It’s probably a given that all of us have MST3K’ed a movie at some point in our lives, maybe frequently, maybe usually, but has there ever been a time when you wanted to be quiet but due to the movie and/or occasion just couldn’t contain yourself?
My example was showing “2012” to a group of friends in our big (9′) home theater. None of us had seen the movie before and, because these were not “MST3K” friends I would not in a million years think of riffing on the film. But it was so incredibly bad and over the top I couldn’t contain myself, and started a running commentary (at first very low and then, as folks started to laugh, probably much too loud) that probably spoiled (if that were possible) the movie for the rest of the folks (at one point one of my guests asked me if I found disasters funny and I said “Only disastrous films”).
My only saving grace was when the little dog made it onto the boat my wife said loudly “well, at least we now have something to eat” which cracked me up (okay, so maybe you had to be there).
I was in a packed theater for the opening night of “The Return of King,” and when the Army of the Dead zoomed off the battlefield and into Minas Tirith and began zipping around inside the city, I leaned over to my daughter and said, not as quietly as I should have: “Scrubbing bubbles! Scrubbing bubbles!” About eight people shushed me. I slunk down in my chair.
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I’ve been told by my wife that if I was going to keep making jokes that I would have to watch something in the bedroom or she would kick my butt
I was watching Judge Dredd at home with some friends (and in my defense, this was a couple months after having seen it in the theater with the same two friends). During the opening where James Earl Jones is doing a monologue, I did some Darth Vader breathing over it. I was asked if I’d like to do something else, like play a game or something. Ok, I’ll shut up… sigh.
“well, at least we now have something to eat”
That’s hysterical, btw!
MST3K has ruined me forever in that regard. Whenever I see a movie in theaters now, I have to actively curb myself from leaning over to friends and making comments. I can’t help but do it to shows and movies I like, either.
The worst example was New Year’s Eve 2008. I was at a party with some people I was meeting for the first time and we all sat down to watch. I think it was The Red Shoes (British movie about dancers & their careers, won an Oscar). Well, since nothing’s really sacred and it’s about dancing, I couldn’t help but chime in a few times. I tried, really I did.
“Well, at least we have something to eat” was a top notch riff.
March of the Penguins. My girlfriend and I love animals and are 50 somethings. We went to see MOP in the theater during a weekday and there were maybe 12 people in the theater. During the part where this poor penguin is dieing and they were filming the poor things demise and describing how I blurted out (loudly I guess) ‘Put the damn camera down and help the poor thing!’ There were a few chuckles and some of the kids pointed out that I used a cuss word. It was not meant as a riff but ended up being one.
I went to see “The Specialist” many years ago with a couple of friends. We found the movie to be hilariously bad, and were making comments and laughing hysterically throughout. I think the people around us were puzzled as to why we were laughing.
I also have a “Return of the King” story. My wife and I went to see it with my sister and her husband. After a couple of the false endings, I started to laugh at the silliness of the gimmick. But they kept coming and coming. By the actual end, I was laughing so hysterically that I couldn’t hide it. My family started laughing too, and everyone around us wondered what the hell was wrong with us. I think the whole theater could hear us.
Can’t say I’ve ever done it during movies I’m watching with family and friends or in a theater. Oh, I’ve thought of riffs but kept ’em to myself. The only time I’ve ever riffed in a theater was several years ago, I can’t remember what the preview was for, but toward the end of the trailer when the voice-over said, “From Columbia Pictures…”, I stole a line from Crow and blurted out, “A sincere apology”, which actually drew a good laugh from those sitting within earshot of me. Gotta admit, it felt good, but I’ve decided not to go to the well too often, if you know what I mean. ;-)
My girlfriend loved Brittany Murphy, so after she died, I decided to make a kind gesture and watch Uptown Girls with her. It made her really happy, but OH MY GOD, I was screaming inside. Its not the worst movie or anything, but there are quite a few ridiculous or downright stupid moments where I had to keep myself from saying anything. The worst part is that I have a very dark sense of humor, and so every time she was around food in the movie, my first thought was “For the love of God, eat!”
Transformers 2, opening mid-night showing…nuff’ said-
I have gotten to the point that I constantly make comments during movies, so one of my best friends always reminds me at the beginning of a movie not to “MST” it. However, years ago my friends and I went to see “Racing Stripes” (it’s about a zebra that races with horses) with the sole purpose of making fun of it. The three of us sat in the front by ourselves and riffed on it the whole time. Great fun.
I riff on movies at home all the time – sometimes my family loves it, other times they are annoyed by me.
I’ve posted this story twice already on different forums here, but I love it, so I’ll post it again. At the end of “Avatar”, when Sensitive Marine is being transferred into the body of Big Blue Guy, the camera zooms in on his face with his eyes closed. It took all the self-control I had not to blurt out “And his eyes open! And his eyes open!” I told my daughter afterward what I almost did (we both love the Space Mutiny ep), and she confirmed she would have burst out laughing had I actually done that, very likely to the chagrin of our neighboring Avatrees.
While watching the ending of Se7en, in the theaters, when the box shows up, I whispered “You know what that box is the perfect size for? A human head.”
Oops!
Even before I was exposed to MST3K I was riffing movies, my father — a stickler for horrid puns and also making comments during a movie — got me started. Most of my friends enjoy it because they find me funny (People sure are strange aren’t they?) and usually tag along with me. I think the movie that got the worst treatment from me recently was this good-in-a-bad-way 80’s sci-fi movie called “My Science Project” (It has Dennis Hopper in it and some pretty good special effects) and one scene one of the dumb teenagers in the film sees the strange alien device that’s the central plot point to the movie he says “Is it an engine?” in the most totally meat-head fashion. Naturally whenever someone in the movie looked puzzled or asked “What is it?”, were handed something, etc. I’d blurt out “Is it an engine?” It was one of those call backs that stopped getting funny, but then was suddenly funny again.
One of my friends *hates* MST3K with a passion, and also hates it when people talk through movies. To quote her directly “I even hate watching MST3K with you Nick, because not only is the man and those two robots talking through the movie, so are you.” One time we had a bet that I could keep quite through an entire movie, a wager that I won. It was tough though because we were watching “Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe” a really bad 90’s sci-fi epic starring Jessie “The Body” Ventura (and I am embarrassed to admit it was filmed in my home country of Canada and is as bad as The Final Sacrifice) I managed to keep my lips clamped, but the joke was on her because while I was trying to win a bet, my other friends were not subject to the rules and they talked through the WHOLE movie much to her dismay.
This post has Matrix Revolutions spoilers, you know, if you haven’t seen it yet.
Anyway, so I was watching that awful movie in the theater with my friend, and we’re watching Trinity’s overlong and stupid death scene, which just seemed to go on forever. Towards the end of it she says to Neo: “I guess you’ll finally get what you want” (or something like that) and I lean over to my friend and whisper into his ear “…you’ll get to make love with a dead chick.” Dumb joke, but the timing was perfect and the film was plodding, and my friend completely lost it and several people wrapped up in the scene were rather annoyed.
I’m sure I’ve done this several times that I can’t remember, but one time I do remember was while watching “Armageddon” with some friends (at a drive-in theater, of all places). When Affleck and Liv are having their pre-flight tender moment, Liv says something like, “Do you think anybody else is doing this right now?” Ben says, “I hope so.” I blurt, “What?!? Shoving animal crackers down their pants?” Everyone laughed, including someone in the next car over…
…In retro-spect, though, I think I stole that riff from another friend. We were at a free pre-screening for the re-make of The Getaway, with Alec Baldwin and Kim Bassinger. There’s a kiss and make up scene in the middle of the movie where Alec forgives Kim for what she had to do to spring him from the mexican prison. Kim says, “You’d have done the same for me.” My friend blurts, “What?!? Sleep with James Woods? I don’t think so!” Don’t know if the movie-makers got that comment on their test audience feedback sheets or not…
I went to see “Star Trek: Generations” opening night and when it got to the scene where the Enterprise is crashing onto the planet, taking out mass stretches of trees, I blurted out, “Wow, think of all the endangered species that are being wiped out here.” My friends laughed at it, but the person behind me didn’t like that comment that much.
Whenever my daughter wants to watch a dvd with me of her movies her first words are “no riffing during the movie”. Sigh. That only appies to the first viewing after that it’s riffed to death! :shock:
My wife holds the trophy for this in our house. We were watching Batman Forever in the theater, and there’s a very unnecessary “heroic” low-angle shot of Batman standing on this rock. My wife looked at the focus of the shot and blurted out “Holy Codpiece, Batman!” — it came out loud enough for people several rows away to laugh!
But I’m getting better — we were just watching an episode of “How It’s Made” about toothbrushes, and the narrator was talking about the different colored bristles: “The robot knows just what color goes where.” I added “… because it studied color and design in Home Economics!”
Okay, I thought it was funny.
A friend of mine and I pretty much laughed and riffed (quietly, I should note) our way through Phantom of the Opera (the 2004 musical version). We were actually shushed at one point by an older lady a few seats over, but frankly if she took the ridiculousness before her seriously, then there was nothing that could be done to help her.
I went to see a movie at some people’s house that I had just met to watch the Utena movie….I was nervous and wasn’t really into anime at that point so I really shouldn’t have….but I couldn’t help riffing on it. Luckily they didn’t mind and we all became close friends after that.
I usually riff on movies as much as possible, but when I’m with most of my friends and we watch a movie, I’m automtically told to shup up. That hurts because usually my riffs make them laugh until they cry. Oh, there was a point where we watched, in class, “Alex Rider: Stormbreaker.” I thought that the movie was incredbly stupid and cheesy, so I began to riff on it as I usually do with stupid movies. I got about three riffs in when the entire class told me to shut up. I kept quiet the rest of the film…
I really do try not to say anything in the theater, but sometimes it just can’t be helped. Luckily, both of mine ended well…
1) Star Wars, Episode II. Anakin and Padme are having one of their interminable scenes of painful “romantic” dialogue and Anakin says “I’m in agony!” I couldn’t resist and pretty loudly said “So are we!”, which got a big laugh.
2) This unbelievably horrible Braveheart parody called Strangeheart (granted, it’s mostly deliberately bad, but that’s almost worse). A friend had somehow convinced the theater to show it, and the film was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. About halfway through, the projector malfunctioned and the film had to be stopped for a bit. I shouted out “The projector killed itself to save us all!!!” Not only did it get a big laugh but, once the film started up again, the audience started to turn it into a riffing contest, actually making it more enjoyable for all. Probably didn’t hurt that it was the same theater where Rocky Horror was playing, and there was a pretty big audience overlap.
I have been a MST3K “Jedi” (if you will) for many years. There is a differance between your living room and a movie theater. MST3K always seemed to me to be a social thing people get together for. When you blurt out riffs in a theater(and I have), people are trying to get away from it all including being social. Thats why kids can text for a date, go to a movie,(bad 1st date by the way) and ignore each other the whole time. So even though I will be on the edge of my theater chair waiting for your next riff, there are other people there that need to look at a glowing screen in complete social silence.”Silence is Golden”, but its not funny.
MST3K has ruined me, as well. Any movie, brilliant or godawful, is riffed into oblivion.
Many moons ago I was at the movies and one of the previews was for that awful Winona Ryder movie “Autumn in New York”. After the preview was over I said (rather loudly), “Oh…barf!”
The whole theater cracked up. :mrgreen:
I think all MST fans have this tendency, but there is a time and place for it… that time and place is your own home. When I pay to see a movie in theater, I am there to be entertained (or not) by that movie and am not interested in some random person in the audience try to entertain the rest of us, often badly. I didn’t pay to hear you riff, stranger. We live in a culture where every wanna-be jokester treats the whole public world as their living room and they simply want an audience to vindicate their attempts at humor. Please stop. Riffing on movies can be fun but no one seems to have respect for anyone else these days or an understanding of appropriateness.
Now that I have thought about it some more, Im going to open a movie theater. In theater A, I will play 1st run movies like 2012. In the other thaeter , well thats for the rest of us. We will watch 2012, but it will be open mic night with 3 mics in the back of the theater to riff away, and i also want to serve beer. Anybody on board? My wife thinks Im on to something, or on something. :lol:
:razz: Can’t watch a movie without doing it at some point. Let’s face it. There are plenty of big budget turdburgers that are ripe for the picking.
My wife and I occasionally riff on shows like Dora the Explorer and Wonderpets, etc. while our 3 year old is watching. Some of these shows are really quite bizarre and can be entertaining watched with a MSTie mindset.
Neptune (#28) – I’ve caught myself doing that with my 2yo’s TV shows too. Thankfully, she didn’t really notice the time I started singing alternate words to the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme song – “It’s the Lucky Louse Alehouse. Come inside, theres rum inside…”
Never Ending Story 2. A friend and I went when it was new in theaters. He was a big fan of the original. The movie was terrible and we started tearing it apart quietly for the most part. The riff that broke the camels back was when Bastian and Atreyu are arguing and I shouted “I wish I’d never read you!” My friend was rolling but I had a couple of parents ask me to kindly shut the heck up. Rather embarrassing.
A friend and I were once subjected to the film Domino by a mutual friend who was hosting it at his house. The host evidently really liked the film, but we didn’t understand how much he liked it. Within minutes, I began riffing the film and my friend joined in. I think we were only 30 minutes in when the host angrily shut the film off, upset with us for making fun of it. I would’ve been willing to keep watching it, it was awful enough that I would have riffed to the end.
A small local theater here in Wisconsin used to run a midnight movie (Midnight Madness) every Friday night. The typical fare was cheesy movies with the occassional big budget good ones. For a long time people would just sit and laugh and then one day I just started riffing. Not crazy loud mind you, just enough for my friends to hear. Other people would hear as well and laugh and I never got shushed. I never got carried away with it because I’m not an attention craving freak. Eventually more people started doing it and it just added fun to it. And of course every now and then we’d get the couple of guys who think they’re funny but are very, very much not.
My favorite moment for me was one time I was just exhausted and wound up passing out (because of this I do not remember what movie it was). I woke up to a car driving with one headlight and I just very loudly said, “Padiddle” and got a pretty big laugh from it before passing out again.
At the end of Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond, when the main actress turns around and the camera just starts to pan out, my brother, with perfect dead pan inflection says, “Hence the title ‘The Beyond'” (just joking that the title made no sense).
LOTS of times… and even before MST existed.
My favorite time was during “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” when, in the darkest part of Transylvania, a coach comes up to Keanu Reeves. A skeletal hand emerges from the coach and lifts him bodily into the coach. I said, “You could have just said ‘Get in.'” EVERYONE around in the theater laughed. It was a cool moment.
Another time when I was watching “DuckTales: The Movie”, of all things, with my sister and her friends. I was going a bit nuts and she was getting annoyed with my riffing. But at one point, Hey, Dewie and Louie are talking to a duck genie, who mentions his master was a falcon. The three ducklings say to the genie, incredulously, “Your MASTER was a BIRD??” I shouted, “They’re ALL BIRDS!!” My sister looked sheepish and said, “Okay, you win that one.”
If the title of the movie is spoken as dialogue, I cannot help but say “We have a title!”
A bunch of years ago we saw a hideously bad sci-fi movie. (I think it was called “Hardware,” but I’m too lazy to go to IMDB and find out) The theater was maybe 1/2 full, so we weren’t bothering anybody around us when we started our riffing. As the movie got worse, we got louder and by the end of the movie the whole theater was throwing out riffs. One of the worst movies I have ever seen, but one of the best movie going experiences, so maybe this doesn’t count as riffing when we shouldn’t.
I TRY to avoid doing it in the theater, though I’ve been guilty of the occasional whispered riff. When watching movies at home or someone else’s, I do this all the time. In college (admittedly not too long ago), I came into the dorm lounge to find several girls watching “High School Musical.” With nothing else to do I ended up watching the rest of the movie, hating it, and just SLAMMING it to the ground, riff-wise. Most people laughed along and this gave me my well-deserved reputation as a smartass.
But I do it with movies I like, too. In another girly setting, we were watching a BBC miniseries based on the novel “North and South.” It’s a great production, and I genuinely like it. However, the first time I watched it, I was so overwhelmed with British accents and heroic brooding and romantic angst that I had to relieve the tension with some good-natured riffing.
My science teacher from high school once showed his class “Contact”. At one point during the film a character says “Oh my God”, and I blurted out, “It’s full of stars!” The teacher actually laughed sat that, but I don’t think any of the other students got the reference. Sad.
Schindler’s List for my High School AP European History field trip.
Worst part is, two other MiSTies joined me at the front right of the theater.
Thank goodness it was a matinee.
It wasn’t me, I wish it was, but a man sitting in front of me did riff during The Two Tower. Frodo and Sam are gazing at each others eyes and the man said, “Why don’t you just kiss him?” No one minded either. Anyone who heard it laughed.
If there was a Mr. B Natural of movie riffing, he/she would say that, “The spirit of riffing is in all of us!”
I was invited to a friend’s house to see his favorite movie, Citizen Kane. Let’s just say he did not appreciate my comments. His wife, however, did. We laughed throughout the movie. This included bad WWE kane jokes.
I was at a friend’s house with a group of people watching the atrocious Deep Blue Sea. At one point, one of the characters is underwater; I don’t remember why because I’ve been fortunate enough to purge most of it from my memory. My friend, who had not been paying attention asked, “what is that guy looking for?” I replied, “the script.” And when Sam Jackson’s character is killed I said, “yeah, I’d want to get out of the movie as fast as possible, too.”
That was the night I found out my friends & I have different taste in movies.
I’ve done riffs during so many movies it’s hard just to pick one event. I’ve kinda of become know as the riffer in my group of friends.
Here’s a few examples from recent years :
Cloverfield (opening night):
My friend and I decide to go see it figuring it’s going to be bad and we’re also big fans of Kaiju films so two birds with one stone. There’s maybe a good dozen or so people in the theater to begin with. Well through the whole movie the two of us are riffing. Well it gets to the part where the horse runs by and with out think I shout out “Rusty! No!”. From a couple rows back, we hear ” Hey Guys, Shut up.” Before I have a chance to react another voice says “NO you shut up, those guys are actually make this film enjoyable.” We look at each other and say at the same time “We have fans?”
Death Note 2:
For the most of the film, I’m trying to remain quiet. The scene where Light is in the cell and falls off the bench/cot onto the floor. I ended up shouting out, “uuh, I fell on my keys.” The re-action was mixed.
Wolf-Man:
I don’t remeber any of the riffs my friends and I made. But I do remeber my friends joking saying that they wouldn’t have been surprised to arrive at the theater and see me running out being chased by people with torches , pitchforks, and/or throwing popcorn at me.
Sports on TV. My roommate hates watching football with me. I dislike sports anyway, but when they, in the most round about way, say “to get a touchdown, ya gotta get in the endzone” I can’t help myself.
My sister and I were in church on Christmas; there were no seats so we had to stand in the back with a bunch of other people. Every single woman around us had a red coat on, so I leaned over to my sister and said, “The Redcoats have us surrounded.” She laughed really loudly and everyone in the church turned around to look at us.
#25 I agree with you. I love MST, probably my favorite show of all time. But when I have paid money to sit in a theater, I do not want to hear people try to riff. One of the reasons MST is so good is because they scripted the shows, they spent time coming up with the jokes, the timing, everything, so it works. 99% of the time, a random person riffing in a theater is really damn annoying. Add to that fact only you and your friends think it’s funny. So if you are doing it just for your enjoyment and the enjoyment of your buddies, save it for the DVD at home. If I were sitting in a theater and someone was riffing through it, management would be notified. Have your fun, but don’t ruin a movie experience for people who paid good money to see it.
Sorry to rant, but it’s one of my biggest peeves. I’ll pay to hear Mike and Kevin and Trace and Joel…..not you and your buddies thinking you are hilarious…
Honestly, as much as I love MST and have fun riffing bad movies at home, I go crazy if someone tries to do it in the theaters…I don’t get to go to the theater often and when I do, it’s for a movie that I’ve really been wanting to see. So I tend to get annoyed if someone talks over it, even if it is funny…though when my friends and I saw Dark Night, some what against our will, we tore it to pieces :) Which I felt bad about because we got a lot of shushes. But we just couldn’t help it! Some of the riffs I remember:
(when Batman first spoke) “Tom Waits!”
when Batman refers to a character named Rico – “Suave”
A gaunt, bespectacled man in a bucket hat appears – “Hunter S. Thompson!”
Opening night of the disastrous Branagh/DeNiro Frankenstein. We were so young, so excited at the prospect. We had read no reviews. The place was packed. Within about ten minutes you could FEEL the whole house give up and just seethe with (justified) hatred for the whole process.
It started slowly, with some obvious Young Frankenstein riffs. And it snowballed. It was magical really – I don’t remember any particularly choice riffs, but they were coming from everywhere and I could only hear the ones around me.
In the end, our money wasn’t wasted. It just went into the wrong hands.
As a film student, I went to many, many screenings. Thankfully, this included great films such as The Rules of the Game, Peeping Tom, and Sherlock Jr.
However, there was this one film – The Butcher. A 1970 French film by Claude Chabrol. It was a poorly dubbed English version. It’s a bad movie. There’s a lengthy scene with people visiting a grave… it goes on and on. The bad guy gets shot and bleeds all over the place until dying right before getting to the hospital because it took ridiculously long to get there.
So, everyone at the screening started riffing the movie. First it was one or two guys making cracks, then the entire class. I wish I had remembered more of the jokes, but it was hilarious. It would have been perfect for MST3K. The professor wasn’t pleased.
I haven’t seen 2012, but that’s a funny joke about having the dog along to eat (mind you I am completely humane to animals). Ironically, I yelled something similar out seeing the trailer for 101 Dalmations (the live action version), which stated a release date of Thanksgiving: ” …A 101 Dalmations to eat for Thanksgiving”
I have to be really, really pissed off at a movie for me to utter anything, even in a whisper, when I’m in a movie theater. It is incredibly rude to overhear, anyway, unless you happen to have judged your audience correctly, which is almost never. I’ve had too many movie-going experiences ruined by brainless teenagers acting like they were sitting in their college dorm-rooms chatting instead of in a public venue.
All the same, there have been moments. The Lord of the Rings movies provided several, for example. Some while later I promised my BF (who liked the movies) that I’d sit through the extended version on DVD because I really did want to see what the long version was like, but I broke my promise to say nothing aloud within ten minutes.
Ya know, as the person who started this thread (well, suggested the idea) I *would* like to make it clear that I in no way condone riffing at the theater where others have paid good money (and may actually enjoy what they are watching no matter how bad it might be). And as I said, I truly never do it with company over either — the “2012” showing was such an anomaly that it surprised even me.
The one exception I make to this (and feel is okay for others) is during the previews. To me, the previews are fair game, although it’s dangerous to riff TOO much because you may set the tone for the main movie. Still, I can’t even count the times I’ve made fairly funny (other folks laughing out loud around us) riffs during the coming attractions (which, let’s face it, are sometimes just compendiums of the worst moments of some of these turkeys). Indeed, I’ve often wondered why MST3K/RT/CT didn’t do some of these.
But otherwise, I believe in keeping my mouth shut. Trust me, if I could keep silent (and I did) during “Twilight – The New Moon” thingee, I can keep quiet during anything normally (and now my wife owes me about 100 movies of my own choosing :>)