Ghost Rider cast likes "Mephistopheles"

by: Lufguy 1 year, 10 months, 3 weeks, 3 days, 20 hours, 45 minutes ago 1

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Mike Szymanski talks about some of the behind the scenes happenings on the “Ghost Rider” set for Sci Fi. Com.

Peter Fonda, the 1960s film icon and Easy Rider star, was an inspiration to the cast and crew of Ghost Rider, in which he plays Mephistopheles.

"Peter is the reason why I ride motorcycles,” Ghost star Nicolas Cage said. “I saw Easy Rider, and the next day I bought a Harley Davidson and went from L.A. to San Francisco and back to L.A. and became Captain America in my mind."

In Ghost Rider, Cage is still a biker, playing motorcycle stuntman Johnny Blaze, who strikes a deal with Fonda’s character to save his father and discovers that he must transform nightly into a demon avenger with a flaming skull. The movie offered the perfect place for Cage and the 66-year-old Fonda to bond.

"We were there play acting together, and there is this bike there, and this is Peter there, and he’s talking,” Cage said. “And I stepped out of myself and looked at the two of us and thought, ‘This is really cool.’"

Director Mark Steven Johnson said that Fonda wanted to ride a bike in the film, but that he had to say no. “Look, we border on camp anyway, but there was always that line that’s too much,” Johnson said. “The devil on a bike would be too much."

But that didn’t keep Fonda off bikes entirely during the production. “In the middle of the night, like, three in the morning, I would hear a ‘vroom, vroom,’ and he’d ride a bike right on the set and say, ‘Hey, man, far out!’” Johnson recalled. “And I’d be like, ‘Fonda, you’re not working tonight. What are you doing?’ And he’d say, ‘Just riding around, man.’"

Fonda also made an impression on Cage’s comely co-star, Eva Mendes. “I have to tell you my little Peter Fonda story, because I love this story so, so much,” she said. “So we’re hanging out on set, and there is me and Peter and a couple of people, and they are talking about Easy Rider.  So I finally confess and say, ‘Peter, I’m so sorry. I never saw Easy Rider. I know it’s a huge deal for American cinema.’ So he got a group of, like, 10 people together, and we all met up at my director’s apartment in Melbourne, and he played the movie for me, and he sat next to me. And I had a personal commentary by Peter Fonda. And he’d sit there and pause it and be like, ‘Now, on this scene, it was my 27th birthday, and Jack [Nicholson] and I were up for two days.’ And that’s as far as I can go with that."