NPR’s “All Things Considered” had a story about it today.
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Hecklevision?This is intriguing. Anybody seen it?
13 Replies to “Hecklevision?”Commenting at Satellite News
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SciFi channel’s Caption This! feature was great fun but that was a new still every minute that viewers could write a caption for. It seems like doing that with a movie in realtime would be a little more chaotic. But it might well catch on.
It is possible. Once in a while, the MST3K channel on JTV plays a movie which the chat liveriffs on.
This sounds like one of those “great in theory, failure in application” ideas. I wish them luck, though. Should still be fun.
It does sound like fun but, as CT’s live shows have kind of shown, you’ve actually got a pretty small window to get comments in. Too late and you’ve kind of missed the joke.
I’m not sure how that would work with a whole bunch of people texting at once and also waiting until the line/scene was out there before responding.
Still, I wish them good fortune with this one.
This seems to be either a port or a direct rip-off of a program the Alamo Drafthouse has had for years called, wait-for-it, Hecklevision. I’m going to give Hollywood Theatre the benefit of the doubt and assuming they are licensing it somehow. Exact same name, premise, and execution. Although Hollywood’s logo also happens to look suspiciously similar to the Drafthouse’s (www.drafthouse.com). Haven’t personally been to a Hecklevision screening (texting not my thing) but as I said it’s been going for a few years so I guess it’s popular enough. Not the only MST3K flavored thing the Drafthouse has going (they were actually cease-and-desisted by Mallon for their Mr. Sinus show, for the name and concept being too similarm think it’s just the Sinus Show now). I believe Mary-Jo has guest-hosted for them, however.
For those not in the know, the Drafthouse is central Texas theater chain, though it has started branching out across the nation (just, one coming to NYC, one in Virginia). Famous for a mixture of first-run and arthouse showings, themed pre-show content (vintage trailers, etc., no ads), full food and drink (ie, booze) service, and, most importantly, zero tolerance on talking and usage of phones during showtimes. Only theatre I have gone to for the last ten years. If it aint showing at a Drafthouse, I won’t see it in the theatre.
Semprini – it looks like they’re both using the same software, though I’m not sure if that’s where the hecklevision name originates. Interestingly, the main consumers for the software appear to be public libraries’ teen programming.
Like Caption This!, this sounds like a beast that’s related to, but different from MST3K. In CT, part of the appeal is the communal live nature of the thing – the surprise of somebody else coming up with something 180 degrees away from what you did for the same material – or the exact thing, as sometimes happens. (And as long as we’re mentioning Caption This!, I’ll plug my own site linked above, which is one of the sites cappers are still running ‘in the style’ of CT)
The only way I see this working is if the “heckles” are shown on a subsequent showing. Still not sure it would actually be funny, but that would at least give it a chance.
Riffing is not an easy task. I usually leave it to the professionals, but good luck to this Hecklevision project.
I live here in Portland, and The Hollywood Theatre is my favorite theatre in town (and we gots lots) as they are the Pacific Northwest equivalent to Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse, and I’ve been hearing about this “Hecklevision” and I’ve been curious, but honestly, I don’t imagine it’d be any good. I mean, maybe I’m wrong, but I lack faith in the ability of the general public in being funny or clever. That being said, I will still probably check it out eventually but only when it’s a must see, semi-obscure movie, not something like Point Break.
One of my favorite parts in Point Break (a movie I thoroughly enjoy, in an un-ironic way) is when Gary Busey sticks a gun into a perps face and barks, “SPEAK INTO THE MICROPHONE, SQUID-BRAIN!!” How do you heckle something like that???
Personally to me this sounds like it could never actually work. I can only imagine it will be a bunch of bad jokes showing up several seconds too late, and/or filled with near indecipherable “LOL U R s0 pwnEd” type “text speak” nonsense. With this kind of setup how could people possibly type out any intelligible (let alone good) jokes, text them, and get them to show up on the screen at anywhere near the right moment?
The secret to getting all the good jokes in is to watch the movie before you get there. Have your jokes already in mind. Sometimes you can make a great spontaneous joke, but if you want some sort of consistency, it’s good to be prepared. I’ve been to GersonK’s site and a couple of other sites that provide screengrabs for captioning. I find my captions are sharper when I’ve already seen the subject movie/tv show/short. However, YMMV.
I’ve been to events where people try to riff a movie en masse, and it can be very difficult to make that one riff you’re really proud you thought of heard over the din. Texting would solve the sound problem, but man-oh-man would you have to be a fast texter to make it work. I’m still nowhere near regular speed on my phone’s virtual QWERTY keyboard. That’s probably why The Kids Today resort to that awful text-speak, but I’d hate to have to watch that on a big screen.
This is a great-in-theory, difficult-in-execution idea. I remember the “behind the scenes” show and only saw a few riffs. I can’t imagine what it would be like to edit a hundred-thousand (guess) riffs into one movie.