I was twenty years-old the first time I saw MST3K. I was sitting on the couch with a friend of mine, looking for something to watch on a Sunday morning, when she stopped on some crappy old horror movie.
"What's this?" I said.
"You've never seen this before?"
"No," I said, "That's why I asked 'what's this.'"
"It's a show about this guy who is trapped in space with robots, and is forced to watch horrible movies. So he and the robots talk back to the screen."
It reminded me of this show I first watched on KDOC here in Los Angeles when I was a freshman in high school, called Mad Movies. I became a fan for life in a matter of minutes, and developed a list of favorites just as fast: Manos, the Hands of Fate, Rocketship XM and Lost Continent are a few that come instantly to mind.
MST3K's Joel Hodgson once said, "We don't ask ourselves, 'will anyone get this?' We tell each other, 'the right people will get this.'" I was inspired by that philosophy, and when I wrote sketch comedy or did improv (both pursuits inspired by MST3K and the British Whose Line?) I used it, and I still use it today, even when I'm not writing comedy.
So now that there's some context for how much I love MST3K, you'll understand how excited I was when I saw that most of the original crew has reunited for Cinematic Titanic, which I believe can be safely called The Return of MST3K:
Cinematic Titanic is a feature length movie riffing show and is an artist owned and operated venture created by Joel Hodgson, the creator of the Peabody award-winning Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Cinematic Titanic features the original cast and writers of MST3K, which is Hodgson (Joel Robinson), Trace Beaulieu (Crow), and J. Elvis Weinstein (Tom Servo). Filling out the ensemble is Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester) and Frank Conniff (TV’s Frank).
While this is exciting to me as a fan, it's also inspiring and validating to me as a creative person who lives on the Long Tail. Instead of waiting for a network to give them the opportunity to bring their show to viewers, they're distributing the show on DVD themselves. Between this and Riff Trax, we Misties have a lot to celebrate these days.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have some rock climbing to do.
