The Nicolas Cage Blog Post

As a drunk you populate your world with people who won't interfere with the most important thing - getting drunk. So eventually you end up alone (Leaving Las Vegas 1995), and facing death full of regrets (Adaptation 2002). Along the way you have manipulated people, let down people or left people. But always there were people - those who will get drunk with you; those who quietly tolerate your drinking; and those who avoid you.

The first group have seen you at your worst (or near enough) and how quickly you deteriorate from quite drunk to borderline arrest material. They know you can be an entertaining, ebullient dinner party guest, but have noticed how you start searching the pantry to drink anything after the good wine has gone.

The second group tolerate your drinking - they smile at your drunken jokes, or sit through Christmas lunch with an untouched glass of wine just so you don't feel uncomfortable. They either quietly despise you or pity you. This group is wary of you. They have seen a drunk before and identify you as one, but just because you keep it together when they are around, you think they don't know, just like the third group. The third group simply avoids you.

At some stage, you recruit a close friend who would never, never ask you to stop drinking. It is an unsaid contract, so it is likely this person will be alcoholic or have addiction experience.

Ben drinks and drinks and drinks and Sera is there with a bemused devotion, knowing her flaws, and accepting Ben as flawed too, except he his just a drunk. Sera consummates his ultimatum with her vow "I do". The voiceless soundtrack is fitting as you can imagine what utter bullshit is coming out of his drunken mouth.

My wife has watched as I spilled wine in a restaurant in Italy, and waited anxiously as I stumbled around for somewhere to buy alcohol late at night in Budapest. Watched as I have gone to bed with a half full glasses of wine, to drink on waking in the morning. Or kicked me as I lay drunk on cold kitchen tiles passed out, not waking. Just being there and, more importantly, still being there today is a fucking miracle of some sort.

But even with her love, you are still a stinking alcoholic, and on those occasions where she does have the temerity to "ask you to stop drinking" you react. It is outrageous to even consider taking away your alcohol - after all, without the illusion of drunkenness, the life you have been avoiding is just drudgery. There is no magic without alcohol, because you are fearful of giving anything meaning or passion because then you might feel pain or loss. Even simple emotional stuff is totally off limits.

Because you are so closed to all your experiences they are bundled up in little pockets of resentment, bitterness and non forgiveness. And this limits your life, because you have given away the power to take charge and interpret what happens in your life, the way you want to.

In Adaptation, Donald "I'm gonna be a screenwriter - like YOU!" Kaufmann owns his emotions, even though it is misplaced, unrequited, or simply wrong. The emotion exists nonetheless - it is a flutter in his stomach, or a tingling up his spine. And by owning it, Donald has the balls to harness powerful meaning from what others would dismiss as awkward fantasy. And it makes his life richer. Simple.

Instead of self censoring the love, Donald Kaufman identifies it, has the balls to go up to the girl and say it, and takes away an experience that is truly his.

Like today; I was delivering gift hamper parcels with my wife. I jumped out the car and the woman who answered the door was D, the older sister of the girl I never asked on a date in when I was fourteen! Un-fucking-believable! I looked at D and saw her sister's eyes and felt that flush of missed love, a missed crush. An episode that never quite happened. But it is my moment, and I can cherish that beautiful, innocent me and the potential love that wasn't realised.