CRISS ANGEL CELEBRATES LUXOR HOMECOMING and HE AND NEW LOVEMATE CAMERON DIAZ PLAN ROMANTIC GETAWAY VACATION!
Hot on the heels of his success with a miracle escape from a concrete coffin hoisted 40 feet above Times Square, master mystifyer Criss Angel returned home to the Luxor here last night (Tuesday). Although his new girlfriend, actress Cameron Diaz, couldn’t get here because of Shrek 3 movie promotions in Europe, he still celebrated with a triple knockout punch:
* On the same night that Season Three of his A&E cable TV series Mindfreak premiered with his amazing levitation in the searing flesh-scorching 800-degree light beams of the Luxor, Criss told me that he’s been given the go ahead for Season Four to start filming again from his Luxor headquarters in September after August location scoutings in and around Vegas
* He has been offered his first movie with a multi-million-dollar contract to star in a new version of Mandrake the Magician: “That’s such an enormous deal it even freaks my mind,” he laughed.
* His 10-year Cirque du Soleil contract to star in his own show at the Luxor—previously reported here in Luxe Life—now comes with a firm commitment to 4,600 shows plus a 5-year renewal option. “The Luxor is his home for at least the next decade” said proud president, Felix Rappaport. And Criss added: “Yes- I’m locked to the Luxor for at least the next 10 years.”
“All is really going well with the Cirque plans,” Criss told me. “We’ve already done one successful workshop. Thursday this week we’ll go to their Montreal HQ’s for another workshop. My team and their team are getting along really well with each other. The creative process is working great and after it closes for the start of the late summer renovations we’ll move into the Luxor theater in January for first on-site rehearsals and open next summer!
Early yesterday morning, as Luxe Life reported with our near minute-by-minute countdown, Criss baffled thousands of fans by escaping from a small glass-steel box encased in concrete only seconds before it plunged to the ground from five stories up in a terrifying fall from a swinging crane. Just five minutes earlier a lipstick camera showed him feverishly chipping through the concrete—but at the moment of impact he was amazingly discovered “alive and well although totally exhausted” on the nearby countdown clock billboard. He’d been held captive for exactly 24-hours to the split second! He flew out of Newark Airport at 3 p.m. and said he got 90-minutes of solid sleep on the near six-hour Continental flight to McCarran! By 8 p.m. he was safely back in his highroller suite at the top of the Luxor pyramid. By 9.30 p.m. he strolled to the Luxor Theater lobby to watch the premiere one-hour special episode of Mindfreak Season Three, with Luxor executives staff, close friends and Luxor comedy headliner, Carrot Top!
“A FANTASTIC WHIRLWIND”
He was presented with a unique huge cake to celebrate all the success of the day—and he playfully fed the Luxor head honcho with slices from the knife! Felix Rappaport gifted Criss with a Slingbox TV-computer system to let him watch network and hometown Vegas TV anywhere in the world, plus a framed wall-poster taken from the backdrop of the Cirque du Soleil press conference when the original show-deal was announced.
There’s no rest or let-up with his busy non-stop schedule. Today he flies to Los Angeles to do the Craig Ferguson late-night talk show and then Ryan Seacrest’s early morning radio show tomorrow (Thursday) before jetting to Montreal and the start of seven days of intensive planning and pre-production session at Cirque du Soleil HQ’s.
“The last 2 years have just been a fantastic whirlwind,” he told me when we chatted during the party. “Its incredible to think that when I first came to Vegas I just had a beat-up battered car and could only afford a cheap motel across the Strip from the Luxor and now today I am in the highest penthouse suite of the Luxor. I am very very blessed and my thanks to God for getting me through the very difficult journey. But it proves what I say that anybody can have the same dream and being passionate and persevering they will make their dreams come true like I did. I have always strived to be the very best at what I do and now this is it, with the No. 1 show on cable-TV, 70 episodes to-date and another season to come—we have more hours of magic on television than anyone else in history! “
Criss will also make history as the only magician to get a full one-hour solo appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s show when she films it here in Vegas later this summer. He told me: “Living at the Luxor under its pyramid which is the most mystical sign of strength has been miraculous in its own way—so many great things have come from here. I really think its helped me become the very best in the world at what I do.”
“THE MOST DIFFICULT AND DANGEROUS”
In last night’s debut episode Criss showed Billy Gibbons of ZZTop how to pass a guitar wire through his neck and hook a ring he swallowed onto the string when it was removed! He also showed the segment where he nearly drowned from being underwater for four-minutes after Dog the Bounty Hunter tied him to a chair with 100ft of rope—and threw him into the Luxor pool to prevent any “magical” escape. Criss managed to get free from the rope but didn’t remove it all before he was pulled from underwater.
“I failed,” said Criss, smacking the water, ”I didn’t get all the rope off me.” But Dog commented: “To me he managed to escape—how, I will never ever know because no-one has ever escaped my rope and knots. So lets call it a draw and we’ll do best of three with next time at my house in Hawaii.” But the breathtaking highlight was his—literally unbelievable—floating levitation right in the powerful spotlights from the pointed top of the Luxor pyramid. Traffic came to a halt on the Strip and tourists pulled out video cameras to capture the “miracle walk” for themselves. In fact, producers used some of the viewers own videos and snapshots in the show to prove it was all for real and not edited-video trick techniques.
“It was the most dangerous and difficult thing I have ever done,” admitted Criss. “I couldn’t even look down for fear of losing my concentration. Standing on the edge of the top of the pyramid before I began and looking all that way down was so terrifying I didn’t even think about being burned to death, fried in the mega-lights!” Last night Criss paid off a $1 bet , with a specially autographed check, he’d made with Luxor’s engineering heads about the impossibility of the levitation—and they returned the compliment with a brand new HD-TV installed while he was in Manhattan—to automatically rise and lower in its own cabinet at the foot of his Presidential sized bed
I asked Criss as to why his right hand was seriously bandaged after the New York escapade. He said: “I impaled it inside the concrete cage. It’s a nasty hand puncture wound. I was using like a key to pick away at the cement but in fact the glass was even more difficult. I was tired. I was weak. I had no food for more than 24-hours and the rain from the tropical storm was completely unexpected and that made everything even more difficult. I felt the air running out of my lungs it was so bad. But I just had so much to lose—I couldn’t blow it.
“I DON’T FEAR DEATH BUT I DON’T WANT TO DIE”
“Each challenge has its own risks and obstacles. The Luxor light levitation is still the most difficult and dangerous. Not just the 800-degree heat but one slip would have meant a 500ft plunge to certain death. The truth is, however, that either one I could wind up in a body bag. I don’t fear death but I don’t want to die. Simultaneously though I am prepared to take on any risk and I guess its in me to always do that. I just don’t think about the one that will go wrong and nail me, maim me and kill me—that’s always the concern though.
“We have so much to live for now: the movie, the new Season 4 of Mindfreak we’ll film here at Luxor again and the Cirque show. Hopefully we’ll reach a point where I will stop risking my life but you know Houdini created the illusion of all this except I’m actually in danger and he never was. When I can’t get any better is when I’ll stop—and anyway although its incredibly real and incredibly painful I have become the greatest escape artist of any era. I’m just sorry that it gets my mom and my family so upset and emotional every time I take on one of these challenges.
“Cirque may put a stop to it as we get the show underway. We’ve already been working in a secret location here in Vegas to create the most extraordinary experience ever seen. It will be beyond your wildest dreams—and nobody will come close to topping us for the next 15-years if we go on past ten. It will be the most phenomenal show ever to be produced or likely to be staged on the Strip.”
And what about that nickname “Trouble” that he yelled out to girlfriend Cameron after he escaped and I promised Luxe Life readers I would quiz him about: “That’s just a conversation line that remains solely between the two of us” smiled Criss. “Sorry but it has to remain private life.” However I did learn from others in his circle of confidants that the two-some are very much a romantic item. “You can call it love,” said one. “They clicked the moment they met and its become a perfect match—they were on their cellphones to each other throughout the day yesterday. It was his first call after the escape. In a few weeks he’s going to take a month’s vacation—his first in 2-years—and she will join him for part of it!”