Back from the future with Heath Franklin’s Chopper

COMEDIAN Heath Franklin is bringing his wildly popular Chopper persona back to Bendigo, touring his latest stand-up show The Last Hard B&^%$#@ on Earth, and suffice to say, it contains strong coarse language.

Based in 2030, it sees the parody hardman rising from the ashes “like a glorious moustachioed phoenix” to restart humankind after “self-diagnosing whingers and 37 types of milk” destroyed civilisation.

The much-lauded funny man said he first concocted the character after the Chopper movie starring Eric Bana was released in 2000.

“Me and my mates really enjoyed the film. Every group of boys had their favourite movie that they quoted to each other, and that was the one for me,” he said.

“I was (performing) at university when my now wife said, ‘you keep doing that Chopper impression, you should put it in a show.’

“I thought, ‘yeah, that’s fair enough’, and it was really well received. It kept snowballing from there.

“When you watch the film there’s a really dark sense of humour that runs through it.

“I thought if I twiddled the knobs and turned down the violence and turned up the comedy, then there’s plenty to play with.”

Heath said the premise of his new production is “a bit ridiculous”, which is why he’s “having so much fun with it”.

“Chopper’s come back through time to warn us that everyone’s getting too soft again,” he said.

“I’ve seen a lot of other comedians who have stories about themselves or personal growth or something sad that happened with a few jokes in there.

“As Chopper, one thing you can’t do is talk about your feelings because he’s a sociopath.

“It frees up a lot of room to just tell jokes and have some really heavy-hitting punch lines.

“That’s the part of the market that I’m trying to (aim for); people who want to come along, forget about the work week and forget about the stress of everything, have a couple of beers and laugh (themselves) stupid.”

Heath Franklin’s Chopper: The Last Hard B&^%$#@ on Earth comes to The Capital on Friday 28 March.

Tickets can be purchased on Gotix.