He flies up to a perch, where he can scrutinize us at eye level. Huginn has gleaming black feathers all over, except for his chest, which is an unexpected shock of pure white. His name is Huginn, and Cage says it was вЂњlove at first sight.вЂќ He swoops around a massive geodesic dome, so we inch up to the edge and peer inside. And he will, in turn, explain everything to me that is seemingly inexplicable about Nicolas Cage.ДЇirst, though, I want to meet his talking crow. We will settle in his sitting room, where, over many mugs of coffee, I will try to square the sensitive, self-aware person in front of me with the fairly ridiculous myth that exists in our culture's collective imagination. And my uncleвЂќ-the director Francis Ford Coppola-вЂњhas decided to change his name to Francesco,вЂќ he says, excitedly showing me the two-month ultrasound on his phone. They have the names picked out already: Akira Francesco for a boy and Lennon Augie for a girl. He has spent recent days this winter mostly inside, reading scripts and watching movies and preparing to welcome a baby with his wife of a year, Riko Shibata. What I encountered instead was something more surprising: a human being who has been to some serious depths, much of it public, much more of it not, and emerged with a new and better understanding of himself and his life. And isn't this what I expected? That I would come to his enchanted lair and talk about the snakes and skulls and other oddities-maybe getting injured by a samurai sword or something in the process, though hopefully nothing too grievous, so that I could still tell you about the snakes and skulls and other oddities. These moments can happen with Cage, when you suddenly find your spirit levitating an inch outside your body, while you're locked into a description of a situation that could not have happened to anyone else on the planet. After immediately taking him up on the offer, Cage learned that to feed it, he had to put a spatula between the heads to prevent them from fighting over their food and this was all way too much to handle, so the snake was re-homed to the zoo, where it only recently died at the ripe old age of 14. Or, rather, he had been dreaming of two-headed eagles and then the very next day, a guy called to sell him a two-headed snake for $80,000. At the heart of the house is a charcoal drawing of his late father, August Floyd Coppola, who looms over the fireplace, and everything else. Straight ahead: a prince! Specifically, a huge photograph of Prince roller-skating in hot pants and a Batman tank top. Look up, you have a crystal chandelier and an original Creature From the Black Lagoon poster. Look down and you have a Persian rug ripped out of a Lisa Frank coloring book. Lacquered arms holding torches sprout from eggplant purple walls, lighting the way. An imposing mahogany cuckoo clock chimes on the half-hour.

вЂњI'm still decorating, so excuse me,вЂќ he says, as we stroll through his home. Boots, $1,295, by Nick Fouquet x Lucchese. Belt (price upon request) and belt buckle, $3,750, by Kieselstein-Cord. T-shirt, $42 for pack of three, by Calvin Klein Underwear. Jacket, $375, and pants, $225, by Diesel. Nicolas Cage cover the April issue of GQ. And so it's like my uniform to relax in.вЂќ вЂњI studied with my sifu, Jim Lau, when I was 12 years old, because I was a big Bruce Lee fan. вЂњThis is my Wing Chun kung fu suit,вЂќ he explains, waving me in and handing me a mug of coffee. Nicolas Cage greets me at his door, wearing a kung fu suit. Fifteen minutes from the Las Vegas Strip, into a tranquil gated community, up a red-brick driveway, past the palm trees that touch the Mojave Desert sky, through the veil that separates the astral plane, and here he is: the man they say gained and lost a $150 million fortune who owned castles in Europe and the most haunted house in America and the Shah of Iran's Lamborghini and two albino king cobras and a rare two-headed snake who had to return his prized dinosaur skull upon learning it was stolen from Mongolia who went on an epic quest for the actual Holy Grail and who-when his singular, fantastical life eventually comes to an end-will be laid to eternal rest in a colossal white pyramid tomb in New Orleans.

Crows zero movie poster