Jan. 29, 2007
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

ON THE SPOTLIGHT

Our reporter loses focus and leaves the performer and the crowd in the dark

Watch the video MOV | FLASH   click on the photos to enlarge them... Corey Levitan hangs over the crowd at The Club in the Cannery Casino, trying to keep Elvis impersonator Johnny Fortuno illuminated. Photos by Ralph Fountain. Levitan, wearing the required safety harness, receives instructions from the lighting supervisor before the show. Johnny Fortuno basks in the light shined by Levitan and co-spot operator Ben Best. Levitan's lighting truss is perched 30 feet up a wobbly rope ladder, the exact distance his cell phone plummets after this photo is taken.

"Spot one?" lighting supervisor Matt Druzbik's voice blares from my headset.

As a spotlight operator at The Club at the Cannery Casino, I have only one job tonight: to keep tribute artist Johnny Fortuno out of the dark.

Unfortunately for me, Elvis has left the spotlight.

I'm not the only spotlight operator working. On my far right is Ben Best (spot two). But he's illuminating a guitarist right now.

Even if there's only one performer, there are two spot operators. Usually, that's to ensure against technical problems with one of the lights. Tonight, I'm the reason.

"Spot one?" the voice repeats.

Druzbik built the $300,000 rig himself in 2003. Before Fortuno's show, he walked me around beneath it like a proud papa. Then he warned me.

"If the singer walks out of your spot because you're not paying attention, it makes me look bad and it makes the whole room look bad," he said. "You have to be on it.

"You can't lose him."

My mind is wandering, I admit, even more than usual. The first thing I did after climbing 30 feet up a rope ladder to my seat in the lighting truss, is drop my $400 cell phone. It shattered into three $133.33 pieces, landing 3 feet from an audience member.

"That's not good," Druzbik said.

Quickly, I shift my 1,200-watt Lycian Starklite 1271 the required half-inch to the right and apologize into my headset. The $6,300 lamp sits to my left and is swiveled with my left hand. My right hand controls switches for six sheets of plastic that change the beam's colors, and covers my eyes when I think about my body taking the same fall as my Palm Treo. (From up here, Fortuno's 500 audience members look like 250 distant bald spots and their companions.)

Travis Giordani, the 24-year-old Cheyenne High School graduate I'm replacing, says he digs this job — for the most part.

"It's got its rewards," he says. "But it's kind of thankless because not everybody realizes you're up there doing that — unless you're cutting their heads off."

It's not exactly a full-time job, either. Giordani, a spotlight operator for eight months, supplements his income as an air-conditioning installer. Spot-operating pays a decent $20 an hour to start, but there aren't many hours to work at a single facility (six to 10 a week during a typical Cannery winter, although the number triples during the peak summer concert season).

That means I would need to work three weeks just to replace my phone.

"Iris in," Druzbik says as the opening stirrings of "In the Ghetto" fill the room.

What does that mean again?

There are two activators, or handles that whirl back and forth, on the spotlight. The one on the left controls the size of the beam, the right its intensity. For the show's first hour, I fiddle with each, trying to remember which is which. My experiments occur in full audience view, transforming the stage into the sky in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

But I forgot what "iris" refers to anyway — size or intensity.

I wanted to rehearse. Honest. I showed up for Fortuno's show the night before. But The Club's lighting truss is like an Apollo space capsule; there's no room for people who aren't commanding it.

Anyway, with all my years of experience hogging the spotlight, I figured I'd be a natural.

"Tighten to the waist," Druzbik says.

Ah, OK. Iris means size.

There are two main spotlight shots. One is wide, in which the edges of your light circle envelop the subject and extend just far enough to avoid illuminating the curtains, monitors and extraneous performers. (Oops, by the way.)

The other is the above-the-waist shot. (Coincidentally, the real Elvis knew this one well, from the TV cameras struggling to ignore his swiveling hips.)

"Spot one," Druzbik's voice summons me. "Sax player."

Fortuno is now barreling through a song that's not on the set list (and that none of us headset people has ever heard).

After working lights for 25 years (for the likes of Rush, Madonna and Tina Turner) Druzbik has a sixth sense for when a singer will throw to an instrumentalist — and back when it's the singer's time to shine again. This is even true if he has never heard the song.

"We never have any rehearsal here," he said earlier. "It's all by the seat of the pants."

I hear the sax Druzbik predicted, but can't tell where on the stage it's coming from.

When spotlight operators shift from one subject to the next, they always black out the beam on the old subject, then fade it in on the new one. But my circle of light wanders the stage as though a prisoner has just gone over the wall.

"Spot one?" Druzbik beckons again. At least he's laughing.

After the show, I ask Fortuno what he thought of my work.

"We had a spotlight?" he replies.

Fear and Loafing appears every Monday in the Living section. Levitan's previous adventures can be found at www.fearandloafing.com.