“My biggest influence was
Richiardi. Richiardi really
had a major influence on me
because he showed the power
of simple objects like a broom
suspension. “
it was 30mph winds, I had no safety lines or anything! I was 550 feet
up and you know, I did a lot of really stupid things because I worked so
many years, 18 to 20 to try to become successful and this was my shot.
David:
Do you have a favourite thing that you’ve done on television? That
you kinda go, well that was special!
Criss:
The floating illusion over the Luxor! Magicians think it was a green
screen, but on my mother and my child’s life, I was really up there for
about 30 minutes. A taxi even got into an accident! It was just the scariest, craziest thing I’ve ever done because I’m up there, and how do you
test that out? How do you say, we’ll put this 500 and something feet up,
and you’re gonna be 30 feet floating from the tip of the Luxor, how do
you try that? You can’t.
David:
Health and safety must be a lot more relaxed in Las Vegas than it is in
the UK …
Criss:
What I did was, I would give them the wrong address when I did crazy
things. That’s a little trick that I use to do.
David:
Come on, elaborate on this!
Criss:
So you know, ‘Standards and Practices’ would be like, okay we’re going
to come and watch this, and I’d be like yeah sure, no problem, and then
I would give them the wrong address and directions! Then they’d be like
“We’re lost,” and blah blah blah, by the time they came to see it, it was
over. I knew what I had to do in order to capture the imagination of the
public. I needed to take magic to the extreme, and to do stuff that they
hadn’t see before. If you remember season one, I did the matrix where
I leaned back in the park. No one ever did that before. No one ever
walked up and down a wall, no one did walking through a pain glass
window in the middle of the day, or levitating a girl or any of that, a lot
of magicians that came out after me copied me or my style.
David:
How do you feel about magicians that have copied either your style,
or your routines? Do you take it as a compliment or does it hurt you?
Criss:
It doesn’t hurt me, I just kinda think it’s sad for them, that they don’t
have the ability to create their own material, or be original. You have
40
2007 Uri Geller and Criss Angel T V Show
Phenomenon