Frank: For me, performing to a packed house in my hometown, NYC, on Broadway no less, was a definite highlight.
Trace: After years of writing and performing in a little room, getting immediate feedback from a live audience is a great reward.
Mary Jo: For me, it was doing our first “official” live performance at the L.A. Film Festival in the John Ford Amphitheater. It was beautiful – albeit hot – night, and getting to do it live made me realize how it could all gel. Before that, I’d been operating in a vacuum on our studio DVDs. Getting that immediate reaction struck me to the core of my performer soul. Also, that whole weekend was wild because Roger Corman had pulled a cease and desist about 24 hours before we were to do the show. We’d been slated to do “Wasp Woman”, his horde of lawyers descended, and we were able to switch gears immediately. All very thrilling! I still have the emails from his legal team, sent to each and everyone of us.
Josh: I couldn’t narrow it down to one, so here’s my best memory of each year we’ve been doing live shows:
2008 – Our show at the John Anson Ford Amphitheater. I’d wanted to play this venue since I first moved to LA and saw Elvis Costello play there. I always thought I’d have to rent it out myself to make it a reality – this was much better. That night was a huge confidence booster for us – both from the really fun, sold-out show, and for our ability to handle the legal curveball thrown at us from Mr. Corman and his legal team.
2009 – The Pastrami at Kenny and Zuke’s Deli in Portland. I’m sorry, but of all the fun we had last year and all the cities we visited, that’s the memory I return to most often.
2010 – Our trip to New York was packed with fun memories: visiting MAD magazine and having them know who we are, appearing on Keith Olbermann’s show, playing a sold-out show on Broadway, and the look of sheer joy on Frank’s face as he ate a chopped liver sandwich at the Carnegie Deli.
Also, I’d like to thank Dave (Gruber) Allen for being there at all our live shows the last few years as our opening act. His presence has added mountains of joy and fun to the adventure that has been CT Live.Joel: I think some of my favorite moments were the special events we did for different
groups: such as our shows for Industrial Light and Magic, The USA Film Festival in Dallas, as well as performing at Pixar. These “out of the ordinary” events are a bit out of context as the expectation from the audience is never exactly clear – that is, until you’re right in the middle of it, also, at these demonstrations, it feels as if you’re being observed sort of academically: the audience is there to appreciate your craft as well as your ability to be funny. I like these events as they also include Q and A so you feel like you get to go a bit deeper with the audience explaining the story and hard work behind the making of a riff.
I have two most memorable moments from all the DVDs. From the live videos, the brilliant “group spit-take” in ‘East Meets Watts.’ Classic. For the studio titles I’m going to go with the first 15 minutes or so of “Doomsday Machine.” Some of the tightest, funniest riffing EVAH (in my humble opinion).
What would you pick?
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Josh, sorry to tell ya, but we call “Kenny and Zukes” “Unreliable and Zukes”.
You go once and get fantastic food. You go back the next day and your Pastrami is all fatty and there are eggshells in your breakfast.. true story.
Oh – but please come back to Portland, we do have plenty of GOOD-RELIABLE food in town =)
Definitely the spit take in East meets Watts, saw it live here in Cleveland, and it brought down the house, still just as good on the live DVD. From that same one, I also enjoyed it when Josh, makes a MST3K reference to Trace (rock climbing), and Frank “call them on the carpet”, accusing them of pandering, which he later gets accused of when he does it. Great work guys, keep it up, and come back to the Northcoast soon.
Seeing Wasp Woman live in Dallas. When the title came up, and the crowd saw that it was a Corman flick, the roar was unreal. I also saw them do East Meets Watts in Phoenix, and that was the regular style the do every night now. That was awesome as well, but seeing CT live in a packed movie theater, and the Titans are just sitting in the front row with their music stands, wow, that was phenomenal. I gave myself a headache from laughing so hard.
“East Meets Watts” DVD, I loved every second of it. I Haven’t got to see any of the live shows. :cry: I hope we’ll be doing this for Rifftrax next week. I’m a big fan of both groups !!!
“The Alien Factor” dvd…it truly ranks up there with greatest MST3K episodes IMHO.
East Meets Watts: “Don’t you have a town hall meeting to disrupt?”
I haven’t bought any live DVDs because there hasn’t been a show anywhere near my town. Until that happens, no $$$ from me.
i had kind of shrugged off CT after being underwhelmed by the first 3 “episodes” but gave “the alien factor” a chance, hearing that a live setting did wonders for the group. it did – the movie was a blast, the riffing was energetic & the DVD finally convinced me that the CT crew still “had it in ’em”. i saw them riff “genocide” in princeton a few months later, which further convinced me to keep following these guys. i’m still not that into their studio work, but i’ll pick up every live DVD they release from now on!
The Alien Factor: He looks like a tootsie roll that fell on the barber shop floor.
You know, I had never heard about the Roger Corman lawsuit thing. How did that end? Obviously they were able to perform and sell the show later, is there an account of that incident somewhere online?
I’m with darthservo (#14). The New Year’s show at the Keswick (with War of the Insects, Samson and the Seven Miracles and Legacy of Blood) was incredible. I don’t think another live experience could top it.
Must be nice to live in a town that has theatres. And have reliable transportation to actually get there.
Sadly, it would be not being able to find a date for the CT show in St. Louis last year and being too depressed to go by myself.
This year’s show isn’t looking too good, either. I actually resolved to go anyway this year even if I couldn’t find a date, but then my finances took a sharp downturn the last month (basically losing half my income) and I probably can’t afford to go in any case…
My favorite moment is still receiving that first DVD in the mail (in it’s wonderful paper envelope).
#52 Fingal
Don’t tell anyone, but my comment was also a backhanded dig at Kenny and Zuke’s.
When I saw them perform ‘Blood of the Vampires’ in Chicago, Mary recited this long name for the lead character. Something like ‘Eduardo-Marco-Pablo-Francisco-yadda-yadda-yadda,’ and she almost ran out of breath. Once she finished, we applauded her work.
I think she had one of the funniest lines in ‘The ALien Factor’ : Ladies and Gentlemen, the world’s only 2-door cop car.
I’m a visual effects artist (among other things)formerly with Industrial Light & Magic, so I was fortunate enough to attend that first performance at ILM of “The Oozing Skull” (which was still under the title of “Brain of Blood” back then). I literally had the best seat in the house. The Titans were in the front row of the screening room with their microphones and script stands. The two rows behind them were kept empty. I was in the middle seat of the very next row back, sitting right directly behind Trace.
It was one of the most hilarious evenings I’ve ever spent. We were all laughing so hard it hurt. It got to the point near the end where the audience (as well as Joel, Josh, Trace, Mary Jo, and Frank) were even laughing at the silent pauses, just aghast at how bad the film was.
But the moment that brought the house down was during the roof-top fight scene and after a true-to-form riff Joel declared, “We’re back, folks!” The screening room at ILM thundered with applause. Of course that comment is also uttered by Joel on the DVD, but that night at ILM it was just priceless.
CT couldn’t have had its try-outs at a better place than Industrial Light & Magic. When I was working at ILM there was a series of screening of classic films called “Flicks”. They would take place in the nicest theater on the ILM campus. The best 70mm prints possible of films such as “North By Northwest” or “The Godfather” were presented after hours with someone standing up before the film started to give a short lecture about the movie. But a rival group of screenings began on the ILM campus called “Flecks”. (Look it up in the dictionary, it’s disgusting.) These were not classic films by any stretch of the imagination. These were real stink burgers. The catch was that the films played at “Flecks” were bad films that someone at ILM had worked on prior to joining the ILM team. We would gather together in one of the not so nice screening rooms (the one we could eat pizza and popcorn in) and riff the heck out of the movie. Very few people would actually volunteer their previous projects for “Flecks”. Usually the folks in charge would do some snooping around, find the dark blotches on someone’s resume, go and get the DVD, and then shame that person into coming to the screening. Then they would tell the “Flecks” audience a bit about working their horrible film and list certain things to look for. There were also skits and sketches at the beginning of each “Fleck” presentation.
So ILM was the absloute perfect audience for CT to be tested out on.
I agree with what haverchuck said upstream in the comments here. The studio DVDs are great, however where CT truly shines is in the live performances. If you haven’t seen Cinematic Titanic live you really need to move heaven and earth to do so.
Now having said all that, my actual favorite CT riff is not from “The Oozing Skull”. It’s Josh’s riff from “East Meets Watts” when he says, “We walked right into a Journey video”. My second fave IS from “The Oozing Skull”, and again it’s from Josh where he says, “They brought Stiffy Pop.”