Kreskin with Daniel and Stephanie at the Sheraton Hotel

PART 3: Kreskin and the Future

“The person who says they’re bored is a boring person. Just pick up a damn book and read.”

Kreskin will read about four books a night. Some call it speed reading, but Kreskin sees it as a great skill which allows him to easily enjoy his passion.

He’s physically unable to pass a bookstore without going in. While performing in Dallas, Kreskin did just that. Moments later he walked out with 42 books that now needed to follow him back to New Jersey.

It was the discussion of books that lead to us telling Kreskin about the building which fell down beside the Lister Block in Hamilton. It was in such a bad state before falling, that a resident had to move his collection of over 1,000 books to another building because the floor was beginning to cave in.

Kreskin had seen the Lister Block during his habitual morning jog. No matter where he was, Kreskin was up at 6 AM and running through the streets. He passed by the Lister Block that morning and was in awe of the sheer size of the abandoned monument.

He then asked us why one of our streets was named after the famous composer Franz Liszt.

Stephanie and I didn’t know at the time, but later found a small connection. Alan Walker spent 25 years writing what was the top biography on the composer. It was hailed by both the New York Times and Washington Post. The street may be named Franz Liszt because Mr. Walker is a Hamiltonian, who today calls Ancaster his home – Visit his Wikipedia Page.

Don’t call me a psychic
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Kreskin is calm when correcting us on the term psychic. He’s not a psychic. But what do we call him?

Kreskin recalls for us a dear friend who passed a few years back, a woman named Dr. Margaret Mead. He was intrigued by her work which dealt with the study of anthropology. One interesting case had her living among African tribes, looking into claims that the tribe’s people could communicate by means of mental telepathy.

She was a larger woman, authoritative, and known for carrying a walking stick. She was adamant about Kreskin never calling himself a mentalist or psychic. She saw him as a “sensitive”. Kreskin refused. Fearing she’s hit him with the stick, he quickly added,

“I’d spend the first ten minutes in front of my audience telling them what {sensitive} meant, before they find out who they’re seeing.”

Not to mention that Kreskin doesn’t have a very high opinion of some psychics out there.

“It is sometimes hard to sit with psychics because you have opportunists everywhere.”

Not being a psychic doesn’t stop him from making some of the most accurate predictions. Media outlets all over the US will cover his New Years Eve insights. Also during times when the press is looking for guidance, Kreskin will come through with the answer. One of these times was before the Democratic convention last year.

“I had a press conference in December of last year {2007}. They wanted to know who I thought would win the {democratic} election {Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton}. I wrote it out, it’s logged.”

He didn’t wish to reveal these results live to the press for fear that half the room would attack him. Instead, Kreskin wrote the name and gave it to officials to keep at The World Bar (beside the United Nations in New York). They put the paper in a lockbox with plans to open it after the convention.

A respected Rabbi in New York was invited to watch Kreskin write out the prediction. He initialled it before giving the paper over. The press hounded him as the Rabbi tried to leave,

“Rabbi we know you can’t tell us what Kreskin wrote, but could you tell us if it’s a man or a woman.”

Kreskin was right. The prediction was revealed to the media two days after the election. The paper clearing said “Barack Obama”. When it was written in December 2007, the strongest candidates were Hilary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. Barack didn’t even make the top list at that time.

Just last year, emotions ran high in the betting world when Kreskin went on Fox news before Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and New York Giants. He predicted for a live viewing public that the winning team would be the Giants, and by a small margin of three points. The final score of 17 to 14, for the Giants, proved him right.

“God forbid the day comes when we find out that these reality shows have writers.”

This turned out to be a candid prediction for just us. Kreskin wouldn’t give out names, but would admit that he knows many of today’s popular Reality TV shows have writers and directors.

“People’s lives are not that dramatically exciting in an hour without direction.”

He believes this isn’t a big shock, that the people of Canada and the United States are starting to see that this can’t be reality. Survivor was the example. He can’t understand how the camera people and crew could be right beside the contestants.

“They would have normal food, right?”

“I know a lot of people in the business and they say, Kreskin, when the bubble breaks we’re in trouble.”

The Amazing Kreskin’s predictions for 2009

A personal trick just for us
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Kreskin handed me an old, brown leather book, with the word “Timeline” centred in gold lettering on the cover. I opened it to see this was a datebook from 1996. Kreskin asked me to close it for now.

Back in 1996 Kreskin had an assistant who brought her daughter into work. To keep the young girl busy, Kreskin asked her to copy a mixed deck of cards into the datebook, one card per day, and when the deck ran out she should mix them up and start again. The book in my hands was the same one filled with entries for each card in the deck.

Kreskin held up a deck of cards, all with the common red backing. We noticed our card was blue.

“I can’t tell you what that card is.”

Kreskin picked out the special blue card that morning. He knew the card would represent something important to Stephanie during the interview. He handed the blue card to me and asked Stephanie to pick a date, an important one with special meaning to just her. She chose her birthday – June 14th.

Kreskin had me open the book and confirm some of the cards written on different dates. There was the Seven of Clubs on April 25th, the Eight of Clubs on April 27th, the King of Hearts on April 30th and so on.

I turned to June and looked at the 14th. Written clearly beside it was the Ten of Spades. The blue card in my hand was the Ten of Spades.

I was holding this card before Kreskin heard Stephanie say June 14th. He couldn’t have known.

It’s not every day that the world’s most known mentalist performs a trick right in front of you. We were honoured.

Today’s magic
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“{Magic is} not just sleight of hand, but now altered reality, trick photography and time editing. A very, very sad thing.”

Kreskin’s views of modern magic are not positive. He believes using a camera is cheating, that many impossible tricks are done with the magic of time editing.

“The completion of some tricks is happening almost one hour after they started.”

He talks about a trick made famous by magician David Blaine and other conjurers,

“They throw the deck of cards at a window, and there’s a card on the other side of the glass; the problem is that when the camera moves upwards to the card, not only has everyone witnessing seen it before the deck was ever thrown, but everyone has agreed to act or behave as if they were surprised!”

“That may be good television, but CBS, NBC, the founding fathers, Carson and all them, would never allow it to happen. First it’s dishonest, secondly, the moment that leaks out, how could you ever trust again what you would see on that show.”

It’s true that many modern magicians use television to communicate their form of entertainment. Nobody doubts that the Blaine’s and Copperfield’s of the world have great focus and strong minds, but it doesn’t mean that they can levitate.

Not your grandfather’s magic for sure, but can it be considered taking the easy way out? Some disagree, stating that there’s as much effort put into creating the perfect camera trick as in ones done for a live audience.

“I have to be alone about an hour before a show… to prepare.”

It was difficult for Kreskin to focus when those around him would constantly fall into his world. The phone would ring and he’d pick up with a personal greeting, knowing who was calling right away (... and long before Caller ID made that trick possible for us all to be magicians).

“People wouldn’t be comfortable around me, so I really needed to be alone.”

It takes real focus and a strong will to success to do this real style magic, people watching you closely, always criticizing and trying to prove you a fake. We admired Kreskin for his kind nature.

The people he met that make it all worthwhile
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“To meet the people I could have only dreamt of meeting.”

Catholic Bishop, Fulton J. Sheen was one of those people. They said he had the golden voice,

“He talked the good word… he would mesmerize you.”

Bishop Sheen was a star during the dawn of TV. He held his own up against giants like Frank Sinatra and Milton Berle. Milton joked about being beat out by the Bishop, saying that he’s amazed because the bishop “uses old material”. When the Emmy was awarded to Bishop Sheen in 1952, his acceptance speech thanked the show’s writers, “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”

Kreskin was lucky enough to appear a number of times with Bishop Sheen in live concert performances. Not long before he passed away in 1979, Bishop Sheen wrote a personal letter to Kreskin. This is now one of his most prized possessions.

Another important meeting came to Kreskin because it was just more proof of his predictions. At an event Kreskin was hosting, a woman came up to him at the end and said, “I’ve known you my whole life. My father talks about you all the time”. The woman was the daughter of a Barry Goldwater, a US senator.

Mr. Goldwater was visiting a nearby city to where Kreskin had performed many, many years ago.

“For some unknown reason I picked up the phone and said I’ve got to speak with Mr. Goldwater.”

“I told him, “Mr. Goldwater, you got to be at some building tomorrow... somebody is going to try and kill you by blowing up the building.””

Kreskin was right. There is no news story, no press because nothing happened. Barry Goldwater lived that day because of Kreskin and was forever grateful to the mentalist for his prediction.

The Amazing Kreskin’s movie
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In 2009 a movie will be released with a main character being based on Kreskin. The release date initially in a number of cities is March 20th.

“I got a call before Christmas 2007 from LA. Two people are flying to New York to bring a movie they wanted me to see.”

He screened it in New York and was delighted with what he saw. At the time of the interview Kreskin couldn’t tell us much about the movie, but recently he was permitted to reveal more.

The movie is called “The Great Buck Howard”. The producer and one of the stars is Oscar winning actor Tom Hanks. The character based on The Amazing Kreskin will be played by John Malkovich.

The story technically has nothing to do with Kreskin’s life, but what is intriguing is that John Malkovich impersonates all the mannerisms and remarks of Kreskin. Not to mention that almost every incident happening on stage in “The Great Buck Howard” happened to Kreskin in 1994; the time that Sean McGinley (Director and Writer of the movie) was working for Kreskin as his tour manager.

Time to go
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Kreskin was happy to give Stephanie and me an extra half hour to finish up all our questions. He seemed sure of it even with other’s waiting to talk with him.

He told us about a similar interview, where a woman came in with exactly 14 questions to ask. She sat there, ready, pen in hand, just waiting to ask her carefully prepared inquiries. Kreskin told us how he talked and talked, not allowing her a moment to cut in.

After sometime he stopped and asked her if there were any questions she’d like to ask. Relieved it was her turn; she looked down at the paper and realized that Kreskin had already answered every one of those 14 questions.

We realized afterwards that most of our questions were answered without being asked. We would be ready just when Kreskin would politely interrupt with another great story. It wasn’t always related to the question we had ready, but they all seemed to be answered.

And after a great interview with a very famous man, Stephanie and I had only one last thing to ask. This was answered with a final exclamation from the amazing one,

“I’m loving the adventure!”

We knew he’d say that.

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© Photos by Stephanie Cumerlato