I'm just a bloody normal bloke... who likes a bit of torture

October 9, 2013 1:34 AM

“There is no doubt some of Read’s stories are embellished, polished or, in some cases, stolen, but there is also no doubt that through the 1970s and 80s he was one of the most dangerous men in Australia.” RIP Mark 'Chopper' Read

Chopper Trailer
Drink Driving Commercial
Ronnie Johns - Chopper NSFW

posted by fearfulsymmetry (46 comments total)

William Gibson used him as the basis for a character in Idoru.
posted by awfurby at 2:47 AM on October 9, 2013 [3 favorites]

R.I.P. what has seemed to be Eric Bana's career. Compelling actor, he.

This guy? Fuck this guy.
posted by converge at 2:47 AM on October 9, 2013 [7 favorites]

I agree, fuck him.
posted by drnick at 2:53 AM on October 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Read quickly realised that stealing from drug dealers was much more profitable than preying on ordinary citizens [...] a criminal who stole from criminals and (supposedly) never harmed an innocent person.

Unless, of course, you think drug laws criminalize a lot of otherwise innocent people.
posted by pracowity at 2:55 AM on October 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Charisma and crime are closely linked. The former is a means to sucess in the latter. What an awful person. I'm fascinated by what drives people to these extremes and I'm happy this asshole is dead.
posted by vapidave at 3:05 AM on October 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm happy this asshole is dead.

It seems the "asshole" died a long time ago:

“When I was 50 and I saw my second boy born, I became a fully paid-up member of the human race,” wrote Read. “I have no regrets, but those moments told me what I should have been – a good human being.”

Seems like he came correct and the guy that died was a different person than the legend.
posted by three blind mice at 3:26 AM on October 9, 2013 [8 favorites]

I heard the rumours this afternoon. And now, here it is, confirmed.
I have no great interest in him, but being Australian he was always around (lying or not I could never tell)m but I always respected him for the fact he refused to take a kidney transplant.

I'm not sure if it was the right decision or not (probably, if he did kill 19 people as he claimed), but there you go.
posted by Mezentian at 3:29 AM on October 9, 2013

Too long, didn't Read.
posted by a non e mouse at 3:30 AM on October 9, 2013 [5 favorites]

"Read claimed to be involved in the killing of 19 people and the attempted murder of 11 others"

His epiphany is cold comfort to those he killed, their family members and friends. I don't believe in a punitive justice system, I do belive in forgiveness and hopefully his tale will help, but people died. A lot of them.
posted by vapidave at 3:38 AM on October 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

I think there's is a fair amount of redemption in the Chopper Read's life.

Chopper in 1992
posted by Mario Speedwagon at 3:48 AM on October 9, 2013

Media watch on Chopper on Elle McFeast then Chopper with Kerri Anne Kennerley, and Alan Jones.
posted by Mario Speedwagon at 4:01 AM on October 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

Beat me to it - that was a shining moment in Chopper's career (torturing Alan Fucking Jones).
posted by a non e mouse at 4:11 AM on October 9, 2013

torturing Alan Fucking Jones

That's what I meant by redemption
posted by Mario Speedwagon at 4:14 AM on October 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Now that he's gone and is a media celebrity to profit from, you can probably look forward to a dead Read redemption, too.
posted by ardgedee at 4:27 AM on October 9, 2013 [9 favorites]

One of Read's sons is a classmate of my daughter. He's a great kid, polite clever and friendly. It was his birthday 2 weeks ago, and he's just lost his Dad forever.

Read did some very, very bad things early on in his life, and I don't feel bad that he's no longer with us, but I do feel sorry for Roy who had no part in any of it. I don't reckon vindictive gloating becomes any of us when there are innocents involved.
posted by nonspecialist at 4:49 AM on October 9, 2013 [14 favorites]

I did some bad things earlier in my life for which I was never punished and for which I feel I deserve forgiveness in my encroaching dotage.

None of them involved killing or torturing anyone. So we let that stuff go now?
posted by spitbull at 5:08 AM on October 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

It would appear the wiki page is currently mid-vandalism-war. His current cause of death is listed as "choking to death on another man's ejaculate during oral sex."...
posted by sodium lights the horizon at 5:15 AM on October 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Anybody whose favorite drink is raspberry lemonade can't be all bad.
posted by echocollate at 5:16 AM on October 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

I sat through 7 minutes to find out what was meant by "torturing Alan Jones". It's when the deceased mentioned that he was allegedly arrested in a public toilet?
posted by thelonius at 5:16 AM on October 9, 2013

It's when the deceased mentioned that he was allegedly arrested in a public toilet?

That rumour about a certain radio shock jock who used to coach a young man's sporting association is widely known. In all my years I have never seen proof of the allegations, but then Rolf Harris is up on charges....

But Alan Jones is a particularly spiteful person.
posted by Mezentian at 5:20 AM on October 9, 2013

I'd ask what a "chaff bag" is but I think that is just going to lead to more antipodal confusion on my part, so I'll take your word that Jones is a swine.
posted by thelonius at 5:28 AM on October 9, 2013

None of them involved killing or torturing anyone. So we let that stuff go now?

Of course not; but you're not dead yet. Chopper spend 23 years in prison for the crimes that he was convicted of, all before his kids were born. Perhaps there's more to the story than "bad man was bad before, must always be bad".
posted by nonspecialist at 5:31 AM on October 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

Alan Jones is a boil, a carbuncle, an oozing pustulent sore on the already blighted landscape of AM talk radio in Australia. He may be a jolly nice chap in person, but his behaviour in public totally denies it (and he's rarely if ever had to pay for his obnoxiousness)
posted by nonspecialist at 5:33 AM on October 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'd ask what a "chaff bag" is but I think that is just going to lead to more antipodal confusion on my part

It's very simple. What Mr Jones is suggesting that there is no hessian/burlap bag big enough to fit those who attract his considerable ire into. These bags are commonly used to drown unwanted kittens in.
1) Put kittens in chaff bag.
2) Throw bag into farm dam.

In a nutshell.
posted by Wolof at 5:56 AM on October 9, 2013

Alan Jones is a boil, a carbuncle, an oozing pustulent sore on the already blighted landscape of AM talk radio in Australia.

nonspecialist is, in my view, being kind in this assessment.

For the US readers; Jones' equivalent is maybe Rush Limbaugh.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:57 AM on October 9, 2013

I sat through 7 minutes to find out what was meant by "torturing Alan Jones". It's when the deceased mentioned that he was allegedly arrested in a public toilet?


I think the clincher was that Alan was set up. Ackland was correct in calling it gross hypocrisy to call Jones onto the program to lambaste the ABC for using Read for entertainment - then essentially doing the same thing, knowing that it would male priceless entertainment.

and...

Alan Jones is a boil, a carbuncle, an oozing pustulent sore on the already blighted landscape of AM talk radio in Australia. Sydney.

Thankfully Melbourne seems immune from shock jocks, as Steve Price can attest.
posted by Mario Speedwagon at 6:11 AM on October 9, 2013

Melbourne, it seems, is the leftmost point in Australia; somewhere between Austin, Texas and Barcelona in Franco's Spain.
posted by acb at 6:19 AM on October 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

Maybe he just needed to harden the fuck up?
posted by Sphinx at 6:50 AM on October 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

Good. Fuck him.
Condolences to the innocents unfortunate enough to be related him.
I listen to ABC 774 while I'm in the car on my commute to work which usually is about 15-20 mins. I last heard Chopper call in a month or so ago gloating about how much money he made, compared to having a legit job. He's a thug who loved being a thug. So long.
posted by goshling at 7:18 AM on October 9, 2013 [4 favorites]

The trailer makes the film look like it covers a lot of the same ground as "Bronson".
posted by hanoixan at 7:50 AM on October 9, 2013

Media watch on Chopper on Elle McFeast

That was fascinating
posted by KokuRyu at 8:01 AM on October 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Gorr (as Elle McFeast) made a number of ABC shows, such as Breasts, My Big Bottom and Power Pussy,[1] she often interviewed Australian celebrities on these.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:03 AM on October 9, 2013

In his extortion days he used to cut off the toes of people he was terrorizing. Is toe cutting an Australian thing? :
For example, the character Toecutter in the first MAd Max movie .
posted by King Sky Prawn at 8:12 AM on October 9, 2013

The trailer makes the film look like it covers a lot of the same ground as "Bronson".

Oh my goodness, no. Bronson was a mentally ill fitness freak whose criminal career outside prison was unremarkable but his endless destructive tantruming inside prison was the story (he also authored books on physical fitness, "detailing individual training process with minimal resources and space," as Wikipedia drolly puts it.)

Chopper's criminal career is a big part of story, including his longstanding technique of kidnapping and torturing criminals to get them to pony up money. And while he did really long stretches in prison, he wasn't the solitary madman that Bronson was -- he organized a prison gang and led gang warfare and prison riots.

Also, Bronson is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn as some sort of lunatic staged Penny Dreadful, while Chopper is filmed by Andrew Dominik as a violent, deadpan comedy. Very, very different in tone, in story, and in lead performance.

Also, Read recanted his claim of how many people he killed. He was an inveterate boaster and I suspect he killed less rather than more. It may have been as few as four. Now, admittedly, that's four more people than most of us will kill, and he was a bad man, and in a just world he would have been punished more fully for his crimes, but that's all academic at this point.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 8:35 AM on October 9, 2013 [3 favorites]

So what we really need is a Chopper vs. Bronson team-up movie?
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:49 AM on October 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

It would add an interesting spin to my Eric Bana/Tom Hardy slash fiction.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 8:55 AM on October 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

To those that see redemption I would ask what is the number? 19 murders is 19 too many for me. If you murder one person and then murder a second you have lost your mind and likely impacted many lives.

What's the number? "It may have been as few as four." Well ok then. No problem. That's a normal weekend for me.
He only killed four people and here I was worried it could have been more than that. Shame on me.

As few as four.

As few as four. Really?
posted by vapidave at 9:02 AM on October 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

"Few" was not meant as a moral judgement there, but instead merely as a point of comparison with how many he claimed he had killed. I thought that was clear from context, but I suppose nothing is absolutely clear in any context.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 9:08 AM on October 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

In his extortion days he used to cut off the toes of people he was terrorizing. Is toe cutting an Australian thing?

It was a tactic used by standover men in the 70s-80s, notably the Toecutter Gang.

'The toe-cutters, who operated in Sydney and Melbourne in the early 70s, cut off hold-up men's toes with bolt-cutters to get them to hand over cash from big robberies.'

It's now used to describe political enforcers who operate through intimidation - meet The Right Honourable Reg "Toecutter" Withers.

For a sense of how it's used, see the official transcript of Australia's political system.
posted by zamboni at 9:18 AM on October 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

And holy shit is the comedian/actor who plays Elle McFeast sexy. Dead sexy.
posted by KokuRyu at 10:12 AM on October 9, 2013

Chopper sounds a lot like Tom Hanks's thug character in Cloud Atlas.
posted by zippy at 12:41 PM on October 9, 2013

I don't gloat but neither do I mourn. I think the lionising of Read was the first step towards a general glamorising of, and interest in, organised crime and gang violence in Australian pop culture, and I wish it would stop. Even if Read did have an epiphany, that wasn't the reason the media was interested in him. It was interested in him because he'd been a murdering thug for most of his life and was happy to accept celebrity status from it. Why make a celebrity out of him? Why would people want to see him as a panellist on comedy fame shows or a guest on talk shows?

And while I'm complaining, I'm cross that his success changed the Australian true crime publishing scene so that the shelves are full of gang violence books now, instead of interesting forensic and detective stuff. Bah.
posted by andraste at 12:55 PM on October 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

I think the lionising of Read was the first step towards a general glamorising of, and interest in, organised crime and gang violence in Australian pop culture

I wonder how this correlates to examples from abroad (gangsta rap in the US, Guy Ritchie geezer flicks in Britain, and such). Or, indeed, the Australian outlaw mystique (Ned Kelly, for example, or the unnamed sheep rustler in Waltzing Matilda, which almost became Australia's national anthem).
posted by acb at 1:19 PM on October 9, 2013

I think it's all part of the story and the Kelly gang in particular has an influence, yes - but I think Read is the only modern criminal who's reached celebrity status here because of his criminal activity. It just feels like we're seeing a lot of Australian-made TV and publications within the past five years or so which romanticise organised crime - albeit in a gritty, in-your-face, we're taking out out of your comfort zone way.
posted by andraste at 2:48 PM on October 9, 2013

Not to prolong the derail, but there is no question it is a fact that Jones was arrested in a London public toilet.
It is also on the record that he was charged, and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, which was subsequently dropped.
Besides a link to Wikipedia, I can recall it from news reports at the time.
I don't think pointing at somebody's sexuality is really a thing to do, but I suspect his lack of comfort with his own motivates a lot of the vitriol. But that is just speculation on my part.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Jones_(radio_broadcaster)#Other_cases
posted by bystander at 12:46 AM on October 10, 2013

Not to prolong the derail, but there is no question it is a fact that Jones was arrested in a London public toilet.

Read Chris Masters' Jonestown. There is no question that Jones was seeking sex. He did in fact proposition an undercover policeman.
posted by Mario Speedwagon at 1:34 AM on October 10, 2013