is my second of glory,” says Elevating Arizona Cage Daniel Breuer, who works within the music business and says he’s in comparison with somebody well-known virtually day-after-day of his life. Whereas Serpico-era Al Pacino and Jerry Seinfeld additionally function, “Nicolas Cage has been the one fixed”.
Patrick Doran, an actor and net designer, likewise says it’s a fixed chorus. “Once I was youthful, individuals used to say I seemed like a younger Nic Cage. Now it’s simply: ‘You appear like Nic Cage.’ I take it as an awesome praise.”
We will blame all of it on 23-year-old American YouTuber Anthony Po (subscribers: 1.9m), who final October posted 100 sheets of A4 promoting a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest on lamp-posts round New York – he later mentioned he had completed it for a guess. A number of dozen Chalamets confirmed up, in addition to 10,000 or so different spectators and – shocking even Po – the true Chalamet. It concluded with 4 arrests, a $50 (£37.60) prize for the winner, and a worldwide publicity storm.
Dublin was subsequent on the bandwagon, internet hosting a Paul Mescal doppelganger contest just a few weeks later, at which another pale Irish males briefly shorts competed for €20 (£17), three pints and a packet of Denny’s sausages. Although the actor didn’t make an look himself, he was later launched to the winner, Jack Wall O’Reilly, a wannabe screenwriter, on a radio present and congratulated him on “captur[ing] the spirit of me very effectively”.
From there, inevitably, issues snowballed. A Harry Kinds lookalike contest in London supplied prizes of £50, wine and a few hair merchandise. A bunch of mates in San Francisco, noting that solely white male superstar clones had been sought thus far, organised a hunt for Dev Patel doppelgangers. (“I simply took individuals out and handed out burritos,” mentioned the eventual winner, Jaipreet Hundal, of his $50 prize bonanza.)
Chicago threw a Jeremy Allen White contest, at which the cutest contender was a toddler Carmie in white T-shirt and apron. New York sought a lookalike Zayn Malik, though it was unclear if the eventual winner was aware of any One Course songs.
Glen Powell personally endorsed his personal lookalike contest in Austin, Texas, in November, inviting Powell clones to assist him stage “a felony Glenterprise” – “All of us have the identical face, it’s the proper crime” – and attending (virtually) in individual, through a video name to his mum, who was one of many judges. He additionally supplied probably the most distinctive prize: a cameo look for the winner’s mother and father in his subsequent film.
By the point Drake was providing $10,000 to the winner of his personal lookalike contest in Toronto in December – claimed by a 21-year-old lady, Makayla Chambers, who had pigtails and a drawn-on beard – you might need questioned if the pattern had jumped the shark.
Not in accordance with Cage’s publicists, who on Friday had been providing prizes for the Folks’s Cage (“finest general lookalike”), the Cagiest Cage (“finest cosplay”) and the Ragiest Cage (hopefully self-explanatory).
First prize – life membership of the Prince Charles cinema – was awarded by fashionable acclaim to Breuer, who mentioned he felt “like I received the Oscar, which in fact Cage did for Leaving Las Vegas”. A few of the different rivals had had him “quaking in his snakeskin boots”, he mentioned, “however I knew I had the very best kick within the sport”.
