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

He got through it!

Update: I had quadruple bypass surgery and I just got out of the ICU with a good prognosis for recovery. So grateful to all who sent me such warm wishes. I love all of you.

— Frank Conniff (@FrankConniff) June 18, 2019

yaaaay

And updating that news above, Frank's back with The Mads are Back crew; he talks about his surgery a bit at the start.

https://soundcloud.com/user-340711944/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood

Saw the MST3k live show over the weekend & it was a total blast, definitely recommend catching it if youre on the fence. Never saw Joel perform IRL, it was a surprisingly heartwarming and nostalgic experience (even considering the circumstances) for me & my companions seeing him riff onstage, reacting to the audience, etc. Film we saw was "No Retreat, No Surrender" which was truly bananas, would easily have been a classic episode back in the day.

wish i had the scratch

only saw a live show with Mike, Minneapolis 1994

Were you there on Friday, too? xp

Oh, whoops. Glazed over the movie title you mentioned. I saw "Circus of Horrors"

I love ‘No Retreat, No Surrender’.

Frank's starting to surface more in public and he's looking great -- he'd mentioned losing weight after the surgery:

Mads meet-up with @feliciaday in Brooklyn. Check out her inspiring new book, Embrace Your Weird. pic.twitter.com/w72GAhpG11

— Frank Conniff (@FrankConniff) October 5, 2019

RIP Jan in the Pan

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/virginia-leith-dead-star-brain-wouldnt-die-was-94-1254393

Pretty good for a half-century run without a body.

Someone finally ... let her die

dedicated 24 hour Twitch channel goes live tomorrow
http://www.twitch.tv/mst3k

You could kinda tell this was the case. From Joel's latest mailout to the original Kickstarter backers:

As some of you might have guessed, we won't be making new seasons of the show for Netflix. However, I want you to know that we've had a wonderful time working with the Netflix team, and will always be grateful to them. After all, they gave us the opportunity to spend the past few years aboard the Satellite of Love, and made it possible for new generations to discover the joys of riffing cheesy movies with your friends.

I couldn't be more grateful or proud to our incredible cast and our wonderful crew for bringing this incarnation of the show to life, and hope that we'll get the chance to continue collaborating on MST3K as we enter our next chapter.

And, I'm pleased to confirm that The Return and The Gauntlet – along with a healthy selection of classic episodes – will continue to stream on Netflix, bringing some of the show's best episodes to cheesy movie lovers around the world.

Now, I know you might have questions about the future of Mystery Science Theater, but as you've seen over the last four years, we are just as dedicated to keeping MST3K alive as ever. And I want to remind you that there are still lots of options for us to explore in the years to come. This isn’t our first rodeo! So, while this might be the end of the first chapter of bringing back MST3K, don't worry: it's not the last chapter.

I'm sad that there will be less of it in the near future, and happy that they'll have time to reconsider some aspects.

So I saw the touring production with Joel the other night -- nights, really, both Friday and Saturday:

Seeing #MST3Klive on Friday and Saturday night in SF was a real treat, and I'm so glad I went. If this is indeed Joel's formal bowing out from the role he created, while still helping guide its future, then it couldn't have been more fun. pic.twitter.com/JfNKkF7Hyg

— Ned Raggett (@NedRaggett) February 4, 2020

And I muttered this on FB:

So back on Friday and Saturday night, as I briefly posted then, I saw two of the three SF performances on the current Mystery Science Theater 3000 live tour. (The third was a matinee of the Friday show.) Joel Hodgson, the originator of the whole thing, has said this is his last go-round with it as the central figure live (and likely for good), so while ticket prices for close seats were up there, ultimately I felt I had to go for it. And it was well worth it -- the presentation was a stripped-down and engaging affair, almost like the theatrical equivalent of the earliest actual episodes, though with an eye towards careful cleverness in how to showcase the robots, add extra visual elements and so forth, all while keeping the core of making fun of some trashy movies (_No Retreat No Surrender_ on Friday, _Circus of Horrors_ on Saturday). There was also something of it feeling just so right -- MST3K is probably the TV program I ultimately love the absolute most, and where time casts certain lines and things in new and not always better lights, I can't sit with those people who seem to think it was a blight on moviegoing and criticism and so forth. It comes out of a place that doesn't really exist anymore -- late night UHF broadcasts of cheaply made and cheaply acquired films and the sheer befuddlement of seeing them, combined with the Vampiras et al of the world on various local stations as the hosts of bumper segments -- and has become its own origin point for a slew of other approaches in turn. Nearly thirty years is a long time to fly the flag for anything when there's so much more to learn and discover, but even if we're not talking the from-when-I-was-six Tolkien and Star Wars interest I still have -- and, say, Schulz and Peanuts before then, the ultimate lodestone -- it all seems to move beyond nostalgia towards transcendence in its own way. I've only ever seen Joel once before live during a filming of his pilot _The TV Wheel_ back in the mid-1990s, so there was that too, while this supporting cast did a solid job, and Joel made more than one comment -- perhaps underlined by the fact that Netflix has dropped the revival -- that this was 'the future' of MST3K, and it's a little noteworthy that Emily Marsh, to the right of Joel in this shot, was set up the _No Retreat_ performance as, quite possibly, the next person in the jumpsuit alongside the bots. If it took over 50 years to get to Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, then 30 for the equivalent here is an improvement. Maybe the future'll be more productions like this? Maybe something through Shout Factory's own channel? Who knows? But all I can tell you is that I had a good time, and it was especially nice being among 'my people' in the crowd -- a whole mix, older and younger, and by no means not all middle-aged white dudes like yours truly. I think we all had that slight look about us that knows we're not glamourpusses or bros or whatever, we're just people. That suits the show as its best too, and I'll always be grateful. Towards the not too distant future, in whatever form it holds.

I can't sit with those people who seem to think it was a blight on moviegoing and criticism and so forth. It comes out of a place that doesn't really exist anymore -- late night UHF broadcasts of cheaply made and cheaply acquired films and the sheer befuddlement of seeing them

Absolutely OTM, and yet I have come to a place of total comfort being an advocate on both sides of this debate.

The Buddha of MST3K

Interesting:

http://www.mst3kinfo.com/?p=28884

In brief: Susan Hart, who has the rights to five of the remaining eleven or so episodes not formally rereleased, is apparently on the verge of a deal with Shout Factory.

We watched the 'Mac & Me' ep last night, pretty fun, I guess they still have it. Any recommendations out of the other 12 that are on Netfix?

cry wilderness

the mac & me episode utterly slayed me

I second Cry Wilderness, which is an enjoyably bonkers movie on top of all the riffing.

i never came back to pick up the final six episodes. can't remember which were funniest/best in terms of riffing, but just in terms of movie selections, Cry Wilderness the most jaw-dropping of the first batch, and pretty much all of them have the right "feel" to be MST movies. i think Time Travelers and The Christmas That Almost Wasn't were the toughest to get through. i never really fell in love with the cast or the pacing of riffs but i got more used to both as it went on... maybe a little of that is like a "getting used to Mike after Joel" thing, but it never quite shook a certain 2010s "bad movie podcast / bad movie youtube channel" energy that just isn't for me. still totally glad it happened though.

Yeah they're compelled to fill all the empty space with jokes. It comes off too blatantly as pre-written, where the pacing and delivery of the original run maintained the illusion of quick witted reactions on the fly.

Agreed with that. But yes Cry Wilderness and Mac and Me both agreeably insane. Avalanche was an amazing botch of a film. Generally speaking all the film choices were good, it was the end results that were varied -- the 12th season/six episode run had the advantage of none of the shoe-horned cameos or the clumsy Max/Kinga dynamic, it was more just breeze through it all.

This may owe more to my not-very-good hearing, but when I watched the first few Jonah episodes after they debuted, I had a hard time telling the bots' voices apart, which didn't help that "cramming a joke into every spare moment" approach.

same experience here.

I had that issue too - they both have a similar tone and delivery

Okay so the new riffalong special is live in about half an hour:

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZXMttOWzLY

i find it weird that they are riffing an old episode so it’s like double riffing except the newbies are just kinda ... watching?

ok it’s still funny

but the interludes are v awkward lol

feel like adding additional riffing to an existing episode might be approaching Peak Riff, but I'm still here for it

agree

Bury My Turtle Hat at Wounded Knee is still one of the funniest lines to me

A bit random all in all but nice to showcase the touring cast as a bit of a wider intro. The end short was creepy and weird (of course, it's the circus!).

This has been bugging me for awhile but I finally realized that The Mountain Goats song "Genesis 3:23" has been reminding me of the Puma Man theme. They aren't the same but similar enough, at least according to my subconscious.

Well Mike's REALLY shot himself in the foot here, sadly; his beliefs aren't the surprise but this is all pretty wretched:

http://mostly-retro.com/2020/06/14/the-bigot-doug-tennapel-and-his-friend-mike-nelson/

(This Doug guy is the source of most of the wrath in the post, but some of the specific Mike bits aren't so hot, like him complaining about people wearing masks right now. Mm, really?)

yeah wow, this is a huge bummer to read.

wow I had no idea

Mike was revealed as kind of a shit politically all the way back to 9/11, not a big surprise here.

Yeah, that part's pretty baked in.

Yeah, he’s near the top of my list for people who I trust are utter shit in real life but still contributed to something crucial in my life. Like, I guess, Christopher Columbus, et al.

He might be the ultimate test case for separating the artist from the art, and damned if the last 10-20 years haven’t made that a bold statement to make.

He’s rot.

Vaguely hoped he'd bucked the trend and wised up a little in the Trump era but no surprise he hasn't.

Also, based on the evidence throughout Rifftrax, not even funny anymore.

Eh, sort of an update:

A statement from Mike Nelson pic.twitter.com/vM5xe0jtKN

— RiffTrax (@RiffTrax) June 17, 2020

In response to someone asking "This is a good step 1. But will you be taking further measures to show this is not just spin?"

More word on that soon.

— RiffTrax (@RiffTrax) June 17, 2020

Ya gotta wonder.

Nice to hear that he didn't dig in his heels. Because that's a pretty common response, too. Could have easily gone that way.

As it is, given some of what he DID say regardless, it's not enough. We'll have to see.