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| Dave
Hotle’s quarter horse farm near Winfield offers a respite from
the pressures of his job rigging lighting and other stage equipment
for television productions such as “Jeopardy” and “Wheel
of Fortune.” |
Dave Hotle is hundreds of
miles from his next job but already his work has begun. As he pores
over blueprints and engineering drawings spread across the kitchen counter
of his home near Win-field he begins to envision the Grand Ole Opry
and what he will soon do there.
In a few weeks the television
show “Wheel of Fortune” will go on the road, taping episodes
in Nashville. But before Pat Sajak and Vanna White take the stage Dave
will be there.
Dave is a production rigger.
His job is to hang the assorted lighting trusses and set pieces needed
to produce a TV show or stage event. But unlike technicians based in
entertainment capitals on the West and East Coasts, Dave lives in Missouri
and travels from job to job. His work is particularly specialized because
with jobs like the upcoming “Wheel” shoot in Nashville, he
must adapt to an ever-changing set.
“Every job is like starting
from scratch,” he says. “You know the wheel is going to be
there and the puzzle board is going to be there but everything else,
all the lighting, and all the carpentry, it all changes. On top of that,
the building’s always different.”
Now 39, Dave got his start
nearly 20 years ago working as a roadie, setting up gear for a St. Louis-area
band. One job led to another and he ended up working for a staging company
that sent him to a seminar to learn rigging — the job of hanging
stage equipment.
Dave has toured with the
rock band Stone Temple Pilots, the Mannheim Steamroller ensemble and
with Latino heartthrob Ricky Martin. Life on the road with a band was
everything it’s rumored to be, he says. But along with wild parties
came long days, hard work and not particularly good pay.
“I didn’t make
a whole lot of money back then but it was fun,” he says. “It’s
not glamourous, though. You’re living on a bus with 10 guys. That’s
no fun. And being away from home for six months is no good.”
It was during those days
that the Cuivre River Electric Coopera-tive member earned the simple
nickname he’s carried even after becoming the chief production
rigger on many jobs.
“I was on a tour with
five other Daves — bus driver Dave, carpenter Dave, rigger Dave.
I’ve never introduced myself as Rigger Dave but the name stuck,”
he says.
In time, his skills and easy-going
manner led Dave to the top riggers in the entertainment world. “I
just shut up, worked for them and learned a lot,” he says.
One of the things he learned
was that TV offers a more comfortable life than rock and roll.
“Television is a totally different world,” Dave says. “You’re
paid a lot better. You work civil hours. They put you in the best hotels
and they treat you with respect.”
Besides “Wheel of Fortune,”
Dave gets steady work with the “Jeopardy” television show,
beauty pageants such as Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen, and other
major productions, including the NBA All-Star Game and national political
conventions.
Despite working in celebrity-packed
environments, Dave says nearly all his time is spent among the crew.
He seldom has direct contact with the stars. “It’s not really
professional to approach them,” he says.
Still, some contact is inevitable.
“Most of the people
you meet are really down to earth,” Dave says. “Vanna White,
she’s a very, very nice lady. She cut my birthday cake for me one
day.’”
Dave has plenty to keep him
busy without trying to meet stars, though. Coordinating the needs of
the various departments in-volved in a production requires far more
than placing the lights so Vanna looks her best. Dave once suspended
an airplane and even rigged a pair of mini vans so they appeared to
jump a 16-foot-high wall of video screens.
“It’s a challenge,”
Dave says. “You’ve got a big puzzle you’ve got to solve
and you’ve got to do it right.”
Since large productions often hoist as much as 30 tons, doing it right
means the rigger’s first responsibility is making sure that what
gets hung stays hung.
“It’s the most
serious job on the road. If you don’t do it right people can get
hurt or die,” Dave says, adding that there are risks to the riggers
themselves. “I’ve witnessed two guys dying on the job already.
One fell and one got electrocuted.”
Despite the challenges and
risks Dave says he enjoys the freedom that comes with location work.
“I consider myself the luckiest guy in the industry,” he says.
“I have the best of all worlds. I get to travel and do the hustle
bustle. I go out of town for 10 days or two weeks and then come back
here and just decompress.”
Dave’s retreat is a
15-acre farm between Troy and Winfield where he and his wife, Carole
Roberts, raise quarter horses. While nearly everyone he works with lives
in California or New York Dave says his Missouri home, complete with
swimming pool and tennis court, offers a respite from the highly charged
entertainment industry.
“The California folks
think it’s the greatest thing in the world to be from California.
I think it’s the greatest thing in the world to be from here,”
Dave says.
“New York City, I just
don’t get it. People love it. But I’m like, it’s really
nice to go there for a couple weeks, but to get home and get on a tractor
is really cool.”
