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CLASH of the Teutuls 'American Chopper' features a motorhead father, two sons and a volatile family dynamic. Viewers can't get enough. By Mary Voboril January 12, 2004
"We were traumatized by that first show," says Paul Teutul (pronounced Tuttle) Jr., a metal fabricator who dreams up hot designs for custom motorcycles - choppers - that cost $39,000 and up. Traumatized? "Yeah, absolutely," says Paul Sr., a crabby ex-hippie and founder of Orange County Choppers (OCC) in Rock Tavern, N.Y., population 200. "Traumatized, like, head in your hands, thinking that we had ruined ourselves," Paul Jr. says. "Ruined, yeah," Paul Sr. says, nodding. At issue was the Sept. 29, 2002, debut of "American Chopper," the hit cable series about the Teutuls' fractious (Sr. to Jr.: "You are the biggest slob I have ever met"), diss-laden (Jr. to Sr.: "Go take some Geritol") but also symbiotic relationship, rubbed raw under often-tight deadlines. The show that so troubled the Teutuls aired on the Discovery Channel, which carried a second pilot last spring. It morphed into a series, and the first of 13 new episodes is to be carried tonight at 10. "American Chopper" features thumping rock music, short explanatory sound bites and "filler" that has the Teutuls futz around, for example, with very large, very live alligators. But the show's basic animating theme is the day-to-day lives of actual working men played out on national television. As such, it's a fresh "reality" show, centering on the edgy synergy between Paul Sr. and Paul Jr. as they conceive, fabricate and assemble high-end bikes that can cost well into six figures. Comic relief comes in the form of Paul Jr.'s brother Mikey, 23, a guileless, mild- mannered goof who sweeps up, orders parts, pops bubble-wrap and hangs up on customers. It turns out that OCC, founded only four years ago, was far from ruined after that first show. Business at their real-life 16-employee shop, Paul Jr. says, "has probably grown by a thousand times." The show became such a raging crossover success - the Christmas special alone drew 3.5 million viewers - that the Discovery Channel is launching others in the same genre, including "American Hot Rod," "American Casino" and "American Beauty Shop." But ohhhhh, that first episode. The bickering. The pouts. The sulks. The bleeped expletives as the Teutuls, under a 45-day deadline, struggled to build a military-themed Jet Bike from scratch, complete with tail fins, tiny cockpit, miniature missiles and don't-mess-with-me decals ("Live ammo ... Extreme thrust"). "You've got to understand: We expected to see a show about building a bike," Paul Jr. says. "Which it was. But we expected polish, like every show you've ever seen on TV. You never see the behind the scenes. You never see arguing. Everything goes perfect. Our show came on, it was a little less than perfect, in our eyes. We thought it was ..." - his brown eyes narrow - "... terrible." Paul Sr.: "Would you like to see yourself on TV, yelling and screaming like a maniac?" Paul Jr.: "It didn't sound very professional." Paul Sr.: "I was on my way to California to kill somebody." The next morning, he is informed that "hundreds of e-mail" have arrived, Paul Sr. says. His reaction, he says, was this: "'Oh, yeah? What the hell's e-mail?'" But also, "We started reading. And people were, like, just raving about the show." A great part of the appeal is that viewers can identify with the volatile family dynamic. "I call it the dysfunctional norm. Their personalities are not foreign to me. It's like watching a bit of home," says Dan Simon, 38, a non-cycle-owning fan in suburban Portland, Ore. William Thorpe, 54, of Farmington, Conn., says, "They remind me a lot of my family. My father and brother were just like Paul and Paulie." Dan O'Shea, 41, of Morris Plains, N.J., says, "I have worked with guys like these. They yell, they scream, they bark and, in the end, they get the job done." In the case of the Teutuls, "they feed off each other and build awesome bikes." Paul Sr. sees other elements. "We have a passion about what we do," he says, "but we don't portray that hard- core biker image." He does at the moment, though. The sun is down and it's cold out, but Paul Sr. wears narrow black sunglasses and a sleeveless red shirt hemmed at the shoulders. His usual sartorial style is to leave the sleeves ripped off, threads dangling over massive upper arms that flare out like slabs of bacon, his tattoos bigger than beer coasters. One wonders what kind of makeover he'd get on "Queer Eye
for the Straight Guy." Not many smiles break through his walrus mustache, which frames his mouth like a big gray C clamp. Yet Paul Sr. allows himself a grin when asked why women are some of the show's biggest fans. "We're physically attractive to women," he says. Paul Jr. says, "Women love soap opera, and that's what we have, essentially." Father and son are lounging in the Green Room of Fox News in midtown Manhattan, on leave from the New York International Motorcycle Show. They and Mikey had been signing autographs for four hours, a dense line of fans snaking along the walls of the Javits Center. Mikey, long blond hair dangling in his face, was still at it, showing a seriousness of purpose that doesn't quite match the slacker image he has on the show. At the Javits Center, and at all bike shows these days, most fans have to stand in line for more than two hours to get within touching distance of a Teutul. "You see those two, father and son, everybody in the world can relate," says Craig Piligian, executive producer of "American Chopper." And Paul Sr. has a certain ineffable presence. "When Paul Sr. walks into a scene, it energizes it," says Piligian, whose "reality TV" credits include that of co-executive producer of the first three seasons of "Survivor." "It ramps right up." That the Teutuls have sluiced from blue-collar obscurity to babe-magnet celebrity was due, initially, to Piligian. He made them an uncomplicated offer: "'We do an hour on you building a bike. We live with you about six weeks. You build a great bike." They agreed, relinquishing any control over editing. As it turned out, of course, "It wasn't just about bike building," Piligian says. "It was about a relationship. A family." The enduring appeal, he says, is this: "Good storytelling. Real people with real angst." In a way, Piligian says, it's in the tradition of "I Love Lucy," each episode having a single overarching theme: "Ricky loses his guitar. Lucy gets a job." Here, "Paulie's building a bike; a part is missing. Paul Sr. hates a mess." (Teutul père turns out to be a persnickety neatnik, the "Odd Couple's" Felix to Paul Jr.'s Oscar.) And it's comic, with some of the humor low-brow enough to elicit laughs from an 8-year-old. When a photo of Paul Sr. is about to be laminated onto the seat of Mikey's chopper, Mikey gazes down at his father's celluloid face and announces, amiably, "Every time I get on it, I'll fart." The show's casual back-and-forthing has generated something called Teutul speak, such that a joyous roar went up in the Javits Center when someone yelled, "Size 12! Size 12!" - that being the measure of Paul Sr.'s scarred work boots, which he regularly threatens to connect with some part of his errant sons' anatomy. As in, referring to Paul Jr.'s work ethic, "If he keeps doing like he has been doing, he is going to get a good look at the wrong end of my size 12s." TV Guide's take on all this: "Brawl in the Family." Some Teutul fans are famous. Rapper Wyclef Jean, for one, bought the Spiderman Bike. David Letterman dubbed Teutul choppers "wonderful works of art." "American Iron" magazine, based in Stamford, Conn., has featured four of Teutul's theme bikes on its cover. Editor Chris Maida calls them "very creative, but they are not long-distance bikes. They're made for a look and style. Toward that end, they do a great job of executing it. Would I ride something like the Fire Bike cross- country or on a long trip? No. It's not designed for that." One bike featured on the American Iron cover was the Fire Bike, which Paul Jr. designed to pay homage to the 343 firefighters who died in the 9/11 attacks. "Tell me that Fire Bike was not a work of art," says Dennis Bivona, 53, a Harley owner and "American Chopper" fan in Sparta, N.J. He loved the detailing - the fire ax, the miniature ladders, the oil tank made to look like an oxygen cylinder, the diamond-plate running boards, the small chrome fire hydrant that's actually a carburetor. Gazing at the finished product, Paul Sr. couldn't resist a tribute to Paul Jr. He said, "I don't think I have ever been prouder of my son." The finishing detail - a small chunk of World Trade Center debris - was snapped into place at a fire station, before a throng of solemn firefighters. Among his friends, the Teutuls have become "legends, cult figures," Bivona says. Capitalizing on all this, the motor-manic Discovery Channel is launching "American Hot Rod" on Jan. 23. Its offerings already include "Great Biker Build-Off" specials and "Monster Garage." But among motor-mavens, the Teutuls seem to rule. And on Feb. 1, their recognition factor will ratchet up even higher: They are to appear in 30-second AOL commercials in the first, second and fourth quarters of the Super Bowl. Yet Paul Jr. wants people to know: "It's not all glitz and glamour." It's like having two jobs, six days a week, he says, with each hour-long episode condensed from about 120 hours of taping. At cycle shows, they need security for crowd control. Fans show up at their shop, even on Sundays. The perks, of course, are significant. Paul Jr.'s face, squared off by a beard trimmed along his jaw line, breaks into a dimpled, babe-friendly grin. As celebrities, "We really do get to do things that no one gets to do," he says. "We drove down Main Street in Manhattan. ..." Main Street? "Broadway," Paul Sr. says. "Broadway, with Letterman," astride three choppers, Paul Jr. says. "They just shut down the street for us!" The Teutuls also designed, built and gave Jay Leno a chopper for free, which will be documented on the show. "We just wanted to do it because he's such an enthusiast," Paul Sr. says of Leno. "It's an honor. It means you must have something going on, because he would not let just anyone build him a bike." According to figures supplied by the Discovery Channel, nearly 70 percent of "American Chopper" viewers are male. The show delivered an average of 1.5 million viewers in its Monday time slot for the fourth quarter of 2003. By comparison, "Monster Garage," which precedes the Teutul show, delivered an average of 1.4 million viewers. Paul Sr. figures his fans are ages 2 and up. At one chopper meet - which Paul Sr. derided as "a redneck free-for-all" - Mikey helped set up a spaghetti wrestling event. It attracted the usual array of loose-breasted enthusiasts, most of them female. Paul Sr. wants Mikey to stand up more to his talented older brother, so long as he doesn't pick up his anomalous work habits. And so, when Mikey designed his own bike, he rejected the gas tank favored by Paul Jr., the design genius. Mikey's rationale: "It looks like a big, gaudy, push-up bra." Paul Jr. says: "If he wasn't funny, he'd be fired." Paul Sr.: "Yeah, 'cause he doesn't do anything. If you ask him, 'What do you do?' he says, 'I get you guys ratings.'" Mikey still has no chopper license. Nor does he have a girlfriend, "but women are going for him," Paul Jr. says. Born in Yonkers, Paul Sr. was a long-haired, bell-bottomed hippie, though never, he says, a war protester. Tonight's show features a POW- MIA chopper, complete with barbed-wire spokes and names taken from the Vietnam Memorial. Paul Sr.served in the U.S. Merchant Marine. Paul Sr. looks like the type of biker who, when not astride a chopper, would drive a Hummer, and he does. He bought his first Harley when he was 24, around the time he started Orange County Iron Works, a steel fabrication shop that produces, among other things, ornamental fences. The firm did well; Paul Sr. was semiretired in 1999 when his basement-built chopper won a prize at a bike show, leading to the founding of OCC that same year. He is the divorced father of two other children: Dan, 25, runs the Iron Works, and Kristin, 21, is in her third year of nursing school. Paul Sr. readily admits that he had struggled with drugs and alcohol most of his life, that he was in 12-step programs for nine years. Paul Jr. knows that road as well; though he captained his high school football team and was a state and national bench-press champ, he entered rehab at 16 and was a daily drug user until about five years ago. He got religion, got straight and discovered his considerable design talents. He has never worked for anyone other than his father. That, perhaps, is why he feels free to take his artistic time with projects important to Paul Sr. "There is more to life than just work," Paul Jr. says. And also, "I cannot let the pressure of a deadline inhibit my creativity." Paul Sr. has other ideas. In one episode famous among Teutul-heads, father and son sit on opposite ends of a black leather sectional couch, talking man to man after a combustible and emotionally torqued day. Their eyes tear up. They sniff. They stand and hug. "I love you," Paul Sr. says. "I love you, too," Paul Jr. says. "That," says Dan O'Shea, the fan from New Jersey, "was the day I tossed my beer can at the TV. "This had to be staged. Manly men tell their sons they love them only when they're out in the wilderness or on a hunting trip, and nobody can hear them except maybe a tree frog. They do not express heartfelt emotion in front of a camera." It wasn't staged, says Piligian, the executive producer. The Teutuls had had "a huge argument," he says. "They were at a pivotal time in their lives.... We just let the cameras go." The segment was so intensely personal, the Teutuls say, that they wish they'd retained some editing rights, so that it could have wound up on the cutting room floor. To break up the show, "American Chopper" producers have dreamed up gimmicky father-son outings, such as the alligator rides and pheasant hunts, even though they aren't hunters. "And they wanted to get me going on a date," Paul Jr. says. But the Teutuls seem genuinely astonished that anyone would think that they were fed lines for the "I love you" episode or any other. On this, too, there is familial accord. Paul Jr.: "Things that seem outrageous to common people are stuff that we do regularly. It's our fun time. Like, smashing into each other with cars." The bottom line, Paul Sr. says, is this: "We can't act. What you see is what you get." Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc. |
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