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Criss Angel PCM Interview
 

This season of Criss Angel's "Mindfreak" will feature "The Five Lives of Criss Angel," a five-part series of death-defying stunts - each one more dangerous than the last. In this interview, Criss gives us a few details about the show, which you can watch Wednesday nights at 10 on A&E.

Q: You know the five parts, they all sound really interesting and scary and good. And is there a certain order to them? Does one get scarier than the next or are they just all different?

Criss Angel: Yes, I think they're all very diverse. I mean like "White Death" for example has me literally manacled inside a coffin, buried 6 feet below the surface with nearly 5000 pounds of wet snow placed over me at Mammoth Mountain which is 10,000 feet above sea level, which will deplete me of 20% of my oxygen.

So I'll have to deal with that and I'll have to deal with potential hypothermia. And as I make my escape -- now this is an escape that Houdini attempted a test of and vowed after that test when it failed that he would never attempt this in his career. And magicians have lost their lives attempting to do this. So this is very exciting, very challenging and something that is really pushing my envelope.

And then later, you know, I'll be doing mass levitation where I attempt to do something unprecedented which is to try to levitate multiple people, you know, more than 12 at the same time literally among 1000-plus people in a very public place.

And if I'm successful with that I'm going to attempt to levitate people right through the TV so millions of people will have the opportunity to literally levitate in their home as I try something that again hasn't been done.

So it's very diverse and it all has different elements. But I think the theme of the season is "Five Ways to Live, Five Ways to Die." And that kind of ties it all together.

Q: Okay. And, you know, with your line of work it would seem that you are quite fearless, but what does scare you?

C.A: I don't fear death. So if you don't fear death what on this earth is, you know, something to fear? Nothing. I guess my biggest fear and my only fear would be God.

Q: Now I was really excited about "Death Field." How do you train for something like that?

C.A: Well I've been doing an art called Hellstromism, which is a technique of how to read people's muscles, for many, many years. And it basically stems from that and utilizes -- some people might say it's mind expansion, some people might say it's just a technique that employs, you know, what I do meaning as a magician or as a student of psychology.

At the end of the day it is what it is and I'm able to do in that episode what a dog does which is, you know, a dog's sense of smell is 7000 times more powerful than a human and the military utilizes those dogs to look for IEDs. And I was invited to Edwards Airforce Base where I demonstrated my ability to accomplish the same thing. By no means am I saying that I have a dog's sense but I was able to accomplish the same thing in their parameters.

Q: Okay. Now I also wanted to know, how much did the mass levitation weigh on your mind? Because if it went wrong, other people would get injured, right?

C.A: Well that was the big thing because, you know, when I'm doing things to myself and if I get maimed or hurt or killed, that's one thing. But when you take a spectator that's there just among other people having a good time with their friends and family and I put them in a situation where they can get hurt, it certainly does weigh on my mind that I have to make sure that, you know, that doesn't happen because I have that responsibility.

So it's certainly something I took into consideration and, you know, again this is years in the planning. This is not something I just came up with and the next day did it.

Q: I was wondering if you've ever actually had a near-death experience.

C.A: I've been very blessed not to have anything that had any true significance regarding like, you know, life or death, you know, laying on my deathbed. But I had had many instances where I was hurt or I have little war wounds, you know, on my body that reminds me of the things that I've done, whether it's the explosion that shot in my leg and I have like a 3 inch kind of part of my leg that's kind of missing, that's scarred up, or, you know, the fish hooks that, you know, remain scarred on my body.

You know, those things kind of remind me, but I've never had like a real situation where I was laying on my deathbed and they revived me or something. Thank God.

Q: That's good. And how to do you prepare yourself the night before a really dangerous trick?

C.A: Well it's hard because I'd like to say I get rest but I don't really sleep more than three to five hours a night. So I think I'm just kind of mentally preparing. I kind of try to look at the scenario very much like an athlete would look at something that they're trying to accomplish, you know. They kind of visualize what their performance should be and hopefully the body follows suit. And that's indeed what I try to do.

Q: If you could go back in time and revisit yourself right before you did your first stunt, what advice would you give yourself?

C.A: That's a very good question but the truth is that I really don't have any regrets. You know, each moment that we're all alive we learn something new and we evolve and hopefully better ourself as a human being and our profession.

And for me I think I needed to go through those experiences. So I probably wouldn't tell myself anything just because there was an innocence and I was a little naïve in the very beginning and I kind of approached life and death situations in a way that I wouldn't approach them now. I'm much more prepared and I do my due diligence a lot better.

I mean I took tremendous, tremendous risks as I'm doing in this season, but I really train and prepare for them a lot more, you know, well rounded now because I can afford to have the team in place to train me and to prepare me the way I need to do it so I have the best opportunity of being successful and not killing myself.

(continued on page 2)



 
 

 

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