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What Did You Think?We were at the live show in Minneapolis. What was it like in your theater?
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It would be cool if this site would list the best theaters for seeing the live shows. The ones that remember to put on the pre show, turn the lights off, have a feed that does NOT cut out periodically and so on. I was at the Marcus Oakdale, Minnesota. It sucked! the theater not the show.
We had a sparse, but receptive audience. This is likely because we were in the 2nd theater in the area to be showing it, and the other theater was closer to the population center.
Went to the Cinemark in Towson, Md. and a serious storm came through just as it started. It couldn’t have been two minutes in when we lost the feed. Theater went dark, and the DISH network info came up. To me the most amazing thing was there was no yelling/screaming/throwing of food items. Everyone talked or broke out their phones and just waited. Approximately 10 minutes in to robust applause, the feed came back with the car short already in progress. Made me proud to be a MSTie. By far the funniest shorts were the Kay and the Barber ones. My son and I had a blast. Thank you guys for every riff group you’ve given us. And Joel, Trace…
You guys are the best…
Hmm, that may explain the anti-egg-salad sentiment I’ve heard in a couple Rifftrax riffs.
LOL!!!! Too funny!!
I was in Tulsa at the Cinemark. The place was essentially full and we enjoyed every minute of it. Very funny stuff.
Cinemark in Woodridge, IL.
The mood was jovial and upbeat with lots of loud laughter. And yes, Trace and Frank’s segment was the standout of the show.
Late to the thread, it was down earlier:
I went to the show in Concord, NC. I got there at 7:30 to watch the early stuff, and the place was half full already. Everyone was in a great mood, and most were in the mood to sing along with the songs. Best reactions were to “Nummy Muffin Coocol Butter” (great laughs for Frank) and “Toobular Boobular” (constant laughter). The place was sizzling for the start and there was a raucous ovation for the start of the movie.
Observations: (SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO ARE GOING TO THE REPLAY)
Great starting riff by the guys on “The Talking Car”. A perfect riff to start and got lots of laugh. Someone needs to lock up that Model T.
Bidget and Mary Jo got a great hand. Their riff of the housewife who wanted the new kitchen was great. Watching Darren McGavin blow a gasket was a trip in itself. I think Mary Jo was great in this one and had the best riff (and now for my puppet show!) So instead of remodeling the kitchen, they buy a whole new freaking house!?!?!?
Trace and Frank got up to a roar from us in Concord, and IMHO gave the best riffing performance of the night. Their was a simpatico thing going on with those two that’s as good as Mike, Bill and Kevin. I don’t know who picked out that short but it was probably the best too.
Of course Joel got a standing O. I thought Jonah more than held up his end of the riff. Who ever heard of an AFL/CIO for barbers? Dear God that beautician really did look like Herman Munster. The other one was so Mr. Mooney-ish I was hoping for a “LUCILLLLLEEEEE!!” from someone.
The last to riftapaloozas were good, but I thought the Superman stamp one didn’t match the Grass final. IMHO a good film to riff is one that has enough pauses to let the riffs flow between the actor’s lines. In the Superman film there was barely enough time to throw in a riff. The Grass one it looked like everyone let their hair down and got into it. I thought there was some real genuine fun going on there and it was a great way to end the show.
Other thoughts:
Like everyone I would have loved for them to talk more about the MST3K days. There was about 5-10 minutes there but I would pay good money for an after-party show with all of them talking about the old days.
It was great when Kevin hugged both Bill and Trace and said “I’m between two crows!!!”. I thought Bill did a classy thing when he told Trace he left big shoes to fill. Very gracious. A tip to Frank for never aging. I thought it was total Frank to take a few extra bows and have Trace drag him off the stage. :) Like others here I would have liked to see Mike and Joel do a riff together, the two crows do a riff…….who knows, maybe one day? I think Jonah did a great job but he seemed the odd man out up there, not being part of this first generation crew. But he still did a great job.
Mike has a great sense of humor, and he took the jab from Bridget great. His introduction of Joel as the founder and creator was a great touch. The “hair” mention in the barber scene with Joel got a “wwwooooooooooo” from our crowd too.
All in all, it was a show that made me want more. Maybe they won’t be able to bring them all together for a while, but I’d love to see a special night with the Mads, with Bridget and Mary Jo (would love to hear Mike and Bridget do a man/wife riff), and with Joel again with the full cast of the new MST3K.
And like I said, if anyone has a tape of the after party, I’ll pay 12 dollars including shipping and handling for a copy!
Well, as I’ve posted elsewhere, I missed out on last night’s live show due to stupidly underestimating how many pre-sales of tickets there would be at the Regal Commerce. But I did mange to get a seat at the encore on July 12th. So, in a couple of weeks, I’ll be able to actually read what’s been posted in this thread.
I think there will be many who saw the first show go back for an encore. There’s a lot going on in 2 hours and you always forget something.
The show was fantastic! I had a wonderful time! My theater in Stockton, California, including myself only had 6 of us!!! So I laughed long and loud!!!!
What a fun experience! :-) :-D
I think there was only one thing missing from the whole night: All 9 riffers didn’t do a joint, “Lllllllladies~” at some point. Understandable since the two shorts they did didn’t really allow for one.
I saw the live feed with a friend. Both of us are first generation Misties and we loved it. A couple of the shorts were a little weaker than others, but it was so great to see them all together again (although I wondered why Josh was missing). I highly recommend seeing the rebroadcast if you missed it.
Does anyone know why Josh was absent?
Wow, no one else has checked in from the Lennox AMC 24 Columbus, Ohio yet? It’s always a good crowd for Rifftrax Live shows, but last night it was so full I wouldn’t be surprised if it had sold out. I took my mom, who uses a wheelchair, so we sit down front in the handicap section, and there were so many people that the down-front seats were filled in around us. There’s a couple who have built their own Crow and Servo, and they always bring them to the live shows and let people take their pictures with them. Last night they had bow-ties on the ‘bots and Crow’s net was “slicked back” for the formal occasion–nice touch!
Our theater isn’t the only one in town that shows Rifftrax, but it’s usually well-attended, and the theater has gotten pretty good at the routine. We had good sound, no loss of the feed, and had the pre-show slides and music. It was a fantastic show, tons of laughs, great to see everyone and glad Jonah got to prove himself game enough to hang with his heroes. Can’t wait to get this one on DVD!
I had an phenomenal time at the Rio 24 in Albuquerque, NM. The Theater was the fullest I had seen it for a Rifftrax show in a while. I’m also glad they riffed a bunch of shorts instead of one movie. This event just really clicked. Only things I really missed are most of the fun pre-show stuff.
Other things I noticed:
1. Joel Hodgson was “turnt up.” He was even dare I say this? “on fire” – to use another older piece of slang. He hadn’t done Cinematic Titanic in like what 3 or 4 years and he had not lost a step in his riffing skills last night.
2. Jonah Ray was good. The one person I was worried about onstage was the new guy and he was great. Yes he was tall but what I’ve seen no one mention here yet is that he also reminded me of Josh Weinstein! In fact when I just listened to his voice and didn’t look at him I almost thought it was Josh a few times!
3. I‘ll agree with everyone so far that “More Dates For Kay” was the highlight of the show. I almost hope that Trace & Frank can do an MP3 of it for Rifftrax but I know that might be kind of hard considering they’re not signed up with them (or are they….?)
4. The “transgendered bathroom” joke worked fine but what got more “shocked” reactions at the theater were when Jonah mentioned “xenophobia” during the Barbers & Beauticians short or when during the “The Talking Car” short they riffed the girls crossing the street scene with them asking each other if they could re-do the “Ghostbusters” movie when they grew up.
Anyway this was a amazing, incredible, beyond great show and I’m so very glad that I saw it.
You might be able to get some sympathy if you send a polite e-mail to Fathom Events (which I believe runs the Telecast side of things), because those things are really an issue that the theater runner needs to address and Fathom might not appreciate that they’re delivering a sub-par experience. Best case, you get a ticket voucher for the next one, worst case you get an abusive e-mail back and the CEO of Fathom hunts you down and boils your beloved pet rabbit.
San Diego and the house was practically full.
Great show and the line about Joel’s hair seemed to get a universal response from the whole country.
We do love our Joel and we are all protective of him.
I applaud Jonah Ray who was on the stage with giants and did very well. It was interesting that the only obvious mess up was his and Joel said “live riffing folks.” We all laughed.
Anyone else having problems getting the avatars from the “special” email? Got all the other goodies but when I clicked them, even this morning, I get an error screen.
Would like to have seen J. Elvis just to have a complete set. Just the die hard fan in me.
Otherwise a great show and a great reunion.
Riffing good.
I’d like to defend the Marcus Oakdale. I usually go there (except when the live show is at the State Theater!) and have always had a pleasant experience. They have those huge recliners, which is a plus. The only time there was an issue was during Santa Claus where it cut out at the very end after Lupita got her dolly. The theater gave me a full refund even though I only missed a few minutes of the broadcast (and only the credits at that). I felt guilty taking it!
Love the Marcus Oakdale, and will be going there most definitely for Mothra
In the Superman short, at first I thought Blinky might have been George Offerman (Jimmy Vale in the Batman serial and Freddie in Gunslinger). But according to IMDB it was one Billy Nelson, who was a regular on Superman mostly as goons with names like Knuckles Nelson and Muscles McGurk.
I had a feeling based on a 4-movie set I picked up that included Mothra, The Giant Claw and two Ray Harryhausen movies, but it’s a little strange to me that Toho is not making any claim to character rights. Rights to Godzilla movies are also kind of confusing, I mean Toho released a classic Godzilla DVD set and they could only put seven of the films on there. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of consistency in terms of who owns what.
I was at the State Theater with my wife, and we had a blast. I thought everyone brought their A game, and though it might not have been the perfect vision of a reunion show many of us imagined, I was completely satisfied. I hadn’t seen either of the repeated shorts, which was nice, so I enjoyed them thoroughly. My only complaint was we missed A TON of riffs because everyone was laughing so hard during the weirder moments in some of the shorts like The Talking Car. I definitely want to see it during the rebroadcast just to see how much we actually missed. Also, a guy in the row ahead of us was being obnoxious and trying to do his own riffs during the first short, but maybe someone told him to knock it off because I didn’t hear anything from him during any of the other shorts.
They’re trying to consolidate all the rights under one company, but a lot of the rights given out for North American release were spread around over the years, and some of them are only now expiring (they were also a little too loose with some of the contract terms back then). The company (can’t remember the name) that had the rights to Godzilla Returns (aka 1985) only just lost them a few months ago. They actually didn’t have the rights to release it on video, which is why it’s the only one you can’t find easily. BTW – there is a blu-ray coming out later this year of it!
Some of the blu-rays that are out now are by different companies – mostly Sony, but not all (Destroy All Monsters, for example). I’m just happy they’ve been coming out, and with Japanese language tracks (even if the subtitles are often lacking….).
I think the original Mothra is still one that is owned by another company that doesn’t have rights for blu-ray release (thus why there isn’t one yet outside Japan), same with Rodan. So they may not have had to deal with Toho at all.
Hello, aislemate! *grin*
Yes, it was hard to hear at times. I’ll likely be going to the repeat – I certainly don’t mind giving them more of my money!
I saw it live at the State Theatre with my best friend and his son. The Boy, a big fan, said that it was his favorite of all of the Live Rifftrax shows.
I believe that we were sitting directly in front of Sampo and Erhardt. Sitting two rows in front of us were Beez McKeever, Patrick Brantseg, and Paul Chaplin!
Also, when we left after the show, we walked past the stage doors and saw Frank outside posing for pictures with some fans. We didn’t stop as we didn’t want to bother him, but it was fun to see.
A side note: I was sitting on the aisle on the far side of the theatre, where security staff were walking back and forth. I noticed something about one of the security guards, who I would guess was not previously a fan and perhaps not even familiar with the idea of riffing. At the beginning of the night, he looked stern and a bit bored. As the show went on, he seemed to be warming up to the concept, and eventually he was laughing and watching (as much as he could while doing his job) with a big smile on his face. I suspect they gained at least one more fan!
I was at the State in Minneapolis. It was tremendously fun. Very good crowd.
2 screens at the theater in Redmond, WA. The one I was in was over 3/4 full. It was a blast–“More Dates for Kay” was definitely the highlight, but I laughed all the way through. And now I know the show is in safe hands–Jonah Ray can do a Frank Nelson impersonation!
Well, now I feel extremely lucky that the Livonia AMC 20 didn’t suffer any outages.
Even luckier that I bought my ticket Monday, because it was sold out when I got there! That’s a first for any Rifftrax event I’ve been to.
Still no pre-show, but the actual show couldn’t have been better! As for them reusing shorts…well, I’ve mostly bought shorts via their DVD releases, so I hadn’t yet seen the Grass-fest, and the guy next to me clearly hadn’t seen Shake Hands With Danger considering his reaction to the last two dismemberments, so why not revisit a few proven favorites? SHWD especially deserved a second go without the CG avatars (not that they weren’t a necessary one-time experiment; or did they ever use those again?), and what better excuse than a live show?
I don’t know how close it is to you, but we’ve seen almost every live show at the AMC Rosedale 14 in Roseville, and they’ve done an excellent job from a technical standpoint.
I didn’t mention this in my first comment – I was at the Breckenridge theater in Little Rock, and it was a full (or nearly full) house.
Also thanks to #93 for posting that Q&A, it was glorious and had some hilarious moments. Particularly the bit where someone asks them which riffed movie they would star in, and Frank immediately responds with “Wild World of Batwoman.”
Joel: That came a little too quick, Frank.
I loved where they talked about how the last time the group was together was in 2008, at Comic Con…and it turned out Jonah was there too, having lied to a security guard to get in after the room was full.
Then later they discuss Manos, and its reputation among fans vs. its actual strength as an episode and what the cast thought of it. Joel says he doesn’t think it’s too strong of an episode compared with its reputation (I feel similarly).
Kevin: I f***ing hate that film.
Frank: The film has a certain unique quality to it…
Trace: So does the Zika virus, Frank.
Then the rest of the cast talks about how gross it made them feel, etc. etc.
And Jonah finishes up with: “Well as a fan, I loved it,” and talks about how he dressed up as Manos for Halloween one year, and his wife dressed as Torgo.
In the Portland, Oregon area, two theaters carried the Reunion — one in the city, and another in a sort of bedroom community that’s about 15 miles outside of Portland. I was at the “outside of Portland” theater.
So, during “At Your Fingertips:Grasses,” when they did the riff “I bet these kids all live a yurt outside of Portland” there was an almost stunned silence at first, people couldn’t quite believe what they’d just heard, then big laughs and applause. Definitely got our attention.
Josh said on twitter that he couldn’t make the reunion due to working on a documentary project.
I had a really great time. A TRIUMPH OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT! I’ll be going to the repeat broadcast for sure! :D
I liked this part too. I’m glad someone else feels the same way about Manos. It’s a fun riff but like “Red Zone to Cuba”, it’s got a dirty feel to it. Even the worst movies have some redeeming quality. I liked Franks comment that the actors, even when they’re trapped in a bad film, are trying their best. But with Manos it don’t get that vibe. I’m sure when you have to deal with Manos as much as they have, it wears on them.
I was surprised they didn’t do it after they introduced Bridgette and Mary Jo. I was waiting for it, but it didn’t happen. Ah, well, can’t have everything. :)
I saw the show in Portland (Oregon), and the theater had the show on two screens, their largest one and one of the smaller ones. We ended up in the smaller of the two, and the display was DARK. Like so dark that when they cut to the audience, you basically got a black screen. It didn’t occur to me to complain, though, until the show was over because I didn’t want to miss the show, and I stupidly assumed it was the same in the other theater. But I was wrong.
Still, I thoroughly enjoyed what I could see. The highlights for me were Frank & Trace’s More Dates for Kay, with its weird, omnisexual overtones, and the Grasses finale, which had me weeping with laughter. The Barbers one was good, but couldn’t seem to find its rhythm. (Loved the Frankenstein-like grunts from the big guy.) A Word to the Wives was great fun. But the Superman riff should’ve been a home run and seemed to have too much dead space.
I, too, was hoping for Mr. B Natural to make an appearance. Oh well. I really can’t complain, as this was simply a dream come true for me.
TThe Cary (NC) Crossroads theater was about 50-60% full I’d guess, Cheers when Trace mentioned The Mads are coming to Durham. The show was great – best RiffTrax broadcast ever. I was a little disappointed that they didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to give us combinations of riffers who have never performed together – like having Mike & Joel together, or Trace & Bill… Maybe they can do that for new year’s reunion show. ;-)
Saw it at the Regal in Eagan, MN–not full, but a sizeable crowd given the number of Fathom options in the Twin Cities (as well as the State Theater itself). We had no technical issues. Solid riffing throughout–yes, Jonah flubbed a line, but having watched quite a few of these, everyone’s flubbed a line once or twice. (Plus, he will get retakes for the show.) He had good energy and delivery, and I’m looking forward to his run.
Also, anyone else think it’s weird that they had a reunion show that was the first appearance of one of the cast members? :)
Special props to the Rifftrax highlight reel–it made me very happy watching that. Good choice of moments.
I loved it all, I hope they do it again, and I’ll keep watching their individual projects as well.
Saw both showings in my hometown of Valencia, CA at Edwards Cinemas. The only technical issue was that the video cut out for less than a minute during the Superman short while the audio continued. Other than that, everything was great! My family and I nearly died with laughter!
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