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Another Joel InterviewMike Bloom of the Hollywood Reporter has a nice long story about MST3K at 30.
22 Replies to “Another Joel Interview”Commenting at Satellite News
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It’s an interesting dichotomy in that MST3K helped fuel the “watch/play something and poke fun at it” genre, and yet MST3K itself, while still beloved, has become a relic of the past.
The reboot is good fun and all, but oddly feels more like a follower than leader. It just doesn’t feel like it has a place in a world where literally everyone on YouTube and social media is doing what they’e doing.
Here’s hoping season 12 is great, but if it’s anything like 11 it’ll be “good not great” as Sampo likes to say. I don’t know what it is, but MST3K needs a little extra something if it wants to stand out and be a leader again…
I guess you could call it The Simpsons Effect. There was a time when The Simpsons was the funniest, most cutting-edge show on TV. Now every show is like that and The Simpsons itself is old hat and not really that funny anymore.
Granted, I don’t think the new MST3K is anywhere as bad as the past 15 or so seasons of The Simpsons, but I can’t help getting that same vibe…
I prefer to think of the situation as all the others on YouTube and elsewhere are followers and amateurs. They’re OK, but MST3K features the professionals. In Bond terms, you could say the other guys are the ones with “standard intelligence duties”, while MST3K features the 00’s.
And the only ones our guys need to be better than are themselves, not someone else.
Two nitpicks of the article.
1) Joel hasn’t been involved with every iteration of MST3K. He wasn’t part of the SciFi years.
2) Rifftrax isn’t just a random group of former MST3K writers.
Terry:
I think “The Simpsons Effect” is baloney.
People who state that “The Simpsons” hasn’t been funny since ____ haven’t watched the show in years.
I could suggest to you several dozen episodes from your delineated mark of Season 15 that rank with episodes of the classic years.
I’ve watched “The Simpsons” since its beginning.
However, this is a MST3K board.
Or as TV Tropes calls it, “Seinfeld Is Unfunny”.
#cancelthesimpsons
Here we go again with the cable-access nonsense! They actually got paid to do the show at KTMA (not very much, but still). In many cases, you have to pay to do public access tv
It’s kind of a murky situation, but someone on reddit transcribed a podcast featuring Hampton Yount where he says that money issues prevented him from going on the current tour. You’d think whomever is in charge of the tour would pay for him to be on it, but…like I said a murky sitch and kind of confusing.
https://old.reddit.com/r/MST3K/comments/9nar7l/hampton_explains_why_hes_not_on_the_mst3k_tour_on/
Had it not been for the way the Sci-Fi Channel ended up treating MST3K, would there have been such a longing for the show’s return? Ten seasons is a very respectable run, especially for show with a two-hour TV runtime. Too much happened between 1999 and 2017. These new seasons are mercenary productions that rely on the nostalgia of about three generations of fans.
The fan push for “SciFi will save us!” was basically a cable-clueless attempt to stay off the addiction-withdrawal after S7–Remember after SciFi, when it was going to be, “Well, what about AMC, THEY show movies!”? ;)
The first early sign of the Rifftrax-fan “More MST3K Stuff is better than none at all” need to keep their own subjective idea of what the series is “about” on Intensive-care machine-that-goes-ping hospital life-support in whatever form, rather than bury the real thing on hallowed ground, preserve it on disk, and move on into experienced adulthood.
(Which is pretty much why “The Simpsons” stayed on so long, after generations grew up literally never alive to know a time when the show wasn’t on the air. It, y’know, was just SUPPOSED to be, like SNL or Sesame Street.)
Cinematic Titanic and Netflix-MST3K were different, though, since the whole issue was about Joel Hodgson getting ownership of his creation back after the Jim Mallon troubles, under its original name or not–Sort of like Disney finally getting Walt’s Oswald the Rabbit back, even though nobody ever watched the cartoons.
Whether “our” MST3K is actually BACK-back is the big division of fan-opinion, but even in the interviews, Hodgson still points out that the entire center of the show and the Tours is the audience-dynamic of finding movies that are silly enough to get a whole crowd into it, and not the private standup-comic snipes at pop-culture from comics who don’t really care about movies onscreen that much, good or bad.
So, yes, we have somebody else to blame for why it took so danged long to get back to a proper revival, but hey, at least that’s over now.
MS3K isn’t a show in the conventional sense. It’s probably more like a talk show than anything else, with the guest being the movie. Talk shows last decades.
Where Sci-Fi and now Netflix have hurt the show is by having segments with a story, instead of the random skits they used to have. Which not only are funnier, actually hold up on repeat viewings.
Eric J:
You are not a happy man.
Many people here like Rifftrax.
Get over it.
As for Season 12 of MST3K, look before you lip.
Why is KTMA referred to as Cable Access. It was a UHF Independent Station. Common in those days.
And, I love Rifftrax. Not as much as MST, but it is pretty good. The live shows have always rocked it out.
I’m guessing people wanted the origin to be sorta like Wayne’s World.
And yes, in the beginning, all the good stuff was on local struggling UHF. The indie stations that had to show whatever they had, in between the local sports games, and if the channel wasn’t contracted to the local city sports team…they got even more creative. They were the funky Amazon Primes of their day. :)
If you’re saying it’s fun to watch a goofy movie in an old-fashioned palace theater together with a rowdy audience all having fun laughing at the same onscreen movie jokes, and NOT in a cineplex crabbing about cellphones, I’m pretty sure that already existed before Mike brought it down to mortals from Mount Olympus.
It just didn’t cost $50 for the privilege in our day, junior, and nobody made Internet or Nick Nolte jokes.
Eric J:
You’re obviously cranky because you’re sleep deprived.
Take a nap and don’t call people here “junior.”
Just wanted to note that I complained to the author about this and he corrected it.
Season 12 episodes (Via the British rating system)
https://www.bbfc.co.uk/search/releases/MYSTERY%2BSCIENCE%2BTHEATRE%2B3000%253A%2BTHE%2BGAUNTLET
1201-MAC AND ME
1202-ATLANTIC RIM
1203-LORDS OF THE DEEP
1204-THE DAY TIME ENDED
1205-?
1206-ATOR
Had to happen, and oddly worth it. :) (Also semi public-domain, now that MGM/UA movies are practically giving themselves away for free on streaming.)
No. No, no, no! BAD Joel! (smackie-handies!)
No matter how neurotically we think we have to do “recent” color-widescreen titles for the Young Kids With Their Netflix, we do NOT do cheap title-buster Asylum movies, just because we think that Rifftrax fans would find them as neato as the Sharknado sequels. Let someone else profit off of clueless shallow poseur desperation.
(Seriously, anyone ever get tasting-the-dog-biscuit curious enough to LOOK at the other non-Sharknado movies on PlutoTV’s Asylum channel? It’s getting to the point that I can spot one just from the amateur Birdemic-esque camerawork and green washed-out cinematography, even before any unnaturally-moving sharks or dinos show up.)
Oh, and accdg. to IMDB, it’s now titled “From the Sea”, as the hammer came down from Warner Legal. Just like “Lord of the Elves”, “American Warship”, “Megashark vs. Colossus” and “TrollLand”.
Charles Band’s epic followup to Laserblast, only with the good parts (the goofy aliens) and without the 70’s-pickup jokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2PkSwkhSas
“Well, Rifftrax does soulless completist vintage-series callbacks, TOO!”
At least, if it is, it’s in proper hands. (So, has RT done the third Ator movie billing itself as “Troll 3” yet?)
Oh, and unless they’re showing Clint Eastwood & Sondra Locke, can we assume “: the Gauntlet” is the new S8-style Gripping Season-Long Binge-Arc Storyline most of us politely asked them not to do this season?…
You don’t work on the show so enough of the “we” crap.
Don’t try acting cute. It’s sickening.
Yes, yes… Rifftrax bad, Joel good. Juuuuuust shuttie already…
Don’t use “we” as though you speak for everyone. You can barely speak for yourself.
Delete your account.
Gare
You wanted a story line?
I was there for the Sci Fi years and, believe me, there was a lot of love for the show and it was reflected in on-air promotion and the support it received on our website. It sucked when we found out that they would be getting a call that the show was being cancelled but it was handled well and they were able to wrap up the series.
There was a longing for the show’s return because people genuinely missed and still enjoy the show. I’ve enjoyed The Reutrn and my kids absolutely love it.