WTF Friday: RiffTrax
How many of you remember these guys?
(photo via jeffbots.com)
Considering our target demographic, I imagine the answer is, “most of you.” But just in case we happen to be going beyond our own people to the ear and eye holes of the new geek generation, or some less geek-o-centric folks, this is a production still from Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (MST3K). The show premiered on a local Minnesota station in 1988, ran for a while there, moved to Comedy Central (before it was called Comedy Central), and last to SyFy (which was, at the time, SciFi), which eventually cancelled the show in 1999. For a show about a dude and two robots imprisoned on a space station and forced to watch bad movies, not a bad run. To stay sane, said dude and said robots made snarky comments about said movies. It’s really the only way to watch Jason and the Argonauts. Without hoping Medusa will show up and turn you to stone.
How was this different from what my friends and I did did after popping in the VHS (DVD toward the end if you were lucky) of Excalibur, getting a little buzzed, and making dumb jokes? Well, first of all, these guys are funnier. They also sustained the humor longer than most of us can on out best day. Third, why do it yourself when someone has already done it for you and done it with impeccable humor and robots?
Exactly.
We were all very sad when it went away.
And then, not too too long ago, this happened:
(image via RiffTrax.com)
From consulting the Rifftrax page, it seems the idea came about when Michael J. Nelson (one of the dudes) decided to continue making a mockery of all things B rated and atrocious after the cancellation of the show but hit a major legal snag: the movies MST3K used were, for the most part, out of copywrite and, therefore, part of the public domain, free to be mocked at will while being actively broadcast. The show could get away with airing the movie along with the dude + robot dialogue because no one owned the films.
It takes many years for things to drift into public domain. This presented an issue when Nelson wanted to use newer films.
So long as commentary soundtrack was a separate and distinct entity, however, the “riff” if you will, would not subject to the same restrictions; Nelson, and later added regular compatriots Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, along with a few other regular cameos and fantastic guest stars (Neil Patrick Harris, Weird Al Yankovic, Paul F. Tompkins, and Fred Willard to name a few) realized he could provide watchers with those audio tracks and a synching tool (a robot named Disembodio who will occasionally say a line of dialogue, thus allowing listeners to pause either movie or audio file as needed), leaving it to the viewer to come up with a copy of the movie.
And we were back!
Issues first (and there aren’t many of them): 1) You need to make sure the version of the movie you have is the one that synchs to the riff. Some are made specifically to match a special addition or a theatrical cut or etc etc. It isn’t bad, it’s just something to know because there is nothing more disappointing than starting a riff you’ve been waiting for, or been dying to watch forever, and realizing that you have the wrong cut of the movie. 2) It is a pay service. You do get three downloads of a given riff per purchase, but the price tag is there. One top of that, you have to either buy or rent the movie, which, with Netflix/Amazon Prime/Redbox isn’t a big deal, or terribly expensive, but it is still an outlay. 3) There is at least one riff I can think of that, no matter how well synched you are, and how often you correct, gets off by the end. *Shrug* Nothing’s perfect.
The raves:
1) Newer releases aren’t your only option. There are lots of shorts and older movies that have gone out of copywriter that you can stream with the track already synched and overlain for you. I recommend the Norman shorts particularly.
2) They boys have riffed a wide range of films. Like, Casablanca to 300 kind of range.
3) The worse the movie, the better the riff. Which makes the whole thing that much more fun.
4) The Live Events: every few months, Michael, Bill, and Kevin will do a simulcast event where they riff live from a theatre in Tennessee and the rest of us get to watch it at theaters in our vicinity. Jon and I have gone to three so far: Starship Troopers (they bought the rights with the funds from a Kickstarter campaign), Night of the Living Dead (of special important here in PIttsburgh), and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (because how can you turn that shit down). These live events are fantastic geek gathering times and the fake trivia before the main events alone is worth the price of admission.
5) These things are, by in large, hysterical. Good for boosting a bad mood, getting out of a funk, or just for any old Saturday night (or any other night for that matter) when the goal is amusement. It’s hard to remember all the crap going on in your life when you’re laughing so hard you can’t breathe. Hell, the Twilight one made me laugh so hard, early in my first pregnancy, that I threw up. For reals.
My favorites:
Twilight: “This from the ‘guy you tell the stewardess about’ catalogue.”
300: “Why’s the pizza guy still here?” “He likes to party!”
Eragon: “E-raggin’. For all your ragging’ needs.”
Get watching, kids. And enjoy.
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