The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent stars Nicolas Cage as Nick Cage, but how much of the actor’s life is true and featured in the film? Directed by Tom Gormican from a screenplay by him and Kevin Etten, the film seems to blur the lines between reality and fiction by having the actor play a version of himself. When it comes to certain aspects of Cage’s life and film career, however, here is what the movie gets right and what is exaggerated for the sake of drama.

In The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Pedro Pascal’s Javi encourages Nick Cage to take the wheel after they take LSD because he did his own stunts for Gone in 60 Seconds. In another scene, Javi says he knows Nick can run really fast because he did it while filming National Treasure, though Nick initially refutes this. These two behind-the-scenes tidbits are actually true. Cage, the real-life actor, did do his own driving and running stunts on each respective film. For Gone in 60 Seconds, the actor revealed he went to a high-performance driving school where he learned how to do 360s and more with a car. For National Treasure, there is a video that was filmed on location showcasing Cage running on set, the camera following his movements.

Related: Why Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent's Reviews Are So Good

When it comes to Cage’s personal life offscreen, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent couldn’t be farther from the truth. In the film, Nick Cage has an ex-wife, Olivia, and a teenage daughter, Addy. The fictional iteration of the actor spends a lot of time focused on himself and Cage's film career and love of movies is greater than his desire for a genuine connection with his family. In reality, however, Cage enjoys spending time with his children and has even admitted to turning down roles in big movies to be with them. What’s more, unlike his fictional counterpart, Cage has been married five times, four of which resulted in divorce. He has two children, not one, and is expecting a third with wife Riko Shibata.

Unbearable Weight Is Fictional But Feature All Of Nic Cage's Real Movies

the unbearable weight of massive talent nic cage

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a completely fictitious take on Nicolas Cage, focused on the persona of the actor and the perceptions one might have about actors and stardom. However, one of the things that is a shared reality is the actor’s filmography, with the film referencing Nic Cage movie classics like Wild at Heart, Guarding Tess, Con Air, Face/Off, Leaving Las Vegas, and plenty more. To that end, the characters Cage plays in each of these movies remain the same. The actor has also been known to star in plenty of indie films, which Cage has admitted helped him pay off his debt (via GQ), just like his fictional counterpart. But whereas movie Cage really wants to land that lead role in a major studio film, the real-life actor enjoys making indie films more than making movies like National Treasure.

All told, there is some overlap between the real and fictional when it comes to The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. But the film itself is meant to be dramatized for the sake of being exciting and thrilling. Nick Cage and Nicolas Cage might share the same name and filmography, but they aren’t the same people, the former an exaggerated version of the actor audiences have come to know and love.

Nick Cage Is Actually Toned Down From The Real Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage grinning at the end of Mandy

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent actually presents a slightly more restrained version of Cage, even though the Cartel-related escapades in the movie are patently ludicrous. The real Nicolas Cage has dropped $150 million on what turned out to be stolen dinosaur eggs. He also owned two castles in a real-life story straight from his National Treasure movies – he became obsessed with looking for the Holy Grail. Given his romantic life over the years, the stable (if fractious) relationship shown in Unbearable Weight is a far cry from his multiple real-life marriages. In a move that shows that Unbearable Weight is aware of Nicolas Cage memes, Cage regularly argues with a de-aged, rambunctious Young Nick Cage in the movie – the raging id to his older, slightly calmer superego – to distance his character from those real-life excesses. Instead, Nick Cage's eccentricity stems from his love of German Expressionism, his unyielding passion for his craft, and his sometimes extremely irritating search for creative purity. A concept like The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent doesn't come around every day, so Cage had to carefully pick the parts of himself he wanted to show and acknowledge without painting over what his avid following already knows about his wild life.