  Visit Cinematic Titanic, the new site by Joel Hodgson and other original MST3K cast members.  And be sure to visit mst3k.com, the official site of Best Brains, Inc. and Mystery Science Theater 3000.  And don't forget about rifftrax.com, the place to download DVD commentaries by Michael J. Nelson.  And also be sure to visit the official web site of Michael J. Nelson.  Also also be sure to visit the official web site of Kevin Murphy.  Discover Darkstar. |
Weekend Discussion Thread: Your MST3K ProjectsAlert reader David writes:
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Satellite News is the official fan site for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 television series. It is endorsed by Best Brains, Inc. but is an independent publication written and compiled by Chris Cornell (msampo@aol.com) and Brian Henry (erhardt4@aol.com). Best Brains, Inc. does not maintain this web site, nor is it responsible for this site's content.
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About three months ago, I was directed to create and implement a sales training course. The material was prepackaged and quite dull; they had worksheets, video examples, and horrible discussion points.
I found unaltered copies of “Hired Parts I & II” and showed them during training. I instructed the class to interject their thoughts and comments during the videos.
I did this for four separate classes; the results were mostly boring, but once in awhile there was a good comment.
I also said that I owed my success to “an amazing mentor named Rando.”
My DeviantArt gallery is full of MST3K fan art. I can’t possibly link to all of it in one post, so I’ll just give you the link to the gallery itself and let you look around (try entering MST3K in the search bar): http://jbwarner86.deviantart.com/gallery/
My most recent one is “Pa-Pa-Pow” http://jbwarner86.deviantart.com/art/Pa-Pa-Pow-120415270 , a tribute piece I did for “Laserblast”. My only regret is that I couldn’t fit more characters in there.
I put up something on my website where two characters make fun of song lyrics. I used the horrendous “Sorry” by Buck Cherry. It sucks, and I did my best to tear it apart MST3K-style.
Back in a high school art class, one of my clay projects was a Tom Servo. I think he came out pretty decently, though I kept myself from going too far: rather than trying to match the proper coloring he became a solid shiny black. So I guess he was more like the theater Servo.
I wrote, or co-wrote, several MiSTings back in the late ’90s and early ’00s.
Plus, on the dedication page of my master’s thesis, I thanked MST3K for maintaining my sense of humor through the process. (And Lord, I needed that. *wry grin*)
Gah! And how could I forget this?
Back in the summer of 2003, my workplace had a cube decorating contest. I decided I may as well go with an MST3K theme, and have some fun with it. I put up the postcards on the wall, along with an old calendar. Put a couple of Rhino videos up on a shelf. Played a snippet of the theme song. And, in a burst of either inspiration or insanity–or both–I created a shadowrama and taped it to the screen that’s used for the indirect lighting system. Word balloons let Tom say, “Geez, can you say obsessive?” Mike added, “Or fanatic?” And Crow said, “Every move we make, every breath we take, she’ll be watching us!” I figured if I’d have them up there, they’d best riff *something,* and that something might as well be me. I even fired up the Torgo screensaver for them–and for me. I’d never seen or heard it before.
Well, against the odds I was thinking of, I *won.* Got some nice 4th of July-themed prizes. *grin*
My friend and I once did our own riffing of “The Day The World Ended”; we placed a video camera at the TV screen playing the movie, while we sat on either side of the camera (offscreen) throwing out jokes at random, something similar to the days of KTMA. When we finished, at the time both of us thought we had done a horrible job, but when I played it back recently there was a joke here and there that cracked me up.
http://www.newshounds.com/mft3k.html
The “Mystery Fandom Theater” site is down for good, I think, and since all the key participants have long since moved away from each other, I don’t hold out any hope that it will return. But it was definitely fun while it lasted.
http://www.rifftrax.com/iriffs/good-table-manners
http://www.rifftrax.com/iriffs/our-hands-how-lose-what-we-have
I’m “Beagle.”
And lastly:
http://www.newshounds.com/mst3k.html
… you could say I’m something of a fan.
You remember MST3K Presents Caption This! on scifi.com? Because of the generally neglectful way SFC ran it and the cappers’ fears that one day we’d wake up and it’d be gone, I built a site that my lawyers tell me is in the same vein, and not a cheap knock off. CT’s been gone for a few years, and a few more imitators have cropped up, but my site keeps chugging along. It was actually one of the first bits of programming of any complexity I did before my brief career as a fully fledged web developer. (I’m now a less than half fledged database programmer).
I also oversaw a few mstings performed by the cappers. The notion was that it would be done as a group effort over a wiki and sort of just run itself. That never happened. I think we peaked around #2 of 3, though #3 was still pretty good, just had about 200% too many riffs.
As a side effect of my capping site, I also have a youtube channel that includes a number of clips (mostly stingers) from the raw movies featured on mst, and a slightly outdated list of the original versions of the movies that are available at archive.org.
I had built a cardboard/spraypaint SOL like set, gotten a DR.F costume, prepared a script for a couple of host segments and riffs for a movie called A*P*E [1976] but sadly it was never filmed. My camera would only show half of the tv screen of the movie during preprodution tests. It made the veiwing unwatchable.
As has been generously reported here, I’ve been fortunate enough to get Frank and Joel to do voices on The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd, the family friendly podcast I produce. Joel played Blackbeard on two episodes while Frank has been our most reoccurring special guest star playing Buffalo Bill Cody, Patrick Henry, Nikola Tesla and Ulysses S. Grant to name a few.
I’ve also had dinner with Clu Gulager. He likes apple pie with Cheddar Cheese on the top of it.
In this extremely stupid short I made, I made an reference to a Maltese goose.
Example
The link I provided doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter.
I’ve managed to sneak in a lot of references here and there due my whole “school” thing – though I think one of my favorites was being on a coach bus and me and my friend riffing (very loudly) on High School Musical 3. Good stuff.
For Halloween, I dressed up as Dr. F and passed out DVDs of Zombie Nightmare…for AP Art, one of my breadth projects were 9 3×3 squares of my Crow figurine (and he’s actually going to to the College board!)…
Probably my biggest thing, though, was the creation of a weekly chat over at, of all places, an anime website. I pulled two of my friends into it, and our trio hosted the room we decided to call Movie Sign. Back then (August), the chat function was very new and didn’t have any sort of events, so our weekly watch-and-chat about MST episodes started a trend for the thing. Two things that blew me away were how many people knew what MST was (this is a site mainly populated by teenagers and college students, making many of us a bit too young to really remember it on TV), and then how many people we were able to make curious and then become fans.
We’re also the most popular of the two weekly chats (there were others, but they were temporary) – and the other is an anime group. The MST chat being more popular than the anime one at an anime website…that makes me giggle.
When I was in high school my English class was reading Hamlet and I talked my teacher (also a fan of the show) to show my videotaped MST version of Hamlet in class.
I convinced the same teacher to give extra credit to everyone in class who wrote to the sci-fi channel asking them to keep MST3K on the air.
Fun class!
well back in, i wanna say 1997 or 1998. I built a cambot (i had planed to make a crow and a tom but i was unhappy with how cambot turned out.), a mst3k moon, a replica of the movie sign buttons, and a 30oz plastic drinking cup.
out of all these projects the moon came out the best. its also the only project that survived, to this day it still hangs from the celing wherever i live.
eventually I hope to riff my own movies once I get some money together and assemble a cast.(obviously not a direct rip off, more an homage and reinvention, posted free on the internet of corse)
someday.
“jimminy thinks johnny, if only I could get a ride in one of those”
I played Gypsy once. The “Mystery Fandom Theater” site is down for good, I think, and since all the key participants have long since moved away from each other, I don’t hold out any hope that it will return. But it was definitely fun while it lasted.
Two iRiffs. I’m “Beagle.”
And lastly:
… you could say I’m something of a fan.
Double posted because I have no idea why my last one was awaiting moderation other than the fact that the links were not hidden.
Why are my comments awaiting moderation? I put in links, but everyone else has as well.
My biggest project has been one that many people have take on as well: converting my own collection of MST3K episodes from VHS to DVD. I started out with trying to use iDVD to make menus, and a few of them turned out well, but iDVD’s encoding really sucked for longer formats like MST3K so I ended up using Toast. So, I have no nice menus on most of MST3K VHS-to-DVDs but I do have a lot of episodes that I truly love captured to DVD from my own source material.
I have done about 30 episodes including a few that ultimately made it to official release. DANGER: DEATHRAY is one that gets a LOT of play here as is GIRLS TOWN, LEECH WOMAN and OPERATION DOUBLE 007.
I started a few other projects, like covers for DVD cased (abandoned since I live where I have space issues) and a a database to track the details of the VHS-to-DVD project (also abandoned since a table in the my Tiddlywiki was easier, as well as just having a print out with highlighters and color coding).
Long, long, LONG ago, literally in the mid 90s before the web was really even know, I was trying to have what would now be called a blog about MST3K news. I don’t even have a record of that anymore (thank goodness really).
I would love to hear from some of the folks who have put together amazing projects like the STACK-O-LOVE Hypercard Stack (which I would LOVE to see replicated online somewhere) and some of the fantastic Mac OS (Classic and X) icons that people did throughout the years.
MST3K-related projects have been a staple of my life since 1990 or so, when I was ten years old. Back then, I built a few Servo units and even a Crow, but they weren’t very screen accurate. My elementary school let me tour them around to different classroms for who knows why (truth be told, it was about the ONLY good thing I remember from elementary schhol) However, they weren’t very sturdy and have long since disintegrated.
In high school I made some custom MST3K action figures and a small Tom Servo statue, but it wasn’t until several years ago in college that I began bot building again. I havent yet completed the new and much more screen-accurate Crow and Tom I’m working on, but then I’ve decided to make them more challenging to build; I’m trying to make them more articulate and detailed than they were on the show. I got the idea to go that route when I was working on building some parts for crow. Since I wasn’t able to find some of the parts, I’ve had to try and reproduce them in other ways, primarily in wood, like Crow’s shoulders and feet. Anyway, since I have to build some of the parts custom, why not improve them? I’m hoping to be done with both Crow and Servo by the fall of this year, but we’ll see how things go. I’ve got a bunch of stuff up at my Deviant Art gallery, located here…
http://weirdonian.deviantart.com/
There’s a prototype for Crow’s hand, the action figures, and some Tom Servo heads too.
I once wrote up some riffs for the David Lynch adaptation of Dune. I have no idea what happened to them. The only one I remember clearly occurs during the opening credits when it shows that the music was composed and performed by Toto, which goes, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little composer, too.” A bit obvious I suppose, but worth a giggle.
For a high school powerpoint presentation, I used the “Tusk” medley from Werewolf for the credits. It confused people, but I was happy anyway.
It wasn’t me, but when my ex was in grad school for her Masters in Psychology, she took my copies of the MST-ed shorts (Body Care and Grooming and A Date With Your Family) to her gender studies courses. Apparently they were a hit.
I’m a filmmaker, and I decided a long time ago to sneak references to MST3K in everything I do, you know, something about the right people getting it or something. Anyway, I have about 40+ videos on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/skipfusion. I also created an iRiff for the Rifftrax contest called “Best Friends B-Movie Bonanza” in which my friend and I riffed the 80′s drive-in classic “Deadtime Stories.” We got selected as one of the top ten, but alas our victory was stolen by some guy with glasses…
I also named my cats Rowsdower and Sampo, probably not very original in the world of MSTies.
I drew two pastel drawings, one of Tom Servo and one of Crow, that I ‘signed’ and framed. I wanted them to look like celebrity 8x10s you’d find on the walls of Hollywood restaurants, like the now-defunct Brown Derby, et al, which they do. They always make me smile.
Okay. So my dream box set would go something like this…wait…oh, we’re not doing that.
I once drew a picture of myself hanging out with the bots on the SOL. I had an intention of putting it as my Facebook profile picture…never finished inking it.
I’ve written a science fiction/detective/comedy novel with a few MST3K references in it including a lackey character based on Torgo. I’m currently in the re-writing/revision stage, but because I’m a hack, I doubt it will ever see the light of day.
Too bad I can’t seem to get my exact mental image of the story and characters down on the page–some of it is damn funny.
When I was in junior high & high school (ten years ago) I worked MST into as many of my art class projects as possible including a bust of Dr. F, my friend did a pretty good bust of Joel.
Also, I’m a bit of a “found object” artist and I owe that inspiration to the
Brains, I’ve made some obvious MST related stuff, such as a ship and a working robot head that would’ve made a nice brother for Crow, mine was silver with a vacuum cleaner attachment that is meant to clean fan blades for beak, and light bulb cage around the whole head.
For 8th grade science we had to make short videos about a planet, I don’t know what the teacher was thinking when he assigned another Mistie and me the planet Uranus. Our video was set up as if we’d been accedtly shot into space towards Uranus, and we sat behind a counter with this toy robot, we didn’t have a camera man so we just set it on a table and left it running, the thing ended up being 20 minutes when everyone elses were under four.
oh and I have a massive MST3K tattoo, which I’ve shared on here before.
I used to make up MST3K quizzes, like matching the character to the movie or the quote to the movie.
Nobody ever made a 100% on my quizzes. I don’t know if that’s good or bad…..
Well, last year my buddy and I made 5 full length riff-trax style riffs on old public domain movies and posted them online.
Check it out, pdbasement.blogspot.com
We recorded a 6th, but the audio got screwed up and we never got around to re-doing it.
When I was taking German in high school, sometimes we’d have to write brief skits in German and then perform them. Once, I basically just translated one of the host segments from “The Giant Gila Monster” (the one where Joel opens a malt shop and the ‘bots make fun of him,) and a friend and I performed it. He was the one who got me into MST3K in the first place, loaning me tapes because I didn’t have cable back then.
My brothers and I are riffing
“Night Of The Lepus” as an iRiff over at Rifftrax. We have a whole slew of movies
that we are planning right now, and all
in the same ballpark as the original MST3K,
but felt that “Lepus” was going to be the
most obvious film to riff first. What can
I say – we are coming out swinging.
I hope you guys check it out,
we are releasing the lepus on May 25.
http://www.iriffs.com/watchalong
One time me and my sister went to an earth day thing where you were supposed to build something out of old pop cans. We built a robot and named it Crow. We won, too. We won a candy bar.
I also read Hamlet in Senior English class, and we had to do a visual/oral project. I cannot remember what it was, but I asked my teacher if I could slightly modify the project to, ‘alternate versions of Hamlet’
First there was a mirror, mirror version, where everyone sports vests and goatees. King Hamlet is an opresive ruler, so young hamlet disowns him, and renames himself Riblet.
Ham/Riblet become power hungery after killing is father, that he kills EVERY character in the story. Except Horatio.
Then of course, the percussion version, with spot on script of that particular host segment.
I wanted to record the drumming part but I did not know how. I actually sad that I wanted to record me and my bloods (sidehackers!) wailing out the percussion version with the bongos and maracas.
Next, the furniture version, again with adherence to the HS, even trying to match voice inflections.
Then scuba version, and bucket head version.
Then I completed it with Servos well spoken monologue, ‘Stick it to all those pretentous bastards who want to do something different with this classic tragedy…’ ‘…modern astract interpretation sort-of-thing’
Lots of laughs, and I passed it. I wanted to show the episode, but then I realised that my teacher would see that I lifted eighty percent of my project from this show. Ah well, you win some, you lose alot.
The name of the fictitious business in my handouts for an ACC101 class I teach is “Mike’s Speedy Transport 3000″, abbreviated MST3K of course. The owner’s name is Mike Nelson, and he has various transactions with businesses such as “Tom’s Stationary”, “Crow’s Appliance Emporium” and “Gypsy’s Radio Shack”. I’ve had one student so far get the joke. As the student body gets younger (compared to me), the pool of people who might get the humor gets smaller.
Randy
Just my website. But I haven’t updated it in years. http://www.picturethisquote.com – Now it’s just an archive of the old entries.
It was fun, but sometimes very difficult to transcribe the audio correctly. Especially since at the time I just had VHS to work with, and no digital copies on the PC to make things easier.
I remember doing some art stuff in a computer photoshop class or whatever, and i used a red/gold bowling pin/gumball/engine block/helmet net motif. I cannot remember for the life of me what the project was.
Back in the day, when I was writing Tiny Toons comics for Warner’s international division, I offered up my services to Valiant/Acclaim when it looked like they were going to make an MST3K comic. (Actually, it was more like begging for a chance to do it.) Talked with some editors, did a sample riff off of a wonderful 50s sci-fi comic name of Lars of Mars… aaand nothing ever came of it.
Look me up on MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/cranberryblogs) and you can see a project I did finish: The complete and utter history of MST3K in haiku form.
Yes, I have no life!
Last year I attempted to iff Space Jam, and even posted some videos on YouTube but they were deleted by WB. I showedmy videos to Billy West (who voicd Bugs Bunny in the movie). He was no happy wth the riff job I had done and wen into Ray Dennis Steckler mode about how low it was for me to attack Space Jam, and if I ddn’t like it, I should tryand make a better movie, etc., etc.
I also made a Servo in a high school ceramics class. It was roughly 6 inches tall, and his hoverskirt had a perforation that made it into a whistle.
Apologies to those who had their comments delayed. I think WordPress is suspicious when the posts have a lot of links. They’re cleared now.
Besides writing various MiSTings (including, it appears, the first-ever Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction MiSTing), over the past year I created a successor site for the long-lost Web Site Number Nine. It’s still got only kind of an awkward interim non-name, and I haven’t had time to add nearly as many MiSTings as I want to (I haven’t even uploaded all the ones I’ve written), but it is up at http://www.nebusresearch.com/mst3000/.
… Er. Hold on. There seems to be some DNS problem. It will be there as soon as I do something appropriate to the appropriate persons. But believe me, it’s there and full of MiSTing goodness.
Garza says:
May 2nd, 2009 at 8:
I teach “Sales Management” at a university and I used the MST3K version of “Hired I and II”. I used the part at the end to reinforce some of the lesson work. The kids loved the riffing.
Those classes they at least didn’t sleep
Don’t worry, Brandon. From most accounts i’ve heard, Billy West is always a bit of an ass.
I’m not artistic enough to create something physical, but at least once a day I experience the following:
*blank stares*
I sigh and explain “It’s a MST reference. You really should watch Space Mutiny”.
I made this last summer. I’m not sure if it counts, but here it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxL4qxxn7KY&feature=channel_page
Back in 2003, I started a multimedia “MST3K Quotes” project, in which I listed segments of dialog from various episodes, added notes and/or explanations for the riffs, and included some explanatory images and sound clips. It also includes an all-too-short page of frequent riffs, a very preliminary riff index that riffs and what shows they’re in, and links between callbacks and the original riffs so one can jump either way. I’ve never publicized or let search engines crawl it because it was so unfancy, so you all are the first to take a look if you wish.
I haven’t updated the web copy for a few years now, although I continue working on my home-system copy. The sound clips are missing from the online version because my Internet provider doesn’t give me much disk space, and I haven’t gotten around to getting my own web domain. I once calculated that I have over 10 times the material that Wikiquote has in its MST3K page, but that’s still a far cry from 310+ hours of dialog.
A month or two ago, reading Sampo’s new episode-guide posts, I followed one of his “References” links to find “The Annotated MST”, which does the riff-explanation part of what I’d been working on. Focusing just on the riffs, Annotated has a lot more explanations than I have. I’ve focused mainly on quotes I like, then started expanding around them for various reasons, so I’ve got a lot of dialog with fewer explanations. I like Annotated’s explanations, but mine often have more details and some personal observations, more like Sampo’s ep-guides.
Of course, I still have huge numbers of riffs that I’ve tagged for future writing but never got around to. I haven’t made any attempt (yet) either to incorporate Annotated’s information into my project, or send my information to its author.
Don’t tell Toblerone, but ideally, I’d like to work toward a website that showed the entire dialog of every MST3K episode or other fragment (and now, adding Cinematic Titanic, Film Crew, and RiffTrax materials!), with clickable notes, images, and sound clips about anything that isn’t obvious to any Internet-connected human with a good command of English. (This might help MSTies in Keflavik, Iceland, and other far ports who might have long-circulated tapes on hand.) But it’s still just a pipe dream…
Oh, and I also work MST3K riffs into my everyday life when possible. Once a friend of mine was looking at someone’s framed family portrait. When he wondered aloud who they were, I immediately replied, “Oh, that’s the Came-With-The-Frame family” (“The Final Sacrifice”, ep 910) and he cracked up. But I confessed that I’d lifted the riff from MST3K.
If I may take just a moment to join “Beagle”…
iRiffs, IRIFFS, IRIFFS!!!
If you haven’t checked them out, DO!! There’s some “Classic Commercials” in it for you…
I’m teaching a statistics class this summer for future teachers at a large university. You can bet that we’re watching “Why Study Industrial Arts.” Mr. B Natural might also be shown. And there are a lot of educational film RiffTrax that I might work in.
As far as slipping in a covert MST3K reference, I ended a graduate school presentation once with, “His last words were, ‘Huzzah!’” Sadly, I can’t remember which film that riff’s from. (I want to say “Time Chasers,” but that doesn’t sound right.)
itsspideyman #39 – My mom showed Hired II when she was a coding manager at AT&T. They had their weekly meeting and she listed it on the schedule as “Motivational Video”. She asked for thoughts afterwards and one of the other managers unfolded his donut napkin and placed it on his head. True and hilarious!
Re #45: “Huzzah!” was most extensively used in ‘Pod People’. The deceased in question was the bearded guy with the crossbow who had “…renaissance festival written all over him”
#303 was my favorite when I first discovered the show in high school, so another reference to it found its way into a drawing in my senior year art class: We had to base a “Benday-dots” drawing off 2 different comics, and mine was mostly from the ‘Transformers Generation 2′ Halloween special. As Bludgeon kicks Jimmy from ‘The Family Circus’ off a cliff, I had him inform the tyke, “It’s called EVIL, kid!”
Annnnd…that’s the closest thing to a MST3K project I’ve ever done. Which makes me feel like the least productive person on this thread. I’ve been told I do great voice impressions for riffing, but I’m not even tech-savvy enough to do the simplest recording or music video (btw, #42, if yours doesn’t count, I don’t know what does!). Oh well, at least Aspies rarely know boredom.
I just recently mentioned the “…another dimension” (Ep 513 The Brain That Wouldn’t Die) whenever a coworker would get up and be absent for an extended period of time.
It caught on like wildfire and ended up being used on me this past Thursday, April 30. I spent most of the afternoon messing around with my car, trying to figure out a problem. I walked back in around 4 o’clock to finish assignments for the day, and someone turned and remarked, “Oh, he’s back from another dimension.”
I just laughed a little and said, “Oh, it’s being used on me now too.”
My high school had a tradition of having the “commercial art” class students all design a yearbook cover as a project and then the yearbook comity would vote for which one they wanted to use as the actual cover. My good friend and I both worked Tom Servo into our covers, and together used all our connections to get as many year book comity people to vote for either of our covers. Mine didn’t make the cut, but my friends did, and so together we managed to get Tom Servo on our yearbook cover that year (amongst other crazy-ass things since both of our covers featured massive crowds of people as their theme). The next year we both actually joined the yearbook comity in order to try and bring it down from the inside, or something like that, and we both worked in as many goofy references as we could, many of which were from MST3000. I remember one I was especially proud of was with a picture I was given of someone giving that finger and thumb “okay” sign. In the caption I just wrote “*so and so* says ‘it stinks!’” I think I also had a nice Kenny and Gamera reference. The key was to make them seem as normal as possible so that the clueless teacher running the class wouldn’t notice, but they would still be instantly recognizable to the right people.
I’ve done a lot of other drawings and paintings over the years, and right now I’m working on a super secret MST fan-art project that I think is pretty unique, and unlike anything anyone else has ever done, and I hope it will be well received once I get it out there amongst those internet crowds of cool kids and crazy chicks.
@ Brandon #36
What made you think Billy West would be at all interested in seeing your Space Jam riffs? That just seems weird to show him that as if he would praise you for your brilliance or something. And I can kind of understand his point of view. He’s a pretty talented guy who is incredibly good at what he does, and has worked his ass off to get where he is in his career, so it doesn’t surprise me that he wasn’t very enthusiastic about someone he doesn’t know from Adam coming up to him and saying “hey look at these videos I made to make fun of something you worked on”. The “Ray Dennis Steckler mode” as you put it doesn’t apply very well to MST because that show was such a brilliant and original idea that they actually were making something better than any of the movies they used. Yes they used someone elses work as a basis for it, but they were still being incredibly creative themselves. But all you did is use someone else’s original creative work (Space Jam) to imitate another persons or group of peoples orginal creative work (MST/Rifftrax/CT). Where was your original creative input? If you showed Billy West some kind of animated short you had made he probably would have been really impressed, even if it was only at the creativity and hard work that went into it. Sure there is nothing wrong with people making fan riffs on terrible movies just for fun (and Space Jam is a really terrible movie), but I wouldn’t expect anyone involved with the movie you are riffing to have any respect for what you are doing. And you shouldn’t think of it as some kind of great creative achievement on your part. Anyone can try to imitate an original idea as brilliant as MST3K, but the really creative people are the ones who try to come up with the next great original idea that no one has seen yet. That’s why The Simpsons is absolutely brilliant while Family Guy is nothing but a poor man’s cheap knock off. It doesn’t matter whether you think Family Guy is funny or not (I personally think it’s pathetically unfunny) there is no way getting around the fact that it is a complete rip off from the Simpsons, and totally lifted it’s style of humor from one that was developed from the ground up over many years on The Simpsons (and Family Guy really sucks at doing it as well). And the next two shows that those unoriginal hacks developed after Family Guy are themselves just a cheap knocks off of their original cheap knock off of the truly creative The Simpsons. But what did a bunch of the guys from The Simpsons go on to do when they decided to make a new show? They created the absolutely brilliant and highly original Futurama, which maintained the same high level of quality as The Simpsons, but also developed it’s own distinct and highly original sensibilities and style of humor, again from the ground up.
Wow, I must be boring. The only thing I remember doing was drawing the theater profiles on an etch-a-sketch. I sing Nummy Muffin Coocol Butter everyday because a friend of mine has a dog named cocoa butter. She has no idea where I got it from. I think I quote the show at least once everyday, then people look at me funny. People are just like that….
Once upon a time in high school, I took a creative writing class where we had to have a set number of ‘freewriting’ pages by the end of the term. Being the slacker that I am, I waited until the night before to write the majority of those pages. I ended up writing a stream-of-consciousness type story where Torgo and Eegah met so they could take revenge on The Master and beat Arch Hall, Jr. with his own guitar (think Ultimate Showdown, but with B-movie characters).
After being a hardcore Mstie for years (I was at the final Best Brains studio tour!) I sneak a MST-themed poster in the background or on the screen of the tv in my comic strip as often as I can:
This one’s from 2003!
http://www.moorecomics.com/crew/090303.html
Katana #14: I know who you are! Mwahahahahaaa! Your mom made you an MST3K hat based upon mine which was in turn based upon someone else’s brilliant idea and design. Hello!
Not a project, but I have worked ‘ConHugeCo’ into numerous reports and training documentation at several jobs
This only sorta counts, but I was converting my old “Rocket Attack USA” tape to DVD and I was looking to put some clips onto menu (it’s what I do, don’t ask).
I had always wondered if you could frame-match Joel & the Bots’ descriptions with action from the film. I liked what I did enough to throw it up on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp5mU7eesHM
OK this doesnt really count as a project, but amongst all the sports posters I have on my garage wall is a poster of crow, people who have seen the show get a laugh out of it and the ones who havent say “what the heck is that?”
In school,we have to do Current events.And the theme was pick your own,so I decided to be a Uber nerd,and get the mst3k movie review and do the project on that.Well I get the paper back and the teacher wrote”I <3 MST3K”
So after squealing and fainting,I found someone who liked the show.
I also drew a picture of the gang…but it kinda sucked a lot.and Huzzah and Criminy are part of my writing voaculary if it calls for it
I’ll frequently will quote riffs or lines from favorite episodes, but I’ve yet to entertain anyone except myself by making those references. I did have a position a while back doing warehouse duties, and decorated the rear of my forklift with “Watch out for snakes!” That one actually got some chuckles, though no one knew the source.
Great topic, love all the posts!
Every friday night we perform a live, improvised version of MST3K in Atlanta called Cineprov!
We just won 2008 Best Live Comedy in Atlanta at My Fox Atlanta City Voter.
We take on Hollywood’s biggest and worst movies.
If you’re in atlanta come see us every friday night at 8:30. Mention Satellite News and get half off your ticket price!
I’ve written scripts for a few Riff Raff Theater iRiffs, Die Hard, The Day After Tomorrow, Aliens vs. Predator, Minority Report and Armageddon.
The only thing I’ve done was name my Fantasy Football team ‘Satellite of Love’. No one knew what it was (except my boyfriend). I took first place!
In high school I built the entire Satellite of Love and a set of puppets in my garage and riffed an episode of “Doctor Who”. Too bad the jokes weren’t as good as the props.
http://www.angelfire.com/film/ranisite/picgal/solpics.html#zoo
Well, I’m working on a ridiculously detailed episode guide over at thelogbook.com:
http://www.thelogbook.com/logbook/mst3k/
I’m helping out with the MST3K reference list for the Muppet Wiki:
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000
But the biggest MST-related project I ever did was providing the information track on the Legend Films release of ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’ (the one with Mike’s solo riff on it).
Our production company does Films, TV, Radio, Animation and Comics and as one of the Head Writers, I do admit inserting MST3K references in a number of scripts and only a rare few catch them.
One of the more obvious ones, to me, is from a slapstick TV series we write/produce where in one episode the 3 main knuckleheads are Hollywood screenwriters and write a new series pilot. In casting, three very big, muscular, adonis-like actors come in to audition and each introduces themselves.
(I think the reference is self evident to everyone in this community, but here’s the script segment (Excuse the script reformat in posting this):
DIRECTOR
Send in the auditionees!
Three extremely handsome ACTORS and a
bubbly ACTRESS enters the room. The
Director orders them around.
DIRECTOR
Read Colby, Dingo and Duck
and you read Ma. Slate your
names and we’ll get this done.
ACTOR #1 (COLBY)
Hi, Bolt Vanderhuge
ACTOR #2 (DINGO)
I’m Butch Deadlift.
ACTOR #3 (DUCK)
Bob Johnson.
I Couldn’t help myself.
MST3K 4 life yo.
I can’t believe anyone would have the audacity to make fun of Space Jam! It’s the Casablanca of it’s day, for heaven’s sake!
In 6th grade, I had to give a report on Madagascar. My memory is hazy, but I know I made a puppet and essentially performed the Joey the Lemur bit in front of my classmates. I think it went over about as well as could be expected.
I took a ceramics class in college for a few extra credits. I made a terra cotta bowling-pin lamp like the one in “Mitchell” but it broke during firing.
I made some Youtube shorts to choose stingers for the episodes without stingers. (look up ‘MST stingers’ and they should show up) I plan to do more of those. I also sent in clips to my favorite morning show, Kevin and Bean on 106.7 KROQ, and they were played on the air! They always start the Friday show with the song ‘Don’t Bogart That Joint’, and add sound clips from movies and TV shows as it plays. I sent in the clips of Mike saying ‘I am so baked’ from 706 – Laserblast, and of TVs Frank saying ‘You are so stoned, you wake and bake every day. You are so high.’ and Dr. Forrester saying ‘Wake and Bake!’ from 609 – Skydivers. You can listen to how they added this to the start of the show here:
http://www.kjbleu.com/mstclips.htm
Cubby (#60), that was damn near perfect. Very MST Hour-esque. In high school I did a video project for my Spanish class that somehow involved Taco Bell and these cut-rate bots that I made in a couple of hours. I can’t imagine what anyone must have thought of this, and luckily it was never mentioned again so no harm no foul. I think I used a toilet roll and a couple of spoons for Servo’s head. So bootleg…
(Second try on this post)
First, I created (and continue to add to) a ridiculously detailed episode guide for thelogbook.com:
http://www.thelogbook.com/logbook/mst3k/
I’ve been working lately helping fill out the MST3K reference page on the Muppet Wiki:
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000
But my biggest MST-related project was working on the Legend Films DVD release of Plan 9 From Outer Space which featured Mike Nelson’s commentary. I wrote the subtitle “trivia track” and it took a *lot* of work, let me tell you.
Edwin #73 – I keep meaning to tell you how much I enjoy your stinger selections. In fact, even the episodes that did have stingers usually had several good options other than what was chosen. Maybe you could put a few of those through the sifter?
GizmonicTemp # 76 - Thanks for the compliment. I like your idea! There were times I was sure one clip would be the stinger, but they went with another one. I will put that on my ‘To Do’ list. (along with finishing the other episodes without stingers)
My and two friends have began writing a rifftrax for a movie that was so bad we riffed it live the day it came out. Going through the process really makes me wonder how the brains were able to watch sheer horror many times over to make it funny.
Shameless plug
When IRiffs started up, I started work on a solo riff of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I only got about a half-hour in, though. And someday, if I could find like-minded girls in my area, I’d love to try again and put together an all-girl gang of riffers, if simply because as far as I know, no one’s done anything like it yet.
IMPORTANT RESPONSE TO MR THOMAS #8 & 17:
Mystery Fandom Theater is NOT DEAD!! We want to live, LIIIVE!! My husband and I are working on it RIGHT NOW! We are working on 2 episodes concurrently (#4 and 5) and the Original Mike is still on cast. We actually had a meeting today to flesh out the last of the host segments. Unfortunately, we need more people. Actors mainly, but crew hands always work, too. There are a few more tidbits on the website news. Go here: http://www.mft3k.com to see new news and old pics. We’re doing a movie episode and an all shorts episode.
We’ve been working on the shorts only ep for a long while now, and I’m only afraid that Rifftrax will overtake us and do some we had already planned on doing.
Use the website contacts if anyone is interested in helping out!
I am going to be making two trips to Minnesota in the next few months and my “project” is going to be to meet Joel or to find someone that happens to have the lost 3 episodes. I suppose that could be considered a project.
Sorry the link didn’t work. The site is http://www.mft3k.com, but the link I made there didn’t work. My apologies.
Hey! I see my wife posted about the work we’re doing with the Mystery Fandom Theater Group. (#80 & 82) But, the MFT site is still being worked on. If you live in or near the SF Bay Area, and want to act, write, or help us with crew, email me: drewjfisher AT gmail dot com.
(We are also open to people out of the area doing some theater lines writing)
http://www.mft3k.com
itsspideyman #39 – My mom showed Hired II when she was a coding manager at AT&T. They had their weekly meeting and she listed it on the schedule as “Motivational Video”. She asked for thoughts afterwards and one of the other managers unfolded his donut napkin and placed it on his head. True and hilarious!
Love it!
Before I got my hands on the MST3K bridge model in 1999, I built my own MST set using spare model parts and an Apollo lunar landing kit. It has little versions of Crow, Tom, Gypsy, Joel, and Cambot. I made it look like they were having a picnic on the moon. I still have, though its packed away in a box somewhere.
Brainchild # 79 - You are trying to get together an all girl group of misties? Please marry me!
Cronkite Moonshot: Wow. Way to beat someone’s head into the ground there.
Larry: Cineprov sounds awesome! I’ll drop by some time when I’m in Atlanta, how about? What theatre is it in?
The Rifter #37
It’s in there.
Bobbled Dopple #71:
In 6th grade, I had to give a report on Madagascar. My memory is hazy, but I know I made a puppet and essentially performed the Joey the Lemur bit in front of my classmates. I think it went over about as well as could be expected
In other words, you got sent to the school psychiatrist.
to John #87
We perform Cineprov! in Relapse Theatre 380 14th street nw atlanta ga 30318
http://www.cineprov.com has all the info and our schedule etc.
cya soon
#80 & #82: Oops! My apologies. I’m very excited now! MFT is tremendous fun.
Question: How do we go about suggesting topics for future weekend discussions?
Here’s my suggestion, if that’s okay:
Some MST3K movies were actually part of a series (like Godzilla and Gamera), while others tried, and often failed, to set up a series (Code Name: Diamond Head).
But are there any movies that you wish had gotten a sequel? “Mitchell 2,” maybe? Or maybe just a character you wish had gotten another movie? “Rowsdower and the Fate of Atlantis” has a nice ring to it. What would you have liked to see?
Hope I’m not too late here.
I’m a producer for my local access cable channel (Piscataway Community TV), and I host an interview show where I talk to other volunteers. Once in a while, though, I put together an April Fool’s Day episode, where I play with the format.
One year, the theme was ideas for the show that didn’t pan out. One of those ideas was an MST3K take-off, with my brother Bri riffing for a few moments on his own interview. He was accompanied (in pseudo-Shadowrama) by Miguelito, the puppet for the PCTV show “Espanol en Accion”.
Oh, and I made sure to credit Joel at the end. No need to get sued, here.
For my 2-Dimensional Design and Color Theory Class last Fall (yes, this class is boring, especially for someone who can already draw and paint) our final project was a big color print. Our promt for our original image was “Attack of…,” so I made mine Attack of The Giant Servo. I managed to make a big colorful image of Servo towering over skyscrapers with fire and smoke.
I titled this piece: “I’m Huge.”
So, about a month ago we had this photo collage assignment in my painting class. We brought in images and put them in a box for the class to pull out four slips each and combine the images any way we liked for our painting. By a total coincidence I pulled out my pic of Crow, and created an image showing a giant crow striding over a surreal landscape containg trees, moutain climbers on a snowy slope, and a swimming sea lion ( my other pictures).
I titled this piece: “I’m the god!”
I built the bots. I have my very own Servo, Crow and Gypsy in my living room, flanking my fireplace. No further information is available.
me and a couple of guys in college scripted a MST-like show and the movie we picked was “the invisible Dr. Mabusse”
not sure of the spelling of the doctor’s name… but the movie was bad… so were we i remember.
I once wrote several MST3k fanfics, including my favorites, “I’m Dreaming of a Coruscant Christmas” and the James Cameron Conspiracy Theory trilogy of MiSTings.
I’ve also written one college paper on MST3k looking at the history of the show and the fandom around it. There wasn’t anything special about it. It was one of my early college papers that I’m not overly proud of having written.
In my public speaking class, I did a speech on MST3k. It wasn’t too bad, and included a clip from the movie where Dr. Forrester explains the concept behind show.
Also, throughout my college career, I had a number of MST3k shirts I would wear repeatedly, leading me to discover a number of professors I’ve had who loved the show.
In high school my friends and I worked on an MST fanfic show called “Subterranean Cinema Realm.” We are presently writing an iRiff. I’ve made numerous references in my writing, including naming a disembodied voice “Mary Jo.”
Hey John #87
We perform Cineprov! at Relapse Theatre 380 14th street nw atlanta ga 30318.
Visit http://www.cineprov.com our full schedule and directions and info is there!
cya soon
I got MSt3k room for my sister After prom. The theam was going to movie or your star, so they had movie room where kids could hang out and eat popcorn and making out (with adult to break up action if got to hot and heavy. Hey better there than hotel room or car.) Anyway My mom and I made the famous doors to go into the movie area. I couldn’t go prom but did sneak in ( was older and wan’t my prom) and get picture. I did send to MST3k gang. Someone did write me told me it was on there wall before they closed up shop unfortuly it never made on air
Funny thing is My sister not fan of MST3k.
Oh I also wrote a fan fiction with a shock treatment / MST3k cross over and did get published in Crazed Imainations (rocky horry fan pubishing) by good friend my Bill Brener.
I drew the robot in class note book while bored and my profesor knew who they where.:)
To #79: I want to be in your Mistie girl group! How do I apply?
S.Mc. #101 – Yeah, me too. I’m not female, but I’d like to be in the group.
http://www.youtube.com/badmoviegeneral
A series I make with some chums of mine. I managed to get a nice silouhette in it, and use lego men as people propped up against the screen. I make fun of archive.org shorts. Good times.
I do writing and script polishing for Riff Raff Theater. We have a few riffs on iriffs.com. We’ve been doing live shows in Iowa City for over a year and this Friday we’re riffing Alien vs Predator.
Lukas #94:
Do you have a picture or print of this Giant Servo work? I would like very much to see it
For five years, I worked for a local web design firm and I was required to have a Mac and a PC on my desk to work in and proof with both operating systems. I named them Tom and Crow and then named my space on the company’s server Gypsy.
I’m actually about to do some artwork about the show for BOTH of my final art projects in 2 separate classes. One will be a re-creation of the theater entrance all done in after effects and the other will be a a flash-based animation (not really about MST3k but tom and crow will make an appearance). I also made a shirt in the woot! derby that referenced MST3K (buildings in a future environment made rough psuedo silhouettes of tom and crow)
Some stuff I did at the peak of my fandom of MST3K:
A sample page of an abandoned project to revive the MST3K comic book concept. I had a page or two of Host Segment art and storyline as well, but it’s in a folder I just can’t find at the moment. In case you’re curious, the experiment here is The Creeper – First Issue Special (Yet it’s labeled as issue No. 7- an oddity I recall pointing out on the MiSTied cover).
A (remake of a) doodle-comic I did during my teen years, at the height of my fandom for both MST3K and Sailor Moon. I just took a look at it, and I can see that it’s difficult to see on a computer screen. Sorry!
Page 1 / Page 2.
The original, less legible version of said doodle. I only added one line in the improved version above, which is also missing the last frame or two: Page 1 / Page 2
A cover I made for one of my high school binders, you can guess around when I made it.
One more Sailor Moon-MST crossover/crossdressing oddity I drew in my free time. Venus is crawling away in the background because I kind of ran out of room to draw her properly with the other characters.
My first celebrity pumpkin I did was of Joel. http://surfingthechaos.deviantart.com/art/Joel-Pumpkin-82114155
For my own private amusement, I used to make audio cassette tapes of various episodes. If I was very familiar with the epsiodes, I could visualize what was happening in the movie in my mind as I listened to the riffing. It was a sort of proto-Rifftrax for the mind’s eye.
I have since caught up a bit with modern technology. Now I record the episodes on a Zoom H2 digital recorder, edit the recordings on freeware, and load them on my iPod. Such fun….
I want to be Joel for Halloween? Has anyone ever made a Gizmonics Inst. Jumpsuit or know where to get the proper color and style jumpsuit?
Hey #79..I’d be interested in the all female riff group..
#79 – let me know how to get in on your all-girl MSTie group!
My list of MSTie projects is rather short, consisting mainly of a small painting I did as practice for the SOL Christmas ornaments I’ve made…
Well, shoot. I totally forgot about our traditional MST pumpkin carving. Go here: http://picasaweb.google.com/gypsy.honey/Pumpkins#
There should be four MST related ones in there, all hand carved.
I made Clowns in the Sky III audio cd. It has all the songs that weren’t on the first 2. I also made a Colossal Guide II from the KTMA & Season Seven online guide (from this site?) and Seasons 8-10 from the Sci-Fi site. I bound it in a three ring binder, with front, back and spine illustrations.
I have also made about 15 MST3K themed t-shirts (I even had Joel and Trace sign two of them at a recent live show).
Finally, I have a really cool Lego Crow I made with my son.
**Not to mention my desk and walls at work are a shrine to MST/Crow T Robot.
Me and my dad do little Mst3k projects all the time. Whenever we watch bad movies we sit around and riff them like no tomorrow. We have gotten pretty good at it too.
Actually there are a few project ideas I have yet to come out with.
One: Create an mst3k retrospective and go episode through episode on Youtube telling my own thoughts on the show. Yeah kinda like here but it’s in video format.
Two: I have a ‘Creature’ mask (Revenge of the Creature) and me and my dad would sit down and do a kind of “Interview with the creature’ on the making of ‘Revenge of the Creature.’ Chris the dog and Clint Eastwood mentioned periodically.
I get to do my own shameless plug now?
I’ve been a huge fan of the show ever since I first saw it. Regretfully, this was in 1998, when the show was making it’s round toward season 10, and even then, I couldn’t make every episode. I made up for lost time with reruns and store-bought Rhino tapes, but it still left an unchangable mark in my life.
Growing up a fan of video games, I’ve always considered the two my favorite pastimes. Sometime around 1999, my friends and I decided to take it to some video games that deserved a good riffing. And so, now that technology is getting cheaper and I’m equipped with recording equipment suited for it, I’m starting my own project of riffing video games, starting next month with ‘Final Fantasy X-2′, quite possibly the worst modern video game out there. It’ll be featured on my YouTube channel here — http://www.youtube.com/user/VGRiffers
Oh… and I also have a few clips of my friend and I tearing ‘Wild Guitar’ on there. I’ll be putting the whole movie up soon (since it’s on Public Domain, as I understand it), so if you have a few minutes, please check it out.
(End shameless plug)
My devotion is permanent as I have a full color MST3K tattoo on my leg, you can see it at myspace.com/kylex
I recently crocheted Servo for my brother and chibi Tom Servo when everyone begged for a pattern.
It’s been floating around the net so you may have already seen it. They were so snuggly fun to make 
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=302884.0
Hi, I did the LEGO version of the bots and SOL that showed up here months ago, but the other night I drew what’s basically a Terminator Exoskeleton / Crow T. Robot figure
it’s here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31606635@N06/3517667141/
When I have time I was gonna make a Tom Servo / Tank
I quickly came on to wish you a merry christmass and a happy new year since your site always has something interesting for me to read
. I know I’m a bit late with merry christmass but I’ve just been a tad busy with so many guests and I’m sure you are too. So I wish you a merry christmass and a happy new year and I’m hoping to see more interesting posts on your blog!