Once in a while, I am contacted about a show with which I am only vaguely familiar, but when asked to do an interview, I consistently seize the opportunity. In the case of Dennis Pittsenbarger, host of Discovery Channel’s Sticker Shock, I agreed to chat with him almost immediately for two reasons–I had heard of the show Sticker Shock, and he lives in Oregon (how often do I get to interview another person from the Pacific Northwest and only one state down from me?). And quite honestly, chatting with Dennis was refreshingly simple and fun as we discussed the show, his passions, and oh so much more!
RH: Hi, Dennis, so nice to talk with you today.
DP: Thank you, Ruth, it’s nice to have people give the show some attention. I really do appreciate your time. It’s kind of a crazy roller coaster, but it’s always fun to talk about something you’re involved in.
I’m glad to talk with you and promote the show.
Happy to do it, Ruth. I realize your audience may not be too mechanically-inclined, which I appreciate because not everybody can be a self-described car nerd like me.
Well, I can’t speak for my entire audience, but I can say I know virtually nothing about cars, but that doesn’t stop me from taking an interest in car shows now and then. Especially when it’s presented in an entertaining style. Interestingly enough, since I am a substitute teacher, I sometimes sub for high school auto shop. And that’s always fun because I have no idea what the kids are supposed to be doing! {laughs}
I may have been one of those kids who might have tortured you a little bit in the auto mechanics class, I have to admit.
Well, they’re smarter now because they don’t let the kids do anything in the shop when there’s a sub. So when they see me, it’s more like, “Oh no, we’re doing book work.”
Well, good for you, that’s a tough road sometimes. And you know, as much as life took me down this automotive road, once I had a daughter and have included myself in coaching and PTA meetings and all these things I do…’cause family is the most important thing…it’s funny. I’ve said it more than once. I don’t know if I would have taken the advice, but the forty-seven-year-old Dennis would go back and tell the nineteen-year-old Dennis to get a teaching degree because I enjoy coaching soccer and I enjoy being around kids and helping them create something with their lives rather than just going through the paces. It’s a good job. My wife works in the public school system too. It’s a tough gig; you have to have a lot of patience, that’s for sure.
So have you always been interested in cars?
I got my first car when I was twelve years old. It started with my brother-in-law marrying my favorite of three older sisters. It was my life mission to make it so he wouldn’t marry her and take my cool sister away from me. Between him and my dad always being around cars–he was a mechanic as well; he did heavy machinery mechanics. I was always into tools and getting into dad’s shop and playing with stuff, whether it was bikes or motorcycles or mountain bikes. It was the jingly keys that got me to look; it was the sleight of hand, “Oh, I’m marrying your sister…but look over here! That’s your car!” Then I was like, “Oh, wow, cool, I got a car! Oh, you’re marrying my sister. What happened?” So it was one of those things that started off as kind of a predetermined path. But once I was hooked, the hook was in deep.
I kind of figured that. My dad can’t really work on cars, but he knows classic cars. He’s in his seventies, and he can still look at cars from the 1960’s and earlier and tell you what year it was made. When I was growing up, I was always amazed by that. In fact, he caught a mistake in an old movie that was supposed to be taking place in the 1940’s, but they messed up and the car was from the 1950’s. I never forgot that, and years later, I discovered that he was exactly right since it’s a known “goof” in the film.
I see that a lot in anything that’s no automotively based. Not something that is automotively based like Sticker Shock, but in a movie. A perfect example would be Dazed and Confused. It’s about a bunch of high school students goofing off in 1976, but there’s a bunch of cars from the 1980’s in the background. And I’m like, “It’s 1976. What’s that ’84 Camaro doing in the background?”
Well, because most of us just sit there and watch it and don’t pay attention to that stuff or don’t have the knowledge to even catch the mistake, I guess studios don’t always consider those kinds of mistakes. I watch out for historical mistakes–that’s my thing. So can you tell us about your experience with shows and TV?
I’ve done a lot with media over the last thirty years. Whether it be my own programming that I did in the Pacific Northwest. I had an opportunity to work for Hot Rod Magazine, and that’s what led me to the national scene, I guess. I had a show before this current one that was on Discovery. It was a cool idea, and it was well thought-out. I was glad to be a part of it, but I don’t mind visiting its grave. If you go digging for this show on the internet, you’ll probably understand why the show didn’t pan out. But like my mom taught me, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” But Sticker Shock is not my first ride on the television merry-go-round.
So for young people who might want to follow in a similar path, how do these kinds of opportunities come your way?
I guess I would say there are two answers to that. The first answer is genuinely honest: I just don’t have a clue. {laughs} Luck, happenstance. For whatever reason, I’m not shy. I’m not a person who can’t talk to people. I call it luck, but maybe there’s a plan for me.
My metaphorical way to put it, of course, is that it’s very easy to spot the wrong cars. I’m reminded of the movie Days of Thunder. There’s a scene in that movie where Tom Cruise says, “Hey, listen, if you want us to change the car, tell us.” A wedge here, a twist here.Then he looks at the guy and says, “Hey, listen, I don’t know much about cars.” And the other guy says, “How do you not know anything about cars? Every driver knows about cars.” So the guy responds and says, “No, I don’t have the vocabulary.” But I do have the vocabulary. I own several cars. If they put me in a car, I can talk. And that is truthfully one of those things that way, way back, I said, “What? No one’s gonna take the lead role? Well, I guess I’ll do it.” I have the ability to walk up and not be scared and not take myself seriously and not be a prima donna. So I was just like, “Point the camera at me. I’ll say something.”
I think a lot of what led to the TV world was the fact that I did syndicated radio for a long time. When you interview someone on the radio, as you probably know, there’s a “yes” and a “no” answer to every question. And from there, it branches out to infinite paths. In every opportunity I was given, I was always thinking six or seven steps ahead of the conversation. So that gave me the opportunity to do radio. And then they thought, “Let’s stick a camera in this guy’s face, and he can do the local TV spots.” Then suddenly I was doing my own local TV show.
Then I have to give a lot of credit to Doug Evans from Hot Rod. He was the one who took me under his wing when I worked for Hot Rod Magazine. From there, I was put on this national stage, and all of a sudden people are like, “Ask Dennis to do it.” And I was like, “I’ll do it. Wait! I get paid to do it? You’re kidding me! You’re gonna pay me to do this?!” And that led to companies that reached out, and they did these screen tests which showed them that I’m just the same guy everybody meets on or off the camera. It happens a lot. People meet me on the street, and they talk to me for ten minutes, and they’re like, “You’re exactly the same guy you are on TV.” And I’m like, “Well, yeah, I am. Of course, I am.” I’m that guy. I work my butt off. I love my family. And I play with cars!
One of the reasons I enjoy this program so much is because I get the easy job. My job is to walk out, meet these people that, for the most part, I have never met before–a couple of them I knew previously–I walk out and say, “I’m Dennis. Let’s talk about your car.” Then I get some genuine reaction from these people that wasn’t scripted or pre-loaded, and I get these people to really tell their stories. And if you’re good at what you do in my world, you can make it about them. And that has always been my ability, to talk cars with people.
Now, I have a really nice convertible G28 drag car. The thing is gorgeous. People walk over and start talking to me about it, and I guarantee you, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, two minutes into that conversation and we’re talking about their car. I already know my car; I don’t want to talk about my car. I want to talk about what you have. Like, “What makes you want to play with your Oldsmobile convertible or whatever that thing might be?” So I’ve got the easy job. It’s Randy {Carlson}, Todd {Wertman}, Nick {Smith} and Addison {Brown} that have the hard job, which is putting the value on the car. They have to be like the hammer, and I just get to be the fluffy pillow that comes out and has some fun.
So when and where can we see this show Sticker Shock?
It airs Wednesday nights at 10:00 P.M. Eastern time. It airs on the Discovery Channel. That’s the regular show time, but if you’re like me, you get to watch it early. It all depends on your cable provider. We filmed a total of thirteen episodes, and this week, we are on episode number nine. We are starting to hit our stride and get some good traction. The four appraisers and myself along with Discovery are doing a fantastic job of promoting the show. It’s nice to have feedback. It’s nice to turn on your phone Thursday morning, and you hit a jackpot of feedback and messages about the show. People are commenting and saying that they like this show, which makes it so much fun.
For people like me who aren’t car enthusiasts, why would we want to watch the show? Why would we enjoy it?
First of all, it’s not “inside baseball.” It’s not me sitting there with a set of cylinder heads for my drag car going over whether I’m going to do a three or five angle valve job. The audience that watches the show does not need to be car-oriented. In my opinion, they just need to be family-oriented. They need to see the passion that people have for their cars. Now, I’ve said this many times. People need to have a passion in life, no matter what that is. What people will see in this show that aren’t “car nerds” like me…I call myself a car nerd. That’s what I talk about all the time and play with all the time. If I’m not with my family, I’m at a racetrack or I’m at the shop. A non-car-oriented person will be just as entertained and just as involved in the show for the very simple reason that the show is not about the cars. It’s about the people and the connection to their car. It’s not about the appraisal first. It’s about the story behind it. Like why it’s a multi-generational car. It’s about the story of standing on the pickup truck bed having a piece of chicken in a BBQ with their grandfather–that’s the memory they have.
One of the ladies who was a guest on the program had what is called a Meteor Corvette. It is a ’66 Corvette. It was her grandmother’s car, but then became her mother’s car. And then it became her car. And it was going to become her daughter’s car. It had nothing to do with the car or even the fact that it was a cool, black Corvette. It’s more about why a kick-ass girl like her has a Corvette like this. It’s so cool that this story was passed through that car within her family. And they all have different memories. Whether the car was in this condition or that condition. Whether it was stuffing a bunch of high school girls in a two-seater Corvette and going to the beach for the weekend…whatever that memory might be. They all got to share the memory of that car. Almost every single car on the show has that kind of background touch.
There was a particular car from a guy down in Woodburn, Oregon where I drag race. There was a car that was passed along to him from a guy whose dying wish was to see this car go out on the racetrack. Even though the guy who owned it originally was named Davey–we called him Crazy Davey–the guy who owns it now is Davey, and we call him Crazy Davey. That kind of connection had nothing to do with the car. It had to do with the fact that he’s part of Racers for Christ. That’s something we do here in Woodburn. So the audience is able to understand the family connection.
Whatever the story might be. “It was a car that Grandpa had that I always wanted.” “It was a car that was passed down to me from my Dad, a cool little ’63 Nova.” After all these years, even though they had been in the automotive business for years, they finally got to build a car together. That has nothing to do with the car. It has to do with family and connection.
I’m a red, white, and blue patriot type, so for me, it’s about that connection you have with your family. It’s that connection you have with Mom, apple pie, and baseball. I know that’s kind of a corny metaphor, but it’s that connection to people. It’s that connection to the same like-minded people that make us get together every weekend. To get to go to the car show, the drag races. Standing at the Daytona 500 for four hours in the sun getting barbecue and going in the circle. I think this kind of thing is the most important part of the show and the most visual.
Now I feel like I have a good understanding of the show, Dennis. Thank you for all those details.
The format of the show is this. It’s about telling the story first and then putting the value on the car. One of my favorite stories all season is one that I can’t talk about without tearing up. A couple of weeks ago, we featured that story of Crazy Davey. But in that same episode, you get to see me completely channel my inner five-year-old and play in a fire truck.
Now, I’ve been on TV, and I still do other programs and projects that are on the other end of the spectrum. “Let’s grab a small box, everyone. Let’s pull the shoulder heads off of it and we’re gonna check the crank thrust. And we’re going to check piston ring clearances. And we’re going to set it up for a nitrous loader.” With many audiences, even before I got through that small paragraph, they’re gone. But if the audience is looking for a connection to a person…even the love and spirit of Grandma or Grandpa, their uncle, their dad, their wife…if that spirit can live while you’re listening to a car, that’s the kind of touch this show has.
So you don’t know if the show has been renewed or if you will be making more episodes?
No, I don’t know. For me to answer that question would be like throwing a dart at a wall. I hope. It’s a fun show to make. I think if people can connect with it and see it for what it is, I think it could be a long, successful show. It’s not a secret that it’s very much a car version of Antique Roadshow. If I could only be so lucky to have this interview twenty-one years in the future…Antique Roadshow is in its twenty-first season. I would love to be able to at that point come back and read this article and say, “I remember when…” If I could only be that lucky. But if it goes the way of the dodo after one season, I’ll always be able to chalk it up as a cool experience.
With it being on Wednesday nights and the season past the halfway point, is there a way people can get caught up on the show?
If people want to get caught up or they can’t stay up to watch the show, thanks to the digital world we live in, they can go to the Discovery app and watch the episodes they missed. And there’s also Discovery Motors and Discovery on Facebook. With Discovery Go App, you can watch any of the old episodes. It’s great when there happens to be a Saturday when it’s raining and there’s nothing better to do. Thankfully there’s plenty of ways to find me if they don’t want to stay up that late.
Well, Dennis, this has been so informative. Thank you for the fun chat, and I hope that everyone can catch Sticker Shock this Wednesday night.
Thank you, Ruth, it was my pleasure. I hope everyone enjoys the show and that we can come back next season with even more stories to tell.
Speaking with Dennis was such a thrill, and had I not invested the time, I would never have considered watching this particular show. While it is currently occupying a prominent spot on my DVR while screaming out for me to watch it, as of yet, I haven’t had the opportunity (but school is finally out for the summer!). Although I would consider myself completely “car illiterate,” this is a show that intrigued me from the moment Dennis described it to me. In my humble opinion, the fact that Sticker Shock relates to people through the medium of automobiles and anecdotes that viewers would not hear otherwise tends to set this show apart. My sincerest desire is that viewers and the network will rally behind this show and secure a second season for everyone involved. Dennis is definitely not your standard show host, and I believe that in many ways, his disposition, joviality, and easygoing spirit establish the tone for the show.
Therefore, if you have not been watching Sticker Shock on Wednesday nights, I would strongly encourage you to either set your DVR or download the Discovery app and watch an episode or two (or eight). Additionally, I would invite you to check out Dennis at the links below and consider following him where applicable. As one whose passions include his family and his cars, Dennis is the ideal host for a show that focuses on family stories as they relate to automobiles. While there are a plethora of car shows available in the entertainment universe, I do believe that Sticker Shock has carved out its own niche in a market that is flooded with any kind of media imaginable, thus practically guaranteeing the show’s longevity based on its originality. And while I am not familiar with the appraisers on the show (no doubt they are just as proficient), on a show like this, it is often the host that can “make or break” it. Accordingly, I can state with relative certainty that Discovery selected the correct host for this show to ensure gratification, reciprocity, information, and just plain fun. Dennis undoubtedly brings every one of those aspects to the table every single day of his life, and Sticker Shock is merely an additional outlet for him to fuel his passion and “play” with cars while detailing family tales that tug at the heartstrings and resonate with the viewers on a deep, personal level.
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