When Nicolas Cage and Charlie Sheen caused drug-addled chaos at 20,000 feet

Pairing two of Hollywood’s most prominent party animals together at the peak of their wild-living powers always carried the potential for disaster, but Nicolas Cage and Charlie Sheen did at least wait until they were soaring high in the sky before indulging in some shenanigans.

The two co-starred in 1993’s Deadfall, a thoroughly terrible crime story only memorable for Cage’s demented performance that saw him sport garishly white veneers, a porn star moustache, shirts so loud they hurt the eyes, and an unconvincing toupee for reasons only he could explain.

With his brother Christopher Coppola co-writing and directing, there presumably weren’t any heated arguments over the direction of the character, with Cage’s Eddie huffing poppers and throwing random karate kicks at various points throughout the film in a turn so unhinged it almost begs to be seen to be believed.

Even though the flight in question was only 90 minutes long and took the pair from Los Angeles to San Francisco, Cage and Sheen nonetheless conspired to get up to no good, which naturally involved some illicit substances and the involvement of the authorities when they finally landed on terra firma.

That being said, the Academy Award winner wanted to make it perfectly clear that he was blissfully unaware his co-star was carrying a sizeable amount of narcotics on his person, not that it stopped him from hijacking the plane’s PA system and announcing to all of the passengers on board that he was in charge.

“I did not know that Charlie has an eight ball of cocaine wrapped around his ankle, nor did he know that halfway through the flight – and remember, this was over 20 years ago, and it was a much more innocent time – that I was going to grab the PA and announce to the passengers that I was the pilot, and that I was not feeling well, and that I was losing control of the aircraft,” Cage explained of a moment that no doubt struck fear into the heart of everybody else on board.

Once the aircraft touched down, the real pilot understandably had a bone to pick, as did law enforcement. “And then when we landed, the pilot came out and understandably he was very angry,” he continued.

“And he said, ‘Not cool, not fucking cool,’ and then he pointed his finger at my face furiously, at which point the door to the aircraft whooshed open like a nuclear gateway to a bank vault to reveal six fully armed police officers.”

To try and diffuse the situation – which could have gotten a lot worse very quickly were the cops to discover Sheen had cocaine on his person – Cage “very gingerly, very politely, very delicately talked my way out of going to airport jail,” which came after he’d absolved his cohort of any blame so that he wouldn’t be subjected to a search.

Given their respective reputations, Cage telling a plane full of people he was the pilot losing control while Sheen revelled in cocaine-fuelled bliss isn’t even surprising in the slightest.