Mystery Science Theater is... coming back?

For those not in the know by now, Joel Hodgson started a Kickstarter campaign in November in order to fund a new production season of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  The principals have been cast  -- Jonah Heston as the human riffer, Baron Vaughn and Hampton Yount as Tom Servo and Crow respectively, and Felicia Day alongside Patton Oswalt as the new Mads Kinga Forrester and TV's Son of TV's Frank.

The Kickstarter raised $6.3 million dollars between direct donations ($5.7MM) and add-on purchases ($600k) over the typical thirty-day open solicitation period.  The amount raised set a record for film/television projects, but just barely... by only a few thousand over the Veronica Mars film.  Joel Hodgson set a graduated goal, stating that $2 million was necessary just to get on the board with three episodes but that the ultimate target was a twelve-episode season, which would end up costing $5.5M.  Joel received that and a bit more, with all of the extra money raised going into creating two additional episodes to bring the first season up to fourteen episodes.  The final amount was gained through one of the goofiest trainwrecks of a telethon you'd ever watched.  This was even more awkward and technical-issue-ridden than the fake fictional one that "Weird Al" Yankovic envisioned in his movie "UHF".  Far less money, too...  And if there ever was a quintessential Joel moment, it was when he looked drowsy when announcing that the Kickstarter hit his *first* stretch goal of $5.9MM to get the thirteenth episode.  It was like watching him helm the Satellite of Love twenty years ago.

At present, there is no outlet for broadcasting these episodes.  However, being fully-funded for one season was Joel's goal so that he could literally bring "free" content to a provider and show the support of the show.  The provider would receive any sort of advertising revenue, with the hope that the advertising from the provider would induce the provider to fund more seasons, while being able to sell the show's audience to advertisers.  This brings us to the present day with the situation, awaiting Joel's post-mortem tomorrow.

So, the last month really did happen.  Fifteen years have passed since the Sci-Fi Network decided that they would not fund more episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  Oddly enough, every single one of the principals from MST3k ended up going on to do projects that were.... just MST3k in different forums other than television.  Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy seem to be making a very good living from Rifftrax since 2006 (nine years!).  Joel reformed the old guard into Cinematic Titanic, which ran for another six years between 2007 and 2013.

It was always odd to me that these side projects ran for such a long time yet there was no ability or way to get MST3k on the air again.  Cable television has exploded with so many channels through the last five years, and now that Netflix and Yahoo are creating new content for delivery via internet there's even more media options available.  On top of that, according to Joel, MST3k was always a low-budget affair.  The very last time Joel was onscreen as principal riffer, "Mitchell", the crew simulated static on a video feed by literally tossing white shredded paper in the shot... they couldn't even afford the extra monitor and camera to film while degrading the signal in 1993.

Now, some outlet or another will get the opportunity to bid on this show... and they'll have a reel of fourteen episodes, multiplied by ninety minutes of footage -- twenty-one hours of content of a fully realized show, fully funded by fans, and all they have to do is add advertisements.  Joel's Ask Me Anything said that he conceives that the show can last another thirty years with support.  It seems though that the the only current support are the fans... who by the way ponied up an average of $120 per person in order to fulfill the Kickstarter campaign.

I can't help but be apprehensive for where this project will end up going.  New riffers means that there will also be people that need to learn how to write riffs for movies.  Joel made the point that he tapped people from a wide range of previous occupations to write for him (and yes, sadly neither of your blogging hosts are on the list....), and these people will need to get up to speed.  Every single character is new and will need to be fleshed out, given a solid voice, and will need the sympathy of an audience in order to get away with some of the funniest riffs... putting three Donald Trumps in a shadowramma would end the show very quickly.  And this is on top of the fact that the show is cheap, has a built-in audience, and has had multiple successful online knockoffs through the last decade and a half but has not been brought back to television in any way, even by someone that was considered to have a business acumen (Jim Mallon).

One last point to make about the reboot is that this is happening with what seems to be an all-West Coast cast.  All of the guest-stars and guest-writers are also in the showbiz mold, having earned fame from other projects.  I don't know a whole lot about the new writing crew, bit the hope is that they can bring some balance to the finished project.  The writers used to be proud that they were performing in a "midwestern puppet show", and I am not sure how it will go if they lose the sense of confrontation and being wayyyy outside the halls of coolness that Minneapolis brought them.

This is not to say that I didn't put my money down on the table.  I anted up for this project, and I don't exactly have a lot of pocket change that I can devote to things like this... and the main reward that I was looking for from the Kickstarter will not be available until fifteen months from now.  Joel is helming the project and I am hoping that he can train up the next denizens of the Satellite of Love and Deep 13 into a fighting force.  And to be perfectly truthful, when I heard that Patton Oswalt was involved, it made me feel at least a little bit better.

So the Satellite of Love will float on.  I also hope that it will float on for many years to come... I love the characters, I love the concept, and I do still enjoy writing my own content within the idea of the show even if there's not a lot of time to produce free content within my schedule anymore.  I may even meta-MST some of these new episodes if the time and fancy strikes.

Though apprehensive, I am hopeful that this is the right time for Mystery Science Theater 3000 and that the show will work well.  In this day and age a provider only needs to market to perhaps two million people to get enough support and profit in order to keep a production going.  Even with the likes of Rifftrax around, I hope that both Rifftrax and Mystery Science Theater 3000 will be able to find the audiences and support it needs to do battle with pop culture into next Sunday A.D.  (And yes, I'm still available to write!  Follow the link above to my portfolio!)

#2LR Meta Navel-Gazing Part 2 -- Inspiration

In the first meta navel-gazing post, I tried to go into part of the reason that I write these reviews... wanting to talk about art to other people, finding methods that make movies / television shows / anime series / video games work or not work, and wanting to share my opinions of such.  In this post though, I wanted to go into the idea of inspiration a bit more, and to discuss a bit of how it works as far as a critic (slash MST3k writer) goes.

Firstly, I absolutely love Wikipedia.  I collect trivia like other people collect shotglasses, spoons, or other knickknacks.  There's just a wide range of amazing stories... such as the Great Chicago Fire happening the same day as massive fires in both Wisconsin and in two different places in Michigan.  One of these many places happens to be my hometown, yet I hadn't the slightest idea that this coincidence existed until reading Wikipedia articles.

Another favorite story is about an eighteenth-century queen of Denmark, Caroline Matilda.  In twenty-three short years, she managed to provide an heir to the Danish throne (plus a daughter), ended up taking some sort of charge of the kingdom when her husband became mentally infirm, going as far as to dress as a man to rally the troops, embroiled in scandal when it was implied that the king's doctor was the true father of both her children... it's really just a fascinating story to me, and it happened in only a few short years.  At some point, I think I need to find more books about this because I'm sure that the backstory will be even more surprising.

Cruising Wikipedia became my go-to for stories about accidents and other catastrophes for a while too... for me, I enjoyed reading the accounts of aircraft accidents or other disasters, finding out which decisions were the fateful ones, realizing that there's sometimes just that thin thread even if it didn't seem thin at the time.  I wrote a whole post describing more of my enjoyment of "disaster porn" that can be found at the link.

I suppose that one of my favorite subjects recently has been reading the articles posted about music.  The Beatles in specific have been covered quite a bit, but there are more than a few other artists that have articles up about their songs on Wikipedia.  I'm interested by these because I really enjoy hearing about the creative process... pulling just the most random thoughts out of midair, adding lyrics and music to these thoughts, and then bringing them to life to the point that millions of people want to hear more and more.  In all frankness, I've never been a big fan of the Beatles, but hearing the stories behind their work has actually encouraged me to listen a bit closer to their music, and I have been slowly becoming more and more of a fan.

It's really odd where one finds their inspiration, yet I think that the parallel activities of writing MST3k treatments of fanfiction and writing reviews of various types of media dovetails quite nicely.  As I look back, I find myself wanting to comment most on what other people have done, or said, or played, or acted... it's almost like I care just as much about the execution of the idea as I care about the idea itself being shown.  My inspiration and enjoyment comes in writing humor about creative situations, or commenting about the creative situations, and trying to find the thin line between the creators and their creation on one side and how the creations are perceived by the other.

I'm not sure if I'd ever really write anything original, at least not at present.  I suppose I would need to figure out a way to get inspired by my own thoughts, by bringing life to something completely internal rather than something that piques my interest because of how it affects me and makes me feel.

At present though, I'm more than happy to offer my thoughts on the experiences I share with others.  I certainly can understand the critics' soul far more than I did before I started doing this... right now, I'm comfortable in telling what audience we have my thoughts on watching/listening/playing, and hopefully we'll get a few interesting conversations scraped together sometime about how things will work for some but not for others.

Ever since MST3k was cancelled....

I know that more than a few people were rather disappointed to hear the news in mid-2000 that MST3k would be stopping production. As for myself, that was the one and only show that I cared to sit down and watch on a regular basis. When MST3k left the air, I did give some time to a couple other shows to see if they were still worth watching.

While "South Park" was a decent satire and had some intelligence to its writing, Parker and Stone were also content to fill it with all sorts of rather unintelligent vulgarness. I don't really mind vulgar to some extent, but I do mind the spirit with which it was presented... as pure humor. That's not humor to me, it's just laziness. I left "South Park" in 1999, and have never looked back.

The next show which seemed to offer some promise was "The Daily Show". The first ten minutes, "Headlines", delivered on a pretty regular basis. Unfortunately, "The Daily Show" could not keep my attention for even half an hour... almost every interview ranged from mildly boring to completely excruciating, and many of the comedians they booked to be commentators were rather unworthy of even being called comedians.

It took a couple of years, but I have found at least a bit of relief on the television. Ever since 2005, I have become a fan of "House" on FOX. Some people could certainly draw apt comparisons between "House" and "South Park", but I feel that "House" is just more interesting. I haven't seen too many episodes of "House" where the humor becomes scatological just because it can, for instance.

It also has a high level of snark in the form of the main character, and while some of the medical cases get stretched so thin that I can even see the light between the plotholes, the writing is pretty darned decent... jokes fly at a well-rhythmed clip, the mystery of the week is presented and resolved, and the characters have becomed nuanced and interesting.

My recommendation, if possible, would be to see Season 2... S2 hooked my attention to the show because of the overall quality. While current episodes of "House" haven't quite reached that level since then, it's still worth checking out.

Of course, I also have a recent entry in this list too. I don't know why my wife and I sat down to watch it, but a few weeks ago we caught the second episode of the new "Kitchen Nightmares" series on Fox. It also has some elements of MST3k in it, where one expert (rather than three) checks out a substandard restaurant (rather than movie) and makes comments on what he sees.

Of course, the "humor" contained in "Kitchen Nightmares" is of a far guiltier cast... this IS a reality show, and of course when truth is introduced, especially with the bluntness of the main star Gordon Ramsay, feelings will get bent. On the other hand, two facts are immensely apparent. Ramsay's bluntness is just who he is, it's really not an 'act'... and that he seems geniunely involved in trying to bring
restaurants into a better shape. Seeing the inner workings of a restaurant also brings a very close appreciation for people who run restaurants... and may also give you (possibly reasonable?) pause to make sure any restaurant you're going to is serving good food.

I will be the first to admit that most shows I avoid are because I don't give them a try... I'm not the type that just goes up to the television and flicks it on. I would be far more apt to either turn on a video game or read a book. It was actually surprising that I found the two shows above, in all honesty. On top of that, late-night television (such as "Adult Swim" on Cartoon Network) has always been out for me, due to me graduating from college in the same year that my
daughter was born (2002). And as a young professional on one income, I've had cable television for a total of perhaps 40% of the time since 2002.

Our readership at this blog, I assume, enjoyed Mystery Science Theater 3000 or its offshoots such as MST fanfiction. Therefore, my question to anyone reading is this: What shows on television do you see which continue the Mystery Science Theater 3000 spirit?


Postscript 1 / Strike 2

Most recent possible job fell through. Rather surprisingly too, I thought that I received indications that it was actually moving along successfully. While I know that intellectually, disappointments will happen, that doesn't mean that I *welcome* them. Especially since this was a job that I was really looking forward too, one that could have provided me with a lifetime of fringe benefits. Which leads me to:


Postscript 2 / Effing viral marketeers

Not the ones that try to stir up a word-of-mouth buzz, but the ones that hide little chunks of code into seemingly-legitimate computer programs that end up completely destroying someone else's property... namely, my computer. Last night, I attempted to reload WinXP on my computer. Now I'm working on about four hours' sleep plus having to move back a step (from XP to 98) due to a scratched WinXP CD which now won't install correctly. Today's really starting to become a massive pain in the butt, and I'm more than ready to just take a four-day weekend. Thank heaven it's already set up to be a three-day weekend.


Postscript THREE / Blogger!

I wrote this entry in Notepad, which theoretically has no formatting whatsoever... it's text! Yet I have to spend time formatting this darn thing 'cause I love you readers so. Darn you, Blogger, for your crufty interface and text breaks!


(Note to world. Please don't make me get to Postscript Four. Please?)

Drying the MSTing Well:

We have just passed 150,000 hits on our website maybe about a week ago. I don't know if I could ever create another website that would have even half of this response. A MSTing For All Seasons has been up for seven years, which makes it almost a senior citizen as far as the 'Net goes.

When we first started A MSTing For All Seasons, Mystery Science Theater 3000 had already announced that there would be no new shows. The Sci-Fi Network would show all of the remaining shows they ordered, and then would put MST3k on semi-permanent rerun status afterward. Our website opened about three or so weeks after the Sci-Fi Channel had broadcast the last new MST3k episode, the delayed "Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders", which came about five months after the 'official' end, "Diabolik", was broadcast.

In that time, I've seen a staggering amount of attrition. Of course, without the show around to remind people what MSTing was about, it was not a surprise. First, the MST fandom seemed to grow a bit older. As all other fandoms, while some people lose time or grow out, others find the fandom and obtain a desire to write. And without MST3k around, it seemed as if the new author flow of MSTings was slowed to a trickle.

Of course, one of the other watershed moments was when Web Site #9, Dr. Michael K. Neylon's online published MSTing archive, was taken from the Internet. Keith Palmer is currently running the MSTing Mine at http://www.keithpalmer.ca/msting-mine/ , and I wish him the best of luck in reconstructing what remained of Web Site #9 by scouring Usenet. Shinji's Vault of Anime MSTings has also morphed more than a few times, even adding a message board for a while. The same forces of inertia, few new authors and natural lossage due to the ravages of time, took place at Shinji's too. Tim attempted to morph it into Shuuichi's Vault, and then remorphed it into Everything What Is Crap.

The latest MSTings update to Everything What Is Crap was in late May, 2006. By all means, this is not a criticism; other than this blog, AMFAS has not been updated with a published MSTing in almost a year itself. (However, stay tuned, we almost have one finished and ready to publish). This is just more evidence that the fandom is still coming to a slow close.

This was not meant to be a rant, and I'm not making a call to all authors to do MSTings. Of course, people will write what they would like to write. So far, Megane 6.7 and I still choose to spend our time writing MSTings, and we do still hope that we have an audience out there. If nothing else, we have also found that we still enjoy it, even if the process gets a bit tedious at times.

It is not my intent to write a eulogy. I do not believe that this fandom is quite dead; after all, we are still seeing visitors to places like EWIC and A MSTing For All Seasons. It is more of an enconium, I suppose, as I would like to at least say that there have been more than a few MSTings in the past that I have enjoyed, and I hope that those authors have been able to move on to bigger and better things. To all of the readers and MSTers still active, by all means thank you for your support. We hope that you do enjoy your visit(s) to AMFAS, and that you are able to derive some sort of enjoyment from our works. While Mystery Science Theater 3000 is rapidly coming to the point where it has been rerun/off the air for longer than it has been on, I hope that all of the readers and MSTers out there are still trying to keep the spirit of the show alive in keeping an open mind about the world around them, and not afraid to make fun of the stuff that doesn't make much sense.

Again, thank you all for 150,000 hits, and seven years of activity. Thanks also to our website hosts, Nabiki and Lorien. While our content has slowed (significantly?) through the past three years, we're still here and we hope you are too.