Nicolas Cage’s drunken arrest wasn’t his first run-in with New Orleans police

Nicolas Cage would like it to be known that he only gets into drunken fights and goes to jail in his off hours. Despite his intoxicated public arrest in New Orleans early Saturday morning, Cage, 47, was back at work on Monday morning — on the set of the film Medallion, which is what brought him to the Big Easy in the first place.

“He is always extremely professional,” a source on the set told People. “He is a dedicated actor when he is at work, and I don’t think people would hire him so much if he wasn’t.”

The source adds that the actor is “very excited” about doing his own stunts for some of the film’s action sequences later this week. (There’s an idea! Maybe next time Cage is stopped by the police for erratic behavior, he should tell them he’s just “doing his own stunts.”)

Cage may indeed be well-behaved on set — but this weekend’s arrest wasn’t the first time that the actor went wild in New Orleans. In the May issue of GQ, editor Jim Nelson describes how he watched Cage have a complete meltdown at a fancy New Orleans restaurant during Mardi Gras. The story goes something like this: Cage was alone at the restaurant’s bar, his wife and son having left after an “altercation.” He was drinking heavily and “literally bouncing off the walls,” though he refused two expensive bottles of wine (one of which cost $6000!) on the grounds that they weren’t good enough. At some point, the actor got tired of chatting up the bar patrons and made his way into the dining room.

And that’s when Cage — whose wife and child, as you may recall, had just left — started hitting on other people’s dates. The GQ editor says that he stumbled into the dining room, “clutching the hostess stand for balance,” and shouted “Where’s the REAL girls?” He walked up to a table where two girls sat with their boyfriends. Here’s what happened next, according to Nelson’s account:

“You.” He pointed at the brunette. “You’re a contender.” He turned to the blonde. “You’re not.”

He was soon escorted out of the restaurant by a couple armfuls of hospitality. A manager type stood in the driveway outside and tried to gently scoot him off, the way you might shoo a raccoon you’re not sure is feral. Nearby you could hear the carnival howls of Mardi Gras. The room sighed, slowly went back to digesting.

Then we heard another tussle. Cage was at the doorway, trying to get past the manager dude, grabbing onto the walls, his arms extended out as if he were desperate to catch an existential football. His hand went through a panel in the door, shattering the glass. “You LOVE ME!” he shouted to the restaurant staff, who surely at one point did.

The GQ website has also printed the brunette contender’s version of events that night, which adds some even crazier details. For instance, when Cage was hitting on her, he asked her to “be his new mother.” (Gross!) She also says that it took 30 police officers to escort him home.

So now we know that the New Orleans Police Department was well-acquainted with Cage before this weekend — and not just from multiple viewings of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Good to know that Cage is a professional on the set, but it doesn’t make his behavior less worrisome. After all, Charlie Sheen always came to work on time too…

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