I was twenty years-old the first time I saw MST3K. I was sitting on the couch with a friend of mine, looking for something to watch on a Sunday morning, when she stopped on some crappy old horror movie.
"What’s this?" I said.
"You’ve never seen this before?"
"No," I said, "That’s why I asked ‘what’s this.’"
"It’s a show about this guy who is trapped in space with robots, and is forced to watch horrible movies. So he and the robots talk back to the screen."
It reminded me of this show I first watched on KDOC here in Los Angeles when I was a freshman in high school, called Mad Movies. I became a fan for life in a matter of minutes, and developed a list of favorites just as fast: Manos, the Hands of Fate, Rocketship XM and Lost Continent are a few that come instantly to mind.
MST3K’s Joel Hodgson once said, "We don’t ask ourselves, ‘will anyone get this?’ We tell each other, ‘the right people will get this.’" I was inspired by that philosophy, and when I wrote sketch comedy or did improv (both pursuits inspired by MST3K and the British Whose Line?) I used it, and I still use it today, even when I’m not writing comedy.
So now that there’s some context for how much I love MST3K, you’ll understand how excited I was when I saw that most of the original crew has reunited for Cinematic Titanic, which I believe can be safely called The Return of MST3K:
Cinematic Titanic is a feature length movie riffing show and is an
artist owned and operated venture created by Joel Hodgson, the creator
of the Peabody award-winning Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Cinematic
Titanic features the original cast and writers of MST3K, which is
Hodgson (Joel Robinson), Trace Beaulieu (Crow), and J. Elvis Weinstein
(Tom Servo). Filling out the ensemble is Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester)
and Frank Conniff (TV’s Frank).
While this is exciting to me as a fan, it’s also inspiring and validating to me as a creative person who lives on the Long Tail. Instead of waiting for a network to give them the opportunity to bring their show to viewers, they’re distributing the show on DVD themselves. Between this and Riff Trax, we Misties have a lot to celebrate these days.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some rock climbing to do.
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As much as I love MST3K, I have to ask you how you liked the Sarah Connor Chronicles. I know how much you were looking forward to it. Hope it wasn’t a complete bust?
Climb away!
Cool to know that you love MST3K, as do I. My first was Fire Maidens From Outer Space. Couple of favorites are Girls Town and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed Up Zombies. Can’t wait to see their new stuff.
Lost Continent is outstanding. I love that and Hercules vs. The Moon Men. Sandstorm!
Next week on Mitchell: The Cloverleaf.
Thanks for the great tip, Wil! I watched MST3K pretty much from the start. They even did a nationwide tour which I got to go see. I still have my Free Cheese: The Tour t-shirt. I always loved watching Joel – he is much funnier than Mike, in my opinion. He was also better at throwing out Minnesota and other upper midwest jokes that I got but fell flat on my then-boyfriend!
Hand to god, I thought I was the only person on the planet who had ever even heard of “Mad Movies”. I wasn’t making it up, people! See? See!
An old boyfriend introduced me to MST3K back in 1990 and I never laughed so much at movies in all my life! They all just worked so well together, and their commentary was always hysterical.
I enjoyed Mike & Crow most. Tom Servo bothered me..
Being a candy dispenser couldn’t be an easy life. Look in the mirror, you have clear acrylic for a head and a fucking beak. That must’ve been tough.
What if it cracked? There are few things in life more grotesque than a cracked acrylic head.
I admire the fact he had a good sense of humor and a kind soul, despite being born a damned candy dispenser with no lips.
Poor Tom.
Hey Wil-
Long term reader, first time commenter.
Mike and Bridget Nelson (writers of MST3K) were friends of ours in Minneapolis. Mike moved to LA to do Rifftrax about a year or so ago.
I dropped them an email to your post.
W 0 0 t !
Funny, when I think of MST I think of that exact same quote from Joel.
By this time, my lungs were aching for air.
I am still a little bitter that Joel years ago claimed that he was done with MST and didn’t want to touch it again. And now lo and behold, Mike makes RiffTrax and the FilmCrew profitable and now Joel has to come back and steal his glory.
LONG LIVE MIKE.
They started a wiki about it too, at cinematictitanic.wikia.com
The more the merrier!
No TV show has ever brought me as much joy as MST3K.
The Cinematic Titanic gang debuted their show at ILM before the holidays and it was a laugh riot.
Photos of Joel and gang at the after party:
http://flickr.com/photos/bonniegrrl/sets/72157603405589507/
Oh, these stairs…
Gosh, I love that show. I’d watch it when I was a kid at my grandmother’s house because she had cable. She’d watch, too, and she never objected but she never really “got it”. But she never thought I was crazy when I laughed uncontrollably at it, bless her heart. 🙂
I’ve never tried RiffTrax, though… Hmm….
I love the MST3K people, but it annoys me there’s no digital downloads of this movie (for now), and the rights issues won’t even allow anyone outside of the US to buy it. Looks like it’s back to Rifftrax with Mike Nelson for the time being..
Uh-oh, Wil has some rock climbing to do, and he’s got his thong on up-side down. I could have gone my whole life without seeing that.
Hey, it’s Wil, and he brought the keg!
**********
Good times, good times. The guys I lived with my Junior and Senior years of college treated HAtMM as a religion. We watched every few weeks for two years, along with lots of other episodes. I just got the DVD from a web site called “best video” or something.
Looking forward to CT.
Cinematic Titanic is indeed the second coming of MST3K, and it’s long overdue. Thank you Joel, for getting the gang back together– you have been missed! And to akbar above, let’s not forget where all these post-MST projects came from. If it weren’t for Joel, *none* of this would have possible. He certainly doesn’t need to steal anyone’s “glory”– if anyone’s entitled to it, it’s him. Hooray for Joel, Trace, Josh, Frank and Mary Jo! Job well-done!
Yep, like Bonnie said, the guys were here at Lucasfilm/ILM last month. Here is an interview they did for Star Wars.com…
http://www.starwars.com/community/news/rocks/f20071109/index.html
It was great!
I’m most excited that it’s the original cast back together. After TV’s Frank left, it just never had that golden magic. Don’t get me wrong, there were still great episodes, but it just wasn’t the same.
Might have to have an MLK “Turkey Day” marathon this weekend.
I loved Mad Movies and would love to watch them again. They were on Nickelodeon long ago, back when Nickelodeon was cool.
I discovered MST3K one afternoon when it was in re-runs on Sci-Fi, in the Mike Nelson years. It was Mole Men. I was sick, and my whole family was out, and I was flipping around, and came upon this weird show where there were robots commenting at the screen. And I laughed and laughed. Later on when I went to college I found people who loved it as well, and they introduced me to the Joel years. This and Star Trek: TNG are still the only shows that I miss so much it’s a permanent ache. So glad for Cinematic Titanic, RiffTrax, Film Crew, etc.
Hooray! Thank you so much for this information. I miss MST3K so much and can’t wait to get my DVD.
No lie popeye I just sent back ‘The Crawling Hand’ MST3000 on my Netflix! I dearly loved Joel on the show. Mike was ok but Joel has such a dry witty humor! I’ve been googling his name for years to find out what he’s been up to. Yeah for Cinematic Titanic! I knew you were a smart man! You’ve got good taste…
What a topic for starting my first post!
I’ve been a huge MST3K fan ever since I was like 15 when I started watching “Mystery Science Hour” in syndication back on the now-defunct KHTV in Houston. It would air at midnight on Sundays and I’d make a point of staying up late just to see it.
I didn’t get to watch a lot, but it was enough to get me hooked and I got to rekindle my love when my parents finally broke down and got cable. I even went as far as to order every VHS tape I could find and put them on the shelves at the video store I worked in during high school just so I could rent them for free and watch them over and over again.
So, tonight, I just finished watching CT’s “The Oozing Skull” for the second time since I got it in the mail on Monday.
I shed a tear after the initial viewing. This really IS MST3K v2.0.
The riffs were good, the movie was bad and, on the whole, I’d say I laughed at about 90% of the jokes. A few were a little flat. Some were a little TOO obscure (but, yeah, I know that’s sometimes the point), but most were spot-on hysterical.
I’ve only seen one episode of MST3K, years ago mind you, with J. Elvis Weinstein as Dr. Erhardt/Tom Servo, so I’m hugely biased towards Kevin Murphy. However, it only took a few minutes into the riffing and I immediately made a mental note to seek out more Josh-era episodes. He was awesome.
By far, the biggest treat was hearing Joel and Trace together again, especially when Trace began to slide a little “Crow” into his riffing. Trace didn’t have an unfunny line in the movie and he had one of the better visual jokes done.
Oh, and those visual gags are an awesome touch and are so full of win some country has to be suffering from a huge win shortage at the moment. The one thing I sorta missed about the post-Joel era was a lack of interacting “physically” with the screen/movie. CT brings that back and in a big way.
To prove my point, the best moment: the cameo by Stephen Hawking. I won’t ruin it beyond that. Go buy it and watch it.
CT: TOS gets an 11/10.
(Oh, and for the poster above that said something about Joel abandoning MST3K, it wasn’t quite like that. I’ve read a few articles and comments in the past that have stated that Joel was never comfortable in front of the camera and always liked being behind the scenes more, building props and writing and the like. He loved MST, but didn’t like being thrown into the spotlight and it eventually wore him out. I’ll have to see if I can dig up a link to that.)
I too am an MST3K fan… my first one was Sidehackers, not the best episode, but enough to get me hooked 🙂
I haven’t seen any of the Cinematic Titanic yet, but I did get one of the Film Crew for Christmas, and it was pretty cool. Weird to hear those “robot voices” coming out of actual people 😉
-bill
“It was about that time the Duke boys decided to show Boss Hogg what sidehacking was all about.”
Hahahhhhaaaa….
Sidehackers was also one of the first episodes I ever saw.
I loved how at the end of the episodes, the words – KEEP CIRCULATING THE TAPES – would appear.
Some friends of mine couldn’t wait til the next episode, and would tape little cutouts of Joel and the bots to their t.v. and sat and yelled stuff over everything they watched… even the news.
Glad to see that so many people still enjoy what these guys do.
-Jamie
I watched the first (of many, hopefully) Cinematic Titanic film last night…very satisfying! I thought it was a great use of the talented cast! I also think that “The Film Crew” submissions were really good (I hope they haven’t quit after four entries!) But for my money, NOTHING beats RiffTrax. It is great to hear Mike, Kevin and Bill riffing on some movies that are horrible in an entirely different way than an MST3K film!
No Cinematic for overseas – boo! Having said that I’ve got the Film Crew’s “Killers from Space” on dvd to enjoy.
“Who’s narrating this – Christopher Walken?”
“I am….become death….the destroyer….of worlds” 🙂
ORDERED!
Thanks for the head’s up, Wil. Your blog is also a news feed for all thingz k00l on the interwebs.
I was actually searching through a bunch of VHS tapes looking for one and saw all my MST3Ks, thinking…man, I don’t even have my player hooked up any longer! Manos! Long time no see!
Hey will, from all of us at RiffTrax, thanks for the quick mention. You have a bunch of fans over here too, ya know. Ever consider riffing on a movie with Mike? 🙂
Wil, see that guy up there named torgosPizza? He works for Rifftrax. Take him up on the offer. Seriously. Please. The nerd universe would implode in an orgy of win and bodily fluids. Which is a good thing. In this case, at least.
And to my astonishment I called him “will” … As a fan of Wil Wheaton in ST:TNG and Stand By Me, I am outraged at this mistake.
What can I say, Firefox was having issues with TypePad, and I had to rewrite the comment several times before I got it to post.
*Sigh* ..
/Hands in Geek Card
“SANDY FRANK! SANDY FRANK!
HE’S THE SOURCE OF ALL OUR PAIN.”
I love the Gamera series.
Cool! Thanks for letting us know its available for ordering.
You should seriously take up torgosPizza’s offer to do a RiffTrax. That would be awesome!
I remember discovering MST3K when I was about 10 or 11 years old on a family vacation to the beach. Our local cable company at the time didn’t carry Comedy Central…so instead of swimming in the Gulf of Mexico I spent that week indoors watching this TV show I had heard so much about (“Swamp Diamonds” was my first and “The Beatniks” made me stay up past midnight for the first time in my young life in order to catch that episode).
I was a huge fan of MST3K, my family thought I was a little loopy for watching it, but I didn’t care.
I found out about Cinematic Titanic just before Christmas, showed my wife the site, and she ordered the DVD for me; even though she will never watch it. I just got it and I’m anxiously awaiting the time when I can sit an enjoy it.
I’m glad you are talking about it Wil, more people need to know so it keeps going!