Biography
Dutch Merrick is past President of I.A.T.S.E. Local 44, Hollywood Property Craftspersons, where he served 14 years on the Executive Board. He grew up at Van Nuys Airport, where his mother was a flight instructor - and before that a race car driver. His father was a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy who had earlier worked as a machinist at Disney, building rides for the theme park. The son of a fifth-generation UAW family from Detroit, Dutch came to Hollywood already fluent in the language of craft and organized labor. Technical precision, creative ambition, and an inherited sense of humor became the foundation of a career spanning forty years in the firearms world, thirty years in film and television, and twenty years behind the camera as a writer and director. Growing up as a competitive action shooter - an IPSC competitor since age 15 in the Southwest Pistol League - he was a natural for his future role as a studio armorer. His first film job was as a gun wrangler on an ultra-low-budget feature. Over the three decades that followed, he has worked as an armorer or prop master on many notable productions. He served as key armorer in Season 2 of HBO's Euphoria under creator Sam Levinson, was part of the armorer team on SEAL Team across its seven-season run, and has prop and armorer credits on features including The Island and S.W.A.T., television series including CSI: NY, and five seasons as prop master on Penn & Teller: Fool Us - one of television's most technically demanding productions. He has also served as prop master and/or art director on more than 500 television commercials for directors including Michael Mann, John Frankenheimer, Samuel Bayer, and Kinka Usher, including more than 250 spots with Joe Pytka. In the aftermath of the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust in 2021, Dutch became one of the industry's most sought-after voices on prop gun safety. He was interviewed by major national and international outlets - ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, BBC, Variety, and others - more than 135 times, and has been a guest lecturer at Dartmouth College and USC. In 2006, Dutch wrote, directed, and produced One Minute - the Shortest Film About Our Longest War, shot on 35mm with more than 50 crew volunteers. The film was accepted into 11 film festivals and won three Audience Choice awards for Best Short. He then produced, wrote, and directed the first-ever weekly YouTube news program for a U.S. presidential campaign - The Kucinich Presidential Campaign Update - 17 consecutive episodes, nearly half a million views. Six months as media director for the 2008 Ralph Nader presidential campaign followed, crisscrossing the country with a crew of union filmmakers. Dutch served as president of the local station board of Pacifica Radio's KPFK 90.7 FM. He is known on set for his legendary puns and has performed spoken word on a number of occasions. He is currently in his third draft of Mastering Hollywood, One Prop at a Time, the first history and how-to book on film and TV prop mastering.
