| “ | What, 'cause 'The Smashers' was taken? | ” |
| - Trace |
A live streaming show in which the Mads (Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff) riff the 1961 crime movie The Choppers.
The Movie[]
- Main article: The Choppers (film)
A group of young car thieves terrorizes a small community.
The Show[]
Callbacks[]
- "He can smell 'em here to Catalina." "Caper." (Catalina Caper)
Running Jokes[]
Quotes & References[]
- "...our GameStop stock."
- Weeks before this livestream event took place, there had been a widely-publicized news story about an online community of investors who had coordinated to raise the value of stock in the retailer GameStop. The incident prompted a national conversation in the U.S. about what qualified as stock manipulation, what obligation trading apps had to their users, and whether "shorting" a stock should be legal.
- "Oh, Bitcoin! Thanks!"
- Bitcoin is a prominent example of a cryptocurrency.
- "Tango & Cash: The Early Years..."
- Tango & Cash is a 1989 action film starring Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell.
- "They sound just like MY surgeons..."
- Frank Conniff had heart surgery in 2019. He has spoken (and joked) publicly about his health concerns several times since then.
- "Meanwhile, at the Super 8 motel..."
- Super 8 is a chain of no-frills motor lodges. They rarely have swimming pools.
- "Phil Spector produced this and it was the worst thing he ever did..."
- Record producer Phil Spector worked with many popular musicians and pioneered the "wall of sound" mixing technique. In 2009, he was convicted of murdering actress Lana Clarkson (though Spector claimed that her death was an accident). He had died in prison a few weeks before this livestream.
- "Oh, there's Car 54..."
- Car 54, Where Are You? was a TV sitcom in the 1950s about police officers. It inspired a feature film of the same title in the mid 1990s.
- "They've gone to the dark side like Kylo Ren."
- Kylo Ren is a villain in Episodes VII to IX of the Star Wars saga. He is the child of heroic characters, but eventually becomes a dark Jedi after a traumatic incident.
- "It's like a Sophie's choice for dumbasses."
- Sophie's Choice is a 1979 novel by William Styron about a mother who had to make a difficult decision about her children's fate during the Holocaust. It was made into a highly-regarded film in 1982, and "Sophie's choice" has since become a widely-recognized phrase for a hard decision to make.
- "Let's start over again." "Who's on first?"
- "Who's on First?" is a well-known comedy routine performed by the team of Abbott and Costello. It involves a misunderstanding about the uncommon names of the players on a baseball team.
- "Nice goin', Pete, you pulled over the cast of Hillibilly Elegy."
- Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is 2016 book by J.D. Vance. It deals with economically-depressed ruralites in Ohio and Kentucky. It was made into a film directed by Ron Howard that had a very limited theatrical release before being made available on Netflix in November of 2020.
- "Here's a quick Quentin Tarantino shot..."
- Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino often includes shots of women's feet in his films. Some viewers have come to suspect that this is a fetish of his.
Behind-the-scenes[]
- The livestream of The Choppers is the second performance by The Mads of 2021.
- A portion of the proceeds were to be donated to the Friends in Need Food Shelf, a Minneapolis based organization that distributes food to those in need.
- The livestream was produced by Chris Gersbeck.
- The Mads were joined by Carolina Hidalgo (co-host of the podcast Movie Sign with the Mads) for a Q&A session after the movie.