LET THE MOCKING BEGIN
Mystery Science Theater live
Climb aboard the Satellite of Love — it’s time for some terrible, terrible movies.
Few shows have inspired a fandom as loyal as “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” The cult comedy classic riffed on the very bad B-movies that inspired it, and the show encouraged fans to make jokes along with the cast.
A new live show gives fans a chance to become part of an interactive movie-watching experience with new and returning characters from “MST3K.”
The Watch Out for Snakes! Tour will visit Phoenix’s Orpheum Theatre on Thursday, July 20. During the show, the cast will riff on “Eegah,” a 1962 horror film about a caveman living in California’s Mojave Desert. The original version of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” used the film during a 1993 episode.
The live tour coincides with the release of a new season of the TV show.
Netflix, the new home for the series, released the first season of “Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return” in April.
The original version premiered in 1988 and was cancelled in 1996, then again in 1999. The show appeared on a number of different channels, including KTMA, the Comedy Channel/Comedy Central and the Sci-Fi Channel.
The newest season follows a similar premise as the original, with mad scientists taking hostage a Gizmonic Institute employer and his robots Crow T. Robot, Gypsy and Tom Servo and forcing them to watch the worst movies ever made.
Both the TV program and live show feature a number of new actors, including comedian Jonah Ray as host Jonah Heston.
Along with live commentary from the humorous robots and some sketches, the show incorporates video surveillance from Mad Scientist Kinga Forrester, played by Felicia Day, and Henchman Max, portrayed by Patton Oswalt.
During the live show, Ray cohosts alongside original “MST3K” host Joel Hodgson, who started the Kickstarter campaign to bring back the cult classic.
Ray talked about the experience of being part of the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” crew, the evolution of the show and the art of riffing during a recent telephone interview.
Question: I know you grew up watching the show. What’s it like for you to be a part of it now?
Answer: It’s still very surreal, when I step back and think about it. It almost seems like I won a contest. When it comes down to it, the work still needs to be done, so at least I have a lot of writing and rehearsing with the show to keep me distracted without getting too overwhelmed.
Q: How are the live show and the TV show different?
A: There’s nothing really more fun to me than live comedy. Being in a room full of people laughing, there’s really nothing more beautiful than that. What’s neat about a show like Mystery Science Theater is a lot of people just watch it by themselves. When I was growing up, I had friends that we all liked it, but we never really got together to watch it. It was a way to hang out with friends when you were by yourself. The live show is so incredible because it’s almost like we turned the actual TV show into a show that tapes in front of a live studio audience. All of a sudden, there’s this energy that props everything else up. Every show’s going to be a little bit different because every crowd’s a little different…Everything’s written, but sometimes a joke will just blow up, and we’ll add a couple of tags to the joke.
Q: Are there moments of audience interaction in the show?
A: Joel will come out, ask questions and goof off with the audience. There’s certain moments in the show where we bring people up onstage. We try to drop in little local references into the riffs and into the sketches. When it comes to live comedy, you want to make it as “now” as you can. You want to make it very in-themoment. We definitely try to make that happen, make every show special for the audience.
Q: Does the show have riffs that are relevant to audiences today?
A: There’s so many jokes in every show that there’s always going to be jokes for everybody. You can’t always do current pop culture stuff because that’ll get stale, and you can’t do all old ‘60s and ‘70s TV show references because that will get stale.
Q: Riffing was a big thing on ‘90s TV shows. Do you feel like audiences today still respond to that style of comedy?
A: Everything is a riffing show now. You have “The Soup.” You have “Tosh.0.” You have tons of kids on YouTube. A meme is essentially a riff on an image. Twitter is a riff on a pop culture event or the news. Riffing is still alive in many ways. And of course, there was Cinematic Titanic for years…There’s Master Pancake out of Austin, Texas, and you’ve got the RiffTrax guys. There’s still a culture of riffing, and I think it’s as big as it ever was, if not bigger.
Q: How do you and Joel complement each other as live show hosts?
A: I’m a bit more bouncy and bubbly, and I want to be liked. Joel has this cool confidence. He’s almost like a surfer…He’s a no-worries kind of guy. Working together, we complement each other pretty well with our riffs. He thinks very visually, and I think very joke-based.
Q: Do you see people at the live show who remember the old show?
A: People that have been showing up for shows, these are life-long fans. People come up to us and are like, “Hey, I started watching it in the KTMA days” or “I started watching it when it was on the Comedy Channel.” People who got into it, like me, all the people who are coming to the show and the people that are working on it, we got into the show and we stayed into the show. Even if it wasn’t around, we would still consider ourselves big fans of the show.