Ready, aim, fire

By Cindy Landrum  

FEBRUARY 3, 2011 3:58 p.m. (0)

Brian Miser calls himself an adrenaline junkie.

Maybe that’s why being shot out of a cannon wasn’t quite thrilling enough for him.

Maybe that’s why the human cannonball for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus decided he needed to be set on fire, too.

And this year, he’ll do it from an innovative cannon he designed in the shape of a crossbow with a rocket strapped to his leg.

“Flying across an arena is dangerous and then putting fire on top of it, that’s double the danger,” Miser said. “I like facing my fear. I like having that nervous fear. It’s a great affect when it’s finished. I guess that’s the adrenaline.”

Miser will reach 65 mph instantaneously and fly more than 100 feet across the Bi-Lo Center during the circus’ seven remaining shows in Greenville. He’ll soar four stories high, leaving just a few feet of clearance to the arena’s ceiling.

The first time Miser tried it out, he got too anxious and was shot out of the crossbow before he was ready.

His hand hit something as he was leaving the device and, he said,  “about ripped my little finger off.”

While his fingers healed, Miser made changes to the crossbow to make it safer.

While the injury set him back three weeks in rehearsal, he hasn’t missed any of the circus’ new month-old season.

“I just tape them up good and pad them a bit,” he said.

While the audience can see the stunt from start to finish with the crossbow, Miser still won’t divulge any secrets on how he does it.

“The cannon’s been around for more than 100 years and we’ve always kept the workings of it a secret,” he said.

Miser gets shot out of a cannon more than 400 times a year. Miser, who said he learned his act through trial and error, has been shot out of a cannon about 6,000 times.

“I still have bad flights,” he said.

But a bad flight is when he didn’t get the right position or flew crooked, things the audience usually can’t tell.

A really bad flight is when he gets hurt. And he’s had a few of those.

“I’ve broken 18 bones and 16 have been career-related,” he said.

Miser doesn’t practice during the season. “It’s so dangerous, I don’t do it more than I have to,” he said.

The biggest challenge, he said, is setting the cannon up correctly for each show. Even though the circus is inside an arena, weather conditions such as humidity and temperature affects the flight.

“The first shows in an arena are always colder for some reason,” said Miser, who keeps a log of flights with recordings of humidity, temperature and other elements he can consult when setting up his cannon.

Miser is not from a circus family although he grew up with the circus all around him.

He’s from Peru, Ind., a city known as the “Circus Capital of the World” because it served as winter quarters to several circus troupes early in the 20th century. Peru has a renowned summer amateur circus.

Miser, who is now 47, has been performing since he was 8. “I got on a trampoline and was a natural acrobat,” he said. “That’s all I thought about. During school, I’d daydream about new tricks I could do on the trampoline.”

After high school, he joined Circus World and then Ringling Bros. as a flying trapeze artist.

While he was in Peru in 1999 to help with an upcoming performance of the amateur circus, Miser decided to build and create one of his own cannons.

“I’d always been intrigued by the cannon,” he said. “I like being challenged so it was a no-brainer.”

He constructed his own cannon and began learning his own system and what body position worked best.

“It’s a very secretive art,” he said. “No two shots are alike and any tiny shift in the position of your body changes everything.”

His persistence eventually led him to a starring role in the grand finale of the 133rd edition of Ringling as “Bailey’s Comet.” In the act, his wife, Tina, who is also a human cannon ball, shot him out of the cannon aflame.

In the latest edition of the circus, Miser returns to what he loves most – getting blasted out of the cannon.

“Sometimes it feels as if the whole thing is happening in slow motion and I don’t want it to end,” he said.

It does, though, just seconds later.