American Chopper

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American Chopper
American Chopper: The Series logo
Starring	Paul Teutul, Sr. Paul Teutul, Jr. Michael Teutul Vinnie DiMartino Rick Petko Cody Connelly Mike Rowe (narrator)
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	4
Production
Executive producers	Hank Capshaw, Craig Piligian
Running time	60 minutes
Original release
Network	Discovery Channel(2003-2007) TLC(2007-)
Release	2003 – present

American Chopper: The Series is a Learning Channel reality television series produced by Pilgrim Films & Television Inc., and a video game published by Activision. This popular series is based around the founder of the company, Paul Teutul, Sr., and his son, Paul Teutul, Jr., also known as Paulie, as the two run a business creating custom motorcycles in their workshop, Orange County Choppers. The workshop is based in Montgomery, New York. One of their most famous bikes is the Black Widow Spider Bike.

The contrasting attitudes of the men and their propensity for sulking often lead to fiery but humorous verbal exchanges as they meet unusually short schedule deadlines for building distinct custom choppers.

Originally a show on the Discovery Channel, the series moved to Discovery's sister channel, TLC, on December 28th, 2006, starting off with an 18-hour marathon. Its first season on TLC premiered on January 18, 2007.

Positions

Typically Paul Jr. works alongside fabricators and mechanics such as Vinnie DiMartino, Rick Petko, Cody Connelly (a BOCES student intern who left to attend Wyoming Technical Institute (WyoTech) but has since returned), and Christian Helter to create dozens of custom motorbikes. Paul Sr. supervises the builds and has built motorcycles himself. Michael Teutul, commonly referred to as Mikey serves as the shop's custodian and webmaster, appears and provides comic relief, though has been seen doing metal work now and then because one of his early jobs was working at Orange County Ironworks.

The show also documents their personal and promotional activities ranging from magazine photo shoots to family holidays and custom bike shows.

Criticism

American Chopper has received criticism from more traditional Discovery Channel viewers who point out that the show has nothing to do with the channel's theme of discovery and learning, and that it is a low-brow show on a supposedly intellectual channel.

In response to this, new commercials for new seasons have had promotional messages — American Chopper's message states, "Let's all discover...the vision".

Production

As described in a 'behind-the-scenes' episode, Orange County Choppers was not the producers' first choice for a shop on which to base American Chopper. Although they had considered OCC as one of the potential candidates, they settled instead on a small bike shop in New England. During the weeks of preparation leading up to production, the show director began having doubts about their final choice. Just three days before shooting was scheduled to begin, the location was switched to the Orange County shop instead.

Supposedly unaware that the final program would include the disputes between father and son, Paul Sr. reportedly called the producers the day after the pilot episode aired and remarked that the program would put the shop out of business.

Video games

Due to its popularity during its first seasons, American Chopper inspired two video games, including American Chopper 2: Full Throttle for the Nintendo GameCube, Sony PS2, and the Xbox.

The appeal of the show

Vinnie (left) and Mikey filming at an outside location.

Verbal battles: These occur mainly between Paul Sr. and Paul Jr. Since the premiere of the show the two have had endless arguments, mostly related to Jr.'s working pace, which Sr. considers too slow. Paul Jr. has also been known to arrive late to work, take long lunchbreaks, leave unexpectedly without informing anyone, and not cleaning up the shop on a regular basis.

Sr., however, has his own personality quirks; aside from the frustration he expresses over Jr.'s work ethic he is constantly critical of Jr.'s choices in design details, especially when a deadline for completion of a cycle is approaching. He also tends to get himself worked up over seemingly small problems (at least in Jr.'s view), most notably the cleanliness of the shop (Sr. prefers a clean shop). They also bicker about design elements, production deadlines, travel arrangements, and whose authority a design team will recognize and many, many other subjects.

Mikey seems to have a problem with authority but he rarely seems to fuss on the show. He is also able to calm Sr. down.

Random Destruction: Despite the numerous verbal battles and the serious attitude that Sr. usually gives off, he and the rest of the crew do tend to have some fun in and out of the shop now and then, and it occasionally involves a little bit of destruction of various different items. Over the seasons, the crew of the OCC have been seen causing a little damage here and there, like when they were moving to a bigger shop, and to celebrate, Sr. used his SUV to destroy the remains of the office area in the old shop. Another memorable moment was when Sr. decided to give Mikey some help rennovating his house, and he used an axe to take down the walls asking the question: "Is the lady of the house home?"

Not all of the fun involves destruction. In one episode, to kill a little time with some fun, the crew were setting off some explosive gasses. They made several attempts. Sr. soon joined in the fun and got probably the biggest bang of all, which he nearly went deaf over.

Of course when there's no time for destruction, some joking around with Mikey tends to get a few laughs from time to time. At times he almost seems like the "shop clown." Even Sr. has gotten a few laughs, which is apparent as he has told Mikey: "the only reason I keep you around is because you make me laugh."

Outside of work: The cast members often participate in leisure activities together — as a group, the crew have hunted pheasant, gone skeet shooting, snowmobiled, fished for striped bass on the Hudson River and, in one of the earliest episodes, closed the shop for a few hours to go bowling.

Small business success: Although OCC itself started as a small business and was built and expanded by Paul Sr., it was not his first foray into this segment of the private sector. A few years before he started OCC he'd built a successful iron-working shop making wrought-iron fencing and other products. This business is now run by another of Sr.'s sons, Daniel. However, OCC is considered by many to be Sr.'s greater success because of the uniqueness of the cycles they build, his son's talent for original design ideas, the crew they've assembled and, of course, the television series.

FANtasy Bike Contest

During 2005, Discovery Channel sponsored a contest in which four finalists won OCC motorcycles. Bike features were specified by the winning fans, who sent in videos expressing their reasons for wanting a bike. The contest winners were (in episode order): Jeff Clegg (Corporal Punishment), Susan Morisset (Female Snake Bike), Joseph McClendon (Custom Hog), Bryan King (Vertebrate Trike). Each winner's bike appeared in a single episode, since each build took only 2 days.

External links

• Orange County Choppers website.
• Discovery Channel's American Chopper website.
• HP Bike On American Chopper commercial (video)