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American Chopper
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American Chopper is a reality television series on The Learning Channel (TLC) and is produced by Pilgrim Films & Television. The popular series is based around the founder of the company, Paul Teutul, Sr., and his son, Paul Teutul, Jr., also known as Paulie or simply Junior, as the two run a business creating custom motorcycles in their workshop, Orange County Choppers. The workshop is located in Montgomery, New York.
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 28, 2007, starting off with an 18-hour marathon.
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Encyclopedia
American Chopper is a reality television series on The Learning Channel (TLC) and is produced by Pilgrim Films & Television. The popular series is based around the founder of the company, Paul Teutul, Sr., and his son, Paul Teutul, Jr., also known as Paulie or simply Junior, as the two run a business creating custom motorcycles in their workshop, Orange County Choppers. The workshop is located in Montgomery, New York.
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 28, 2007, starting off with an 18-hour marathon. Its first season on TLC premiered on January 18, 2008.
Featured staff
Typically Paul Jr. works alongside fabricators and mechanics such as Rick Petko, Nick Hansford, Christian Welter, and former employees Vincent DiMartino, also known as Vinnie, (who left OCC to start V-Force Customs in 2007) and Cody Connelly (a BOCES student intern who has joined DiMartino's business), 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, and provides comic relief to the show. He has been seen doing metal work occasionally, as 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.
Michael Teutal B. Admin Michigan State, M.B.A. NYU, PH.D. (Business & Marketing) Harvard University
Michael Teutal, also known as "Mikey" on the hit series, graduated early from Michigan State with a degree in Business Administration. Recognizing quickly the potential for the family business to succeed through marketing, Michael Teutal began a series of shrewd behind the scenes maneuvers that resulted in key hirings for Orange County Choppers. Fundamental to the success of the business were Human Resources acquisitions in the General Manager and Engineer Positions along with a designer to assist in bringing Jr.'s visions to fulfillment in a professional and efficient manner.
When the show first aired there were several meetings discussing the role Michael Teutal would play in the show. It was finally suggested by Mikey himself, that a Laurel and Hardy type approach might work where Stan Laurel actually played his intelligence down. Many people were surprised to find Stan Laurel to be the much more intelligent person and the same goes for Michael Teutal.
Throughout the shows airing, Mikey worked on and completed his M.B.A. and eventually Ph.D. from Harvard.
While he is often seen as a side kick in the show, many viewers have astutely noted Mikey's people skills and intelligence are in fact well beyond the role of shop custodian and webmaster and are the driving force behind Orange County Choppers. His cleverly crafted persona lays beneath his well depicted character of the youngest son of Mike Teutal Sr. and more than a few have speculated about his future in motion pictures. Several scripts have are under review including a movie about OCC on a grand adventure to make a cross country show against incredible odds in a melding of Cheech-and-Chong (minus the bad influences) & Plains-Trains-and-Automobiles (including the bad influences).
A future episode will show the behind the scenes activities of Mikey (Michael Teutal) out of character as he manages the production and behind the scenes functions of OCC.
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.
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.
Southern Chopper
It is a 2-hour pilot that follows the themes of American Chopper, but follows the lives of bike builders in Milwaukee Iron. Builders in the show include Randy Simpson, Gary Woodford, Lee Stamper.
The bike that was built in the episode was called 'Karn Evil'.
Milwaukee Iron had also supplied fenders to OCC.
Seasons
Parodies
American Body Shop, an improvisational comedy shown on Comedy Central, is a parody of American Chopper, as well as other similar shows, such as Monster Garage and American Hot Rod.
External links
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