KISS' PETER CRISS Catches Acting Bug

KISS drummer Peter Criss is concentrating on pursuing a career in acting while preparing to release new music through his own Catapult label, the drummer has revealed via a lengthy interview published in the second issue of Gene Simmons Tongue magazine.

"I've really got the bug [for acting]," Criss told KISS bassist Gene Simmons, who heads up the magazine and personally conducts many of the interviews that appear in the publication. "I met Noel Behn, a brilliant New York writer who wrote the book The Brinks Job and also wrote for the TV series Homicide. My wife Gigi became really good friends with him, and he wanted her near his bedside when he passed on a few years ago of cancer. Through Noel, my wife met Tom Fontana, who does Oz on HBO, and has done a million other things. So after Noel passed on, we had dinner with Tom, and I said, 'I want to act. I want to be on your show.' And he said, 'Go to school, and I'll put you on.' I would do anything in the world for Tom Fontana, because he kept his word. I went to school, and he cast me as a guy who just beat two people to death with a baseball bat in the two opening episodes of Oz last season. And I haven't stopped going to school. It's the most wonderful therapy I've ever had in my whole life.

"I also just opened up my own company, called Catapult," Criss continued. "It's going to be the Cat Man's label. I want to release my records, and maybe some other people's records, and I want to produce a few things if I can. I'm still working on it. And I just wrote four new songs, and I've got some new jazz arrangements. I'd like to get some music happening by next fall. I'd like to get parts in a couple of movies, too."