Mystery Science Theater 3000: C/D, S/D.

"i have a harder time meeting women these days"
"if your names happen to be Tina Fey, Lily Tomlin or Amy (Poehler and Schumer) – call me!"
side-eye emoticon

Yeah, Joel McHale, esp. if he's onscreen at all, seems a supreme way to balance out or deliberately hamstring the proceedings from getting waaay too pander-y or having its head so far up its own ass it needs close-circuit tv to call the game.

If anybody wanted a crystallized example of the coalescence of nerd shit from the Before Times contrasting to the monetization and concentrated marketing-demo development of the last 10 years of geek pop culture, this is it.

We go from a collection of Midwestern weirdos and stand-ups doing this cable-access thing that had to fight for airtime to something so potentially drenched in fan service as to make the guys who just record some funny mp3s to play atop your DVDs and sold online only look positively restrained.

Remember then-programming VP Vincent Faze showing up on the air to defend the network's airing practices of the show against fan outrage-as-delivered-by-post-and-phone in 94/95? The q&a was hosted by Marc Marin!

Fire up your thinkpiece churns.

Correction, Vincent Favale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JCk93vx0M8

Oh man, and I just found the rec.arts.tv.mst3k FAQ. Fire up your copies of tin or nn or rn and remember How Things Were:

https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/rec.arts.tv.mst3k.announce/cCz63yOjDWc

seems like new mst3k is going to be far more aggressive

oh debbie

Is there anywhere else on the internet expressing doubts about this reboot besides ILX? Actually curious, I haven't been looking!

― Evan, Thursday, December 10, 2015 12:14 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

BTW the reason I got curious was due to the discrepancy in positivity between the comments here and the comment section on the kickstarter posts. It seems overwhelmingly positive over there, and all doom and gloom here. Just finding that kind of funny! Even with this latest post about cameos.

well remember, most people love Jack Black

this reboot just seems designed for headlines like "MST3K has been rebooted, and who's involved is amazing. #17 will blows your mind."

trying to not be bummed out, failing

feel like this is the creation of someone on a bipolar upswing, like it's SO much

the bots will be shilling podcasts and such

every new name is like, "Why can't they get the old people back?" i did not watch mst3k for celebrity cameos. i guess it is a good kickstarter strategy and wish Joel all the luck but it sets a bad precedence for the new show.

it doesn't help that some of the writers i actively dislike as people, Harmon going out of his way recently to lord his fame over fan in a 2-hour verbal abuse session. it is ok "because he is an alcoholic genius" lol ok

Cline just being a farce of an author, a self-glorifying uber consumer heralding the intellectual nadir of capitalist culture.

can someone explain why TV's Frank, Dr. Forester, and the Rifftrax people can't come back? If Joel has the rights it seems like he could just ask them back if he wanted.

trace declined the offer and i'm guessing maybe frank did likewise. they seem pretty content in their current situation.

so you're telling me they don't want to party with Jack Black?

Stealing your descriptor of Cline, Adam, btw

Trace & Frank have their own thing going now, and will be meeting up with Mary Jo and J Elvis at SF Sketchfest:

http://www.themadsareback.com

I got to meet them at a charity "Plan 9" event in Portland about 2-3 years back and it felt like meeting Bowie or (insert other critical formative figure)

Just to be some glimmer of hope in here, we're not entirely sure how involved the various celebrity guest writers will be. Maybe Cline will write a few jokes or something that we'll get to ignore.

My biggest worry is not that Jack Black and other cameos will ruin it or something but that the whole run of episodes will be overthought. If I were to guess I'd say it's hard to keep something that has always been so loose, intimate and quirky the same after the millionth interview and kickstarter post that picks apart the formula and tone and its place in the universe, how we can make the robots fly around the set and all sorts of other gimmicks that are reasonable as stand alone ideas, then back it with a million "wouldn't it be cool if we got ____ on the show to _____?!?!", in the end you might get something so jam packed with calculation and expectation and epic promises that it'll feel both super stiff and super bloated. I hope among all of this over-analyzation of the whole concept coupled with the hypothesizing of perfect ways to take the show into 2016 that they don't forget the core light hearted, silly and loose pacing they had.

Like there are multiple ways to overthink a piece of art to the point you squeeze everything organic out of it before you even start, and that's my biggest worry. Hoping for the best anyway.

when is firesign theatre coming back i ask you
and can they get jack black

Meantime I do like the extra livestreaming marathons this week. _Warrior of the Lost World_ on now.

Well they're about at $5.2 million at this point counting the add-ons and the rest of today to go, 13 hours or so, so I'm willing to bet they'll get their full 12 episodes. But man did my initial foreboding when this all started play out, except in ways I honestly wouldn't've guessed.

Don't say that until we see the actual result!

You're going to have a long year ahead of you.

It will feel like 366 days.

Soooo ... does everyone hate Joel now as much as they hated Mallon?

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xft1/v/t1.0-9/12360330_10102547487042497_108857818019013401_n.jpg?oh=4717b0f64f0ff38a1d635d62b746102b&oe=571BA69B

Phew.

Meantime, on a brighter note, the last streaming double feature is running now. Starting with The Final Sacrifice (just did the Canada song).

J. Elvis did add this:

https://twitter.com/JElvisWeinstein/status/675378742663901184

And:

https://twitter.com/JElvisWeinstein/status/675432153765646336

True, but then this exchange ...

‏@PinkertonTom 3h3 hours ago
@JElvisWeinstein @TraceBeaulieu I appreciate your clarification, but still seems like there's a lot of bad vibes floating around MST3K...

‏@JElvisWeinstein 2h2 hours ago
@PinkertonTom @TraceBeaulieu That was always my experience.

Yeah I mean, I'm comfortable with it always being something mixed in the memory for a lot of them rather than utterly great or utterly horrible. Though combined with an extra dose of Minnesota nice.

Minnesota passive-aggression, I'd say.

Anyway, it's over $5.5 million and the last new goal is $5.9 for an extra holiday episode.

I'm seeing it at $5.1 million - think they just threw in the extra goal for a little boost.

Host dude needs to shave and take off his stupid hipster nerd glasses, and I say this as a frequently-unshaven man who wears stupid hipster nerd glasses.

You have to count the little purple extra -- it's the funds raised outside of Kickstarter as add-ons, and isn't reflected in Kickstarter's own official count. They're well over $5.5 million at this point.

Oh, huh, cool! Didn't know that.

And the final streaming episode in this week's telethon as such is Mitchell which I think is rather...telling.

Anyway, so while we wait and/or dread, some other news:

http://sidelongglancesofapigeonkicker.blogspot.jp/2015/12/anthony-cardoza-1930-2015.html

Cardoza produced/appeared in The Coleman Francis Trilogy (if you will) as well as The Hellcats. Didn't even realize he was still with us!

Thing I just learned: Robot Holocaust was directed (under the name Tim Kincaid) by gay porn auteur and current Hateful 8 character namesake Joe Gage.

Now there's a detail.

Update.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mst3k/bringbackmst3k/posts/1488469

And now...a different Kickstarter and a different revival, as it were.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rifftrax/rifftrax-live-2016-mst3k-reunion-time-chasers-live

Yes, a Mystery Science Theater 3000 reunion broadcast to hundreds of movie theaters all across America! To help celebrate our 10th year at RiffTrax, we're planning an amazing night of riffing and comedy with most of the original MST3K stars, including RiffTrax regulars Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett, PLUS confirmed special guests Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, Mary Jo Pehl and Bridget Nelson!

We've also invited the other veteran cast members as well as the cast of the New MST3K, and we're hopeful they'll join us too.

im all for this and stoked to see this but also why the fuck cant fathom events fund this stuff?

Good frickin' point!

Anyway this one is off and running; it's already 10% funded and climbing.

I do like the mention of where any extra money goes:

We raised past our goal in our last three Kickstarter projects, and all of the money collected went towards getting the rights to the movies (plus getting additional movies to riff live), top notch production of the event itself, and in creating and fulfilling rewards. It will be no different this time around.

Making these shows a reality costs meaningfully more than our base goal, and so if we raise more money, it will go towards movie acquisition costs for two more shows this year, better production values, and towards all the awesome rewards. And perhaps you know that since RiffTrax started offering Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, we have been giving a portion of sales to all the MST principal cast members. RiffTrax will put a meaningful portion of all additional proceeds beyond our Kickstarter goal into this same pool.

Anyway, they're over 75% there so it'll obviously happen at this point. Looking forward to seeing it.

Is the cold war over? (Nelson shared it on social media insisting this is not a joke.)

http://www.avclub.com/article/rifftrax-exclusive-joel-hodgson-and-jonah-ray-join-234659?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feeds

so this is their 4th (?) Kickstarter for Rifftrax?

and if you contribute to this

every backer at every level gets first dibs on tickets to see the live shows in person - including the MST Reunion show, which is sure to sell out. That's an EXCLUSIVE advance purchasing window just for backing us on Kickstarter

i love these guys but it's kind of blowing my mind that they want to raise a quarter of a million dollars for these two shows. i've seen a video of the Rifftrax live before, it's them showing a movie in a theater while people sit and riff, and that's it isn't it? "We may not have the puppets or costumes, but we will have a blast". and the shows aren't free, they are still selling tickets on top of that?

:-\

is the State Theater a really fancy place or something?