He first performed in Vegas 1999 at Arizona Charlie’s, and the booking agent failed to tell the casino’s entertainment manager that the Anthony Cools comedy-hypnosis show would be an uncensored experience. “It was a great show, but he was having a fit,” Cools says. “He told me I’d never play Vegas again. That’s the only time I’ve ever been told that.”
From there, the Canadian entertainer took his wildly unpredictable show to several venues before moving to Las Vegas full-time in 2003 and setting in at the Stardust, then sliding over to his own 216-seat theater at Paris, where he headlined for more than 15 years. It was an unprecedented run for a unique performer, and it looked like it would never end … until the pandemic hit the Strip.
Fortunately for the ever-industrious Cools, he had launched several side businesses through the years, including Axe Monkeys— the first recreational ax-throwing attraction in the country—six years ago. So when COVID struck, he took advantage of the time off and realized he was ready to be away from the stage for a while, possibly forever.
We had an hours-long, in-depth, behind-the-scenes conversation about his many years hypnotizing folks on the Strip, full of wild Vegas adventures on and off the stage, but for some reason I can only remember the parts you’re about to read.
I like to ask entertainers who use a lot of audience participation, What’s the craziest thing that has happened onstage?, but that’s basically what you do, nonstop. It’s always crazy. I’ve seen things and fallen down onstage myself, laughing. I hypnotized a guy and told him he was auditioning for a porno movie, and that his chair is the person he’s auditioning with. So he sat down and took off his prosthetic leg and proceeded to stump-f*ck the chair. So much random stuff, all the time, always something crazy. I just call that a Tuesday.
Had you been planning to retire, or at least step away from the stage for a while, before COVID? My contract [at Paris] ended in March 2020, but I had a two-year option. They called me into the office and said they wanted to extend it for two more years, and that was fine. But I was prepared to be retired in March 2020, so I was actually grateful I didn’t have to do those final two years. Then when Eldorado Resorts bought Caesars Entertainment and shut down a bunch of different shows and theaters. I wasn’t shocked about it, and like I said, I was prepared, but the only thing that [bothered] me was, I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. I didn’t have a final bow, that was just it.
Is that it? Let’s just say I might not be done yet, but I’m waiting for the town to get better.
You put a pretty good retirement plan in place with Axe Monkeys. I was the first guy to open an ax-throwing range in the U.S. It was a business model that worked in Canada, but no one was doing it here. My friends all thought I was batsh*t-crazy to start it, because they didn’t think it would grow. Now there are thousands of ranges all over the states, and I’m selling franchises, hopefully 50-plus in the next eight years. Fort Hood, Texas, is the newest Axe Monkeys to open up.
It’s a unique activity that seems like a perfect fit for Las Vegas. And now we have the Rage Room, and that’s been trademarked as well. When you’re having a bad day, you can go inside the Rage Room, get outfitted in safety gear and go destroy stuff. You can bring stuff from home or go to our store and pick out stuff off the shelf. Our old general manager who ran the place for the first four years had this printer that had given him continuous grief, and he took out years of frustration on that poor little printer.
Has anybody destroyed their own cellphone? Sometimes I get the urge to do that. The closest thing I saw to that was a guy who believed he was getting proficient throwing axes, and he mounted his phone on the target so he could get a nice slow-motion shot. He missed and nailed the phone, dead-on the money. He didn’t think it was funny.
What are you going to do with all your time now that you’re not performing every night? My goal is to do as much travel as humanly possible. I’ve just been waiting for all the borders to open up again. When [the pandemic shut things down], I truly embraced it. I was so burned out toward the end and ready to be retired, just so over it. It doesn’t matter what you do—if you do it for 26 years, you’re going to be over it. I have a friend who owns a helicopter tour company, and he’d rather be doing anything except flying people, and I thought, how could you hate that job? The answer is, do it for 7,000 hours.
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