The Deadbolt Interview - Exploring the Dangers of Five Lives with Criss Angel

Exploring the Dangers of Five Lives with Criss Angel
by Troy Rogers

After bursting onto the scene a number of years ago with a string of sold out shows at Madison Square Garden, Criss Angel took his illusionary, mind blowing talents to new heights with his own Mindfreak show on A&E, which is still going strong after five seasons. Now Criss Angel is taking his game to even bigger heights with the five week special, The Five Lives of Criss Angel, which airs Wednesday, August 12 on A&E, that sees the world's greatest magician and master illusionist perform five different death defying feats across five different episodes.

Ahead of the debut of The Five Lives of Criss Angel, we caught up with Angel to learn more about his "Death Field" event, the dangers he faces with mass levitation, how the special is different than the regular Mindfreak, how he worked with the military at Edwards Air Force Base, and how magicians have served as military consultants throughout history.

THE DEADBOLT: I was really interested in the Death Field segment. How do you train for something like that?

CRISS ANGEL: Well, I've been doing an art called Hellstromism, which is a technique of kind of reading people's muscles, for many, many years, and it basically stems from that. Some people may say it's mind expansion. Some people might say it's just a technique that employs what I do 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: A dog's sense of smell is seven thousand times more powerful than a human, and the military utilizes those dogs to look for IEDs. I was invited to Edwards Air Force Base where I demonstrated my ability to accomplish the same thing. By no means am I saying I have a dog's sense, but I was able to accomplish the same thing in their parameters.

THE DEADBOLT: How much did the mass levitation weigh on your mind? If it went wrong, other people would get injured?

ANGEL: Well, that was the big thing, because when I'm doing things to myself and if I get maimed or hurt or killed, well, 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 doesn't happen, because I have that responsibility. So it's certainly something that I took into consideration. Again, this is years in the planning. It's not something I just came up with and the next day did it.

THE DEADBOLT: Are you looking to incorporate a death defying feat in each episode of Mindfreak from now on, or is this just a one time thing?

ANGEL: Well, I'm doing five hours and it begins this Wednesday. Each week I explore. Because it's an hour, I have the ability to have some flexibility and do different things, whether it's a life-threatening demonstration or it's a demonstration, like when I'm able to levitate in impossible conditions or I'm able to produce something or produce a shopping cart full of merchandise in one continuous shot, literally within a split second. I'll blow your mind. It's one of my favorite illusions that I did this season, or do some really intimate piece of magic in a completely random place. Each demonstration, because it's so diverse, each episode I have the opportunity to do different things, but I'm trying to keep the common thread with that theme. You know, with levitation, the risk there is if you have a spectator floating twenty feet in the air and they fall, that's a real problem.

THE DEADBOLT: Overall, are most people intrigued by you or scared of you?

ANGEL: It's different. I think that in the beginning when I first came out people were very scared of me and they didn't really quite know, because I blur the line between reality and illusion. A lot of what I do is completely real. It's not a trick. You know, the mind, body, spirit is probably the most amazing thing and it allows you - if you push it enough to be able to do incredible things, and they're not illusions. But I also do things that are pure illusion and I try to cross that line and allow the audience to determine what is real and what is illusion. I think people now who haven't heard of me know who I am, know what I do, and I think they kind of realize what I am about. I think some people are still scared of me, but I think it's more - I think they connect with their inner child to what I'm doing because it shows that anything in life is truly possible.

THE DEADBOLT: Is the beard a permanent look?

ANGEL: [laughs] No, that was for last season. Not because it was planned but because I just get on different kicks and now I'm on the suit kick, living life.

THE DEADBOLT: You mentioned the military when you did Death Field. Have they ever contacted you to become a remote viewer or anything [like that]?

ANGEL: No. But what's kind of fascinating about the military - Throughout the course of history, the military has been consulting with magicians for many different reasons. One example is that a magician's sense of façade and creating the illusion, we look at things differently. So whether it's to disguise planes or tanks as just normal unassuming trucks, or to actually fabricate planes and create the illusion they're all congregated at a specific location so the fake façade planes would be bombed as opposed to the real planes. You know, magicians have been consulting throughout the course of history, as I said, so when I was asked to go to Edwards Air Force Base and go to this place that's so historic, they broke the sound barriers there, the space shuttle lands there, and to be able to demonstrate this technique that I have and they demonstrated it with their dogs, it was just amazing. Quite frankly, they're just absolutely baffled. They haven't discussed with me further to teach them this stuff, because it is a secret on my part and it's what I do for a living, but they were really fascinated with the demonstration, and I was 100%.

THE DEADBOLT: Actually, what do you think of remote viewers?

ANGEL: Honestly, any of that stuff, you know, the supernatural, I had a million dollars of my own money that I was willing to give to somebody that could be able to do something that could not be explained and reproduced, and I still have that million dollars. And that challenge I put out there when I did a show called Phenomenon with Uri Geller. But no, I'm not a believer in that, I'm very skeptical. And so was Houdini and so many people like James Randy, currently, and we want to see something in front of us. So I don't buy into any of that until I see it for myself.

-- Troy Rogers