Here's the trailer for the Netflix docu-series about American Gladiators which started airing on Netflix on June 28. I haven't seen either the Netflix shows or the ESPN documentary. The hit TV show, which ran for 8 seasons from 1989-1996, has suddenly popped back up, with a new edition of the British version of the show, Gladiators, coming out. I heard a rumor of a U.S. reboot of the show, but haven't seen any definite info.
ESPN 30 for 30 doc- The American Gladiators Documentary trailer
Chillin' with Ice podcast- by Lori Fetrick, Ice from American Gladiators (several episodes are out)
American Gladiator TV show intros- 1989-1997
All this talk about American Gladiators this year, and not one shout out to Lico the spotter (coolest TV industry person I ever met), and not one word about the "Puppet People" What the fuck people?
So... most of you who read this blog know me, or know of me, from my days as a mediocre BMX freestyler, and BMX/skateboard industry guy in the 1980's. I stumbled into video work completely accidentally in 1987, when my boss at the American Freestyle Association asked me to produce a contest video. That first video (see the previous post) led to more videos, and a job at Unreel Productions later that year. Unreel was the video arm of the Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear empire in the late 1980's. I worked there from December 1987, until July of 1990. With the skateboard, BMX, and snowboard industries all tanking then, there was a mass exodus.
A woman I worked with at Unreel found a job at a "real" TV production company in Studio City, just over the hill from Hollywood. One day, a few months later, she gave me a call. "We need someone to log a bunch of footage where I'm at, what are you up to?" I wasn't up to much, so I made the long drive from Huntington Beach to The Valley the next day, where I spent ten hours logging footage of interviews of monster truck and mud racing drivers. Logging is industry talk for watching the footage of the event, and taking notes, like "John from Bigfoot jokes about blowing a tire at 43:27." Not exciting, but it paid. They asked me to come back the next day, and the next, and the next. I worked on a day by day basis for two months, I think. Finally they made it official, and called me full time. That's how I got my first "real" TV job at G.R.B. Motorsports, working on the production crew (office staff) of that year's supercross and monster truck TV series.
Those kinds of productions last for a few months, and we rented office space in a large building from a production/edit company called Four Point Entertainment. By the time I quit that GRB a few months later, I was doing three jobs for the price of one. They hired two P.A.'s to replace me, and part of the work still wasn't getting done.
Four Point was where American Gladiators shows were edited. The next year, I called up the secretary and asked if Gladiators needed people that summer. I called too early, and had to call back a couple of times. Finally the secretary said, "We have two jobs available, talent attendant and spotter." "What's a talent attendant?" I asked. She told me that it was a person to ran errands and pretty much got the Gladiators whatever they needed, "I wouldn't give that job to my worst enemy," she laughed. "OK, what's a spotter?" "I have no idea?" she replied. "Sounds good, put me on the list as a spotter." So she did.
A month later, I walked onto the CBS-MTM studio lot, in Studio City, as we called it then, and looked for Stage 3. I had no idea what my job was going to be. That's how I got a job on a hit TV show for season 5, in the summer of 1992. I worked the final four seasons as a spotter, those guys on the sideline with the white karate pads. I didn't like the American Gladiators TV show before that, and made fun of my roommate Bill, who was a big fan of the show. But it was a lot of fun, and really hard work, to work on it, and I'm glad I took the job. I worked the last four of the eight seasons of the show. I was the head spotter, leader of 7 other guys on the crew, for the last two seasons.
We worked for about 6 or 7 weeks in the summer, when almost every other show was on hiatus, the TV industry term for summer vacation. So the huge lot was pretty much empty when we taped the show. We had 6 or 7 days of practice, where both Gladiators and contenders would practice the different games, on opposite sides of the huge, aircraft hanger size stage. Since they were the show, both groups needed people to practice against. The producers didn't want either Gladiators or contenders to get injured before we taped the shows, so us spotters practiced several of the games against both. We played Gladiators for the contenders, and played contenders for the Gladiators. So I ran through Break Through and wrestled in the Conquer ring, played Powerball, ran through The Gauntlet, and practiced against them with pugil sticks. I was in pretty decent shape then, having worked moving as a furniture mover for a while. But I still got knocked around a lot. I got the worst concussion of my life when little April Wheat from Texas got thrown down the pyramid, did a flip, and accidentally heel-kicked me in the side of the head. My pupils wouldn't change size for 2 1/2 days, so that was a pretty good concussion. But, overall, it was a lot of fun.
Then we moved to the actual taping of the shows, and we taped two shows each day, completing the whole season in about 5 weeks. We'd set up one game, have the contests for two separate shows, then clear that out, and set up another game. Us spotters worked with the grips, riggers, and camera crew to change the sets. One old crew guy told me we did the biggest set changes in the history of TV, and we did them 7 times a day. Most sitcoms might do a couple of set changes, much, much smaller ones, a day. Hell, we moved a 30 foot tall mobile pyramid in and out of the stage. We worked our asses off. Our "down" time, as spotters, was actually when they were playing the games. That was the fun part, and when we got to rest a bit.
So that's a little bit about how I wound up stumbling from the BMX freestyle world onto the crew of a hit TV show. If you were a fan of the show, check out the documentaries, and Lori's (Ice) podcast, I've listened to five of her episodes, and they've all been really interesting. While I have a bunch of memories from the show, I doubt I'll write any more posts about it. I've got a lot of other stuff I'd rather write about these days. All of the sudden there's all this other content about the show, so check out any of it that sounds interesting at the links above.
As of late summer of 2023, I'm doing most of my new writing on Substack. Check it out:
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