Nine years ago, comedian Heath Franklin stopped doing stand-up under his own name and re-emerged as Chopper Read. Based on the infamous Melbourne criminal of the same name, Franklin utilises the Chopper character to issue profanity-heavy criticisms of contemporary issues. Inevitably, the more time Franklin’s spent performing from behind the fake moustache, the more that details from his personal life have seeped into the act.
Eventually, Franklin reached the point where his views had become too forceful, and at last year’s MICF he returned to the stage under his own name. However, this either/ or approach – Chopper or Heath – wasn’t quite satisfactory. “I was really enjoying the fact that there was all these ideas I had that couldn’t work for Chopper,” he says. “But then I kept writing ideas that could only work for Chopper. It’s become apparent that I’ve got to do both.”
Thus, Chopper comes back to MICF this year for a one-night-only performance of the show Repeat Offender. In Franklin’s portrayal, Chopper holds nothing back when spurning that which riles him. Yet, the caricatured homage also comes across as an all-round good bloke, who you regularly find yourself agreeing with.
“At the end of the day, it’s all just a bunch of words that come out of my head, and it shouldn’t be taken too seriously,” Franklin says. “I’m not advocating violence or anything like that. I’m just saying ‘Things are pretty messed up.’ We may as well have a bit of a giggle about it or it’s a total waste of time.”
Before bringing Chopper back to the stage, Franklin took some time to review what his initial intentions were for the character. “I remembered that way back when I was doing the Ronnie Johns sketches, Chopper was a pretty brutal rant-y dude, and then every now and then he’d do something really, really silly. So I’ve managed to breathe a bit more of that into Chopper, which takes it back to where it started. (S)Hitlist, the last show, was more or less an hour of high-powered winging. But this year there’s a bit more light and shade and silliness and then some hard aggression. It’s a slightly more balanced show.”
While Franklin’s personal experiences and beliefs have influenced the Chopper show over the years, he’s also reaped benefit from the character’s way of thinking. “Harden the Fuck Up was the first show I did and that was interesting because every time I was winging about being on the road or in a hotel or something, I had no choice but look myself in the mirror and say ‘Harden the fuck up’. Repeat Offender is kind of about losing your shit and being irrational and all that stuff. So in some ways it’s a message to myself to just sit back, chill out and take things easy instead of getting stressed out.”
Because Repeat Offender is coming to MICF for just one night, there’s a strong chance the audience will include many longtime fans. With this in mind, Franklin promises to highlight plenty of the character’s most memorable moments.
“When you do shows, and you live and breathe them and you do them 200 times a year, you forget that most people only see the show once,” he says. “Some people don’t even see it every year, so there are still people out there who really want me to say ‘Harden the fuck up,’ during a show. So it’s been a little bit about that – getting back and being like ‘If I was a punter that turned up once a year, what would I want to hear?’”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
