Chad Vader celebrating 20 Years with creator Aaron Yonda on Max Ink Radio

You found Wisconsin's local music authority. This is magsync radio. We are local music.

If I remember correctly, Chad Vader was Darth Vader's little brother and he was the day manager

at a local grocery store until he was demoted to the night manager. The story is the

adaption of the imagination of Aaron Yanda founder of Chad Vader series, which was one of the

earlier viral moments on a very new YouTube. Part of the magic for Madisonians is that Chad Vader

was filmed at the Willie Street co-op on Willie Street. And now 20 years later, Chad Vader is

awakening in the force and hopefully this time he gets the girl. So here in the studio tonight is

Chad Vader's alter ego from blame society films. Aaron Yanda, Aaron, welcome to magsync radio.

Thanks for having me.

Is it true that the original Chad Vader costume was actually stolen?

Yes, it was and well in fact it was actually the second Chad Vader costume and we had it for a long

time and then one day I went down to the storage room where it was stored and I noticed that the box

that it was in was gone and it turned out yeah a whole bunch of stuff was gone from this storage area.

Someone had drilled out the door and just taken a bunch of stuff. It was like a heist or something.

Specifically for Chad Vader? I don't think it was that. No, I think they were just opportunism.

But they did take it and a bunch of other stuff. I can't believe they got much for it because

they doubt anyone knew that it was well there was a name tag on it. So maybe they did see the

Chad Vader name tag but I think he probably just sold it on Facebook marketplace or something for

a few bucks but you know I had the costume itself in the in the back and around all over the place

was ripped because it gets so hot inside that thing. Yeah. That I just I any part you didn't see on

camera. I just tore it up so the heat could escape. Oh my goodness. I doubt it was worth anything.

Yeah. I know I tell people a lot of people they want to dress up as Darth Vader on Halloween and I

say you know what? Don't have something where there's a mask. You know so you can't drink right?

Yeah. Yeah. No, we used to stick a straw up the little grill and in Chad's mouth so I could

get water in between it takes. I once saw a guy dress up for Halloween. He was called party Vader.

So he just had the actual helmet on but the face piece was gone and he could drink all night.

It was pretty good. That's that's the way to do it. Aaron before we talk about the alter side of

the expanding universe tell us about your about Aaron work Yanda and how you got started. Tell us

your backstory. I grew up in Manamani, Wisconsin and it was you know there wasn't a lot to do when

I was a teenager and eventually kind of fell into making videos and then found out there was a

public access TV station in Eau Claire. So my friend Benson and I started a production company called

Blame Society Productions and we started making a public access TV show. It was very strange. It

was called the Splu Urtaf show. Splu Urtaf was the host and it was just very surreal sketch comedy

and a lot of people would tell us they turned down their TVs and public access station in Eau Claire

was the default channel that would come up back in those days. Yeah, like four. Yeah,

exactly. So that was the first thing they would always see. And if Splu Urtaf was on,

people would just get mesmerized and be like, what? What's happening? What am I watching? And they

would they would always be like mystified. It was great. Oh, that is so funny. And Blame Society

films you also do with your partner Matt Sloan. Yes, Matt is the co-creator of Chad Vader

and currently the he and I are Blame Society films on YouTube. What is Chad Vader's origin story?

I mean, what inspired you to create his character? It was a combination of a bunch of different

things. It, you know, it's kind of just this idea that no one had really done at the time. No

one had, you know, you see a lot of Star Wars based humor, especially like Darth Vader doing

the funny things. But at the time there wasn't much of that. There had been a few Star Wars

parodies certainly. But, you know, the idea of Darth Vader like doing a more commonplace activity

was not popularized at that point. And when the internet came along, we kind of, we fell into this

idea. But and we actually pitched it. We had an agent in 2005. We pitched it around to some

networks. And people were really excited about it. And they were, they thought it was a great

idea. But nobody was willing to take the risk of incurring George Lucas's wrath. So nobody took

us up on it. And we thought, well, let's just make it ourselves. And we walked, we went to the

Willie Street co-op. And we said, Hey, because we had shot a short film there before called death

is my co-pilot. And it was the grim reaper walking around the grocery store. And I think we shot it

while they were open. So that was kind of weird. And like, you know, he was going through the

line and checking out. And it was just this short film that I made for a film festival.

And but we went back to the Willie Street co-op and said, Hey, we want to shoot this. But we want

to do it like after hours. And they were, they were like, Yeah, let's do it. That's great. You can,

you know, they were very, they were very nice about it. And so 20 years later, we're going to be

going back to the Willie Street co-op. Wow. That's going to be so fun. Some of the funniest material

is Chad's romantic pursuit of one of his workers. But he usually has bad luck.

Yes. Yeah. He is. Oh, he tries to live up to, you know, his brother's reputation, but really

struggles a lot. And sometimes he has his good moments, but it then it always seems to, you know,

go badly. Tell us about going viral on YouTube in like 2006. You know, back then YouTube was

pretty new. What was it like to kind of be one of the first viral videos? It was, it was very

interesting. You know, it wasn't something, not many people had done it. And so we didn't really

know what to expect. We uploaded the video to YouTube. They put it on their front page,

which was a thing back then that they did. And it sat there for a few days and started just

getting really popular. And it was at that point, once we reached like 100,000 views, which,

you know, back then seemed like a lot, well, it is still a lot. We reached 100,000 and we were like,

this is, this is good. This could lead to something. And I started to think maybe I would be able

to leave my job at the metal shop. That was my hope. And it happened. We got very lucky.

Oh, that is a great story. Now, you also were awarded a George Lucas fan film award?

Yeah. So instead of punishing us for, you know, making something, you know, making fun of Star Wars,

George Lucas liked it. And he liked it so much that he gave us this once a year award that he

was giving to people who made fan films of Star Wars. And it was, it was neat. He even called me

by, well, he made a joke out of my name. He said, this award goes to Matt Sloan and Aaron Yoda.

And then he said, oh, I'm sorry, Yanda. And I was like, oh, my God, George Lucas made a joke out of

my name. I think my life is now complete. Wow. That is so cool. Oh, that's, that's incredible.

Tell tell me about you've met some interesting people along the way as Chad Vader. Tell me about

meeting Jack Black. Yeah. So we used to do videos for a website called channel 101.com. And then

this was back in 2000. Well, in the mid 2000s. And we made sketch comedy videos. And one of them

was actually Chad Vader. But we made another one called Super Shooter. And it was sort of a one-liner

vigilante vigilante cop who goes around and shoots at things. And so we were at a special event

out in Los Angeles. And we got a chance to we're hanging out with Dan Harmon. And I was in the

bathroom. And I heard there's somebody else in the bathroom. I was standing there washing my

hands. And who else other than Jack Black comes out of the stall behind me. He'd been doing his

thing. And I was I was like kind of I was starstruck. And I was just like, Oh, wow. And he's like

he pointed out the paper towels or something because I didn't know. I was just like, Oh my God,

it's Jack Black. He was in the bathroom still. But then he told me later that he was a fan of

Super Shooter. Oh, fine. And I couldn't believe it. I was like Jack Black is a fan of something that

I like what? My head just kind of exploded. Wow. That's pretty cool. Yeah. There's some great

stories. Tell us about your producer for Chad Vader. That's Courtney Collins. And she's a local

musician. Yes. Yeah. She's been making local music for many years now. In a bunch of different

bands. She's been in Arena Venus, Voltris, Eric Hartz coming on next. Right. Yeah. They were in a

band together. And now she's a solo artist. And she has a she has some albums out. And she's

working on a new one as we speak. And she's excited to get Chad Vader back. Yeah. She's really

excited about that. And she I could not do Chad Vader without her. She's been an amazing producer.

And she is handling a lot of the, you know, the organization. She's she's very organized.

I'm not. So thank goodness that she is. We all need somebody like that.

Chad Vader was lifted out of the back to tank and has some big expenses. And you've created a

GoFundMe. Tell us about the new Chad Vader and your GoFundMe campaign.

Yeah. So, well, we are going to have to buy a new Chad Vader suit, obviously, because that

was stolen. So we're going to we're going to use some of our budget for that. We're going to get

new lightsaber, new costumes for all the for all the empire market employees. And we're going

to have a big crew this time. You know, and we're going to we want to make it something special

because it's the 20th anniversary. And so we figured we should do a GoFundMe. We're going to run

it all year. And if the GoFundMe continues to be successful, it's possible to make a longer

episode, maybe another episode or just do more stuff that we wouldn't have been able to do in the

past. What will Chad Vader be doing in the future? What kind of things do you have in store for him?

This is something we're working on right now. We're currently scripting it. And there's been a lot

of ideas. Does, you know, did Chad get married? Is he divorced? Is he a widower? I mean,

anything could have happened between, you know, like between now and the last time we saw Chad.

So it's going to be we're going to have to try to figure out like what happened to Chad in the

previous years and like what he's up to now. Wow, that's really cool. Hopefully somebody tops

that top donation of $2,000. That's our challenge. Yeah. How do we get to the GoFundMe?

It is, there is a, it's, well, I don't actually know the link off hand, but if you go to GoFundMe

and you type in Chad Vader, it should come up. That is so cool. Chad Vader, AKA Aaron Yoda. I mean,

Yanda, thank you so much for taking the time to stop down and chat with us tonight. We really

appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. You found Wisconsin's local music authority.

This is Maxinc Radio. We are local music.