#AtoZChallenge Topic Reveal

I revealed my topic last May but let's go over it again!  I thought since I watched tons of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax movies on Pluto TV/Amazon in the last 3 years that I could do a whole A to Z Challenge on it.  Doing one movie for each letter would actually be just the tip of the iceberg, so I broke it down into theme days corresponding to each letter.

Now your first question is:  what the hell is Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax?  Good question.  (Actually, dumb question.  Shame on you.)

In the not so distant past, about 1988 AD, a guy named Joel Hodgson came up with the idea of a show that would show old, public domain movies and have a guy and two robots shown in silhouette at the bottom of the screen as they make fun of the movie.

The show premiered on local Minneapolis TV about 1988 and soon became a fan favorite.  This first season starred Joel Hodgson as "Joel Robinson" a man trapped in space on a ship called the "Satellite of Love."  As the theme song tells us, a mad scientist named Dr. Clayton Forrester (Trace Beaulieu) and his henchman Larry (Josh Weinstein) are torturing Joel by making him watch terrible movies.  To help cope he makes robots out of spare parts.  One named Tom Servo and one named Crow T. Robot.  They sit with Joel in the theater to make fun of the movie with him.  Another robot called Gypsy maintains the ship.

The show came to the attention of Comedy Central, who picked it up for their network the next season.  The first season was rushed into production and thus featured only a slight improvement in the quality of sets and puppets.  The same cast from the local TV season reprised their roles.

So the second Comedy Central season is really the first real season in the way that Star Trek the Next Generation didn't really get going until season 3.  The second season there was time to upgrade the sets and screen quality and there were also cast changes with Frank Conniff taking over the henchman role as "TV's Frank" and Kevin Murphy (who had worked behind the scenes on the previous seasons) taking over as Tom Servo.  That's when the show really started to hit its stride.

This lineup lasted until mid-way through the fifth season Joel Hodgson left the show and was replaced by Michael J Nelson (the head writer and frequent guest star) as Mike Nelson.  Otherwise pretty much everything remained the same for about a year when Frank Conniff left.  Instead of a henchman, he was replaced by writer Mary Jo Pehl as Dr. Forrester's mother.

After the 1996 season Comedy Central dropped the series from its schedule.  The same year they released Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, which ended up in limited release in a few theaters for a short time.  That was the last appearance of Dr. Forrester.

The show was picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel with some more cast changes.  Once again they turned internally to fill the holes with Mary Jo Pehl taking over as the evil Pearl Forrester and writer Bill Corbett taking over the voice of Crow T Robot and also playing the henchman "Brain Guy."

After three seasons on Sci-Fi the show was cancelled again in 1999.  It was finally revived for Netflix in 2017 with an all new cast though pretty much the same format.

After the original series was cancelled for the second time, the cast went on to a few different ventures.  The most successful of which is Rifftrax.  The idea was originated by Michael J Nelson in the mid-2000s.  The concept was that since he couldn't sell DVDs of most movies with the "riffs" included because of the rights issues, he would sell the riffs separately for people to play while watching the DVD on their own.  Riff tracks or Rifftrax, get it?

At first Nelson did them by himself or with guests like Fred Willard, Joel McHale, and "Weird Al" Yankovic, but eventually he reunited with Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett from the Sci-Fi Channel years of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

They also had a side project around that time called The Film Crew.  The idea was pretty much the same as MST3K only the setup was they were in a basement shop recording "commentary tracks" for DVDs at the behest of a rich guy called "Bob Honcho."  Unlike MST3K there weren't silhouettes shown during the movie and there was only one intermission instead of the 3 or so in MST3K episodes.  There were only 4 episodes produced in large part because of issues that caused them to switch from Rhino to Shout Factory.  According to Wikipedia "Bob Honcho" was originally called "Bob Rhino" but they changed it when they changed distributors.

Around the same time much of the rest of the MST3K cast was doing a similar show called Cinematic Titanic.  That featured Joel Hodgson, Frank Conniff, Trace Beaulieu, Josh Weinstein, and Mary Jo Pehl.  I'm not really sure what the setup was supposed to be but like MST3K it used silhouettes all during the movie but also before and after as well.  Instead of sitting in a row they also arrayed themselves around the screen with some standing and some sitting.  Which was kind of distracting really. 

Anyway, while those other two projects ended, Rifftrax continued on.  The riffs available only on a website soon expanded into Videos on Demand on DVD and streaming on sites like Amazon, though the selection is more limited because of the rights issues.  Like MST3K it's mostly stuff that landed in public domain or otherwise was super cheap to pick up.

With the advent of smartphones they also developed an app for playing riffs.  And they've done a number of live shows since 2009, usually in Nashville or Minneapolis though simulcast to movie theaters through Fathom Events or whatever.    Besides the "A-Team" of Mike, Kevin, and Bill, there have been other guest riffers and there's a regular "B-Team" featuring Mary Jo Pehl and Bridget Jones, who was also a former MST3K writer and the wife of Michael J Nelson.

So there you go, a brief history of movie riffing thanks to my personal observations and Wikipedia.

To wax philosophical, I think the success of MST3K was helped in part by when it came out.  The late 80s and early 90s allowed it to ride the tide of post-irony like Seinfeld, The Simpsons, the work of Quentin Tarantino, and Scream.  Three guys making smart-aleck remarks during cheesy movies fit in with the sarcastic, snarky humor that began to dominate the airwaves.  As well the expansion of cable TV with Comedy Central and then Sci-Fi gave the show a home without the pressures of a big network.  Had it come along a few years earlier it might have remained a local cult favorite instead of gaining notoriety.

At the same time MST3K and Rifftrax are perfect for the streaming world of today with the 90 minute to 2 hour run times that are hard to fit into a network schedule but far more palatable for audiences on Netflix, Amazon, or Pluto TV.  That's what allowed MST3K to be revived on Netflix for a new generation of fans and has kept Rifftrax going for over 10 years.

There you go, now you're ready for the A to Z Challenge!