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Jim Mallon SpeaksHe’s arguably had more to do with shaping MST3K over its history than anybody, but is perhaps the least-known member of Best Brains. Satellite News is pleased to present our no-topic-off-limits interview with Jim Mallon.
60 Replies to “Jim Mallon Speaks”Commenting at Satellite News
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BSBrian – Thanks Dude!!!!
I e-mailed a copy of my nutty idea to Kevin Murphy (we traded emails a few years ago), but he probably won’t read it.
I think the idea of an experiment of watching the two casts riff on the same movie (blind study) would be fascinating.
Watching how they are similar and different, how the riffs weave from being goofy, mean, sweet, silly, to sublime would be cool.
I think in some cases the jokes/riffs would be identical (like two people blurting out the same thing at the same time), in other cases they would go in different directions entirely.
Garth wrote – “Dr. Erhardt has a cameo at the beginning where he is accepting a Nobel Prize in the field of Cinematic Torture, as Frank views his acceptance speech on T.V.”
Yeah Garth- that’s the thing that sets Dr. F off initiating his new campaign to round up his former subjects.
He’s so made that halfway through the experiment he throws Frank into the experiment chamber (theater) and makes him suffer.
If the movie had Richard Basehart in it, that could open up all sorts of wackiness as well.
I don’t know, maybe me watching MST3K for 20 years wasn’t such a good idea :roll:
I highly doubt we will see the entire cast riffing anything as one group. Instead I hope the individuals from each group continue to hone their own products. Who wouldn’t love to see “Cinematic Titanic” land on cable TV? What about Rifftrax starting a DVD offering, or re-launching the Film Crew film series? MST3K was the perfect show for it’s time, but I feel a “reunion” show wouldn’t work. Have you ever seen “Return To Mayberry”, “Still the Beaver”, “The Bradys”, “Return to the Batcave” or any other myriad of recycled TV shows? None of them work, and are soon forgotten. Leave MST3K in the past, and focus on the future.
Oh…and as far as Jim Mallon goes, good interview. It’s amazing how everyone needs a “villain” or scapegoat for MST3K’s woes, and how Jim gets painted with that image?? If you have to blame anyone for MST3K’s programming and personnel issues, look no further than the suits and programmers at Comedy Central, Universal Studios & the Sci-Fi Channel.
“His early work is clearly not his best but it’s fascinating knowing that they were steps on his path.”
Oh, yeah. That’s a terrific slam. He might as well have called him the antichrist. :roll:
This interview is prety much in line with his Rhinocast. I didn’t sense a lot of true “spin”. The differences in what he says and what Joel says seem to me to be a case of different points of view. For instance, Joel may have felt that they would eventually work things out, but Jim pulled out to do mst3k.com, while Jim felt that things would eventually *not* work out and decided to stop wasting time. Both are correct, but view things from a different light.
For a potential show, it’s not as hard as it looks.
Kevin Murphy is Servo, end of story. Sorry, one season doesn’t give Josh the gravitas to play him, even if it was the first season.
Trace is Crow, even though Bill made an admirable accounting of the character. Still, when I think Crow, I think Trace.
Mike and Joel both get to be in the theater. Any number of hokey story conventions could account for this, and adding another person to the shadowrama would be kind of cool.
Everyone else is a writer and can act in the host segments. Again, any number of story hooks can bring them all together.
Congratulations, I just solved the conundrum. No charge, Jim.
@Graboidz
“Instead I hope the individuals from each group continue to hone their own products.”
Same here. This way we get two riffing machines cranking out product rather than one. Not only do we get to hear Joel AND Mike, but we get to hear Josh as well as Kevin, Bill as well as Trace, and we get to hear the welcome additions of Frank and Mary Jo. Also, we get to hear A-list movies get savaged (Rifftrax) as well as B-list movies (CT). Finally, we’ve got Jim Mallon keeping the faith with legacy material and hopefully transferring the old series to digital format for long-term preservation.
“one season doesn’t give Josh the gravitas to play him, even if it was the first season”
Two seasons and he’s the one who established the character so that when Kevin took over, he wasn’t working with a blank slate like Josh was.
Of course, that being said, I do believe that Kevin is the definitive Servo. He was the longest standing cast member and really defined the character in the end. But there’s also no reason to believe Josh couldn’t handle the character if he chose to do so.
I realize you are trying to be funny, but it’s not so easy when you are trying to balance the needs of so many people (cast/crew/fans) to try and get something done. I know how hard it is putting something as relatively minor as a community theater show together. I can only imagine it gets exponentially worse when talking about something like MST3K.
Post #55 all the way. If only someone like Scott P owned the rights.
The interview was overall good, a little too much vagueness especially when Jim obviously dodged the question regarding Joel’s statements on their arguments and why he left. And saying it’d be too hard to decide who will play Crow and Tom again ect. is a lame copout. He didn’t even think twice to cast Paul Chaplin and an unknown comedian for the flash toons. “Who will own the copyright.” Ah, yes, there we go. As someone else said I suspect THAT was the real reason for Jim stubbornly going the flash route. Otherwise I give him props for finally coming out of hiding to talk to us, he seemed nice enough from the answers although this Q&A was probably deliberately timed as damage control before the CC panel. ;) I really hope someone there grills him good. Oh and of course he gets a huge thumbs up on the KTMA host segments, although I’d rather have them as extras in the box set than web uploads.
I really liked that have both “teams” do the same movie but working seprate. That’s a brilliant idea.
My idea was that they could have both Mike and Joel in the theater (something I wish they did with Soultaker) and maybe have bill/Trace and J. Elvis/Kevin alternate ‘Bot roles between acts.
Having them ALL in there at once could be too chatty.
How they could put it in the show’s story line.. Well I think the theme song would sum it up pretty good “It’s just a show, I should really just relax.”
If they did it, I would not expect them to explain how they got all the different cast members doing different roles after their “exits”.
I mean the Sci-Fi era had it’s “story-arc” but that was mostly a joke and forced on them by the Sci-Fi network mandates.
It is never going to happen, theirs too much ego involved with these two groups and I don’t think Mike and Joel would ever work together again.