“As a loving, caring,
passionate performer
who wanted to give
everything I could,
and did, in every
single show, to
give them the best
experience that I was
capable of.”
ABOVE: 2010 Mindreak Series 6.
as much and I can do other projects,
and I don’t have to be a slave. Every
day is Groundhog Day for me.
David:
You said that in the show, it was a
great sort of off the cuff line when
you got the day wrong the night
that I was there. Somebody said it’s
Thursday, and you went “Everyday is
Groundhog Day for me”, and it got a
huge laugh.
Criss:
It’s true, I don’t read Teleprompter
so when I talk to the audience, every
audience is different, and I could fuck
up, or something might happen in the
audience … I think that’s what’s so
beautiful about Mindfreak.
David:
You are so high profile. Do you worry
about your security?
Criss:
We have a lot of security, because
I do have a problem with security
quite frankly. Even though I have a
14ft fence at my house, and it’s three
fences to get to my house, there are
still people that hide in my bushes.
46
These are people that are unfortunately not well, but you just need one
person, like John Lennon … not to
compare myself to John Lennon, but
one person that gets you from behind
or whatever, so I definitely take that
into consideration.
When people get a tattoo, I don’t understand it, because a tattoo is forever,
I mean you can get laser treatment,
but still it’s a process. For someone to
feel that much about you to put your
cat on his or her arm, or your signature
… that I didn’t even do that neatly,
I’m flattered, but I usually tell them, if
someone come ups and says, “hey can
you sign my arm, I wanna get this tattoo…” I honesty try to talk them out of
it. I honestly will say I really want you
to think about this because I wouldn’t
do that.
David:
How important do you think it is to
create original illusions? Your own
take on things? I’m seeing a lot of
versions of effects here, like your
original “Interlude illusion” is right in
front of us here.
Criss:
Which Jim Steinmeyer gave me the
permission to do that. I told him what
I was doing, and then this version
was basically the nexus, for the one
that I did on Mindfreak that was the
first version of that that without any
apparatus at all. I literally was just
like this (Criss adopts the traditional
pose for this illusion), and the girl
went through my back, and came out
through my front with no apparatus.
David:
So we’ve seen your reworking of the
sawing in half … anybody reading
this that may well be contemplating
buying an illusion, would you advise
them to not buy off the shelf and try
to create something unique?
Criss:
It depends upon where you’re performing right? It’s all perspective. If
you’re performing and you’re doing
private events, and you have the stuff
that’s gonna go in your car, and you’re
gonna perform in the round, and
you’re gonna be in halls or in peoples’
houses. I think you can still buy things,