It’s 7:22 a.m. on a bright, clear day in Nevada’s Valley of Fire. Criss Angel, muscular, shirtless and wearing a rhinestone cross necklace that dangles down to his navel, walks underneath the blazing sun and into the shade, where two master piercers are about to help him accomplish one of his most ambitious demonstrations yet

After shoving four silver hooks into his flesh, his crew fastens them to a crane-like mechanism and attempts to lift him off the ground toward the blue sky above. Quickly, it starts to go awry. 

Angel coughs, fighting back waves of nausea. Earth-colored blood trickles down his skin. He sits with a pensive expression on his face, apologizing to the TV crew around him. For a while, it doesn’t seem like his grand, earth-defying vision will be realize.

Then, he makes a modest request — he asks for an iPod and a pair of headphones. Without a moment of hesitation, he says one word: “Korn.”

Suddenly, the impossible happens: His feet start dangling off the ground, and he slowly begins to take flight. 

As he assumes a Christ-like pose, a helicopter yanks him into the air while the sludgy, brooding chords of “Alone I Break” play in the background. He screams in agony, or maybe ecstasy, as he soars high above the desert landscape held by nothing but the skin on his back.

This audacious stunt took place two decades ago on “Mindfreak,” Criss Angel’s provocative street magic show for A&E — and for many of us who probably saw it for the first time on our parents’ CRT television in the living room, it was riveting. Though it’s been 20 years since the first episode aired, Angel, now 57, is still cemented in the public’s collective memory. But how could he not be?

Instantly recognizable, his floating visage is plastered on billboards by the Vegas airport and on the side of garish LED trucks, greeting millions of tourists who visit the city each year. With his layers of glittering necklaces, skin-tight True Religion jeans, and dimpled chin framed by a sculpted cascade of jet black hair, he seemed more closely aligned with rock stars as opposed to magicians when he first came onto the scene. While old-school entertainers like Siegfried and Roy dazzled audiences with Liberace glam, Angel was busy pulling tarantulas out of girls’ handbags and lighting himself on fire by the hotel pool. He was Harry Houdini in a snakeskin cowboy hat, and hot moms loved him. 

He’s since become synonymous with a particular strain of alternative culture that dominated the early 2000s, a time when bands like Korn, Evanescence and AFI rippled through the airwaves, speaking to disillusioned teenagers skulking around the Westfield Mall. Based on an archived episode of “MTV Cribs” showcasing Serenity, his 22,000-square-foot mansion — and his shamelessly hyperbolic bio that describes him as “the most influential and imitated magician of the modern era” — one thing is undeniable: He was destined to build a rhinestone-studded empire, and no one was ever going to stop him.

‘“Mindfreak” invited a whole new generation into the magic tent’

For Angel, suspending himself by fish hooks in the Valley Fire was just one stunt that simply had to be pulled off. 

“I took a lot of chances, because at that time, I was in a mindset that I was willing to die for my art,” he tells me one recent afternoon over a video call. 

In person, he speaks with a lisp and heavy New York drawl, which is especially prominent when he says the word “coffin.” He was only five minutes late to our interview but apologized profusely regardless. He had just gotten back from Europe and still hadn’t fully recovered from jet lag.   

He, too, agrees that his success was a product of the era — but it was also 18 years in the making.

Originally from the town of Hempstead in southwest New York, school wasn’t really on Christopher Sarantakos’ mind growing up. He never took the SATs, and he rode the Type A bus to get to class, he tells me. When he left home and arrived at the sun-scorched Vegas strip in the 1990s, he was so broke, he couldn’t even afford to rent a car, so he walked to magic shows and stayed in cheap hotels, eager to immerse himself in Sin City. 

Around that same period, Vegas was undergoing a commercial and cultural renaissance: Neon-lit hotels and casinos started taking over the desert, slowly establishing the region as an entertainment utopia. Yet, despite all this development, something about it still felt stagnant.

“At that time, I kind of thought magic was kind of hokey, the way it was presented,” Angel tells me. “Because it was always about ‘How do I do this?’ as opposed to ‘How do you feel when you watch this?’” 

Drawing influence anywhere from Federico Fellini to Black Sabbath, he describes himself as more of a performance artist who uses music — and the emotion behind it — to inspire each act. When he pitched his own gritty TV series, “Mindfreak,” to A&E, he had an opportunity to bring his audacious vision to mainstream American audiences. And he still treats his craft with the utmost seriousness. 

Perhaps as a result of this perceived pomposity and edginess, Angel has been parodied often, like Ben Stiller’s Tony Wonder in “Arrested Development” and Jim Carrey’s Steve Gray in “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.” On YouTube, there’s even Criss Anel, a character that both satirizes and plays tribute to the famous magician. The clip, which aired in 2024, has almost 400,000 views.  

When I refer to his stunts as tricks, Angel corrects me, calling them demonstrations instead. But this feels accurate — after all, most of what he does on “Mindfreak,” whether intentional or not, is a homage to Harry Houdini. The famed escape artist, who pushed himself to his physical limits for public spectacle, is present throughout the show: In one episode, Angel buries himself alive, and in 2002, he submerged himself underwater for hours at a time, just like Houdini had done before large crowds in the early 20th century. In the show’s surreal, dream-like tableau sequence, a child actor even represents his eternal spirit. 

For television executives, green-lighting a show that referenced early-20th-century illusionists and old-time sideshows was an enormous gamble — but it paid off. When “Mindfreak” aired in the summer of 2005, it drew in over a million viewers on average before peaking at 3 million during the third season’s premiere. 

“‘Mindfreak’ invited a whole new generation into the magic tent,” Rob Sharenow, A+E Global Media’s programming president, told me, explaining that it had an unique aesthetic that combined street magic with nu metal sensibilities. As a result, it grabbed young audiences in the Y2K era, bringing down A&E’s viewers’ average age from 53 to about 33.    

But it was really Angel who made the show a success, Sharenow said: “His persona was totally original, on the one hand hard-edged and dangerous, but on the other totally empathetic and loving of his audience.” 

His confidence, too, was unmatched. “I’ve rarely, if ever, met anyone so focused and determined,” Sharenow said. The show ran for six seasons, eventually sunsetting in 2010. On A&E’s website, it’s described as “the most successful magic show in television history, resulting in more hours of magic during prime time than any other magic show ever.”

‘The art has been great to all of us’

These days, Angel’s modern rendition of “Mindfreak” at Planet Hollywood is an enormous, fiery spectacle.

Equipped with pyrotechnics, thousands of lights and hundreds of speakers, it’s an audio-visual monstrosity that’s been heralded as one of the best acts in Vegas: One moment he’s swordfighting in all leather; the next, he’s spinning in the air upside down while escaping from a straightjacket. To prepare, he’ll practice mixed martial arts, but perhaps most importantly, he’ll pray because it’s so “dangerous” that he could be “maimed,” or lose his life, he says. Loaded with superlatives, the 75-minute-long act is marketed as both a technological marvel and an unforgettable “immersive experience,” according to Caesars Entertainment. Though his press representatives wouldn’t disclose exact numbers, Angel tells me that “Mindfreak” generates at least $150 million in revenue, and Bloomberg reported his shows brought in about half that back in 2016. (In addition, after the publication of this story, his management reached out to say that Criss never wore rhinestones, only diamonds.) 

Angel’s representatives also told me that it vastly outsells other magic competitors — some of whom have publicly derided him in the past and called his magic, well, fake. On social media, visitors said they’ve even heard Angel and Penn Jillette from Penn & Teller make deadpan comments about one another, suggesting that there might be an ongoing rivalry between the two. Curious, I ask him whether it’s genuine. 

“I’ll be completely honest, because that’s what I am,” he says. “The world is a big place, and when the tide rises, it raises all ships. So when somebody does well in magic, it’s a great thing for everyone.” 

Though he once had a positive rapport with other local illusionists, he explains, he said their insecurities bubbled to the surface when news outlets started praising his show as the No. 1 act in the city. “I think a lot of magicians kind of have that problem,” he continues. 

“I work really, really hard to be recognized by my peers,” he says, explaining that praise for his show was something he sacrificed his entire life to accomplish. What matters most, it seems, is that people are still even going out to see these types of performances.  

“Everybody can be out there working and have an audience, and I think that’s a beautiful thing for the art, because the art has been great to all of us,” Angel says.  

Despite other magicians’ claims about his authenticity, part of me wondered: Did it even matter? After all, what makes some forms of magic more “real” than others? We watch films and television shows all the time knowing they’re works of fiction, but we become emotionally invested in the stories and characters inhabiting these worlds regardless. In the end, isn’t that what every artist ultimately hopes to accomplish

And few can compare themselves to actual rock stars.   

Though he’s worked in entertainment for decades, Angel is still shocked by the loyalty of his fans, some of whom will get tattoos of his iconic logo and bring family members young and old to his shows. While suspending himself over ladders or dodging plumes of fire, he’ll see the same people in the audience, except they’ll be with their father or mother, or their kids, “which is like, three generations,” he says. “It blows my mind.” 

Overall, what’s most real — and perhaps most important — is his ability to bring people together to watch him soar high above our heads, whether it’s from our laptop screens or live in Las Vegas. 

“I never went to college,” yet “somehow I managed to accomplish beyond my wildest dreams,” Angel says. 

“And if I can do this, anyone can do it, you know?”