10 NEWS People
Cage’s cultivated weirdness
Nobody plays unhinged wackos like Nicolas
Cage, said David Marchese in The New York
Times Magazine. In more than 100 movies,
Cage, 55, usually plays bizarre characters with
off-the-charts intensity. “Nouveau shamanic
acting,” he calls it. “I wanted to have the mys-
tery of the old stars, always preserved in an
enigmatic aura.” His personal life has been no
less unusual: buying castles, preparing a pyramid tomb in New
Orleans for his corpse, collecting exotic pets, nearly going bank-
rupt. Don’t blame the exotic pets, he says. “What is an octopus,
$80?” he says. “The dinosaur skull was unfortunate, because I
did spend $276,000. I bought it at a legitimate auction and found
out it was abducted from Mongolia illegally,” so he returned it.
“I never got my money back. That stank.” He also had to give up
his two king cobras, because they kept lunging at him, although
he kept his cat, with whom he’s shared some profound moments.
“A friend of mine gave me this bag of [psychedelic] mushrooms,
and my cat would go in my refrigerator and grab it, almost like
he knew what it was,” Cage says. “He loved it. Then I started
going, ‘I guess I’ll do it.’ It was a peaceful and beautiful experi-
ence.” Nowadays, he clarifies, “I am completely antidrug.”
Creating his own cure
When doctors couldn’t diagnose Doug Lindsay’s mysterious ail-
ment, he took matters into his own hands, said Ryan Prior in
CNN.com. Lindsay had collapsed on the first day of his senior
year at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Mo., in 1999, and
spent the next 11 years bedridden. Every time he stood, his heart
raced wildly and he became dizzy—the same mysterious ailment
that plagued his mother. In bed, Lindsay pored over old text-
books and zeroed in on the adrenal glands. Seeking a medical ally,
he bought a row of airplane tickets in 2002 so he could lie down
on a flight to a scientific convention in South Carolina. There,
an Alabama medical professor told Lindsay that he was onto
something. By 2006, they’d found the problem: Lindsay’s adre-
nal glands pumped out way too much adrenaline. A diagnosis,
however, isn’t a cure. “If there isn’t a surgery,” Lindsay decided,
“I’m going to make one.” He developed a 363-page proposal,
and finally found a surgeon who’d perform it. Three months later,
Lindsay walked a mile to church. Six years later, he completed his
degree in biology, and now, at 41, he works as a medical consul-
tant. His health isn’t perfect, “but I can travel and give speeches
and go for walks,” he says, “and I can try to change the world.”
Candace Bushnell has second thoughts on Sex and the City, said
Laura Pullman in The Times (U.K.). Not the HBO series itself, a
“game-changing cultural phenomenon” based on Bushnell’s 1997
novel of the same name, but rather the lifestyle it championed.
The book and show, which were inspired by her sex advice news-
paper column, broke down stigmas about single women having
carefree flings. She’s now 60, single, and childless. “I don’t want
to be shot down,” Bushnell says, “but I do see that people with
children have an anchor in a way that people who have no kids
don’t.” After getting divorced in 2012, she spent five years in rural
Connecticut writing, riding horses, and dating little. “I felt a bur-
den,” she admits, “maybe of disappointment or shame.” When
a woman is single in her 50s, she says, people act as though
“you didn’t do something right.” She still wants to look sexy, get-
ting regular Botox (“though it stops working so well as you get
older”) and fillers (“though you try not to get too much”). She’s
also back dating in Manhattan, but doesn’t regret her years of cel-
ibacy. “Did I miss some pure good sex? Of course,” she says. But
“finding the person to have the sex with—I couldn’t deal with it.”Getty,AP(^2
)Bushnell’s sexual hindsight
QMiley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth split
last week after just seven months of mar-
riage. The Disney star turned singer, 26, and
Australian actor, 29, wed last December
after dating on and off for 10 years. They
put out a joint statement saying the
separation was mutual, but Hems-
worth was spotted looking sullen
in Australia, telling paparazzi,
“You don’t understand what
it’s like.” Cyrus, meanwhile,
vacationed with The Hills star
Kaitlynn Carter in Lake Como,
Italy, where the two were
photographed making out on
a boat. Carter, 30, also recently
broke off a marriage. Cyrus saidearlier this year she identifies as queer, and
that gender is “almost irrelevant” in her re-
lationships. She posted a cryptic message
about her separation, writing, “Don’t fight
evolution, because you will never win.”
QFaye Dunaway was fired from a Broadway-
bound play last month for both her abusive
behavior and her inability to remember
her lines, TMZ.com reported. In Boston to
perform Tea at Five, a one-woman play
about an aging Kath a rine Hep burn, Dun a-
way, 78, was fed lines through an earpiece
but still managed to flub them, once ex-
claim ing midshow, “Where am I? Line?”
Yet Dun a way, who won the “Best Actress”
Oscar in 1977 for Network, was even
worse offstage. She was habitually late for
rehearsal, according to TMZ, berating col-
leagues, and slapping crew members whowere trying to put on her wig.
QCNN anchor Chris Cuomo went ballistic
this week after a Trump fan called him
“Fredo,” referring to the cowardly and
stupid brother in The Godfather. Cuomo,
whose older brother, Andrew, is governor
of New York, said, “Don’t f---ing insult me
like that,” insisting that “Fredo” is “like the
N-word” for Italian-Americans. “I’ll f---ing
throw you down these stairs like a f---ing
punk,” Cuomo, 49, tells his antagonist in a
hotel bar on Shelter Island, N.Y., as seen in
a video posted to a conservative website.
CNN defended its prime-time host, say-
ing he was the victim of an “orchestrated
setup.” Conservatives, however, mocked
Cuomo’s tough-guy tirade. President Trump
tweeted: “I thought Chris was Fredo also.
The truth hurts.”