I was watching “Last of the Wild Horses,” with all the hilarious Trek alternate universe stuff going … Frank was doing Joel’s insane Joey the Lemur stuff and I began to wonder … it just came to me … would Andy Kaufman have been a MST3K fan had he lived to see it? I miss old Andy … and I think he would have been one of us.
So … what historical famous person who didn’t live to see the show do you think would have been a fan and why? Also, favorite episode(s)…?
I like to think Churchill would have been a MSTie. Favorite episode: The Killer Shrews. He would have understood the battle.
What’s your pick?
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Physicist Richard Feynman –
Richard died in 1988 and so missed the chance to be a fan, but he loved a good story and a joke not to mention he was a bongo player which is almost a gateway drug for MSTies, especially fans of 1002 Girl in the Gold Boots. Here’s a Feynman quote –
“Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.”
This is a wacky WDT… and I love it!
For a general history famous person, I’ll say Benjamin Franklin. He appeared to love puns and dirty jokes, and have something of a silly “potty” sense of humor. No doubt he would’ve loved any of the episodes with buxom young ladies, maybe Catalina Caper, with the famous “They’re standing four abreast!” riff.
And for an entertainment-specific person, Graham Chapman of Monty Python fame. He died in 1989, so MST3K had technically started but I doubt it was on his radar much if at all. He was witty yet rather brief, like the best riffing. The Deadly Bees looks like it was made for him. Actually, he probably could have played all the parts, from Vicky to Professor Manfred to The Cigarette Hag to Tess the Dog.
I imagine William Shakespeare could appreciate the heckling aspect, and that he had riffed performances of Ben Jonson plays. His favorite episode would obviously be Hamlet.
I’d say James Thurber would have appreciated the very Midwestern humor of MST. I’m sure the man who wrote “The Night the Ghost Got in” and “My Senegalese Birds and Siamese Cats” would have recorded every episode and watched them repeatedly (and smiled quietly to himself).
But if we’re talking a historical person farther in the past, maybe Sir Thomas More. Yes, he was rigid in his religious beliefs, but anyone who could tell the executioner to help him up to the block because he, More, could see himself down, had a distinctive, slightly dark sense of humor. I like to imagine him watching The Touch of Satan, hearing Servo’s “What do you get when you fall from Grace? / You only get cast into perdition!” and laughing uproariously.
Someone else who loves Thurber? Well, aren’t you just sitting in the catbird seat? (Can we be BFFs?)
I’d like to think Tex Avery (d. 1980) would appreciated MST3K. He’d have a field day with them in that “guy in the 3rd row” way in his cartoons (meant for movie theaters).
Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley perhaps, as they both penned horror novels featuring two of the most iconic monsters of our time.
Would they have enjoyed many of the monster flicks riffed by the MST3K folks?
Perhaps some favorites would be:
Sampson Vs. The Vampire Women?
Werewolf?
It Lives By Night?
The Bela Lugosi films?
What would they make of Ed Wood?
What would they make of Torgo? LOL!
I dunno about who would have have been a fan, but Jonathan Winters RIFFING, complete with sound effects-“Up the little ladder to the mother ship, Thor (thp thp thp thp)…wipe your feet, honey, looks like you stepped in some, well, it’s doggie, isn’t it, ohhh…”
Mark Twain. The man loved making snide comments on societal norms. He might like “Time Chasers”, aka “A Vermont Yankee in Washington’s Ranks”.
would say John Lennon would have been a fan.
Leonardo da Vinci. He would have loved Bill’s impersonation in Quest of the Delta Knights. He would have trashed their portrayal of him in the movie. And, he would himself have been a great riffer because, like Gene Hackman, he was good at everything.
Benjamin Franklin was known to have a bit of a snarky sense of humor and i believe would have enjoyed the show.
Also, i think Hitler would enjoy Gorgo, the anti French riffs as well as the various giant critters and people trashing the Midwest. but i wouldn’t show him a certain part of Invasion of the Neptune Men.
also Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde i think would have been fans of the show.
Ha! We can take turns in the catbird seat as long as we have the chance to discuss who’s the greater actor, Greta Garbo or Donald Duck. I’m torn but lean toward Donald, personally. You know HE would have been a MSTie.
I would say Frank Zappa, but I hear Frank WAS actually a Mstie.
So, I’ll go with George Carlin. I believe he would have appreciated the shows unique sense of humor.
Samuel Goldwyn apparently went through life inadvertently riffing himself but that’s not quite the same thing. ;-)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0326418/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm#quotes
Voltaire would have appreciated the satire running through the show.
Early TV pioneer Ernie Kovacs would love the show’s humor and ability to get the most out of it’s limited resources.
Well, why do you think Garbo wanted to be alone?
She went home, turned on her projector, and riffed old silent movies.
She was the original riffer.
It is known….
Almost agree. I think Ernie Kovacs would have really liked the earliest, mostly unscripted shows.
Oh, I’d say he has a few hundred years on most modern MSTies:
https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=midsummer&Act=5&Scene=1&Scope=scene
As for heckling Hamlet, NO ONE could do hip pointed deadpan sarcasm better in the Victorian era than Charles Dickens–
Who already let a rowdy theater audience at it in one chapter:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1400/1400-h/1400-h.htm#link2HCH0031
Mark Twain didn’t invent sarcastic parody, but he cornered the market on it for his time–
Like, when fighting gleefully bloodthirsty battles against “moralistic” children’s-sermon stories:
http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/tomsawye/mtbadboy.html
Or early-American poets:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3188/3188-h/3188-h.htm#link2H_4_0003
Going “outside the box” a little bit, I think Bugs Bunny would have LOVED the show, if he were real.
Given Joel’s admiration for Ernie Kovacs, I agree that he’d probably like how the show plays with the medium.
I get the impression that Fred Allen might’ve liked it, since Allen had a preference for topical, intellectual yet very funny comedy. The way the show fits in cultural references to great effect might’ve appealed to him.
I’m stumped on this WDT.
I just came over here to post how I enjoy the relative sanity on this board.
There’s a “news” story that was picked up by legitimate entertainment sites that Grover—yes the adorable blue Muppet—may have said the F-word on “Sesame Street.”
I’ve watched the clip.
Grover should sue.
Sigmund Freud –
Because sometimes a Little Creature is just a little creature.
I belive you mean Vamuel Goldwyn.
Agree Churchill would have been a MSTie, with his acerbic sense of humor. And he would have liked Killer Shrews, but would have understood the most important task would be to protect the liquor cabinet.
Stalin would have also liked MST. He was always one to enjoy the suffering of others. Stalin and Beria would have identified with Forrester and Frank.
Pretty sure Charlemagne would have liked the show.
Oscar Wilde: “There is only one thing in the world worse than being riffed about, and that is not being riffed about.”
Favorite episode: Time of the Apes (for the foppish costumes)
Nikita Khrushchev was known to have a great sense of humor when he was drunk, which was all of the time. He would be a Mstie for the great number of Russo productions. Additionally, He would get a real kick from USA productions INVASION & ROCKET ATTACK, USA.
i think Groucho Marx would have been a fan.
Mikhail Bulgakov, a brilliant Russian writer who died in 1940, would have loved MST. He was both a sci-fi writer and a satirist (among other things), so he would have been naturally drawn to the show. His novel Heart of a Dog is about a scientist who performs an experiment on a lovable stray dog that turns it into a vile human being–shades of Dr. F & Co., not to mention The Atomic Brain, The Brain that Wouldn’t Die, etc. His “The Fatal Eggs” is about a mad scientist who irradiates a bunch of reptile eggs out of which then emerges an army of gigantic snakes and alligators that threatens Moscow. If that doesn’t scream “MST3K” I don’t know what does, plus he even includes his own riffs: a series of running gags based on the fact that in Russian the word for “eggs” is also a euphemism for “testicles”.
Among other Russian writers, Dostoevsky would have been intrigued, I think: great sense of humor, wicked satirical edge . . . and he once played the ghost in a family production of Hamlet, so naturally he’d be interested in the MSTie treatment of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Alas, the “Russo-Finnish troika” might have offended his later, nationalist sensibilities, however. Tolstoy, on the other hand, would have been the ultimate wet blanket: later in his life, he was suspicious of anything that made people happy (like money, music, sex, etc.) and MST would not have had a place in his overarching theories of art, life, God, and everything else; I could imagine him writing occasional screeds against it with titles like “This Must Cease” or “Why Do People Need to Laugh, Anyway?”. Or else, he would have liked only certain episodes or seasons and would have regularly churned out dogmatic treatises “proving” why his own tastes are the only objectively true ones and how anyone who disagrees is morally flawed in some deep, irredeemable way. Thank goodness we’ve moved beyond THAT sort of thing in our more enlightened age, is all I can say!
Joe Don Baker under different circumstances?
Wow, deep.
It offends me, too, and I’m not Russian. All three just seem to be sneering at another culture in a way that I find to be cheap and cruel. “Ilya Muromets” was a colossal production, not cheap schlock at all. To riff it is simply to poke fun at things you don’t understand. Someday I want to see straight up, but even then I probably still won’t get it.
OK, somebody needs to write that!
Mr. Rogers-
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping’.” Perhaps Fred did catch an episode or two back in the days and took note of how Gypsy and occasionally TV’s Frank were helpers in a scary situation. Also, he was a puppet guy, you know.
Ambrose Bierce, author of (among many, many other things) “The Devil’s Dictionary”. Bitingly cynical and satiric, trashing the beloved work of an inept director would have been a true joy for him.
He died (disappeared, presumed dead) before the movie really came to be. A shame. I think he would have had some really choice things to say about “Red Zone Cuba”.
I think that, had Ernie Kovacs lived, he might himself have created a version of MST3K. I think it would be right up his alley. The world lost an incredible talent.
In the meantime, I’ll just post the reminder to sit through any Gilbert & Sullivan musical–Gilbert (the lyricist) LIVED for self-conscious wisecracking heckle-satire of anything within range, even of his own operetta tropes.
I assume most of the Kovacs mentions are here because Joel Hodgson was called in for one (Museum of Broadcasting?) testimonial tribute to Ernie’s thrown-together comic style?
80’s David Letterman–even in his “found humor” phase–might have been too snarky to heckle old movies (although his old morning show used to have a “morning movie” where one minute of an early talkie was shown completely without context), but impish late-night predecessor Jack Paar would have had a grand old time with it.
Just imagine the famous actionless scene from Manos. Only instead of Joel, Donald jumps up and shouts, “Do something! Gah!” And then has a total meltdown. I now know who I want for the next host.
Some of us watched Ernie Kovacs as broadcast. I first saw him on his show from Philadelphia, done completely live. He might give the impression of thrown-together style, but in the context of the times, it was pretty finished. I remind you that Captain Video was hugely popular with sets literally built from cardboard.
(I’m basically just repeating what I read somewhere; I can’t vouch for the accuracy of any of it)
Supposedly, during his lifetime, Winston Churchill was often referred to as “the Greatest Man in the World” (one could allegedly mail a letter with ONLY “the Greatest Man in the World” as an address and it would reach Churchill).
On one occasion, a visitor’s little boy wandered in on a startled Churchill in his office.
Awestruck, the boy asked him, “Are you really the Greatest Man in the World?”
“Of course I am,” Churchill scowled. “Now buzz off!”
(admittedly, “buzz” MIGHT not have been the actual word he used…)
Armed with that knowledge, the Brains might have worked Churchill riffs into “Mitchell” by starting with the “Buzz off, kid!” line. Which would’ve been something. Of course, you can say that about anything. ;-)
I’m not sure the feeling would be reciprocal, given M&tB’s noted obsession with jokes about King Friday XIII, Lady Elaine, and other bits of bad puppetry embarrassing “their” profession…
“Like all of life’s coping skills the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives.” – Fred Rogers
Eric J:
You need to watch Mr. Rogers to learn about compassion, humility, empathy, kindness, wisdom, and grace.
All traits you are sorely lacking.
Find clips of Mr. Rogers on YouTube and other streaming web sites.
I also recommend the documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”
You’ll become a better person.
HP Lovecraft and presumably most of his circle would have liked it.
His circle, perhaps, but based on what I’ve read about him, H.P. Lovecraft was a man of very little humor, the token stuffed shirt of his crowd. Maybe I’m misremembering some of what I’ve read, though.
Robert Bloch, THAT’S the guy who’d appreciate MST3K. Although his love of puns might have been too much even for the Brains.
Oooh, was Charlemagne introduced to MST3K by Bob Saget? They could riff tapestries together. Would you believe Charlie is the potty mouth of the pair?
“We could take Bob Saget to meet Charlemagne” the wonders of a time transport
Wonderful reading through everybody’s comments!
My own favorite episode, and could not agree more about him probably loving those costumes! lol
Lennon not only liked The Hudson Brothers show he was also a fan of director Alejandro Jodorowsky. I think that covers it! lol
Such a great answer! And funny… I’ve been bringing in the new year watching a wide variety of movies so I missed my suggestion being picked until this last day of the year. Several movies I’d ordered came in the mail today, first Gothic from 1986 finally on blu ray, a movie about the future Mary Shelley! Also Interstellar, a mindblowing science ride. I watched them back to back and had a helluva time. I think MST3k is mostly responsible for me being able to watch crazy combinations of movies like that.
Actually, in his own peculiar way, Kovacs did briefly riff on a film, quasi MST3K-style. I give you… Ernie Kovacs & The Clutching Hand.
Someone mentioned cartoon director Tex Avery early in the thread. I’d guess his Looney Tunes peer, Bob Clampett (1913-1984), who crammed his WB cartoons and later Beany & Cecil cartoons with puns and movie/pop culture references galore, would take to MST3K even more than Tex might have.
Something tells me that Elvis would also be a fan. He was a big Monty Python fan, especially of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
2019 Will find no change.
Shakespeare understood riffing; in A Midsummer Night’s Dream the rough theatricals were heckled by the aristocrats they were performing for. Odds are the groundling audiences hurled out various bits of commentary like “OI! Cleopatra needs a shave!” and “Shut up and die already!”