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

Yeah it barely cleared 2:3 of the minimum so no new episodes for now. Some of it was circumstances beyond control — SAG strike meant the public faces couldn’t promote it until well into the drive — and some of it was fallout for the protracted mess of physical rewards from the previous fundraiser. My own thought was that this was a kinda terrible time of year to do this, even with the Turkey Day hook and previous successes with that — too much in the way of holiday expenses combined with economic angst, rightly or not. Should have aimed for post holiday/tax refund time in the spring. Also a lot of people felt that the Turkey Day interstitials promoting the drive were flat, ad hoc, etc, clearly pretaped and creating an air they’d already given up.

The contrast to RiffTrax (lower key and decidedly non-existential Kickstarters only done for the annual live shows) and especially the Mads are Back (no budget needed, just pay for a YouTube stream that you can download later) is arguably limited — both of those teams just need to record voiceovers, for a start — but still instructive. Maybe they just need to rethink expectations?

It’s a small thing too but last year they were hyping up The Bubble as being the worst unearthed artifact they’d done since Manos. That created expectations that turned out not to fly — it was definitely a clunky low-budget affair but one done in the LA area in the 1960s using the built-in infrastructure for that, with plenty of extras, actual professional care on some level, it felt more like a bloated Twilight Zone episode or like the season 1 Slime People filmed in similar circumstances. Manos wasn’t just truly ‘what the,’ but gained in stature the more people realized what the hell it was and helped actually define the show more widely, an actual organic landmark. For this, they should have really just relaxed.

it's definitely been interesting seeing Joel come under sustained criticism during this campaign, "he's no businessman" etc

i don't like that the new ones have CG sets. the point is that it's ramshackle and made with glue

― Its big ball chunky time

cg is cheaper than glue these days!

idk. i feel like on some level the stuff they're doing is, in terms of material conditions, sub-KTMA. not really the fault of anybody involved. i'm just not sure it's a model that _works_ in a post-UHF, hell, post-_cable_ world.

Thing is I do believe he’s always been much more of an ideas guy than a money man, to his detriment if solely looked at through that lens. If he hadn’t had Jim Mallon for a partner at the start, someone who’d already gotten into some nuts and bolts on this front via indie film and local TV, the show likely would never have happened. Cinematic Titanic wouldn’t have happened further if RiffTrax demonstrated there was a model post MST to follow, and nu-MST relies on that Alternaversal team with the Matt fellow as nu-Jim, but that guy honestly has never done much for me as the on-camera hype dude, feels like he’d be trying to do that for anywhere he was employed rather than because he gets the product at heart. Maybe he’s just better behind the scenes and should have stayed that way, but this failed fundraiser, after two admittedly successful ones, shows he’s not infallible.

Maybe SIMPSONS wasn’t really the proper analogue. Maybe MST3K has entered the 70s/80s Beatles phase.

Anyway, this all said, Joel's mailout this morning strikes me as very clear-headed about it all:

Greetings, backers.

Well, we’ve come to the end of the month, and the end of the Turkey Day Marathon and this campaign.

While we’re incredibly grateful for all of the support, enthusiasm, and encouragement, it’s clear we’ve fallen short of our goal this time.

First, to be clear, please understand that that means that no one will be charged anything, and we will not be collecting anything that you pledged to this campaign , since the agreement was that we’d only collect funds if we reached our minimum goal. No charges will be put on anyone’s credit cards.

Second, and more important, please know that we’re incredibly grateful for all of your input, feedback, concerns and questions, and are thinking about all the suggestions you have made over the past month.

One silver lining is that the continued support for this campaign, and the show, may have opened up some new conversations about potential partnerships and fundraising that could be key in getting the show another season.

We’ll spend some time now exploring those, and working to integrate all of the feedback and suggestions we’ve heard from you, and will follow up again next year, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, when we’ve had a chance to regroup and have more to share downstream.

For now, whether you pledged or not, please accept our thanks and gratitude for your ongoing dedication and investment in MST3K.

We’re proud that the show continues to mean so much, to so many, and will keep working to figure out a path forward so that we can hopefully continue to #MakeMoreMST3K.

Until then, have a wonderful holiday season, and thanks again for all of your support.

Cheers and Thanks,

Joel and Team MST3K

Can we as a culture please just let something be a pleasant memory instead of trying to make it exist forever.

Hodgman seems like a good dude who really loves the thing he created & just really wants to keep doing that. I bear him no ill will for trying.

There are far worse offenders

Assume you mean Hodgson. Though John Hodgman would make a good Mad.

Original MST3K was an unrepeatable coalition of talent, time, and place. I sincerely feel that the Minnesota-centeredness of the original, because from cast to writing to production it was all done in a small cow town (as they called it) and not farmed out across the continent, by a small team who all knew each other from the same small relatively supportive scene, made all the difference. They were writing all the jokers in the same room. Seeing in, for example Rifftrax, the camaraderie (not that there hasn’t been tension behind the scenes) among the cast and especially between Mary Jo Pehl and Bridget Nelson, is part of the fun. Everything we’ve learned about how nu-MST is made works against that.

And Joel’s heart is obviously in the right place and he had some good talent working with him on the revive. But maybe he needs to tweak the approach?

ugh hodgson yes xxposts

Can we as a culture please just let something be a pleasant memory instead of trying to make it exist forever.

― deep wubs and tribral rhythms (Boring, Maryland)

it doesn't have to exist forever, just, like. what's joel hodgson supposed to _do_ now?

this ^

Anyone remember TV Wheel? I liked that. Plus I’d see him do standup in a heartbeat.

Can we as a culture please just let something be a pleasant memory instead of trying to make it exist forever.

― deep wubs and tribral rhythms (Boring, Maryland), Sunday, November 26, 2023 1:53 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

bingo

that said, I too would watch a Joel standup special

This is good a time as any to bring up Joel's early '80s prop comic guest shots on SNL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z7CKzk5o2U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5igaf4JKVI

i mean that's the truth of it, isn't it? mst3k isn't the thing hodgson is best at. the thing he's best at is _prop comedy_. in the '90s calling someone a prop comic was an insult. today it's like calling someone a rakugoka.

Yes, but he was seemingly respected by the "real" comedians in the 90s. Probably because he was clearly doing his own thing.

Which, in the form of the invention exchange, also included prop comedy

Nothing wrong with attempting to keep the concept alive, but it's just the recent execution doesn't seem to be made with the focus or taste required to capture the magic.

For me the performances FEEL like modernizations such as the seemingly conscious attempt to "emulate the sensibilities of youtube/tiktok personality-driven comedy to appeal to younger audiences", but it might also just be the style of the new cast members rather than some deliberate approach based on marketing goals or whatever. Paired up with the revived thematic framework, as I mentioned, it overall has happened to come out way more juvenile than it needs to be... Like all the ingredients are thrown in the pot but upon tasting the spoon it's clear that it's not coming out the same and also not to my taste. Maybe other people like it though!

Yes, but he was seemingly respected by the "real" comedians in the 90s. Probably because he was clearly doing his own thing.

― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes)

i think it's more of a cultural thing, the way polka was derided by a generation even though there's nothing really wrong with polka per se. prop comedy: the polka of comedy.

I ask this with some trepidation, but is there a form of comedy that's currently going through its "prop comedy in the '90s" phase?

Jim Breuer-style comedy? Where you make a lot of silly noises instead of jokes.

cishet white dude edgelord comedy.

cishet white dude edgelord comedy

I mean, yes, and I hope that remains out of fashion forever

in a better world ricky gervais would be up on stage smashing pumpkins into small piles of putrid debris

the only thing that kept cishet edgelord white dude comics remotely relevant was dick jokes, and trans women have _way_ better dick jokes than any of them do

I've really tried with the reboot, but every time I sit down to watch it, I don't last five minutes.

Where have all the edgelords gone
long time passing
Where have all the edgelords gone
long time ago
Where have all the edgelords gone
gone to Netflix every one

i love the show but in the years since its return i've been kind of shocked at how much money and creative energy seems to go into the non-riffing elements. i get how that stuff is more in his creative wheelhouse than movie riffing itself, and that it was obviously an extremely fun part of making the show in the 1990s. but if the difference between doing it and not doing it is raising a big budget to pay for a cast of all these different side characters and a big workshop for robot designs and sets and all this other stuff, ffs get out of your own way dude. if someone asks me what mst3k is i dont start describing the story of a space janitor who got kidnapped from the gizmonic institute, i talk about movie riffing. he doesnt need to do it alone in his basement on twitch, but there certainly is a middle way where it doesnt have to cost half a mil per episode.

One of many reasons I'm not into the nu MST3K

It's with that stuff where the scope creep becomes a problem. Too many "oh! what if we..." ideas.

At least the guard rails are firmer with the riffing portion of the show.

I will say this: I've gone to all the nu-MST3K live shows in my area and enjoyed them. They also were kind of loose and fun and definitely less tryhard. The woman who plays Mega Synthia hosted one and she is genuinely funny.

yeah all that hamminess works much better in a live setting with an audience

the live show was fantastic, I went to one in....2021, i think?

Can we as a culture please just let something be a pleasant memory instead of trying to make it exist forever.

― deep wubs and tribral rhythms (Boring, Maryland), Sunday, November 26, 2023 6:53 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah the last live go-round was end of 2021 and that was a damn treat, with the Emily-led crew and Megasynthia. (The just pre-COVID tour that was Joel's bowing-out from live touring also pretty sharp.)

I remember this show being a thing but had never actually seen it until I watched the dreary German Hamlet episode a couple of months ago and laughed my ass off.

The last time I felt that ol' mistie magic was the Cinematic Titanic live shows. Really felt like "a night out" and everyone was enthusiastic and present.

Cinematic Titanic was great, I even traveled to go to their shows. Now there’s apparently bad blood between Joel and Trace/Frank so that’s unrepeatable.

I'm glad they were still on speaking terms when I caught Cinematic Titanic roughly a decade ago

Thought there was rumor that issues between them had been resolved at some point within recent years

"I'd shoot Donald Regan to prove my love for Lisa Foster.”

Cave Dwellers is top notch still.