An Evening with Cinematic Titanic
by James Roland
I saw fireflies on Saturday night – for the first time in my life.
They’re attracted to the projected light at the John Anson Ford Amphitheater in Hollywood and, last week, while at a live performance of Cinematic Titanic, I watched them flutter just above the audience.
Not that I was distracted from the performance, I saw the fireflies because I flung my head back in a fit of laughter.
For you fellow nerds who discovered Mystery Science Theater 3000 in the nether regions of cable television in the early 90s, Cinematic Titanic is old news because, well, no one watched MST3K without becoming a rabid fan – to this day, almost ten years after the show was canceled, folks across the nation and planet use the internet to swap rare episodes and track the lives of cast and crew.
For those of you that had dates in the past decade, here’s a brief recap of all the geek-hilarity you’ve been missing: Creator Joel
Hodgson left his Hollywood prospects after he turned down a starring role in a mediocre sitcom. When the producers asked again, this time offering double the money, he realized no one in Los Angeles respected his work and moved back to Minnesota. A time of darkness fell upon Middle Earth, until Joel and his crew of St. Paul hipsters conceived a show and seized control of a local television station.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 was born like Frankenstein’s monster, a mish-mash of pop-culture pieces: part Silent Running, part Dr. Demento, part Muppet Show. Joel played the stoner-esque character of the same first name; a janitor who was unwillingly launched into space by two mad scientists and forced to watch bad movies. To keep his sanity, he built four robots to help him heckle.
The stir-crazy humor that evolved from this ridiculous premise was laden with irreverence, pop-culture references, and lots and lots of songs (to this day I can still remember finding the show via channel surfing and can still sing the song that three silhouetted figures chanted over images of a fire spewing giant turtle: “Gamara is really neat, he is filled with turtle meat, we are eating GAM-A-RA!”).
The show ran for a decade – first on a local access channel, then on Comedy Central, and finally on The Sci-Fi Channel (and along the way they managed to make Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie as well).
After its cancellation, the cast and crew dispersed into various areas of arts and entertainment, and now the original crew has resurfaced in the form of Cinematic Titanic, a new model of what Hodgson has named “movie riffing.”
The pressure was on but the fans were eager, and the first two episodes have been a wild success. Already it shows signs of the same creative evolution that graced the original show. While the first installment, The Oozing Brain, was funny and entertaining, it was immensely simple. There were no breaks, no host segments, just five folks in silhouettes while the movie played. The second episode, Doomsday Machine, shows a marked progression in concept: the iconic character silhouettes are no longer confined to the theater, now they can be seen over the opening credits as the Riffers (Joel Hodgson, J. Elvis Weinstein, Trace Beaulieu, Mary Jo Pehl, and Frank Conniff) walk and joke their way down a long corridor, receiving instruction from government officials. The premise is that these movies are so awful that they somehow threaten reality and all digital media, and we need the Cinematic Titanic crew to save us.
The added element of cornball science fiction will inevitably draw MORE comparison to the original show, but the Titanic crew is ready. In the opening of the second episode one of the government officials remarks, “We noticed you don’t have any of the robots with you.”
To which Trace answers, “Oh, we don’t do that anymore, it’s just us now.”
“Oh,” the official replies. “So it’s not just a copyright thing?”
But while the new show has dropped a lot of the MST3K trappings, so far it hasn’t lost its sense of humor. Doomsday Machine is hilarious, and ranks with the legendary MST3K episodes such as Pod People, Cave Dwellers, and Manos: The Hands of Fate.
What makes both shows so fun, and ultimately successful, is that everyone of every age LOVES bad movies. Cinematic Titanic is a humor bridge to all demographics. Geeks love the sci-fi themes, youngins love the silly violence that often accompanies the cult films, and the quick wit and intelligent riffing appeals to the hipsters and cinema connoisseurs that attended the L.A. Film Festival this past week.
It’s been two decades since Joel and the gang first churned out shoe-string budget shows for local television, and I wonder what it’s like to perform live to an L.A. festival crowd, decked out in dress clothes instead of jumpsuits from the Gizmonic Institute, using director chairs and mic stands instead of homemade props.
This gang has contributed 20 years of comedy gold to pop-culture; they’ve coined phrases, created iconic characters (the robot Tom Servo has cameoed on Homestar Runner, 3rd Rock from the Sun, and Futurama), and built a fan base so strong that when they made the second episode of Cinematic Titanic available for download on June 19th, the high demand immediately crashed the server for a few hours.
So it was easy to imagine, when the Hollywood Bowl launched fireworks halfway through their live performance last Saturday night, that the booms, echoes, and colored light were for them.
Alas not.
But then this awkward moment morphed into serendipity when Joel looked up at the screen to see the colored light reflecting off the image of an astronaut staring at a spaceship portal and quipped, “We’re under attack from the Bowl!”
Fitting, from a guy who stepped out of the Hollywood mainstream and made a name, legacy, and living by poking fun at the world he left behind.
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