NOVEMBER 14, 2011: WHY DO WE NEED TO SEE A BAD VERSION OF ‘AMERICAN CHOPPER’ IN TV CAR SHOWS?

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About a year and a half ago, a TV production company got in touch with us about a car show concept.

 

They found us on Google Canada search in the top 3 under ‘collector cars’ and apparently liked what they saw on our website.

 

We like to emphasize the personal relationship between car guys/girls and their rides because it is the very reason for our existence at MyStarCollectorCar.

 

 

So we provided the TV people with a solid list of possible stories for their concept of a car show. We contacted our car owners and asked them whether they wanted to be contacted for an interview about their vehicles.

 

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They all expressed a big interest in a TV story about their beloved cars, so we gave the information to the TV production people.

 

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Most of the people involved with the production company were women, none of whom had a passion for the car hobby. This is the point where their car show concept took a dangerous veer into the ditch and rolled over several times.

 

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Clearly it appeared that they wanted to mold their idea on the fly and began to formulate a show concept in which an uncompleted car restoration project was underway-and under a tight deadline for completion. They were after in their own words, a “Docu-Soap”.

 

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They wanted to create an emotional environment during the shoot in which the elusive completion deadline would appear to be unacheivable at times during the filming process.

 

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What they actually wanted was a very tired TV concept made famous by the antics of Paul Sr. and Paul Jr. on ‘American Chopper’. These days many TV programs imitate this idea in everything from crab fishing to flying-and all points in between.

 

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You start with an alpha male, mix his son into the recipe, and create a father-son dynamic that ranges from contrived conflict to decidedly embarrassing for all involved parties.

 

We are not quite sure whether the TV people were completely headed down this perilous path in their concept show because they lost interest in us pretty early in the game. Maybe we should have told them that we were identical twins that fought a lot with each other to further our cause.

 

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The last word was they had made arrangements to shoot a pilot at a famous vehicle restoration facility on the other side of the country from us. The facility in question typically deals in very expensive high-end foreign cars, and that is not exactly our strong suit here at MSCC.

 

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Details got very sketchy after that news and eventually we were yesterday’s news to the TV people. They stopped calling and we began apologizing to any of our car people that were approached by the TV people for any inconvenience.

 

We were not exactly impressed with the whole episode because we take pride in our ability to present the amazing personal stories behind the collector vehicles and their proud owners. The stories come alive on our e-pages and would have made a big wave on TV- the owners’ stories are that good.

 

Plus they would have been radically different from yet another tired conflict/deadline TV show.

 

Jim Sutherland

See ’em all at-https://www.mystarcollectorcar.com/

COMMENTS

ANGUS:”Touched on this a bit last Friday but there is nothing more sad about this “information era” than the state of television. It has finally grown into its early applied moniker “boob-tube”. The fact that these bottom feeders step over, around and through the accomplished, passionate and or talented to get to the dysfunctional of mankind makes me want to puke. The worse offender is something that dares call itself “The Learning Channel”.

I’ve done everything from clean toilets to dig ditches for a living and there was never a point where I couldn’t look myself in the mirror at the end of the day. Can these cats? I don’t think we ever want to shine a bright light into this corner of television production – we might not be able to live with what we see. I can’t imagine having an opportunity to decide what’s on television and by extension add to the national, if not international conversation, and pissing it away on another Blue-bear or Paul Sr. Harvesting the socialy inept and emotionally crippled to plant into televisions gives a warped sense of the world. It also inaccurately represents the number of assholes in the world to the point that some of the less refined of us believe this behaviour is normative. Then these viewers get real confused when they can’t maintain employment because they have can’t converse without tantrums or their neck tattoo precludes them from a bank loan.

Thank God for MSCC, PBS, Mythbusters and Popular Mechanics.

DENNIS:”If there’s one thing you can count on with ‘Hollywood’, any original idea will be thoroughly beaten to death over and over, before somebody comes up with another one”.

 

 

 

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