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

am I blind or is there no confirmation of any of the cast for this?

Well per the video it's the returning SoL Netflix crew at least, and presumably the photo of Oswalt and Day in the promo image confirm them.

just seems weird that they want money for a TV show but won't state clearly who is going to be in the TV show. wiggle room I guess.

starring... Shane Gillis and Michael Richards

Which makes me think of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN84P7OISmc

lost it starting with "Thomas Aquinas!"

I hope they learn from their mistakes and listen to viewer feedback this time.

maybe the viewers can feedback via little talking heads at the bottom of the screen

Interview with Joel here:

https://tv.avclub.com/exclusive-joel-hodgson-says-it-s-time-to-makemoremst3-1846634073

Also they're approaching $1.5 million and it's not even been twelve hours -- for the first time around the day one total was $850,000. This might all be more of a big blowout than we realize!

Interesting vibes there. The comment about not having to pitch it to a suit .... I wonder, has anyone from the Netflix era ever indicated anything about the show that was in any way pushed from the Netflix end? Or did the nature of the deal give them creative freedom?

MST will be an NFT.

Just what we needed.

In terms of the vibe -- Netflix is clearly in a position of not having to answer to anyone about their choices, so no, to my knowledge nothing has surfaced, probably only a bland statement or two. It's worth remembering that the previous Kickstarter got the show filmed and the Netflix deal happened after the season itself was in the can, so it can't have been that Netflix thought they spent too much money on the production straight up, though presumably there was some further deal. I'm sure Shout Factory and Joel were more than a little miffed at the opacity in the end.

It’s been reported that Netflix finds that seasons beyond the 2nd of their original series generally don’t have a measurable effect on subscriptions iirc

I thought it was three rather than two? Seems to be a magic number.

it is crazy to me that anything at all has any effect on their subscriptions. everyone i know, whatever else they do with their lives, also has netflix. to my knowledge no one ever cancels it or subscribes to it. like the fact that they shovel out content at the pace they do blows my mind because surely they could halve it and experience no measurable drop in income.

Fun detail -- Jonah is responding to a number of the comments on the Kickstarter page.

Anyway initial funding goal reached in a little over a day, so I'm guessing $5.5 million will happen when all is said and done.

Msties are indeed the craziest of fans, in a good way.

yeah, the average donation is currently hovering around $190, which is pretty absurd.

I did like Jonah's comment a few minutes back: "Wow, look at all those pledges... PREEEEETTY NIIIIIIICE!"

Actually what's kinda fucking crazy is that they've since added almost another $50K. Allowing for late evening/early morning slowdown that still puts them in range to hitting $3.3 million conceivably as early as late tomorrow or the weekend? But we'll see how this shakes out, normally there's a big initial rush then a ticking along before a final rush.

First note from Joel from it all:

The last 24 hours have been so crazy that I don't know what to say. When we decided to come back and do another Kickstarter – and to do it after a year-long worldwide pandemic – we weren't really sure how things would go.

The last time we tried this, it took us almost a week to reach our first goal, and make three episodes... so I guess I figured if we could do that again, we'd be off to a really good start.

But yeah, as you might have noticed, things went a little faster this time...

And it goes from there. I hadn't remembered it had needed a week for the first goal last time out, I don't blame him for being surprised!

New update from Joel clarifies some further details and reconfirms the (kinda) obvious, that it's the returning cast from the last two seasons but also dropped a pretty heavy hint that Emily from the live shows last year will be involved too, a good thing.

Chugging along and about to hit halfway to the main final goal. New update with some details

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mst3k/makemoremst3k/posts/3158936

Meantime on tonight's Mads are Back stream (with Kevin Murphy as a guest), one of the questions the moderator passed along -- saying they were getting a lot of people asking -- was whether either of the Mads or Kevin were involved with this new effort. Kevin politely begged off and noted he had Rifftrax but let's just say it was PLENTY clear that Frank and Trace still feel some ill will over everything that happened, though they tried to keep it relatively smooth. (Trace, not entirely.)

Kickstarter still chugging along -- should reach the next overall goal of $3.3 million in a couple of days -- but in the meantime, enjoy an oral history of the movie

https://film.avclub.com/mystery-science-theater-3000-the-movie-the-oral-histo-1846694612

really good read, thanks for linking! confirmed a lot of what i've probably been carrying around since Usenet FAQ days, but with a lot more detail - and a few lighter notes leavening the familiar nightmare of interfering studio suits.

yeah that was great

Very much makes me want to finally get the Shout Factory Blu-ray edition of the movie, long overdue there. Still working off the original random DVD!

Friends on FB commented that they were very much like Jonah in being obsessed with the movie in particular when young. To quote one of them: "when my mom first married my stepdad he had a ton of figurines and stuff from comics and old sci fi movies and he had a set from This Island Earth and I was like YES OMG YES SCROTOR IS IN MY BASEMENT"

I was lucky enough to catch in a theater like Jonah; unlike Jonah it wasn't as random as all that because it ran for a week in the multiscreen theater across from UC Irvine where I was living/going to grad school at the time. That was a treat.

I remember it in the theater bc I think it was my first experience of being the only person in a theater.

in hindsight i feel very lucky to see it in a theater! my dad took me, and also in hindsight i realize how nice it was that he did - it was at a mall multiplex but one quite far from home, i'm sure the only place it played in the atlanta area. he wasn't into the show (he basically "got" it but never sat down and watched it) but he knew how much i loved it.

ha, thats sweet. my dad loved the show, he probably wanted to come with me, i wonder why i went alone - probably just didnt want to wait for him, like a self-absorbed teenage jerk. he probably still hasnt seen it, i should gift him the blu ray.

Meantime, the Mads have shared their riff on Sonny Bono's warning to the youth about the demon weed, as done the other week. It's absolutely great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXbe9BuLRes

Updates from Kickstarter about various things (more on the Gizmoplex apps, how things are going etc.) plus Joel saying livestreams will be returning over the next couple of weeks, starting with:

SAVE THE DATE: Join us on MONDAY, APRIL 26, at 5pm PT / 8pm ET, for our first big #MakeMoreMST3K Livestream!

Apparently a big video announcement tomorrow, probably mentioning Emily joining the cast but we'll see. Anyway: they're about $80,000 to go until $3.3 million and 6 new episodes so far.

And here's that update with the video news and etc

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mst3k/makemoremst3k/posts/3168008

In sum, this is all pretty good! Emily and her bots were great in the live shows and all so bring it, might as well go full multiverse.

First Kickstarter livestream in half an hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hugO9coWrw0

So that was really entertaining! They did a very smart thing and have it just be Joel and the Emily 'crew' from the live show chatting away for a bit, plus Matt, one of their producer/writers, as the coordinator along with an off-screen Ivan. They weren't in character, it was just a fun extended chat and it made for a good way to really introduce all the new performers for anyone who didn't have a chance to see the tour. They told some stories and answered some questions from social media via Matt, then they screened that supermarket short they did for the charity drive in fall in combination with them watching/providing comments, answered a few more questions and then screened what is apparently Emily's all time favorite episode, Hobgoblins. Which it turned out Joel had never seen! So they were watching with us via their webcams again and chiming in and it was kinda great, felt like a classic hang where you get a bunch of people together to watch an episode and some folks have seen it and some folks haven't and everyone's just reacting. Because it was Hobgoblins they all got into a few tangents about the puppets along the way and how they figured they were operated and filmed, and it turned out Joel knew the guy who made the puppets, has known him for years! Tried to get a hold of him on the phone, he says he's going to reach out and maybe they'll have him on the next livestream. Which will be either Thursday or Friday and will be Quest for the Delta Knights -- with Mary Jo as a guest! That'll be good.

Update that they've got a slew of livestreams set up for the next week and they're all potentially pretty great. Last night they did Untamed Youth and the theme as such among the attendees was All the Servos, minus Kevin Murphy. Baron got in some especially pointed lines, and there were definitely moments -- which J. Elvis apologized for out of the gate -- that did not age well at ALL but it was good they noted that upfront. Can watch it here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OOK8IZhXWU

Meantime tonight is Quest for the Delta Knights as noted earlier. Here's the full schedule for the next week so far:

https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/033/332/856/4ae1d9f080fcd871c9c11908e2223dea_original.png?ixlib=rb-2.1.0&w=680&fit=max&v=1619727222&auto=format&frame=1&lossless=true&s=76edef10e3fc6ca9fb4b09a718440c01

They also dropped a slew of new add-on awards and things, including a very indulgent but why not 'Ultimate' digital collection of 120 of the original episodes (plus a separate add-on option if you got the earlier version of this back in 2015).

unrelated, but i just rewatched Radar Secret Service the other night and there was a moment when the repetition flipped over in my brain, and from then on every riff mentioning "radar" just had me in complete stitches. what a weird, stupid, dull movie - great find by BBI.

Yeah that's a long time favorite of mine. The extended Goodfellas riff at the end is amazing.

so there's a youtuber with "broadcast editions" of mst3k - like with the comedy central commercial breaks not edited out. i'm currently watching a 1993 Secret Agent Super Dragon and it''s blowing my mind how impossibly dated and distant everything in the commercials seems, culturally, verus the show still seeming so so fresh and smart and funny to me (much of the time). just saw a bar soap ad where the conceit was, someone at a doctor's office is typing out a prescription for you to use this soap. and it's all closeup shots of typewriter keys. the world of ubiquitous everyday *typewriters* seems as alien and as kinda charming as anything from the 50s or the 70s did back when these episodes were new. and the station ads for standup shows are just complete dead air to me. not one thing even feeling like the way a "joke" would be *formed* today.

whereas mst3k, while unquestionably and beautifully of its time also, works for me. maybe some of the lesser skits fall short of the mark. and definitely, the gentle editing pace and "just set the camera in place and hit 'record'' style of filming do not feel contemporary. but i still experience their back-then outreness and hipness, like the residual glow i pick up watching The Talking Heads or something.

Thanks for the tip! Just watched the Turkey Day version of Mitchell!. So many Air Force ads...

and the station ads for standup shows are just complete dead air to me. not one thing even feeling like the way a "joke" would be *formed* today.

curious if you could provide an example

ummm i'd have to dig back thru the youtube, not sure at what point i encountered the ad that pushed the thought over the top. some promo for some "this funny guy hosts a show of other people's standup" show? this whole viewing experience is already a little hazy in my mind tbh.

No worries guess I just wanted to know more about the effect you described! An obsolete joke form or delivery...

Yeah, to be fair I may have oversold that slightly, the problems really might be more with content than form. but judge for yourself in this clip - the commercial breaks start at 3:00, 19:00, 33:00, 43:15, 55:40, 1:08:45, 1:20:30, 1:33:30, 1:44:30... maybe some others i missed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS4mCeJd7uM

like, the various product ads just feel cheesy and hokey, which is fine, they're 30 years old (though at the time i'm sure some of the advertisers involved thought they were doing quirky, fresh things). the "totally nuts about Payday" song has a kind of cool, hyper-clean sound on the vocal overdubs. but the ads for Comedy Central stuff are .......... not funny. i admit that most of them, i can tell what's supposed to be funny, but time has rendered their constructions awkward and labored-feeling. probably why i reached for the ILX-ism of the horribly formed "joke." just how clunky it feels, and this is a network ostensibly specializing in humor.

Whereas, say, the "jazz combo" host segment skit, while it kinda falls flat in its own way, has a kind of aggressively surreal "we don't care if most people don't get this" quality that would not feel out of place on Eric Andre or something. and the best riffs have this freshness of timing that, while all scripted, genuinely feels like a flash of improv insight, right there on the spot.

so either culturally, humor has moved closer to where MST was in 1993, or... my sense of humor was very much shaped by MST in 1993.

You can't escape your youth. If you will.

Anyway: Kickstarter passed $4.4 mil so we're getting at least nine episodes and one of them with Joel. Just under three days to go (wraps up Friday night at 8 pm Pacific Time) but given the expected but still good to see pretty active count it's looking like the final goal is on.

Meantime the first two movies they'll be doing have been announced:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4219706/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107979/