He’s been in the job a couple of months already, but today Joel announced that former ‘Daily Show’ head writer Elliott Kalan is the head writer for Joel’s MST3K revival. “I’m the luckiest man in recorded history,” he said in his statement to the backers.
And before the political back and forth begins, Joel took time in his announcement to explicitly state that his presence “doesn’t mean that we’re planning to make MST3K more political.”
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And just to add to the “not political” emphasis, on his The Flop House podcast, the humor is much more pop culture driven than political. It seems like he fits in with the MST3K style.
THE BEST CHOICE. I saw Elliot do live riffs of Jaws: The Revenge & I Know Who Killed Me a few years ago with his Flop House co-hosts & I’m certain he’s a perfect fit. I also strongly believe that Gypsy will make a great surrogate for his tuneless, endless improvised songs.
To everyone not familiar with / worrying about Elliott, check out the Flop House episodes “Foodfight!”, “Nothing But Trouble”, “Star Wars Episode II”, or “The Oogieloves”. He can keep it funny without going political &, even better, his reference well is as deep & obscure as the original MST3K writer’s room. We are in great hands here, fellow MSTies.
His “Spider-man and the X-men” comic series was also really fun.
To chime in with the already existing comments, the proof of Elliot’s fitness as head writer for the show comes entirely from the Flophouse for me. His hyper referential immensely nerdy type of humor is perfect for MST3K. The fact that he’s already in the business of making fun of bad movies is icing on the cake.
I continue to be impressed with the caliber of talent Joel has been able to bring on board. I cannot wait until Season 11!
Cool. I was a huge fan of the Daily Show. All the politics aside, just interested that the creativity of the show will be present in the returning version of MST.
Hee-Hee, a former Comedy Central employee is now working on MST3K….. ouch.
Just because he was on The Daily Show doesn’t mean the man only knows political humor. Like everyone’s saying, just listen to The Flop House for a bit. You’ll realize he is perfect for the job. And not just because he’s a lifelong MST3K fan. Elliot knows his bad movies.
Would be funny if it was an executive who helped cancel the show. Doug Herzog as the crusty janitor who cleans up the set where they’re filming?
(Er, I think he means Kalan as an ex-Daily Show writer.)
Any links to GOOD podcasts? Caught a few scraps on YouTube that were a bit unfortunate, and I’m hoping his material doesn’t sink into the “Dogpile” school of picking on the same tired cult-laff targets as RiffTrax had. If he can do good jokes about Zardoz or Foodfight, I’ll give him more benefit of the doubt for Joel’s new show.
Most recently, The Flophouse episode on “Nothing But Trouble” was terrific.
Having listened to a ton of The Flophouse, I’ve learned Kalan has an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture minutiae, it’s amazing. I can’t think of anyone better suited to write for MST3K.
No need to provide benefit of the doubt or viewership for a show that makes you so unhappy.
Well if you hate it then it must be good. I’ll listen to their previous podcasts now thanks!!
As long as he writes funny jokes and funny host segments,that’s ALL that matters….
The reboot ever increasing looks to not be my jam. Which is fine, it certainly doesn’t have to be.
Not a fan of the Daily Show, so I was initially disheartened. But I did listen to the Flop House take on Attack of the Clones and Twilight after the announcement.
Some raunchy stuff aside, cos I know Joel won’t let that fly, it did make me feel slightly better about the pick. His normal speaking voice sounds like a puppet on a children’s show. The references were all over the place, in a good way. There may have been one or two political references in 2 hours of podcasts, so about on par with the average old MST3K episode. Not overwhelming, but not completely off limits.
Best of all, there was a fair amount of word play/punnery, which I always liked. The wordplay/stream of consciousness jokes between Josh and Trace in the KTMA episodes was something I think they moved too much away from after the show was scripted.
Well who involved would be more “your jam”?
LOL A lot of dudes that don’t want their delicate sensibilities assaulted. (I’m looking at you Johnny’s Not So Nonchalance. Alway’s crumbling and gotten to.)
Thing about doing political gags is that it ties a show to a period and dates the humour. Although I’d get gags about Maggie Thatcher or Ron Reagan todays youth might not get it so its best not to go there. Equally todays so called ‘celebrity’ culture spews up fame and then they vanish….or in some cases hopefully vanish soon !!
Great choice, he’s done some fine work. I trust Joel. Welcome, again, Ell-i-ott. :-)
Use your words.
Language is intended to convey meaning.
Wait… does this mean we’ll get a subplot of one of the new robots trying to pitch Rocket Crocodile In The World Of Tomorrow to studios?
Oh, you’re saying that like we don’t laugh at John Sununu jokes anymore, any time we see an airplane!
Yes, I’ll admit I was wondering about the voice.
It’s hard to tell good material from a podcast, because podcasts, by their very tradition of Internet history, ARE two guys sniggering endlessly at their own jokes for whole minutes at a stretch before getting onto the next topic, and….we’ve had quite enough of that for the last twenty years, thank you.
The reboot series, with Hodgson at the helm, sounds like it’s trying to focus the humor back on sharp references and less cliche’d targets, so it’ll be a step up, and a little Daily Show background may put him a few steps over the usual Nostalgia Critic follower.
One of my biggest fears before the Kickstarter was announced, back when Joel kept teasing about the show’s potential return with nothing (seemingly) happening, was that the show would be populated by the Channel Awesome stable. Even the best of them can only play the notes, not so much the music.
We laugh at John Sununu jokes because WE understand the reference, but it’s unlikely anyone under the age of 25 would.
Dated political jokes CAN be hilarious, it just depends on who it resonates with. For example, in the initial series finale “Diabolik” Servo’s riff “Dan Quayle announces his candidacy!” always gets a huge laugh out of me, but I’m sure that riff would go over the head of someone under 20.
I think with this hire, the writing staff now consists of 47 members or possibly even more by this point. I worry about too many hands helping in the kitchen if they’re even going to be together in the kitchen let alone the same building, but who knows. Also, and this is the crotchety old fan speaking: it would have been nice to see Paul Chaplin be named head writer, given his years on the show. Being the sole survivor of the original writing crew being represented on the reboot, he has the experience and could bridge both old and new. However as he’s not a new and sparkly name with current TV show connections, I would imagine this is why yet another new writer is being announced. But playing the nostalgia factor isn’t a constant with this reboot. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, whenever it is convenient. Who knows? Perhaps when we actually get to see a frame of the new stuff, it might turn out to be just fine and I should really just relax and tone down the cynical attitude.
But I’m still antsy until airtime.
Sure, but watch any given MST3K and there are going to be some now-dated jokes in there (and even some jokes that were dated the first time), whether that’s politics, current events, celebrity culture, etc. That’s what the “Then-Current Reference” logs in the episode guides are for.
Besides that, the show’s full of references that many (maybe even most) people in the audience won’t get at all — musical, literary, whatever.
I think they always (or at least usually) did a pretty good job of moving on to the next joke and hey, if you didn’t get that one, that’s okay, one’s bound to come along that you do get in pretty short order.
How did you come by that number?
You’re forgetting that this is a [i]Joel[/i] show, and Joel can do no wrong. It’s Mike who’s pure evil, and he’s not involved in this undertaking.
You need serious help, EricJ.
Its harder for us in the UK who have no idea who John Sununu, Dale or Fabio are. Now we have the net so we can look things up.
Related to dated topical humor: occasionally MST even poked fun at its own use of dated topical references. The standout example is the John Sununu/airplane/haircut joke – Tom Servo flogged that joke in I don’t know how many episodes over the years, to the point where one or the other characters murmured “That’s topical” or something similar in one episode (sorry for the rampant generalities).
Reading the comments any time there’s a news story about the new MST, I grow more and more depressed for the paranoid, entitled fandom that presumably should be, at a minimum, either cautiously enthusiastic for or politely indifferent to the show.
I also grow more and more convinced that the wisest and the best is to fix our attention on the good and the beautiful.
Antsy is right…
I’m guessing through frantic pacing, chain smoking, hand wringing and profuse sweating.
I’m with ya. This kind of seals it for me. I prefer the Rifftrax trio over these guys anyway.