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I get up at about 6 in the morning. I have a 15-month old daughter. I get her and bring her into my wife. Then I go grab a bottle of milk for the baby and head to the gym.
The gym is in the back of my house. I would lose too much time driving, otherwise. I work out for about 45 minutes, get dressed for work and leave.
I direct and produce a TV show called “Build or Bust” It’s a reality show where we give someone parts and tools and they build a motorcycle. I also direct commercials.
When I’m working on the show, there is a basic footprint for the day, even though I’ll never know exactly what I’ll be doing. Commercials are entirely different. I may find out the day before what is going on. The producers decide and then let me know.
When the show is shooting, I start my day at Built by Thugs, the garage in Santa Monica where the show is shot. We start shooting between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., depending on the day.
We shoot 10 months out of the year, four days a week. The production staff is there five days a week. It becomes like a family. We’re doing it every day.
I’m involved in every step of the process.
People who want to get on the show go to our Web site and describe why they would be a good candidate. They have to build a motorcycle. If they do it well and finish in time, they get to keep the bike. If not, they go home empty handed.
My wife and production manager sift through the candidates and choose who they like. We look at their qualifications. They need to know what they are doing. After we narrow it down, we do phone interviews and ask questions like, “Can you weld?” The network makes the final decision before we tell them how it all works and coordinate travel.
We would much rather get successful wins than not. Most of the people we choose are average people with some skill. Four of the winners this year had never built motorcycles before the show.
Four times, people who were chosen to come on the show were sent home because they lied to us. They couldn’t do what they said they could. I take the footage of them telling a lie and then getting caught in the lie, and put it in the opening sequence of the show of the guy I replaced them with.
I’m a character on the show and behind the scenes. On the show, I’m the safeguard or the role keeper. We don’t want viewers to think one guy has a leg up on another guy. And I won’t let someone come in here and build a bike really rudely. It has to have a lot of depth and a lot of thought in it. I’ve built bikes from a design point and I know what I’m looking for. I judge the bike at the end and decide if they can keep it.
During the day, I check with my production manager to see what kind of things she has bumped into. We’re always working on projects: prepping new shows, doing editing, posts, sounds, closed captioning, pressing DVDs, all kinds of stuff.
It can be a challenge to handle all the personalities on the set. I have a harder personality so I have softer personalities around me. I do try to resolve problems.
I usually leave between 6 and 7. If you are in a deadline situation you can fall behind and sometimes you have to stay late.
When I go home, I check the forum at the “Build or Bust” Web site. We try to engage in dialogue with viewers every other day who write on the forum.
I eat dinner, spend time with my wife and baby. I’ll wake up tomorrow and do it all again.
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As told to Sarah Filus
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Scott Gillen
Producer, Creator, Director
‘Build or Bust’
For Fun:
Owns 15 motorcycles, three of which are West Coast
Choppers. Most of the bikes are valued at more than $100,000.
Other Wheels:
‘My favorite car is probably the one I just got: a 1964 Galaxie 500. It is an original Ford race car but never raced. It came out of a museum.’ He also has a fully restored 1967 big block Corvette, a 2004 Ferrari, and BMW IL.
Water World:
‘I have a boat. It is nice and relaxing. There’s no phone on the boat; no TV on the boat.’
