MST3K's Nelson still mocks movies

Mike Nelson makes a living making fun of bad movies. And he doesn’t see anything wrong with that.
Mike Nelson makes a living making fun of bad movies. And he doesn’t see anything wrong with that.

"I occasionally get the question, and there's an implication in it," Michael J. Nelson says. "'Why don't you do anything else?' They usually ask it nicer than that."

Nelson, who has spent the last 26 years making fun of dubious movies, notes "nobody asks a baseball player who has a really long career, 'Why don't you stop that and go play basketball or become a nuclear physicist?'"

Nelson served as head writer and later host of the cult television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (known to fans as MST3K) from 1989 to 1999, where he and a pair of sarcastic robots poked fun at a long string a bad films because they were bored out of their minds stuck on the misnamed Satellite of Love. Since 2006, he has been improving undernourished movies via digital downloads, DVDs and live performances through Rifftrax.com.

Nelson and I were speaking recently because he and MST3K alumni Bill Corbett (who voiced the robot Crow) and Kevin Murphy (who was the gumball machine-shaped Tom Servo) are scheduled to do to Sharknado 2 what the film's star does to flying sharks (it involves a chain saw). The Riffers will gather in a Nashville, Tenn., movie theater on Thursday and beam their live assault on the film to more than 700 screens across the country at 7 p.m. An encore presentation will screen July 16. Five Arkansas theaters -- the Tinseltown in Benton, Conway's Towne Centre/Cypress Point, Fayetteville's Razorback Cinema, the Malco Fort Smith Cinema and Little Rock's Breckenridge Stadium 12 -- are among the theaters participating in the event.

When asked why Sharknado and its successor Sharknado 2 deserve the same treatment given Plan 9 From Outer Space, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Anaconda and Starship Troopers, Nelson says, "We went with a little trepidation with the first one because it was obviously a little bit tongue-in-cheek. But then we watched it, and we thought it kind of fails to even do that. It fails to even be the bad, funny, cheeky version. It tries to have this serious core with a family drama in it that it doesn't take lightly with these little heartfelt speeches. We did it live, and it went really well.

"And then with Sharknado 2, I thought, well, maybe they kind of got it together. Maybe it's going to be like Birdemic 2, where they really lean into the jokes, but it's really kind of the same thing where the only real difference are the cameos, and those were so lame. It's kind of, as you say, a target-rich environment."

Nelson says that the cameos where Robert Hays from Airplane! plays a pilot and Judd Hirsch from Taxi plays a helpful cabbie would probably lose most viewers under 30 or even 40.

"Who is this playing to? How old do you have to be to continue playing to that? The first time you see it, you go, 'Oh, I get it.' You don't really laugh. You go, 'Oh, uh-huh,' and then it's over."

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME

MST3K and Rifftrax make the process of interrupting a movie seem entertaining and even easy. Nonetheless, Nelson explains that there's a reason, he, Corbett and Murphy make their livings commenting on films while most folks who do that risk getting thrown out of the auditorium.

"It's kind of a blessing and curse for us because the end product seems very easygoing and easy to get into, and people enjoy it. They feel sort of a kinship and 'Oh, I do that, too.' Then when people actually sit down and try to do it, they say, 'I can't really do that.' You can be a smart aleck in a theater and say one line every 10 minutes and maybe one out of five will get a laugh out of people," he says.

He also says that not all substandard films lend themselves to additional wisecracks. If Sharknado gives the Riffers room to work, other films have traits that actually turn sarcasm into, oh, work.

"I don't want to say something like Twilight is easy, but technically it provides a lot more opportunities with its slow pace, and it's a little bit melodramatic and maudlin. So, they say a line or do something ridiculous, and there's a nice pause as if they did it for us as a courtesy. 'Here's your chance to make a joke,'" Nelson explains.

"When we did Twilight, that was a riff where we didn't have a lot of teenage girl fans, but people really flocked to Twilight and really understood what we were doing, and hopefully we gained a lot of new fans. Certainly a lot of Twilight lovers' boyfriends watched it, and we gained some new fans there."

NEW FANS

In the quarter century Nelson has been critiquing movies, it has been easy to notice that the films' stars aren't as angry about unknowingly providing material for him and the other Riffers. It was a sure sign your film was wanting if Crow and Tom Servo critiqued it instead of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.

Now, stars not only show up to screenings where the Riffers make comments, some like The Room writer-director-producer-star Tommy Wiseau and the Sharknado 2 leads have actively promoted the live Riffs.

One explanation could be that the Internet Movie Database ratings for the original films are consistently lower than the Rifftrax editions. For example, Sharknado on its own has a 3.3 rating (out of 10), while the Rifftrax version boasts an 8.3 score.

"It's been a real turnaround. In the modern era, with having things on the Internet, maybe we helped open things up with our show originally. This is mostly in good fun. I can see when you're onscreen, and you're acting, and these guys make fun of you. All credit to those people who understand that in the end ... that it's supposed to be good-natured and fun. For them to get into the spirit, shows a generous spirit on their part."

MovieStyle on 07/03/2015

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