I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: July 7, 2017] MST3K Live

I first discovered MST3K when I lived in Boston (on The Comedy Channel) in 1992 (just before it merged with Ha! and became Comedy Central).

Holy cow, did I love that show.  I eventually watched every episode and had every episode on tape.  I even made and sold (at break even price), audio tapes of all of the “songs” in the episodes.  It was a time-consuming labor of love (I wonder how hard it would be to convert them to CD), but I was a fanatic.

I could never choose between Joel or Mike because I liked them both for different reasons.  I admit that by the last few seasons I didn’t enjoy the scenes with the Mads as much, but the movie jokes never wavered.

And then the show was over in 1999.  And we all wept.

Well, 16 years later in December 2015, we were all blown away when we saw that Joel was going to try to resurrect the show.  Of course I pledged on Kickstarter (but still haven’t been able to watch any episodes for various reasons).  I was happy to be part of the new experience.

But I was even more excited when in May (after all of the new episodes had aired) it was announced that there would be a LIVE TOUR!  And that my location would get not only the announced show  ‘Eegah’ but also a “secret surprise film.”

Eegah! happens to be one of my all time favorite MST3K movies, so I was thrilled to hear that that was the movie they would do.  And I was even more thrilled to hear that they were making all new jokes (no mean feat).  But then to get a “Secret surprise film” never before seen by MST3K?  That was spectacular.

Some of the reason why I hadn’t watched the new episodes is because I didn’t want to ruin my awesome memories of the old episodes.  What if the new stuff wasn’t as good?  And who were all of these new people anyway?  Obviously I knew who Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day were, but I’d not heard of Jonah Ray or Hampton Yount (Crow) or Baron Vaughn (Tom Servo) or Rebecca Hanson (Gypsy).

I was a little nervous when I got to the theater–would it be good?  Would it be fun?  Would I actually enjoy watching this with other people?

Well, it was a blast.

I was off to the side in a fairly uncomfortable seat for the first movie, but it was still a lot of fun.

The evening opened with an appearance from Joel himself!  He thanked us for coming and introduced everyone in the show.  And then he talked about what our evening would entail.  It was great  to see the man himself in person.

The show began with the video of Kinga and Son of TVs Frank (Day and Oswalt) on a video screen “engaging “the audience.  I loved the really obvious attempts to show that they were “there” by having the people who were live with us make local jokes to Day’s generic observations.  Well played.

There was an invention exchange and then the movie started  I’m not exactly sure how they made the silhouettes and the guys were behind it appear–not that it was hard to do, I just don’t know what they did.  But it was obvious that they were right there with us, and with a whole room facing the screen with them we were all a part of the experiment too.

I don’t think I ever watched this show with more than one other person before, so having whole room made all the jokes so much better–the laughter was infectious.

As I said, I loved Eegah!, and know many of the jokes by heart.  But the new jokes were really great too–again, not willing to compare.  Some of the jokes were current pop culture gags (updated 20 years later), some were otherwise topical, but many were timeless, just funny jokes that made us all laugh. Not everything was laugh out loud funny, but a heck of a lot of it was.

They made a couple of jokes that referenced the earlier jokes (it would have been bad if they did it a lot, but sprinkled throughout (maybe 3 or 4 time) were just enough great inside jokes for all of us).

Like on the show, Jonah and the bots came back a few times to joke with us–the giant Eegah! head on the left was for a shaving kit.  And the picture below was an ad for Eegah’s Chicken Shack (ew).  It was very cool seeing the bots “live” and “in person.”

Actually someone in the crowd had made his own Servo and brought it along which was really fun (and more obsessive than making tapes, I think).

When the first movie ended, I bought the poster ($10) because the Watch Out for Snakes mug (with lovingly hand made spring snakes) was way too expensive.  I was able to go to my car and come back for a pretty yummy snack in downtown Glenside–at the wonderfully named Humpty’s Dumplings.

And then I was back on line for the secret movie.  I had much better seats for this one (right in the middle but why was the row in front of me completely empty.  Completely.  It was weird. And then a guy who clearly wasn’t supposed to be there sat down and felt compelled to shout back (or just randomly) about whatever was on his crazy mind.  I could have done without him.

Before the second movie started, there were some amusing adds for merch projected on screen by Kinga.

And then Joel came out to introduce the second movie.  It was clear that Joel was really excited that the production as running and being received so well.  He made a few jokes and chatted with the audience members up front (the VIPs).  Indeed, later, Synthia came down into the audience and high-fived people (one audience member even got to be part of the show).

This movie was one that MST3K had never “done” before and, presumably that no one has ever seen before.  And boy was it spectacular.

The movie (since the tour is over I can announce it) was called Argoman The Fantastic Superman.  And with a title like that, you know its going to be good (or bad).  The Wikipedia summary of the movie is a good indicator of what we got: a 1967 English-language Italian superhero-Eurospy film.

And there was plenty of that WHAT? factor that makes MST3K films not just bad but wonderful.  I know that MST3K does selective editing for time (and possibly for plot). It’s unclear if they edited anything out of this that might have made this movie make more sense, but this film was all over the place (as that brief summary suggests).  It was all sexy and suave–with hot chicks, and gadgets like James Bond.  There’s a scene where a woman parades around in her underwear to distract hapless goons.  There’s a bedroom seduction scene–with many bathrobe changes.  But there’s also a superhero element that seems to come and go.

There were far too many hilarious jokes and “what?” moments to try to recall.  One of my favorites was after a scene of fisticuffs, someone pulls out a gun–he had a gun the whole time??

The film was bright and colorful as befits the era and those kind of films are so much fun to sit through.  But it was far more fun with Jonah and the bots riffing.

I also enjoyed that several times during the movie they would, apropos of nothing, say Watch out for snakes which would trigger a 30 second clip of Felicia Day trying to pitch her Watch Out for Snakes gun.

Gypsy appeared a few times during the film in silhouette, often bringing down or lifting up something.  She didn’t say anything and seemed to be there only to remind us that she was there, which was fine–if a sightly missed opportunity.

In the theater with Jonah and the bots were Synthia (Rebecca Hanson) and one of the Boneheads.  Rebecca Hanson was very funny–perfectly playing the awkward clone of Pearl Forrester.  I have since followed her on Instagram and enjoyed her MST3K love.  And I loved the nod back to the movie when Jonah was wearing multiple bathrobes as well.

The whole experience was fantastic–it brought me back to how much I enjoyed the show from premise to execution, but it do not feel nostalgic at all–it was infused with humor and having so many people there laughing along with me was wonderful.

Incidentally, at the end of October, the Mads–Trace Beaulieu and Frank Coniff from MST3K will be coming to Bethlehem.  They are doing two nights.  I’m busy on one night but the other night I’ll be there to see how THEY do it.

Getting to meet TVs Frank and Dr Clayton Forrester and TVs Frank will be a pretty cool experience, I hope.