“We were the
number one
watched show,
and that’s when
I walked up the
building ......”
night, but also all the original programming! We were the number one
most watched show, and that’s when I
walked up the building and I did all of
those sorts of crazy things.
David:
I remember that special well. It aired
in the UK and I remember watching
it with my wife at the time. We were
like, wow, we like this guy … he’s
good.
Criss:
I mean I had a lot to learn and John
and I did the whole thing. I was sitting
there teching the magic, putting it
together, designing and then we were
building it. It was just a crazy time! It
came out successful. My tickets sales
then went up even further for my
Mindfreak show, and then I got another TV Special that was on Si-Fi. It was
the show that I was going to lead into
Shannen Doherty’s Scare Tactics at the
time, and that show was called Supernatural. That show I shot in Universal
Studios in Florida, and I also shot it in
an aeroplane hanger. I’ll never forget
it. I was up for 53 hours to shoot the
live stuff, like you said, the Person
Through The Body, the Interlude, the
Metamorphosis, all this crazy stuff
with the characters. I was slowly but
surely building all this stuff, and my
tickets and my occupancy was getting
bigger and bigger. I said to myself,
“You know what? People are coming
here to expect a certain type of show,
and I can’t deliver that because I’m in a
basement with 145 seats. I need to go
to the next step because I don’t want
to get stuck here.”
After 14 months and 600 shows of
doing Mindfreak, I asked if I could
close the show and the McMahons
were great. They let me close the
show and then I got a manager. I
found the right manager in Dave
Barron and as you know, they
manage the biggest stars in entertainment in Hollywood. He was
also an amateur magician. Many
people he saw wanted him to
manage them, but he didn’t really
feel that they were marketable. He
basically said, “Look Criss, if you’re
willing to cut your hair, and let me
get somebody to help you do it,
I’ll manage you.” I said absolutely.
The next day I chopped my hair. I
got Johnny Depp’s stylist to work
with me and put this together, and
within a few m onths I went to A&E.
I’ll never forget it; he didn’t even
38
go in with me. I went to A&E’s office
with the levitation I did in Times
Square where floated the girl around
in the middle of the square, and he
saw that and he signed me instantly. I
had an offer from MTV to do a pilot, I
had an offer from TLC, but I went with
A&E because they said we’ll take eight
episodes right away! I started shooting those eight episodes in 2004/2005
and the guy who signed me came out
and saw what I was working on in the
middle of shooting. My manager came
to me and said I have good news and I
have bad news. The good news is that
they just ordered 21 episodes or 28
episodes for the first season. The bad
news is you have 21 or 28 episodes of
material that you’ve gotta get together now, and so I was like, lets do it! I
went in, and I took crazy chances that
first season; I was hanging from fishhooks, I leaned off the Aladdin when