Transcript Episode 2: Interview with Mike Nelson
Intro music.
Angie: Welcome to Geek Out with Angie Fiedler Sutton, an ongoing discussion on geeky topics.
Here in a couple days, cinemas across the nation will be screening “RiffTrax Live: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.”
[RiffTrax VO: “Merry Christmas, everyone (laughs)!”
“Idiot, you’ve flown us right into a Christmas movie.”]
RiffTrax, for those who don’t know, is a spiritual successor to the cult-favorite TV show “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Launched in 2006 by MST3K alums Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy, RiffTrax takes the snarky humor of making fun of movies and makes them as either commentary tracks to DVDs or downloadable mp3s you can sync with the movie in question.
In partnership with Fathom Events, this is the 10th such live screening since they started back in 2009. In this episode of Geek Out, I talked with Mike Nelson about riffing and these live events.[1]
And so, this is your 10th RiffTrax Live since you guys started these, according to Wikipedia, is that correct?
Mike: Yeah, I believe that is right. I had to think for a second. But yes, I think it’s right (laughs).
Angie: What caused you to decide to do these live events?
Mike: Well, we’ve always done live events, but they were kind of one-offs for festivals and things like that, and with doing the website work, it was difficult to break away to do those. So, when we heard about what Fathom was doing, we thought, oh, that might be a neat way to cover a lot of what we would like to do. We’d like to do a live tour or something, but this is the equivalent of that just handled in one night. So, we got in touch with them, and luckily it’s worked out for both of us.
Angie: Now, again, according to Wikipedia, which we all know is so trustworthy (laughs), you’ve been doing—
Mike: (Laughs) That’s right. Unimpeachable.
Angie: Exactly. You’ve been doing about two a year outside of 2011. This is the first time you’ve really done a third outside of the rebroadcasts with “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” Do you have any ideas as to why— you’re obviously getting more successful, what, with the Kickstarter and all that. Any particular ideas as to why it’s suddenly getting re-popular?
Mike: Yeah, I’m not sure. I think that we probably started… let’s see, I think our first one was in 2008, and there were problems with the economy and stuff. And so, we did them and they were successful, but these last few have just been— I don’t know whether it’s a choice of material and a combination of things, but they seem to have been hitting their stride. So, we’re just really pleased with it, and the more we can do, I think the better for us. ’cause it’s three shows a year and we continue with the website we put out— it doesn’t really slow us down on the website, so works out well.
Angie: Now, this is, of course, on the tail of your successful Kickstarter campaign for— it was originally for “Twilight” but ended up being for “Starship Troopers” because you couldn’t get the rights. Were you surprised by the amount of funds you ended up raising?
Mike: Very pleasantly surprised, and it worked out, I think, in the end, although we’re not ruling out “Twilight.” They didn’t say no, (laughs) it was one of those things where they said, “Eh, ask us again in the future.” So, I’d like to do that again.
Angie: Yeah, that’s probably the only way I will ever watch that movie (laughs).
Mike: (Laughs) Understood.
Angie: One of the things my thesis is going to be on is on fandom-related stuff. The fans are obviously a big part of why RiffTrax is as popular as it is and the fans, not only RiffTrax but of Mystery Science Theater 3000— they’re getting ready to celebrate their 25th anniversary this year, is that correct?
Mike: Yeah, that’s right.
Angie: I know that Joel is planning on doing the live broadcasts of episodes. Were you guys planning on doing anything connected to that?
Mike: No. You know, I just saw that; someone brought it to my attention yesterday. I’d forgotten that it was the 25th, and then I saw that Joel was doing an event, Turkey Day, which I was glad to see because I think way back in the early 90s, we started that and it was always great fun. But beyond that, (laughs) to be honest, I hadn’t thought of it until yesterday.
Angie: (Laughs) Well, from what I could tell off your website, “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” is not one you’ve done a regular riff of, is that correct?
Mike: Right.
Angie: And obviously, there’s an obvious reason as to why you’re doing that in December, but why that as opposed to, say, “Nightmare Before Christmas,” which I know you have done a riff before, or other Christmas shows?
Mike: Well, this one was— when we did it originally, which is a really, really long time ago, I wasn’t the host of the show, Bill wasn’t onboard. Kevin was there, so he’s the only common thread. And it had been long enough that we forgot it so we just screened it again and thought, oh, this is delightful. And I think for most fans, because I can’t even remember it, I assume they don’t remember much about it either. (Laughs) So, I think it’s about time to revisit and see what that was all about, see if we hallucinated that or not.[2]
Angie: (Laughs) Let’s go into a little bit of the process of the actual writing of the riff. How long does it typically take to write a riff and then go from there?
Mike: It’s probably all told about two weeks… It’s probably longer for a live show. It’s a little more intense, obviously. There’s more people watching you and there’s different considerations and different things that can happen in a live event. But we split up the script and each writer takes a chunk of it and sort of lays the groundwork, and then we get it all together, and then we just start editing it and we go over it again and again and again and just try to find the right ingredients for live. And it’s a bit different than doing it for a recorded version because we’ve just found that things in life, situations will or will not work as well as things in the studio. And you also have to be a little light on your feet when you’re actually up there on stage because things surprise you and audiences are different than you thought, so it’s a fun thing. But that’s basically how we do it. We just start with a loose script, and then we just keep refining it.
Angie: Outside of the three of you, do you run this by any like test audience or anything like that?
Mike: No, not really, not in any formal way. People will come in and out of a writing session, just sort of RiffTrax personnel, but beyond that, we trust our instincts on that.
Angie: For those who aren’t familiar with what RiffTrax is and what riffing is, how would you define what a riff is?
Mike: Well, we always say it’s like watching a movie with your funniest friends, and I hope that’s true, and that’s the tone that we go for is we’re we’re making fun of it, but it’s in a way that hopefully is pretty lighthearted. Otherwise, I can imagine that RiffTrax would grate on your nerves after a while. Guys who are just upset with a movie does not make real funny (laughs). Maybe in short doses, but in the long haul, we’re all fans of movies and we want to see good movies, but we also really enjoy bad movies in the right way, and then we give them the appropriate commentary if something is deserving of a bit of scorn and you get that. But if it’s otherwise just sort of incompetent, it’s just fun to watch and play along with.
Angie: Have you ever riffed a movie that you personally loved and were a little afraid to take on?
Mike: Oh, yes, yes. We did (laughs) as a stunt to see and mostly to prove to people that we don’t dislike these movies, certainly not strongly—there are things about everything that you, as a critic, would like to change—but we did “Casablanca,” which, it’s in my top five favorite movies ever. So, we don’t hold grudges against these movies and we don’t hate them.
Angie: So, after “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” what’s next on the RiffTrax radar?
Mike: We continue along with doing stuff on the site. Hopefully, we will return to the live theaters next year, as well, although we don’t have anything officially on the books for that yet. But yeah, we’re working through new shorts and things. We are dipped into an old “Batman” serial that we’re currently having fun with, so we’re releasing those one every two weeks or so. We just love those.
Angie: (Laughs) And this is just me, personally: why Nashville? These have all been live in Nashville.
Mike: Our production company is there. As it happens, this is not a reason for doing it but my sons also go to college there. So, I’ve spent a lot of time there. And our production company, we could have them out either to California or to Minnesota, but we’re a smaller crew than they are, so they win in terms of the economics of getting a whole bunch of people one place or the other. So, hence the Nashville thing.
Angie: And do you think that web 2.0 and social media has helped your success?
Mike: Oh, yeah. I think so. I think that this is a much more familiar form now to people. It used to just be the one weird TV show that was sort of cult-y and now a lot of comedians do similar things commenting on movies or taking them apart or pretty much doing exactly the commentary while the movie’s playing. So, I think it does make it more familiar to people and not such a strange cult-y thing.
Angie: Well, and speaking of the culty thing, Mystery Science Theater 3000 is a cult phenomenon and it was the first of its kind. Yeah, people always spoke back to the movies, but this was the first time it was ever, I guess, canonized. Does that ever throw you off that you were kind of part of this redefining of a media format?
Mike: Ah, no. It was fun to be part of something that got that much attention, but it cut both ways, is that people read into it a lot of times that we were trying to do some sort of meta commentary on society and things like that, and we were always just a bunch of comedians trying to make a really funny show. (Laughs) So, you would read thinkpieces about yourself and go, “Wow, I didn’t know I was that smart.” So, it really wasn’t our intent to do anything that was a grand scheme of, of commenting on stuff. It was much more… you know, we’re comedians.[3]
The RiffTrax Live presentation of “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” is December 5th, and more information about the show can be found either by going to rifftrax.com, or to fathomevents.com.
[RiffTrax VO: “And a trippy Christmas to all, ho ho ho!”]
(Outro music.)
Thanks for listening to Geek Out with Angie Fiedler Sutton. The theme song is “Schoolyard Haze” by Jari Pitkanen, available via the Free Music Archive. The podcast is recorded in partnership with Sci-Fi For Me Radio and released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. Links for more information on all this are available on angiefsutton.com.