In his own Kimmel appearance, Cage set the record straight about the bat cave. The context for the story is about as wonderfully odd as expected. The actor says that at one point he had a plan to explore all the elements: for water, he learned to dive in the Great Barrier Reef; for air, he considered hang-gliding; and for fire, he made the movie “Ghost Rider.” “For Earth, I thought, ‘Yeah, I want to start spelunking. I want to start exploring caves,'” Cagetold Kimmel.

The actor says he heard about a cave for sale while on location in the Black Hills of the Dakotas, as one does. He visited the cave, which he describes as having “all these stalagmites … all like milky quartz, like crystalline walls.” Cage revealed that the caves were so atmospheric and lovely, he wanted to “buy this and just go down in the bottom of the cave and get totally naked with my wife and drink nigori [sake]. In the bottom of a cave in the earth.”

Cage is an excellent storyteller, so it came as a genuine surprise to hear that, in the end, he didn’t buy the cave and live his sake-soaked dreams after all. He did, however, apparently spend a night in Dracula’s castle and get stalked by a pair of mimes. While none of these facts are especially relevant to his upcoming movie, they all tie in to the ever-present cultural myth of Nic Cage, which surely informed the movie’s version of him, Nick Cage. Bat cave or not, this is one of the most entertaining late night interviews we’ve seen in ages.

“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” is in theaters now.