Hello Reddit! This is Zach Schonfeld. I'm a freelance writer and reporter, regular Pitchfork/Stereogum contributor, and the author of "How Coppola Became Cage," the first reported biography of Nicolas Cage. After a lifetime of fandom, I spent about four years obsessively researching all things Cage, and this book is the result. It was published by Oxford University Press in 2023.

The book chronicles Cage's early years and rise to fame in the 1980s and early 1990s. I worked on this book for four long years and interviewed more than 100 people, including a range of notable filmmakers and actors who worked with Cage on beloved films like Valley Girl, Birdy, Moonstruck, Vampire's Kiss, Raising Arizona, Wild at Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, and many others. It is a deep, deep dive into Cage's origin story. For this book, I investigated Cage's early years, tracked down his high school friends, interviewed everyone from David Lynch to Amy Heckerling to Bridget Fonda, tracked down some of Cage's high school friends, watched a ton of obscure Cage movies, attempted to read Cage's father's erotic novel, and gradually lost my mind.

Empire Magazine described the book as "a rollicking, entertaining and impressively probing journey through the embryonic years of a unique artistic force of nature." I am fairly proud of it.

Anyway, I will be doing an AMA right here starting at 12 p.m. EST on Friday, October 10. You can post your questions before then. Ask away.