Joel Hodgson, creator of Mystery Science Theater 3000, singlehandedly managed to make a robot-and-human silhouette appearing at the bottom of millions of TV screens a phenomenon that has since morphed into an instantly recognizable icon. For fans of the show, the sometimes droll, sometimes incisive, but consistently smart commentary on bad movies has more than stood the test of time, and now, more than two decades after its debut, the show continues to draw new devotees. The show’s DVDs, released by Rhino, are selling briskly — proof-positive of the show’s lasting power.
Now, Hodgson has reunited with former MST3K castmates Trace Beaulieu, Mary Jo Pehl, Frank Conniff and J. Elvis Weinstein to create Cinematic Titanic, a similar movie-riffing experience (sans robots this time around). The cast comments on a movie shown in real-time to a live audience, silhouettes and all. Cinematic Titanic, which was originally sold online in a straight-to-DVD format, has recently evolved into the live audience experience and has garnered critical acclaim.
Dunce Cap Quarterly spoke recently with Hodgson about how Cinematic Titanic came about, his work with MST3K, and what pop culture commentary means in 2010:
Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. How’s the Cinematic Titanic tour been going so far?
It’s good. But it’s not really a tour necessarily; we go out about once a month. We were just in Philly for New Year’s, and that was really fun. We’re going to be in San Francisco the beginning of next month, and then Milwaukee and Detroit and L.A.
In Philly for the New Year’s Eve show, you guys did three movies in a row in one night, right?
That was something the venue suggested — we kind of did what they said. We had never done it before. The first two went great and the third one, well, I read about Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic and starting to see demons and stuff after a certain point, and I sort of felt a little bit like that during the third one. Two I’m good with, two I really enjoy actually, but three is too much.
What has the fan response to Cinematic Titanic been like? Have you received a positive response from MSTies at shows?
Yeah, absolutely. They’re really loyal fans and they’re really great. I’m really happy with them. Lots of them grew up watching the show with their folks, or someone gave them DVDs or tapes. I have some friends that are really truly famous, and their fans are way different than my fans. My fans of MST3K, they all found it, because there was never a big sales push behind it. Most people found it on their own, and they have a different relationship with it. They’re really cool. And almost every show we do (at Cinematic Titanic), we stay behind to sign things afterwards.
How are you going about choosing the films to riff on during the live show? Do you have any on your wish list?
It’s peculiar, we kind of are fixing up houses that are broken down. We ask, “Can we fix it? What can we do with it?” We have to kind of look at the movies and kind of see. Usually I find the movies right now and I do a certain amount of looking at them, and after I’m done I have everyone look at them and they sign off on it before we kind of get into it. It’s not quite that fun as far as having a wish list, though. Although it’d be awesome to do Flubber or something like that.
What’s the process like for writing for the Cinematic Titanic shows?
We all just take the films ourselves and go through them. We do what we call a joke-pass. We’re just doing riffs and figuring it out. We make a master list of all our riffs and we basically get a section to work out. And the next one, it’s my turn and my job to make sure the first section works. Conceptually, it kind of flows, and you’re kind of in a position to shape the material. Once you get it on its feet, there’s changes. There’s certain bits that become favorites for the audience, and all those things do merge from the audience and give us confidence. It makes us realize, “Oh, people are laughing — we’re in the right direction.” We have enough people coming out and a nice audience, so right now we’re kind of in the mode where we’re trying to improve and figure out what movie riffing is in 2010.
I’d heard that acquiring film rights for movies originally shown on MST3K was easier than acquiring DVD rights for the movies, which means some of the episodes of the show will never be released. Are there more episode volumes on the way from Rhino, or has all been released that will be?
We made 200 shows, so there will always be new MST3K episodes released; I think there’s just a lot of them. Granted, we just didn’t know — we couldn’t see at the time that those kind of rights would be meaningful. We weren’t really that alert to it and it just wasn’t clear. I don’t want to speak out of turn ‘cause I’m not certain, but we made so many. But there are movies that aren’t available, we’ve been told. The Godzilla movies, the Gamera movies — those are pretty hard to get because they realized that those properties are big. Godzilla is Japan’s Mickey Mouse.
You’d said that you didn’t want to leave MST3K when you did. Ideally, if you hadn’t come up against creative differences involving the show, would you have liked to have stayed on board and ultimately been involved in the feature film?
Oh, absolutely. I loved doing it and I kind of said, “Oh, I’ve got other things I want to do,” but that was kind of a dodge. I did that deliberately so it could keep going because I really wanted the show to keep going.
How is the cast chemistry for Cinematic Titanic compared to MST3K? Did you find you all picked up where you left off?
Yeah, we remained friends ever since we all left the show, so we’ve all been kind of trying to work together over the last four years. And in the last two, we decided we should do this, and I figured out a way where we could still riff (on films). I saw Philip Glass do music for Dracula, and I kind of got the idea from him because he’s hilarious. I saw him do that and then realized our tour could kind of become doable, and we realized we could travel without props and puppets, and it became easier to get it on its feet. So it’s been good. We’ve been doing it the last 14 months, so we’re kind of getting there as far as our chops go. Performing live has been the best way to get better.
How have you found the live experience to be versus the previous straight-to-DVD experience for Cinematic Titanic?
Personally, I really like it. It’s kind of state-of-the-art to me. The world has changed a bit since MST3K started; there’s a lot more media that people consume. With the commentary, the medium is the message.
It seems like MST3K foresaw a lot of the commenting on art as an art form that’s happening now.
People talk about movies when you watch a movie with your friends or if you’re in your home. So with MST3K, movies were the most logical thing to riff on, and it was thematic with the theater seats. And I think more than anything, everything’s available in your home now, and the only way you can function is to comment about the media. It’s the only way it could exist. People send links, and make remarks and they share it. I didn’t really it see it coming, or foresee, commenting on stuff. I just thought it would make a funny show. I was just trying to be funny.
Tickets for Cinematic Titanic are now available through Ticketmaster for the show’s April 17 stop at Nokia Theater in New York City.
