make $30,000 in a year. I directed and
created this show called Mindfreak.
It was on Broadway on 43rd. I found
a venue; it was the WWE and was a
great location.
David:
Where did the name MindFreak
come from?
Criss:
I’m crazy… I could show you the very
first time I wrote MindFreak. I have the
actual notebook. I was trying to create
names and do different things; I’m
always doing that. I wrote Mindfuck,
but obviously you couldn’t do that, so
I wrote Mindfreak, and then registered
it. It was just a great name which I still
use it to this day. Even when I opened
up the show and people were still
saying don’t do it. My weekly expenses at the time were about $30,000 a
week. I didn’t earn that a year so it was
nerve racking. We were suppose to do
12 weeks there and then I was going
to look for something else, but we did
the 12 weeks, and it was so successful.
David:
And even then, you had ground
breaking illusions. I’ve done a little
bit of research, things like your interlude that looked like barbed wire.
Criss:
It was actually re-barbe that you used
in streets for construction and put
cement around it, you can bend that. I
had Bob North make that for me in the
90s. I held on to it and I used it in that
show. But we also had a levitation. I
levitated the girl three feet away from
the public and it was surrounded. So
we did a lot. I did a Dekolta Chair, a
lot of big illusions. My stage was 10t
by 12ft. That was my stage size. It was
eight or nine inches off the ground
and that was my stage. I actually used
the whole theatre as the stage.
For me it was an opportunity even
though it was small. I just thought I’m
going to create a show that’s so much
bigger when a room of people come
to see it. They’re gonna be fucking
blown away and overwhelmed. When
you go into larger rooms, if you cant
fill that room bigger than what people
expect, then the become disappointed. It’s always that psychology of over
34
delivering for the public
David:
I was just going to ask you exactly
that, and any magicians reading this,
that must be a good bit of advice…
to always over deliver to your clients.
Criss:
Absolutely. I think that word of mouth
is the most important type of publicity, and I think that’s a critical part,
when you’re passionate about what
you do. You want to do the best, and
you want to be the best and you want
yourself to accomplish. You have to
push yourself to do it, and maybe
sometimes you may doubt you can
do it, but you’ve just got to believe in
yourself. You’ve got to have focus and
put in that sweat equity. When you
over deliver you give people a sense
of value, you give people a sense they
were thoroughly entertained, and
that’s the best publicity machine you
could probably have. I built myself
an entire career on that. Think about
it, I have legitimate followers. There’s
a magician just across the street
that buys all of his Twitter followers,
every single one of them he’s bought,
except for maybe 50,000, and you can
tell because if you look at how many
times its re-Tweeted, or how many
likes he has, it’s less than somebody
with 100,000. It’s embarrassing quite
frankly. So when you build that type of
structure in what you do, you naturally
connect with people, and I’ve been
blessed to connect to, I think I have
over six million people or close to it
that follow me on social media, all legitimate people. The word of mouth is
why we’re doing the business that we
are doing. We are bringing in 150 million dollars into the Luxor in direct and
in-direct ticket sales for gambling and
it’s the most successful, and I don’t
say this to brag, I say this because I
fucking worked my ass off to get here,
its confidence.
It’s the time that I’ve put in to be able
to toot that horn, because I always
wanted to be the best and be the
most relevant at what I do. I worked
the hardest at it, and I hired the most
talented people to be in my team
to accomplish it. You must put forth
whatever you do. You’ve got to do it
the best possible way you can do it,
“The word of mouth is
why we’re doing the
business that we are
doing. We are bringing in
150 million dollars into
the Luxor in direct and
in-direct ticket sales for
gambling.
Inside the workshop