Las Vegas Weekly

August 4, 2010 · 2:07 PM

Criss Angel’s Mindfreak premiere tonight includes Grand Canyon jump

By Robin Leach

Criss Angel's Las Vegas mountaintop mansion Serenity.

Photo: AWPI/Richard Brian

It’s one of the most dangerous death-defying stunts that Luxor headliner Criss Angel has ever attempted. Audiences will watch tonight in total disbelief as he kicks off the Season 6 premiere of his hit Mindfreak on A&E with a death jump across the Grand Canyon.

Criss will race a powerful new-age hybrid auto-motorcycle 100 mph up a ramp jutting out and over the Grand Canyon, as we reported last month. To avoid plummeting 4,200 feet to his death, he has to miraculously leap into a locked cage that’s dangling from a hovering helicopter.

As if that unthinkable escape is not mind-blowing enough, Criss also plans to challenge gravity one step farther on next Wednesday’s broadcast by walking 650 feet up the side of the Luxor, where he stars twice nightly in Cirque du Soleil’s Believe. And it’s all done in full view of the public above, below and around him.

“In this new season of shows, we have gone way beyond anything we have ever attempted,” Criss told me. “We are redefining magic. I either wind up on the front page or in the obituary column. I’m tougher on myself. I’m older now, too, so I challenge any headliner to go through the rigors I go through. I try to think of myself as I was when I was 20, and as I get older, I have to continue to think that way. So I work out in my gym almost 2 hours a day to be in the best shape of my life. I have to give people the best that I can give.”

This season, Criss performs his mind-blowing illusions in six 1-hour specials, including one with a scorpion that’s produced from the mouth of an unsuspecting fan after he kisses her! He’ll also pay homage to Houdini’s most dangerous escape when he’s chained and shackled with 100 feet of metal links and more than 20 locks and lowered with his feet embedded in cement shoes 90 feet into Lake Havasu. In another episode, he’ll travel up to the Valley of Fire in the Mojave Desert and levitate more than 100 feet over the remote mystical place and vanish.

Criss has always wanted to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, and he’ll attempt the largest vanish of people in history at the Luxor’s convention arena. In front of a crowd of thousands, he’ll shackle 100 people together and attempt to make them all disappear in a blink of an eye.

As Vegas DeLuxe has previously reported, Criss will open up his new mansion Serenity on Mindfreak for a look at his private life. Viewers get a glimpse of the estate on video, but we posted an exclusive tour last month.

“With the 10 shows a week at the Luxor, I had to do many of the demonstrations closer to Las Vegas. So the show takes place around my home. You’ll look at a lot of my personal life in this season. Serenity is the first home I’ve ever owned, and it gives the series a totally different feel.”

After his Cirque performances tonight, Criss hosts a VIP screening party at Liquidity in the Luxor to celebrate the new season. Viewers also will get a further glimpse at his life and home when a new Biography airs Sunday night on A&E’s new Biography Channel. The 60-minute special with never-before-seen footage from his archives traces his remarkable journey from performing as a 7-year-old to his 10-year contract with Cirque on The Strip.

Criss told me: “I had a wonderful and amazing childhood. I always dreamed big, but not this big. People think it was all an overnight success, but there were 15 years of struggling to get here. I didn’t get into magic to make millions. I got into magic to feel a sense of wonder. Now I want to affect more lives in a positive way and work a little bit more of a balance to enjoy the fruits and the things with charity because without that purpose, it doesn’t mean anything.”

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

Follow Robin Leach on Twitter at Twitter.com/Robin_Leach.

Follow Vegas DeLuxe on Twitter at Twitter.com/vegasdeluxe.

Follow VDLX Editor Don Chareunsy on Twitter at Twitter.com/VDLXEditorDon.

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