This an open thread for comments on tonight’s RiffTrax live show.
NOTE: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. IF YOU ARE GOING TO THE ENCORE SHOW, YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP THIS THREAD.
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How Was the Show?
131 Replies to “How Was the Show?”Commenting at Satellite News
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I swear to god, this is the second live RT I’ve gone to and both times (different theaters) it’s like they forgot something was showing and they turned the sound and ambient lights off for a good 2-3 minutes. It was actually funny in the Plan 9 one because it was the scene where the characters are staring at a record player, so it looked like they were listening to the muzak that started playing in the theater, but this time it was annoying. If it happens in October I’m going to bash some freaking heads in.
Alexandria, VA was about 90% full. I though it was the best show yet. The animated shorts were cute (and short) and much better than the music in the previous shows. The boys were firing on all cylinders last night. I’ll definitely snag this DVD (or DivX) when it comes out.
Why oh why do RT fans hate content from other folks so much? I wonder what opening act would win the hearts and minds of RT fans. Maybe something from the other members of the Rifftrax team?
PS I liked the Lowtax shorts and folks in my theater seemed to appreciate them too.
PORTAGE INDIANA THEATER ROCKED LAST NIGHT! IS CORN GRASS? ANYONE HAVE AN ANSWER? MORE MORE MORE!!!!!
GREAT turnout in Charlotte, NC! LOVED the show, especially the two shorts. I was laughing so hard during “Grass” I literally could not breathe a time or two.
The Regal 18 at St. Louis Mills had the start time listed as 7:30 CT. We arrived early and were on hand when the show started at 7:00; unfortunately about 40% of our audience arrived after the show had started.
I’m gonna go eat some grass..er corn!
Great show!
I enjoyed the heck out of the night. I saw it in a nicely populated theater in Wilmington, Delaware and the crowd was very much enjoying itself. I laughed the hardest during the short on grasses. I have to make myself a “fancy headdress” now.
The Lowtax shorts were fine. They were extremely short and I thought they were cute.
I actually wouldn’t be surprised to see Hodgman do one of these things. They did meet up at MaxFunCon this year, so they have happened upon each other before besides Twitter.
@34: About the Hawley-Smoot Tariff–one of them is either an economics geek or a Dave Barry fan.
The theater in HARRISBURG, PA was about 2/3rd full. No glitches whatsoever. Everyone in the crowd was in a good mood and laughed a lot. I wore my “Watch out for snakes” t-shirt, but no one reacted to it. I, too, was delighted to find that the riffs for “Reefer” were a great mix of old and new; I couldn’t predict them all. Well worth the $$. I’d go to the live CT shows when they’re in the area, but it’s just too expensive. So I always have to wait for their DVDs.
Best parts: the animated flames on the woman’s dress, paul McCartney riff, the weird 30s animation and so-called story.
@Patrick: which theater, Ballston? I had a bad experience there for Plan 9 so I’ve been going to Tysons, but the construction makes it more nightmarish than usual to get to. Sounds like you had a better turnout, too.
Our theater also had a slight syncing problem at the beginning, but it was corrected quickly and didn’t distract from the show. Great job as usual, guys! Agree that the shorts were fantastic.That black and white cartoon was super trippy. If Reefer Madness had demonstrated a direct link between smoking weed and the production of nightmare fuel like that, they would have made a much stronger case for their position! As it was, I learned that “marihuna” makes people laugh a lot, act goofy at parties, and impairs their driving. Y’know, kinda like… booze!
@53 Beautiful Mind: I don’t think it’s that Rifftraxers(?) hate “outside content” so much as it’s that we’re a diverse group of people with varying tastes who all happen to love MST3K and its spinoffs. We can’t even all agree on which MST3K movie was the greatest of all time, so of course people will disagree on other things, too. FWIW, the Lowtrax shorts didn’t do anything for me, but I figured it’s because I don’t have kids. YMMV!
I was amused to see how most of the theater stayed in our seats until the very end of the credits, waiting for a stinger of some sort I suppose. We are well-trained! (How about a stinger next ttime, guys? You know we love ’em.).
Thanks for a night of great entertainment. See you in October!
We saw it in Madison and the theater was mostly full. The Grasses short was wonderful – so demented and genuinely unnerving at the end, though I’m sure most of that is due to Kevin, Mike, and Bill’s Satanic chanting. That made the evening worthwhile. I was disappointed (though, in retrospect, shouldn’t have been surprised) that they were using the garish colorized version of the film from the DVD. It’s the twenty-first century–there is no good reason to be colorizing films anymore. I couldn’t believe how awful it looked, with the bright pink faces and colorized suits. I think I’ll pass on watching the Rifftrax colorized House on Haunted Hill this October. I like that film and it’s great, fun Halloween viewing – but unriffed and in B&W.
I should also mention that the Tommy Wiseau mentions and “The Berenstein Bears Meet the Human Centipede” had my wife and I in hysterics.
Another good show from Rifftrax. The shorts (especially the two live ones) were the highlight of the show. I’ve never seen Reefer Madness riffed before, so it was all new to me. The Lowtax shorts were cute and amusing, but would have benefited from better animation. At least they were short; people always complain about anything non-Rifftrax at these shows, but because the guys are doing several shorts and a film LIVE, there’s always going to be some kind of “filler” to allow them to catch their breath and transition to the next segment. Even if these weren’t ROTFLMFAO funny, they were painless. As for the color palette used in the film, it was obviously an intentional and artistic choice to make it so garish. Since most colorization looks fake anyway, why not have some fun with it when appropriate?
Now, the nitpicking: Audio on the first short was very low. Still, even with the storms raging outside, this was the least glitchy RT show yet. Was it the lighting in the live venue, or were the guys (esp. Mike) sporting some really bad fake tan?
My biggest disappointment was the lack of theaters showing this event. The AMC Forum 30 skipped this one, despite having THIRTY FRICKIN’ SCREENS. Looking at their schedule, I blame the glut of 3-D movies, because they also show the 2-D version of most of them. Really, who wants to see Step Up 3-D in 2-D when the only possible reason to watch that is to see some crazy dancing in 3-D? So, the crappier versions of crappy movies crowded out RT. At least the theater we went to was a nice small-town venue that didn’t rape us on the $$$ of concessions.
Eagerly looking forward to Haunted Hill in October! I hope they dig up some shorts appropriate to the Halloween season!
Had a real good turn out in pittsburgh. Almost a full house. I’d say that the shorts kinda/sorta outweighed the feature, but the feature was still worth the price of admission. All in all a good night for movie riffing…
“Bill put the wad in gaywad.”
I took my dad to see this in Pekin IL and having seen the movie when he was young he really enjoyed it. The theater was sparsely filled, but everyone enjoyed it. We are already planning to go to see House on Haunted Hill.
This was my first RT viewing and “I liked it very much”. The crowd in Orland Park IL wasn’t very big but the laughs made it seem larger. I will definitely be going in October to see The House On Haunted Hill. Hopfully it will be in Orland again.
The one thing that has me scratching my head is the theater didn’t even have a movie poster for the showing which I find a bit puzzling. You would think you could get a bigger audience if you throw one up a week or two in advance. Did any other theaters have movie posters or promotions?
Had about 20-30 people in Owings Mills, MD. A better turnout than “Plan 9”.
Had a blast, loved the “Grass” short..the clay face thing had me rolling, but I LOVED the main feature.
Can’t wait for the Halloween Live Rifftrax “House on Haunted Hill” on 10-28-2010!!
Oh I will also add that the theater kind of messed up the beginnin in that we had a blank screen (no phony trivia etc.) and the show popped on just as Kevin was in the middle of introducing the first short.
The Lowtax shorts weren’t long enough. The two similar shorts they did at something awful were funny because of how they kept getting stranger and stranger. “And then they met Jesus … and went to CostCo…” I guess they couldn’t afford to tell more stories about Dora, though.
That’s my corn graphic. Hi little corn graphic, be good or the flammable housewives will get ya.
I’ll also put myself in the minority that loved the Lowtax shorts. But then, I’ve been the father of a 5 year old girl, so it all rang very true.
About half-full in Union City, CA. And like everyone else, the Grass short was the highlight of the evening. My favorite riff: the weird grass demon head saying “WHAT AM I?!??!”
I went to see the show in Rochester, NY with my best friend and fellow MSTie. It was at a Regal Cinema and the theater was half full (we were all on the upper section) which was a pretty good turnout. The one for the Christmas show was a litle lower than this.
The show was awesome! The 3 shorts were a blast, with Grass being the big winner. (“David Lynch’s Wedding Registry”) The theater was just roaring with laughter during that one. The Gasoline one was great too, we were all roaring at the scene where the housewife was on fire (“The animation burns!!”) The Aesop cartoon was pretty bizarre, not bad but def the weakest of the 3.
I didn’t mind the Lowtax shorts, they were cute and short. I also have to give props to the Mock Trivia and Movie Quotes before the show. Most of them were very funny.
I had not watched their previous work on Reefer Madness so the jokes were all new to me, and I was very impressed. A fantastic job, our audience was laughing almost constantly with several jokes drawing big reactions (The one from Kevin about McCartney’s alimony checks being one of em, The Last Airbender one also was killer.) One of my favorites was “Shroder and Lucy’s Marrige: The Dark Years”.
The colorization scheme didn’t annoy me much, altough the different smoke colors for when they were smoking weed was weird but still funny. As a Three Stooges fan, I got a kick out of the Judge being the same Judge from “Disorder in the Court”.
Other Favorite Riffs:
“Vincent Price!”
“Or my name isn’t the dad from Alf!”
“Some guy said he was going to ‘have me’ at his Grandma’s pool party”
“Bill put the ‘wad’ in ‘gaywad’”
“It’s Kramer!”
“I know who Mel Gibson would blame”
“Gary Shandling: The Early Years”
“They got Judge Cheney!”
Rifftrax does it again and delivers another excellent live show. I’m looking foward to the next one, The House on Haunted Hill in October.
hey… who won the ipad? i got there late so i must have missed it!
Actually, it wasn’t mentioned during the show, unless it was after the credits.
Thanks for coming everyone! Glad everybody enjoyed themselves. After you sit and stare at the films for a while, you sort of get used to the strangeness of something like Grasses, so it’s nice to see an audience react to it for the first time. See you in October, go eat some grass on the cob.
Movie Mistakes!
The Last Airbender
Okay, now my dissenting opinion.
Disclaimers — I LOVE Mike, Kevin and Bill. They could just sit around BSing and I’d pay to see it. And perhaps some of my opinion is colored by the fact this was the least attended show I’ve seen (same theater in all three cases, but this time we only had a handful of people there, whereas it was full in both previous cases).
I LOVED the first two shorts — they were worth the price of admission. “Reefer” as amusing, but not nearly as good (that may have been that the bar was set too high by the first two shorts, or it may have been that the movie isn’t as good for riffing as “Plan 9”, or it just may be they’ve done this one to death, but I never laughed as hard as I did during the first two shorts or even during the entire Christmas or Plan 9 show).
I think I got my money’s worth… but my wife and I also snuck into “Scott Pilgrim” following this movie and it was at least as good, so the evening was pretty enjoyable.
As for the Lowtax (sp?) stuff — it was okay. I sometimes think it’s better to have a break like this, where it’s only *interesting* and not especially amusing or good, because it “cleans the palate” before you get back to the main courses. It certainly wasn’t on par with the third party stuff in either of the previous two shows.
I hope RT made enough money to be successful — my wife and I will be there in October but if there are any fewer people we’ll be in the theater by ourselves (we were at the Orlando IMAX theater).
@mstie#44772: I was at the AMC Theater in Downtown Alexandria off of Eisenhour Ave. We had a really strong turnout. I’m surpised to hear that Tyson’s wasn’t the same.
Is corn a grass? Apparently Yes! http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_Corn_a_type_of_grass
Favorite riff: Exchange about buying a guy a hamburger vs. cheesburger. (You had to be there.)
Oh, I should note we weren’t in the IMAX theater per se, just the complex (in the IMAX we would have been deserted indeed).
Also — does anyone know who does the “Sparklee Vampires” song that was sung during the opening teasers? I’d love to get that for my Twilight-loving friends (to needle them, of course).
“Sparkly Vampires” is by the Rifftones themselves! You can find it on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM4rcjjKYVU
And terrific show, by the way, even though the theater in Kalamazoo was rather sparsely attended.
Shorts = SOLID :mrgreen:
Reefer Madness = FUNNY [firster for me] :grin:
Theater [AMC30 Olathe KS] = 40% full :???:
Lowtax = not my cup of tea :|
October 28 HoHH = YES :grin:
I was at the Chelsea theater in NYC and we had a blast!
No a single tech glitch — finally! — and the show started spot on time. The pre-movie mock triva was a great warm-up and had everyone laughing before the official show began. (I especially liked this sequence: 1st card: This Is A Test: LeBron James. 2nd card: We just wanted to see if everyone in the theater in Cleveland would boo.)
I too own the 3-riffer Reefer Madness and was apprehensive about how much would be repeated but I think the statement above that it was approximately 2/3rds new is absolutely correct. Not only that, the live version was denser, with fewer dead spots.
The first 2 shorts were some of the funniest stuff they’ve ever done. I literally couldn’t breath at spots.
I admit the split screen takes a few moments to get used to, but I do love seeing the riffers doing their thing. And I think going back & forth between having the movie fullscreen and having the riffers on-screen for part of it is the perfect solution.
The Lowtax (sp?) shorts were adorable and a perfect way for everyone to catch their breath.
As for the loud colorization, I’ve always thought it was done in imitation of the colors that used to be used for cheap lobby cards of downscale movies like these.
Can’t wait for the fall — going to see Rifftrax in October and then CT in November!
Saw it in Geneva, IL – almost full theatre. Sound was soft, but still audible. Extremely funny. Lots of loud laughs. Can’t wait until October!
I was also at Tyson’s Corner in VA. I had decided to save a buck and not get my tickets online, and showed up an hour and a half before the show. The ticket guy said they were sold out! I was crushed, and started to leave and think if we could make it in time to another theater showing it, when he double checked and said they actually did have tickets. That was really weird, because the theater was a decent crowd, but it wasn’t packed.
Great show, as always. I really liked Jonathan Coulton in the first show, and was disappointed that Weird Al didn’t actually play any music in the second show. I like that they take some breaks from riffing. I didn’t miss it too much this time, though, because it was a pretty solid show – but I hope they don’t completely write off having special guests in the future. (That said, the host of the first show was pretty bad, I’m glad they’re doing the introducing themselves now.)
I still want to know… is corn grass?
I forgot to mention in my comment earlier (41) that I attented the show in a theater in Asheville, North Carolina. It was a pretty big theater, and the seats were almost all the way filled. Can’t wait for October!
In Cincinnati in my theater wasn’t full either but every was laughing really hard. I love the cleaning with gas short. I ask my mom why anyone would do that. Really did they do that in 1930? Weer people that stupid? WHY? I seen the short of LSD being given to army troops and that made more sense that that short.
Did anyone else think it weird that Bill did a prerecord announcing them at the top of the show while we were seeing Bill not doing that?
Clearly a job for Disembaudio in the next show.
^^^ As a fan of Craig Ferguson, NO! ;-)
KILBORN, shoot I meant to say Craig Kilborn. :oops:
#8 – Cheech and Chong wrote jokes? I thought they were actual incoherent stoned guys who owned a recording studio.
Randy
Maple Grove didn’t carry it this time, went to Waite Park, about 1/2 full. Ended up a few rows behind some film “Know-It-All” who laughed hardest at the fake film fact about someone in the theater finally getting out of the house for the first time in years. He seemed like the kind that would be in his parents basement.
In case you missed the Riff and iPad contest winners in the credits:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJQVpW-EBUM
Oh, I remembered one other observation I wanted to make:
I guess Robert Downey Jr. has had a rehabilitation in the eyes of the RiffTrax guys. In the DVD he is said to be weeping while watching the drugs being destroyed. They used the same joke last night, but now Tom Sizemore is the guy doing the weeping.
Thanks Casey! BTW, can you tell me the names of the two Lowtax clips? I think one was The Story of the Glitter Doll and the other may have been The Story of the Fairy (something).
And by Nashville, do you mean you’ll be back at the Belcourt?
@63: Robinson or Tarentum? If I could have went I would have went to the Robinson showing.
Casey, this is coming out on DVD, right? Right?
One other question: before the show, was there a preview for Rifftrax Live: House on Haunted Hill?
No preview for H on HH..not in my theater anyway.
Great show! Better than Plan 9 and almost as good as their Xmas show…”Grass” was too good to be true, and they didn’t coast through Reefer at all–the riffing was superb. This and Voodoo Man have changed my mind about pre-fifties era films being riffed (the handful msted are not tops imo…I Accuse My Parents accepted).
They got the sound right in this theatre this time, so I was pleased.
I hope CT starts beaming in shows to theatres live like this eventually…
In Burbank, it wasn’t quite as large a crowd as there was for “Plan 9” (I had an empty seat on either side of me), but it was still well-attended.
The only bummer for me was that we didn’t get to see any of the funny text screens before the introduction of the riffers. Was it just my theater, or did anybody else on the west coast not get to see those?
The movie riffing didn’t do as much for me as “Plan 9” or the Christmas shorts, but I still had a great time. By the end, I had to consciously make myself stop smiling because my cheeks were getting sore.
Fantastic time! Not a large crowd by any means, but we still had fun. Loved all the shorts, including lowtax’s, ‘Reefer Madness’ was good…but I kept imagining “Jack the Giant Killer’…My girlfriend and I can’t wait for ‘House on haunted hill’
Great work all involved!
Unfortunatly, “technical difficulties” interrupted what was a very good show here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
We had a very low turnout, not even 1/3rd full, lower than the previous two events. Funny, I thought this one was better advertised and even had a POSTER in the hallway…that had dissapeared when we left the theater.
During the “Gasoline” short just before the lady blew up in cartoon flames the projector bulb blew out. We had to wait 10+ minutes before a “new” projector was in place. Fortunately, they “rewound” the DVR so we didn’t miss anything.
Still, it did tick off a few folks enough to leave and they got a refund. One of ’em, who had “entertained” us before the show started by trying to start as “Mike/Joel or was it Crow/Tom” chant took the trouble to “speak for the audience” when asking for a free ticket to the Encore showing. Instead, the manager offered a full refund and he apparently took it. When he left, the audience erupted into applause!
Pre-Movie Trivia = Good stuff, the “Nerds Cereal” one got the biggest hoots.
Rifftrax Shorts = Great, the “Grass” one was a real howler.
“Lowwhatever” Shorts = Okay, nice time killers.
Reefer Madness = Very funny, although it’s such a horrible film that they couldn’t miss. What I wondered was why, of all the characters in the film, the one who ate all the time didn’t smoke much “reefer”…oh well.
Looking forward to the Halloween show and this time, I’ll speak for myself…thank you.