YouTube compilation of several days on The Pyramid on American Gladiators, from 1993-1995. The only decent shot of me working as a spotter is at 11:45 in this clip. I didn't see a clear shot of Chris or Neal. If you guys see one, let me know, I'll tag it.
Many, many years ago, in the summers of 1992 to 1995, I worked on the stage crew of the hit TV show, American Gladiators. I stumbled into the "real" TV production world, thanks to a former coworker, in 1991. Before that I worked at Vision Skateboard's video company, from 1987 to 1990. I landed a job as a spotter on the American Gladiators crew for the 5th season, in 1992. I worked the last four seasons that we shot the show, on the CBS Studios lot in Studio City, California.
The job of us spotters started with 6 or 8 days of practicing the different games with the Gladiators and contenders. Since the producers didn't want them sparring with each other until the show taping days, us spotters got to be the Gladiators while practicing against the contenders, and be the contenders practicing against the Gladiators. Right from day one we were taking some hits, and physicallt working hard. After surviving that week, we went on to tape the shows, for abou tsix weeks, in the aircraft hanger-sized Stage 3. Since we shot in the summer, most shows were on hiatus, and we used the Roseanne stage and Tom Arnold Show stages, Stage #1 & 2, as storage for our huge set pieces, along with many of the alleyways between stages.
On several games, like Breakthrough and Conquer, Powerball, and The Pyramid, us spotters would be on the sidelines, holding white karate pads, or at the bottom of the Pyramid, to keep players from going out of bounds and crashing into stuff, like a $70,000 studio camera. On some games, like Swingshot and The Wall, we would fasten the carbiners into Gladiators' and contenders' harnesses, hooking them to their safety lines or bungee cords. But our real job was to help the grips and riggers in between the games, changing sets from one game to another. One old crew guy told me American Gladiators did the biggest set changes in the history of TV, and we did them seven times a day, every taping day, for about six weeks of shooting. Most TV shows would do one, maybe two set changes per day.
The third and fourth seasons I worked as a spotter, was the head spotter, and it was my job to lead the crew. While that may not seem like much, the other stage crews, the grips, riggers, and camera crew had all been working together for years. I had to take 7 guys who had never met each other, and have them working like a tight, cohesive team, in about 8 days. If we did our job well, and worked efficiently, we could take about an hour off of everyone's work day, by helping the other stage crews do faster set changes. That last season, my crew kicked ass, and we hardly ever went into overtime, which saved the production about $100,000 or so over the course of seven weeks. We earned our $90-$125 a day.
Two of the guys on that last year's crew were a couple of writer/director, film school guys, out of Philedelphia, Chris and Neil. They were smart guys, and good workers. But they weren't used to the kind of physical labor we expected of them. Both guys worked their asses their asses off though, in their first TV industry job.
We added the pyramid the season before, I think. While not as big and heavy as the Egyptian or Mayan pyramids. we had to move that huge monstrosity nearly every day, in and out, of the massive Stage 3 building. The top came off with winches, and the three bottom parts were over 20 feet high, and weighed something like 20,000 pounds each. It took about 15 of us grips and spotters to move each piece around the wall, out the giant stage door, and around the corner, where we parked them outside. They were mostly huge steel frames, sitting on one foot diameter dolly wheels, that cost $110 each. Once those things huge pyramid pieces got moving, they wanted to keep moving, and not always in the direction we wanted them to. Every time we moved those pieces it was a battle.
One day there was an accident involving Chris. Chris is now a successful writer, director, podcaster, and comedian. In a podcast recently, he told the story of that fateful day moving the Pyramid. I'll let him tell his story. You can find it at 33:52 in this Troubled Waters podcast. You can find out what Chris Mancini is up to these days with @chrisjmancini on Twitter. You can check out Neal with @FilmNerdNeil on Twitter.
Something reminded me about working on American Gladiators a few months ago, and I looked up Chris and Neal on Twitter, and reconnected. Chris tagged me when he did this podcast, and I knew I needed to do blogpost about it before long. In addition, I lived way down in Orange County when we taped those shows, and rented a cheap motel room in Studio City for the weeks I worked on the show. By "cheap motel" I mean the kind that often had hookers out front when I got back from work each day. Neal happened to be housesitting a huge house in the Hollywood Hills, for his aunt and uncle, that summer. So Chris and Neal graciously let me stay in one of the many spare rooms for most of the time we were working, which was super cool. Huge thanks for that guys!
I don't have lots of money these days, but between my BMX industry days, working on a few TV crews, being a taxi driver, and being homeless for a long time, I have LOTS of stories. I really haven't shared hardly any of my TV crew guy stories with anyone. I may share a few more as this blog rolls along. Let me know people, if you liked this post.
If you are in, or headed to Hollywood, check out my online tourist guide to Hollywood:
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