On a sunny, bustling late afternoon outdoors a cinema in Soho, central London, greater than 100 folks have gathered, a quantity of whom type of, in case you squint, look a little bit bit just like the actor Nicolas Cage.
There is a Raising Arizona Cage, moustachioed and with a Hawaiian shirt. There are a number of Con Air Cages in white vests, one of whom has a toy bunny in a small cardboard field. Several can genuinely declare an uncanny likeness to the actor; one or two others may uncharitably be stated 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 to be like nothing like him.
For a performer whose public persona isn’t lower than eccentric, a parade of a number of Cages may really feel solely acceptable. The clarification for this occasion is extra prosaic, nonetheless. The actor has a brand new movie out: The Surfer (“gloriously demented” – the Guardian), and as film PRs are studying, in case you’re after a burst of offbeat publicity as of late, there’s no surer approach to do it than with a supposedly spontaneous, designedly shonky superstar lookalike contest.
t“I’ve had a whole lifetime of ridicule and this is my moment of glory,” says Raising Arizona Cage Daniel Breuer, who works in the music trade and says he’s in comparison with somebody well-known nearly day by day of his life. While Serpico-era Al Pacino and Jerry Seinfeld additionally function, “Nicolas Cage has been the only constant”.
Patrick Doran, an actor and internet designer, likewise says it’s a fixed chorus. “When I was younger, people used to say I looked like a young Nic Cage. Now it’s just: ‘You look like Nic Cage.’ I take it as a great compliment.”
We can 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 stated he had executed it for a wager. Several dozen Chalamets confirmed up, in addition to 10,000 or so different spectators and – stunning even Po – the real 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 in brief shorts competed for €20 (£17), three pints and a packet of Denny’s sausages. Though 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 show and congratulated him on “captur[ing] the spirit of me very well”.
From there, inevitably, issues snowballed. A Harry Styles lookalike contest in London provided prizes of £50, wine and a few hair merchandise. A bunch of pals in San Francisco, noting that solely white male superstar clones had been sought up to now, organised a hunt for Dev Patel doppelgangers. (“I just took people out and handed out burritos,” stated 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 conversant in any One Direction songs.
Glen Powell personally endorsed his personal lookalike contest in Austin, Texas, in November, inviting Powell clones to assist him stage “a criminal Glenterprise” – “We all have the same face, it’s the perfect crime” – and attending (nearly) in particular person, by way of a video name to his mum, who was one of the judges. He additionally provided essentially the most distinctive prize: a cameo look for the winner’s mother and father in his subsequent film.
By the time Drake was offering $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 may need questioned if the pattern had jumped the shark.
Not in keeping with Cage’s publicists, who on Friday have been providing prizes for the People’s Cage (“best overall lookalike”), the Cagiest Cage (“best cosplay”) and the Ragiest Cage (hopefully self-explanatory).
First prize – life membership of the Prince Charles cinema – was awarded by standard acclaim to Breuer, who stated he felt “like I won the Oscar, which of course Cage did for Leaving Las Vegas”. Some of the opposite rivals had had him “quaking in his snakeskin boots”, he stated, “but I knew I had the highest kick in the game”.
