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What Did You Think?An open thread for reports on tonight’s RiffTrax Live.
For me, the good news was that the show was consistently hilarious, one of their best. So, stop that rhythmic ball handling and give your report! 52 Replies to “What Did You Think?”Commenting at Satellite News
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That was very, very funny!
There were a couple of problems at the Regal Commerce in East Brunswick, NJ. First, like during “Samurai Cop”, they didn’t show the test material, and I had to tell the manager that the pre-show hadn’t switched on. Later, the sound mix was off during the pre-show, so we had trouble hearing the lyrics to the songs. Still, the manager, who was very busy, did what he could, so I was satisfied. Not a full house, but a pretty good group.
The show was itself was great. I’d seen “Office Etiquette” before, at the Mads’ show at the Colonial, but the rest were new to me. Everyone did a great job; I really have to get this when it’s released on DVD. (It is going to be a DVD, right?) Two random notes: first, I thought that was a Band-Aid on Kevin’s forehead, until Mike & Bill noticed it. Second, what was Geoffrey Lewis doing in that fever dream of a short, “The Baggs”?
Oh, did anyone actually do rhythmic ball exercises in school? I must’ve been out that day.
Cinemark Monroeville Mall, east of Pittsburgh, PA, a good sized crowd of maybe 125 people. Sadly, due to storms, we lost signal halfway through the ball handling short and picked it up again midway through the danger short, completely missing the Bridget and Mary Jo short. But for the 1/3 of the crowd that stuck it out and didn’t go running for a refund, we got to see the rest of the show, AND got free passes to another show – including the Doctor Who RiffTrax. (And because I stayed to the end of the credit to see all my friends names, I got TWO free passes! Patience pays off!)
Anyway, the ball short just got continuous laughter from the crowd and was by far the favorite, at least for what we saw of it, in that you can’t believe you’re actually watching what you’re watching way. Trace and Frank’s Office Etiquette short was not as big a hit as the More Dates for Kay was last year, but still got good laughter. (They cleaned it up a bit from the version they do as The Mads to get that PG-13.) The bag finale went over well, too, but I seemed to be the only person in my theater who got the cheese ball running gag or who enjoyed Bill’s ode, which I thought was great.
And one more thing: if you managed not to wince during that one scene in the b&w safety short whose title escapes me, (you know the scene), you’re a stronger person than I am.
Yes. So sadly, yes. But we did them a lot better (and more complicated) than the kids in this short. It must have been an early 70s thing.
One other note for those interested in this stuff: Of course we had the return of Thelma “Nuveena” Tadlock, but that “Griper” short from Centron had MOST of the usual Centron suspects, including Jam Handy.
WOW! This was such a great show. From the beginning, the sound was a big difference. Such clarity. The guys looked fresh and rested- Trace, Frank, Mary Jo, Bridget and the other guy from Bo Jack Horseman added more beach fun. The 25 or so in Flint, MI tonight had a great, great time- what a way to kick off the summer, and, what a great time to be a MISTIE.
Slender crowd at the Lansing Mall Regal cinema, possibly because we’re used to these things showing at Celebration Cinema and I was flabbergasted when the show wasn’t listed there. I only found out Regal was showing it by going to Fathom Events’ web site. Because of the change of venue my love and I weren’t able to play pinball; Regal cinema hasn’t got any.
Very happy with the show, especially since the cinema’s sound seemed to be doing something funky with spoken words during the lead-up. Of course I like raccoons so I was glad there was a raccoon joining the canon of Weird Creepy Animals Giving Directions About Not Dying To Kids. And the early-70s footage really reminds you what enormous strides were made in mascot costume technology in the last couple decades. Not the faintest idea what was up with his beard. It’s like they wanted the costume to be fuzzier but had no clear idea what raccoons look like.
Also, my love has pointed out how you know it’s a 70s Educational Film because black people get shown in prominent roles. Having a black person cast as the real estate agent was a slick bit of subversion of the white-flight panic. Good casting there.
The Office Etiquette short seemed structurally flawed to me and my love. Not the riffing, just the underlying material. The protagonist didn’t really have anything to learn, and couldn’t from the premise that she had learned from an excellent teacher. Not knowing how to correctly handle an error in dictation was a good start, narratively, but after that she didn’t do anything that was wrong or unprofessional, and while her coworkers did some stuff that could have been jerky, there wasn’t any show of the consequences of making personal calls or eating candy in the office. Nor was there any show where her superior ways made for a more harmonious office environment.
Rhythmic Ball Movement, now, that’s a rough one. My big question: what was the rhythm? Was there any kind of guidance given to the kids about when they should start doing whatever they were doing? My minor question: how much time were the kids given to practice the moves before filming? If they had more than ten minutes to practice dropping a ball on the beat then they’re even more severely rhythm-deprived than I am.
The Baggs was weirdly interesting and I’d like to know what market, exactly, it was made for. It kind of has the feel of someone who wanted to make their own Red Balloon as their student film, and succeeded mostly. There’s some narrative problems in that it’s hard figuring out why the guy was chasing the bags. I think they should’ve brought the gathering kids in sooner, maybe from that first girl at the picnic site. Slick bit of production in getting the bundle of balloons caught in the telephone line, though. I’ve got ideas about how they might’ve managed that.
So hands up: who here would accept the chance to live forever inside an early-60s corporate-musical-promotional-short apartment, if they could get it wired for Internet? Yes, everyone, surely, right?
The Allstate short about ways to get yourself killed in the office was hilarious on its own. I think it undercut its punch by having the accidents come in such fast, hilariously quick punches.
Regarding the shorts clip show: my love asked about two of the shorts and I didn’t know the context. Was the short with the father angry about the expense of roast beef from a commercial short about the benefits of eating lots of meat at every opportunity, or an economics short about how to better budget your food expenses? Also, what was behind the short with the baby skunks? They’re adorable.
Also who knew there was a Corvair station wagon?
According to the movie posters this summer is bringing us The Nut Job 2. Someone responsible please do something about this.
The angry man is from David and Hazel: A Story in Communication, about a man who is worried he’s going to lose his job when his company is taken over by another, but who refuses to talk to his wife about it because he mistakenly believes real men keep their problems to themselves. The context is the first family meal in the short is roast beef and he’s perfectly happy and fine with that; the second time the wife serves it he goes off the deep end because he’s worried about spending too much money in the face of his job loss.
The skunk short is Little Lost Scent and it’s just one of those cutesy animal shorts like Tale of Moose Baby that shows the birth and growth of some species or another.
The biggest laugh in my theater wasn’t even a riff. It was the “Using kerosene to light a fire is a quick way to die,” line from the safety short. Even for that short, it felt completely out of nowhere and the subject shifted again just as quickly.
Wow, I’ve been using Kerosene to light fires for a long time.
Gasoline is dangerous, it explodes, but kerosene just burns
Thank you! Those make sense then.
(reposting this here; didn’t notice that the other thread wasn’t the What Did You Think? thread)
I… dunno what to say. Either this wasn’t their best effort, or maybe it only seemed that way in the Regal Hamburg here in Lexington, KY due to there being, counting myself, exactly four people in attendance. Usually they’ve got a much better turnout for Rifftrax shows, filling at least half the theater. Kinda let the air out of the live-show-broadcast atmosphere and all.
(I did hear about the Fathom website issues from one of the other people there, so maybe that had something to do with it, but since I’ve never had problems getting tickets in the lobby for these shows, I never noticed)
That’s not to say they didn’t find some choice shorts, though. Once again, Rifftrax proves there’s seemingly no end to short films from the 40s-60s that are just WAY out there. There was great riffing from everyone involved, too, it’s just that it was missing something without more people there, I guess.
Also, yeah, the pre-show slides and previews had really bad audio balance for us, too. I guess it was in the broadcast itself. Fortunately, the actual show’s audio was good (I felt a sigh of relief when it became clear it really was Mike’s mic that died mid-show).
8 people at R/C State Cinema in Lexington, Va. — about normal, maybe a few less.
Unfortunately, because storms knocked out the theater’s satellite, we could receive only audio. Since we were unable to see the video, my wife convinced me to leave after the first short.
While not a full house, there was a pretty good crowd where I saw it. Hilarious (not the crowd, the show)! The last short HAD to be drug-induced somehow.
A couple riffs I thought of while watching:
Accidents short – For almost every spill a Chevy Chase/SNL “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” Thankfully there was enough warning for me to hide my eyes at the foot-nail part!
Rhythmic Ball Movement – After a few fade out-fade ins: Wow, there were a hell of a lot of commercial breaks in this short little film!
The Baggs – After enough moments of essentially two humans jumping around in bags, a Joelesque “John and Yoko, no!”
I couldn’t even manage that. Once I saw the bare feet on the screen, I had a good idea what was going to happen and closed my eyes.
Interesting how the parents could see Ricky, rather than just the rock stupid kid. That’s not something you often see in these kind of shorts.
I have no memories of ever having done rhythmic ball exercises when I was the same age as those kids. Then again, those kids were at a Seattle school in the Seventies, while I went to a school in rural Virginia in the Eighties. So completely different environments. Especially loved the riffs where the kids beg for pop quizzes and the like.
Want to know I experienced instead of rhythmic ball exercises? Watching films like The Baggs. While I don’t think we ever saw that one specifically, our primary school classes were sometimes subjected to similar dialogue-free films made of pure insanity.
I recognized the sandwich makin’s lady from Carnival of Souls (my face I got from an elderly squirrel)
All around, very funny!
I wonder if anyone else picked up on this:
The short with Frank and Trace was full on social justice warrior talking points and it wasn’t that funny at all. (Was Frank possessed by the spirit of Samantha Bee or Lena Dunham???) In a 5 minute short the jokes hit all the SJW points – gender pay gap, mansplaining, glass ceiling, patriarchy and call outs for Devos, Bill O’Reilly and Huckabee.
Was all worth it for “None of this work matters now… because you’re DEAD.”
Sometimes I lose sight of just how good these guys are at what they do. They turned what must’ve been at least 10 minutes of kids throwing a ball about two feet in the air and then catching it (most of the time) into something genuinely hilarious. I lost it on the Marlo Stanfield reference. “My ball is my ball”
Wow, Sampo makes me miss good ‘ol NEPA with a crowd of about 50 cool kids! At the Regal 12 in Miami, there were a whopping 10 including me. Of course, it was POURING rain and I sat with wet shoes the entire time but that’s summer here for you! My first time at this Regal in a mall with nondescript parking and no stadium seating which for those in NEPA might remind you of the old Gateway Cinema Center in Edwardsville. Truly Rhythmic Ball Handling was a winner and I enjoyed how one student in each frame got a ball way smaller and was more poorly coordinated. The Baggs was really really something special…extremely hard to explain to someone at work today. This brought up some ethical questions like you got emptied then spring back to life? The child gang wasn’t TERRIFIED of these living burlap sacks suddenly running through their neighborhood? What was Sammy Hagar doing there? Sore from laughing today and still just confused about balls and bags. Interested to see if more people will come out in August if it’s not a monsoon! As a new northern transplant, I’m not that afraid of rain but we shall see!
About 3/4s full at Union Square in Manhattan. Seems like everybody had the same audio problems with the pre-show, which was annoying, but ultimately didn’t hurt the actual show.
At least 3 of those shorts were so full-on weird that the riffing was almost superfluous! There were 2 guys sitting behind me who were great laughers, so no problem there, and during The Baggs, one of’em kept whimpering “what IS this” between gales of guffaws. I felt his pain.
At first I was confused that not a single short had a summer or beach theme, but what the heck. It’s always fun to see the gang together and their enjoyment of each other is contagious, even when the jokes flag. The only time the proceedings came skidding to a halt for me was when — sorry, Bill, I still luv ya! — Bill sang his Ode to Shorts.
As for this:
I recognized the sandwich makin’s lady from Carnival of Souls (my face I got from an elderly squirrel)
THANK YOU FOR CONFIRMING THAT, JOHNNY’S NONCHALANCE! She went by so fast I wasn’t sure.
And that anyone could be surprised or annoyed at this late date that Frank Conniff is a proud liberal and loves to inject politics into his jokes, get over it. That’s who he is and he makes no bones about it. (Of course, my opinion is tempered by the fact that I agree with him, but still.)
LURVE Brigitte and Mary Jo, their team-up is the best thing to happen to the MST/RT family in years! They have yet to do anything I don’t enjoy and The Griper was no exception. And I have no problem believing that Kevin has ruined many a recording of theirs with his laughter — he’s a great laugher and seems to love watching his fellows riffers at work.
Like Brigitte referring to Mike as “Michael J. Husband.” They’re always so cutely awkward when they’re onstage together.
So, another fun night in Riffland. Next up … Doctor Who! Dun dun DA DE DAH dun dun DAH DE DAh dun dun….
Not to make this political one way or the other but just to point out what I also noticed about the “social justice warrior” jokes in Trace and Frank’s short – they didn’t get many laughs, especially compared to the other riffs. The first one about Devos got audible laughs from the Nashville crowd but the rest of them fell flat (at least from the Nashville crowd and in my theater in south Austin, a liberal city). The one about the glass ceiling didn’t even really make much sense as at the end of the short the woman who started off as a new employee, then had the job of the man who hired her and who knows how much higher she may have gone.
I haven’t missed a live show yet and it’s always great to see the rest of the old gang. I really enjoy Bridget and Mary Jo’s shorts/features at Rifftrax and I hope they keep putting them out b/c they are really fun together.
By far the strangest one was The Baggs. It was funny but I didn’t laugh out loud too much b/c I was just so bewildered that something like that even existed. Will probably catch more of the actual jokes when I watch it again in the future on DVD. I’ve got my mom hooked on these shows and she was also flummoxed by the bag short. Why did this guy expend so much time and effort to scour the city for burlap bags going so far as to dump out trash and steal them from people’s yards? I guess we’ll never know.
I must admit, my rhythmic ball skills aren’t as honed as they used to be, so I will probably take some time off to work on that.
@MuskratSuzie
I feel the same way. Frank is utterly hilarious when it comes to most of his subject matter and you can tell how much he loves being up on stage riffing with how much he gets into the atmosphere, but politically-charged jokes can often be a minefield. In my opinion, they fell flat for the same reason I stopped following him on twitter: Repeating the same hackneyed points, even within the context of comedy, just gets so old and unfunny after a while that it’s no fun having to hear them even more in a venue where we want to get away from those topics.
Reminds me of the post-reunion show comments about the “Every bathroom is a transgender bathroom for Kay!” riff, which did get a lot of laughs and, from what I recall, he had only one other generic, politically-based riff in the later Superman short and that was it for the night.
I think Frank purposefully does it to trigger the right-wingers in the audience.
The sound mix issue wasn’t a theater-based problem: the problem itself was feed-based, as I also experienced similar problems at my regular Rifftrax Live theater in Bowie, MD, with people checking Twitter to discover that this was also happening in other theaters.
My notes on the event:
-Not sure if it was just my theater or if it happened everywhere else, but my theater was lacking the audio of the Belmount Theater’s audience reactions to the jokes (not that it’s a bad thing, as my theater had a good chunk of audience, with it booming with laughter throughout the night).
-Definitely some great choices of shorts for the beginning, end, and 300th short, as Ricky Raccoon and The Baggs were the stuff that would give some viewers nightmares, while the rhythmic ball exercises short was definitely the type of short that would have bored kids if it was shown at school.
-Anyone else wished that the conscience would put an end of everyone’s misery and just kill The Griper?
-I have seen “A Touch of Magic” beforehand via the Fun with Shorts Youtube channel, with a few riffs from that riff of the short (more specifically, “riffed lyrics” to that fairy tale part at the beginning of the short) being in my head during it.
-In terms of “What the heck was up with that last short?”, from what I read online, the Baggs were characters that originated from the 1970 summer series, The Ray Stevens Show, with them being such a hit that the actors who played them, Tom Solari and Clark Carr, eventually made a short film about them.
Clifton, NJ-About 3/5 full, which is about the same as “Samurai Cop.” I’m biased in favor of short films for riffing. Sometimes a feature length movie can be repetitive over 90 mins (how drunk, ugly or fat Joe Don Baker is…). The “Ball Exercises” short was like a live action version of “Mighty Mister Titan” from Frank’s “Cartoon Dump” Show (on You Tube). The “Office Etiquette” short was creepy fine, even with Frank’s partisan jibes, which were ill-fitting for Rifftrax, especially this week. Bridget & Mary Jo bring a high energy fun whenever they’re riffing.They really seemed like they were enjoying themselves as much as we were. I thought Paul F. Thompkins was very funny and enjoyed the “banter,” though neither audience seemed to respond to it. Ditto for Bill Corbett’s poem. The end credits were also fun, where you could see costumes folks made for “Horror of Party Beach” “Black Lagoon”, etc. and nice acknowledgements to contributors. (Leah Goldstein=supercute). Nothing could eclipse “Samurai Cop”, but this was very good.
So, basically the EricJ of politics?
The show started out okay and strengthened as it went along. Agreed with those who said Trace & Frank got too political – I’m pretty much in line with their political views, but agitprop makes bad comedy.
The rhythmic ball thing was something else, and then the living burlap sacks were something other than else. Precisely the kind of bizarre “why does this exist?” that I love MST & RT for.
There were between 10 and 15 people in the theater, less than usual, certainly a lot less than the reunion show last summer. I didn’t arrive early so I didn’t see any technical issues, but did notice Mike’s mic cutting out. I was expecting some of it to be summer-themed material, but I’ll let that slide. The Baggs-what the freakin’ hell? I alternated between laughter and bewildered astonishment. I noticed something (paraphrased) which must be self-deprecation, like this: “This somehow went on for nine seasons and then got renewed by Netflix. They’ll renew anything”. I saw Party Beach Monster in the Nashville audience-good to see he has a sense of humor! As for rhythmic ball exercises-I feel sorry for those kids who had to do that nonsense on camera.
About half as full, and half as funny as normal. Sad to see it dwindle this far. I’m a fan and a backer and want to see them succeed, but my theater has been getting fewer fans turning up lately. I love Bridget and Mary Jo, and of course Bill, Kevin and Mike, even Trace for the voice that brings back memories, but Frank isn’t funny, and his grumpiness isn’t fun. The rookie sailor man Paul F. was OK, but something was off, maybe just nervous. I actually liked when Mike’s mic went out. You can tell it’s a live show, like a live concert when guitar strings break and mics go out and amps blow up. Also, odd things like the sticker on Kevin’s head! At first, I thought it was a band-aid like he gashed his head right before coming out and didn’t want a bloody head wound on camera. Then I thought it was a gag because everything they do is goofy. Then on Twitter, he said it was the legit sticker from his hat. I like goof ups and bloopers and poopies!
I waited to see my name in the credits which was fun. I hope they keep going, but it seems like it’s near the end of the run for RiffTrax events :(
I don’t agree with Frank’s politics, but I didn’t mind the riffs. They got a good reaction from the crowd at the Colonial, and they audience at the Regal Commerce laughed, too.
By the way, what was the name of the b&w safety short with the nail? I can’t remember the title.
Canton cinemas in Canton mi was about it’s usual crowd, which is nice cause it leaves wiggle room. 1/2 to 2/3 full. I loved the show, the shorts were just so bizarre. I thought Frank did a good job striking a balance between being himself and keeping it PG-13. His stuff is always current and a bit edgy and I usually am offended and I laugh loudly ;) I still remember in cinematic Titanic live in Chicago for. Frankenstein’s castle of freeks throwing in a mayor bogoavich (sp?) Joke for the Illinois crowd.
That ball rolling short though, WTH? Mike was right towards the end when he said thus is what it looks like to burn grant money! And the bag short… What controlled substances we’re used in the conception of that mess.
Can’t wait for physical media release. Cause I have to show the wife the warped world of rhythmic ball rolling.
Greensboro Grand 18 showing was actually pretty full! Certainly a better turnout than I’ve seen the last two times I’ve gone there. Great selection of shorts… I found the first one particularly hilarious since my sister and brother-in-law just bought a house themselves. I was tempted to call her and say, “If there’s a giant raccoon mascot in a Hawaiian shirt in there, a) sell the house and b) burn the house for good measure.”
The office work short… hoo-boy. Got some good and bitter chuckles from myself and a friend; I just quit a job in that kind of environment and he’s stuck in one.
Generally, everything I’ve watched on MST3K falls into roughly three categories:
1) Artistic VISION! Even if I have no actual artistic talent!
2) Money! Especially if we can ripoff something else or jump on a trend!
3) …what… why was this even made?
The Baggs falls squarely into the last category.
And yes, Frank does like his political humor. I remember seeing him at Cinematic Titanic in 2012 at the Carolina Theater in Durham, NC make a joke needling conservatives and expecting to get booed. Instead, he got a round of applause and cheers, which amused him greatly. He wasn’t aware Durham falls pretty squarely into blue territory, so it was amusing to watch.
It’s also hilarious when he came back to the Carolina with Trace last year for the Mads show; we were right in the middle of the HB2 “Bathroom Bill” controversy. The choice of film they picked? Glen or Glenda.
Has MST or RT ever done a standalone narrative short like The Baggs before? There were the serials early in MST, and that one Gumby cartoon (which I suppose counts) but it’s been 99% educational and industrial.
Paul F. Tompkins is no rookie. He joined them years ago for the House on Haunted Hill live show, and I think he’s been at every SF Sketchfest Shorts show – at least on the three available for purchase at the RiffTrax site.
I actually had a dream the next morning where I was walking slowly down a hotel corridor, dropping a ball from eye level and catching it, in between each deliberate step. And some kid behind me doing it faster and catching up and passing me. Guess I need to practice my Ball Skills.
There was a good crowd in Cary, NC, but unfortunately, they only had audio on during the pre-show so we saw none of the quips. Seems like there is always something wrong with the Fathom Events at this theater.
Once you use the phrase “social justice warrior,” you lose.
Another corollary to Godwin’s Law?
Just playing Devil’s Advocate, but for all the people who mentioned that the crowds are getting progressively thinner – how much of it do you think is based on popularity waning, versus “I’ll wait for my download?”
I haven’t gone to the past few shows – my wife was taking a year sabbatical so money’s tighter. I still contributed $50 to the kickstarter though – I justified by figuring I get downloads of 2 of the shows and some other goodies – but I don’t go to them in the theaters if a download to that tile is included. I still want them to succeed, and have huge shows but I made a calculated decision to do the kickstarter and skip the shows in theaters if I get downloads.
I also wonder if perhaps they’re doing too many shows per year? I know that seems weird when in the heyday of MST3K they were producing 24 eps a year. But it’s one thing to get the show as part of your cable package and another to pay to help produce the show AND pay to go see it.
And finally I wonder if ultimately there’s a feeling amongst fans that they’re like a well Rifftrax dipped into one too many times. It’s one thing to raise funds to get the rights to titles they’d otherwise never be able to get like Starship Troopers and Godzilla, and then you have to see them “live” because they can’t get the rights to release that live show on video. But at some point doesn’t it feel like these shows should be self-sustaining?
And whether or not we’re going to get more live “Love us!…LOVE US!!” concert tour shows, more than once a year or quarterly, as the main center tentpole of their performing income, now that they took the entire backlog of their VOD sales and started showing them for free on PlutoTV.
And how many ticket-weary cheapskates (who aren’t in it for the proactive public-rally charity-Kickstarter demonstration of love for Santa needing Rudolph tonight) will just sit and wait for the new releases there?
The only live remote I’ve missed was “The Room”, because I was mistaken about the venue. On reflection, I think it might’ve been a bit too much for me.
Personally, I go to the live remotes for one reason: they’re very funny with an audience. I may get the download or the DVD later on, but I just like laughing with a group for at least one showing.
I’d go every time, but I always work Tuesday and Thursday nights.
Think you might be confusing RiffTrax with Joel’s “Watch Out for Callbacks!” MST3K live tour. I can see, why, though: one is three live shows produced at a smallish-theater in Nashville (one less than the now-standard four shows a year); the other is a 29 city tour by bus in the middle of the summer with an unwieldy, overdone stage set where the host of the show is on record as being not that enthusiastic about said tour, one of three main stars isn’t even going to participate, the two marquee costars only appear on video segments, and oh yeah top tickets are a few hundred bucks.
Only been to the CT shows, but my take on the whole see-’em-live experience:
The reason I went to the CT shows wasn’t because I’d heard of the movie (with CT, I usually hadn’t), or out of some pilgrimage fan-love to see them in person, although it was cool to meet the Old Guard after the show.
My moviegoing and movie-riffing experience was shaped by growing up with the old 24-hour sci-fi festivals we used to have every year in our big-city college town: You’d get college and online buddies meeting up, but not everyone in the theater knew each other; there was just one big goofy hive-mind sense that we were crazy enough to be seeing the movies for the same reason, and that was what created spontaneous group audience reactions. (Especially from midnight till dawn, once we got a little punchy, and we were trapped with no subway back to the city. :) ) It was a big sci-fan experience in general, so you’d see folks showing up with costumes or props, and even good movies ended up harmlessly riffed, but bad ones, and some were bad, got merciless running jokes about the pain we had watching them. It’s just what happens when you get the right audience together in a theater that WANTS to see the movie, and you don’t see that as much with the cineplex folk these days, as you could back in the city or college-town’s “local” theater.
During the CT tours, we had two of them in the ancient movie-palace of our one-main-street college town, and seeing the audience treat it as a MSTie fan convention, schmooze the Q&A with Joel onstage, and watch the book trailers and Do the Frank as “warmup”, that’s about as close to recreating the goofy group mentality of the audience experience from the old festivals as you can get. If they’d decided to make it a triple-feature all-nighter, and the guys only riffed the first movie, while the audience continued to react to the other two movies by themselves, you’d get an idea of what I got to see growing up.
In the live-CT “East Meets Watts”, there’s a scene during the big brawl where one character pulls out a gun, and then….throws it at the hero and runs for it, and the audience just explodes before the guys can even get a chance to riff it–That’s when you have an audience pumped up to do the riffing themselves.
I’m guessing most of the RT kids don’t have that experience. They’re (okay, usually) a younger crowd who didn’t grow up with the old series, are used to blowing off their movies by themselves at the cineplex, and don’t have as much sense of the Audience.
Except when they come to the tours to show their love to MK&B, and then have that experience delivered to them personally on a platter….By the people who KNOW HOW!! And who, as we know, are not exactly shy about grabbing credit for it.
Aside from knowing that more tickets will be sold for Sharknado than for Fun in Balloonland, RT knows that its money is in creating Cult of Personality–“Tune in to see what we’ll do to this movie!” And in cultivating that cult, and if they’ve been getting more verified income (remember, Kickstarter means commitment!), they’ll be focusing on the live tours to give their audience something the audience thinks it won’t get from anywhere else, or from anyONE else.
CT, OTOH, found touring was too much trouble, and tried to round up the Netflix series instead. But, had to go out on tour again, just to compete with the other brand name.
Ah logged in at last. I rather enjoyed the show. Still have NO clue what on earth the burlap bag short was about. As for Frank’s political views during the office work short? I share his views so I wasn’t bothered by them. And for a woman to even *have* an office job back in 1950 or so was pretty damn revolutionary. I used the discount freebies from this show to buy the VOD in advance so I’m all good.
So now RiffTrax somehow destroyed a chance at seeing the CT crew doing a new MST3K series? I assume you have proof of this.
Just kidding, I know you’re kookoo banana pants.
Codified as such: “As an online discussion attracts participation from disaffected, disenfranchised white males, the probability of the epithet ‘social justice warrior’ being deployed approaches 1.”
Perhaps it’s just been a grumpy week for me, or perhaps I had something totally different in mind, but the whole evening seemed a bit… off. I can’t just point to one thing; it just seemed like everything had some sort of hitch in its get-along.
Our sound was weird at the start, and it sounds like most people had this problem. Do you know the WOW effect in Windows Media Player, previously done by only connecting the left and right wires to a speaker but not the ground? That’s what it sounded like.
The dead-time between shorts was uncomfortable at best. I love Bill, but his ode to shorts was awkward. The impromptu banter was not funny. I felt like they tried to make it funny, but it just wasn’t clicking. Thankfully, Paul really helped in this area, but only for a short while.
I’m having trouble grouping my thoughts, so here’s a short-by-short list.
“Ricky Raccoon” – GREAT source material, but I felt there were many missed opportunities. Good start. Rank: 3rd
“Office Etiquette” – Trace and Frank never disappoint and this was the second best of the evening. Rank: 2nd
“Rhythmic Ball Skills” – Sigh. Okay, watching paint dry is boring. Watching paint dry with riffs is less boring, granted, but it’s still watching paint dry. I feel like this short was picked on catchy and innuendo-laden name alone. Rank: 7th
“The Griper” – Nothing sets things right like a good black-and-white social behavior short from the 50’s. However, like “Ricky”, there were some missed opportunities. Rank: 4th
“Sentinels of Safety” – Now THIS is what I’m talking about! GREAT source short, GREAT riffing, my sides hurt from start to finish. Bingo! Rank: 1st
“Touch of Magic” – Decent, but why do I feel like, many years ago, the Brains watched this one and “Design for Dreaming” and went with the better one, thus making this the leftovers. Rank: 5th
“The Baggs” – The hell? Is this a PSA about littering? Stealing? Oh! It’s a
cutegoofy-as-all-get-out short story. Rank: 6thAll-in-all, a m’eh evening. Not sure if it was because of a different venue, but the tickets were a few bucks more expensive this time. Unfortunately, what I got in return went the other way… this time.
EricJ: the audience at RT events I have been to mostly looked like middle aged MSTies, like me, with a few younger. I’m in my 40s. Maybe your middle age is 50s and we’re the “kids.” I don’t know, but I think you are off in your assessment here.
My usual theater in Spokane, WA, was mostly full. The show felt a little uneven and lacked some of the energy from the MST3K reunion but I think that probably came from having fewer groups come out. I still enjoyed it quite a bit and am looking forward to the next one even though I’ve never seen Doctor Who before. The show also solidified my opinion that the Mads should release riffs through the Rifftrax site like Bridget and Mary Jo.