Dan Statler
Production Designer | Monster Garage

Dan was born in the Pacific Northwest, where his earliest memories were of his dad welding on a stock car.

"He'd get home from work and go to the garage to get his old Ford stock car ready to race on Sunday. He was always under it welding because he crashed it a lot."

After studying photography at East Texas State University, Dan moved to Southern California where he began working in movies and television. It was while working in special effects that he got interested in working with metal.

"After we destroyed the set, all that was left was the steel we'd built to hold the miniatures. They looked like sculptures."

Dan came aboard during the Zamboni/Impala build, and has just recently put the finishing touches on Monster Garage's new location.

Dan's work has been published in Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly Magazines, and can be seen in the new video from Baby Bash.

My name is Dan Statler, and I'm the Production Designer for the Monster Garage. Basically, that means that I get to use all the tools in the garage when no one's around and make a lot of really cool stuff.

One of the things I do for the show is plasma cut designs in 4' x 8' metal panels that are hung on the walls. For every new show I try to create a different panel that relates to the car being built, but because of scheduling and show changes, it's not always possible.

The Monster Garage is usually busy shooting or getting ready to shoot, so I have to work the weekends before the build when the garage is empty. This means nobody knows what I've done until the day of the build, but it doesn't seem to bother the producers. In fact the only time they ever asked me to do anything specific was to "please put in the NY skyline" (Hot Dog Dragster) because Jesse was going on the Dave Letterman show.

Once the car is built and the show is done, the panel comes down and is moved to the Original Production offices where it is hung on the wall next to computers, fax machines, and accountants. It's kind of funny to see a skull with flames eight feet high next to an accountant.

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