Mystery Science Theater 3000

[mfunk9786]

Wait - so you're saying that you delight in the artistic merits of bad Jam Handy Productions educational shorts about cleaning up your room or having good posture or selling fine Chevrolet automobiles and don't want to see these things teased?

MST3K is about as good-natured as it gets. Does reading a bad review of a movie you like make you break out in hives? To each their own, but it's so silly to imply that riffing on a terrible educational short isn't moral somehow because Herk Harvey was involved in its direction.

[knives]

I didn't say it was immoral, just that suggesting one target is more deserving due to perceived faults over another seems to be missing Shreck's very salient point. I somewhat enjoy MST3K (though it is difficult for to watch as my ears aren't strong), but I do think it does support a false sense of superiority over odd films when one should attempt to approach them as being of great potential. If they still wind up being bad oh well, at least I gave them a fair shot. That's why I wish these sets gave the un-riffed versions on as an extra.

[matrixschmatrix]

If I have a complaint about MST, it's that the version you wind up seeing of whatever movie they're doing is generally pretty mutilated- bad print, cropped to 1:33, frequently horribly dubbed, and often with sizable chunks of the movie missing. Doesn't matter much for some of them (Monster A-Go-Go exists in such a perfect state of blissful incomprehensibility that such things can't affect it) but it's a revelation when you watch the original verions of the Gamera movies, which are actually a lot of fun.

Generally, though, what you're watching is no worse than was standard at the time for showing movies on TV, and says as much about an era that didn't give a damn for the integrity of a movie as it does about MST itself,

[mfunk9786]

MST3K was low-rent and low-budget, and I just don't see the implication of superiority over these films because of its scrappy presentation and lack of truly nasty bashing of these films. I love a few of the films that've been on MST3K over the years (some ironically, some genuinely) without riffing, but it doesn't make me defensive about seeing them riffed. Hell, Carnival of Souls is a film I love, and I saw countless times before Rifftrax got a hold of it, but I guess I just don't see the harm in goofing around.

[domino harvey]

This is a good discussion, but it should probably go here, no?

[tarpilot]

Aw, I don't wanna look like a total dick for trying to start shit in a MST3K thread

[Matt]

Aw, I don't wanna look like a total dick for trying to start shit in a MST3K thread

I'm a huge MSTie (just not gonna debate its merits with you Philistines) and I don't think you're a dick.

[mfunk9786]

Yeah - if the Newsroom thread can essentially be a pile of disgusted bile, I think we can handle a rational critical discussion of MST3K in this thread.

[Polybius]

The Fujiwara piece was a delight. When I woke up today, little did I know that as a fan of the Coens, Bob Altman and MST3K I was not only triply idiotic but also helping to run the culture into the ground.

[knives]

To be fair he notes the Coens and Altman as good examples of that irony.

[Polybius]

Left handed praise.

[matrixschmatrix]

I have to say, if I hadn't read Fujiwara's excellent Tourneur book already, I wouldn't be encouraged to do so by that piece. It's not quite John Simon-esque vitriol towards anything outside the writer's wheelhouse and everyone who supports any of those things, but he's the critic who most came to mind when I read it.

[zedz]

I don't think he's trying to praise them. Rather, I read the Fujiwara piece as yet another instance of the bizarre auteurist meme that Altman and the Coens are somehow 'unworthy'. Because they apparently 'look down' on their characters - though that claim (as is the case here) is only ever asserted or assumed to be self-evident. There's no scope for actually disagreeing and thinking, for example, that Altman actually likes most of the characters in Nashville, or that the Coens actually think the Gundersons in Fargo are admirable. You want evidence of this? - and believe me, you don't - just check out any time either the Coens or Altman are mentioned at Dave Kehr's blog. Any single time will do: it's always the same routine, running for pages.

This beside-the-point slagging is critically shoddy and really harms Fujiwara's argument, since it's exactly the kind of glib, cliquey, critically lazy high-fiving he accuses the MST3000 folks of indulging in, it's just that the clique he's nudging and winking at is a more exclusive auteurist one. Ditto the bizarre sideswipe at Zappa (though I'm also largely mystified by that particular cult!)

[matrixschmatrix]

That is a truly bizarre argument, I always feel as though if anything both the Coens and Altman have an unusual degree of affection for their characters- I mean, Altman shows affection for Richard fucking Nixon in Secret Honor, and the Coens are obviously in love with people like Clooney's fast talker in O Brother, Goodman in Lebowski, and all the relicts of their childhood in A Serious Man. Just because they also find those people risibile doesn't mean they dislike them, anymore than Kurt Vonnegut despises his characters.

[knives]

It doesn't really take much effort to have affection for Nixon. Even his sworn enemy Hunter Thompson said that he couldn't be all bad.

[Polybius]

That is a truly bizarre argument, I always feel as though if anything both the Coens and Altman have an unusual degree of affection for their characters- I mean, Altman shows affection for Richard fucking Nixon in Secret Honor, and the Coens are obviously in love with people like Clooney's fast talker in O Brother, Goodman in Lebowski, and all the relicts of their childhood in A Serious Man. Just because they also find those people risibile doesn't mean they dislike them, anymore than Kurt Vonnegut despises his characters.

That's an argument (about Kurt) that I've encountered. More than once. That sort of laughable pseudo-populism is often deployed against anyone who depicts regular folks in any way that wouldn't be at home in a Gary Marshall film. Medved was always a big proponent of it.

[manicsounds]

To me, it's a shame some people don't like the humor and fun of Mystery Science Theater. Whenever I need a laugh, I love putting in an episode. Also, if I watch too many 'high quality' films in a row, I sometimes have to ground myself by watching something 'bad', like a Mystery Science selection. But humor is different for everyone.

"Look behind you! It's Wong Kar Wai!"

[dustybooks]

I see both sides of this, which is always annoying.

I grew up on MST3K and it meant a lot to me as a teenager. I still enjoy it a lot and get stuck on a binge once in a while. The problem is that, especially in the later episodes, I do frequently sense something like contempt that just isn't funny to me anymore. There was a jubilant "found art" element to the show early on that I feel was ultimately filtered out. Not that I don't still enjoy the later episodes -- Overdrawn at the Memory Bank rarely leaves my mind for long -- but when the universal emotion they seem to be trying to speak to is anger at the existence of a film, I dunno. It seems a little joyless and numbing at times.

I have to admit that this impression has been partially (unfairly?) shaped and/or validated by Mike Nelson's post-MST3K career and movie writing he's done for Cracked and for his own books that does not, frankly, seem to me to reflect any kind of appreciation of cinema... and is pretty consistently unfunny to boot, in my opinion.

And as Schreck said, I've discovered some genuine affection for a lot of these films -- Manos, The Creeping Terror, Coleman Francis' filmography with its bizarre setpieces and plot threads, and just last week when I was watching The Skin I Live In I constantly thought of the number of motifs it shared with The Brain That Wouldn't Die. But honestly I gotta thank MST3K for exposing me to these movies to begin with.

The shorts are my favorite part, by the way -- and I'm fascinated by the artier Centron productions like "Cheating"; the riffing and accompanying host segments are still a riot.

[mfunk9786]

I thought Mike Nelson's Mind Over Matters was pretty damn funny. It's rare that a book has me trying to catch my breath because I am trying to stifle roaring laughter in a public place.

[matrixschmatrix]

I thought it was funny, but it also cemented Nelson in my mind as something of a cranky, irritable guy- though I forget if it's that or his other book that has the essay about how annoying it is that he has to go to the arthouse theater to see Jackie Chan movies, as everyone there is pretentious and smelly. Kevin Murphy's book made me like him all the more, though.

[knives]

Yeah, Kevin Murphy seems like a real nice and open guy about this stuff and I wouldn't say anything bad about him. Nelson's general attitude outside of MST3K is what puts me off of a lot of the later episodes versus their actual content. He just seems so self-serious for all the wrong sort of reasons. The sort of fellow who (to give a popular example) would point to their appreciation of Nolan and hatred of Ed Wood as evidence of their intelligence.

[matrixschmatrix]

Actually he's got a weird thing about Nolan, if I recall correctly. He's not a movie snob, he's a guy who doesn't particularly value movies as an art form, and only really seems to like popcorn Lord of the Rings types of things- which normally I wouldn't have a problem with, but it contextualizes him attacking other movies in a different and less pleasant way.

[knives]

That's what my broad generalizations were intending to convey. Maybe I should have left it off at middlebrow 'intellectual'.

[Minkin]

XXVI set coming out on March 26th. To include:

411- THE MAGIC SWORD
516- ALIEN FROM L.A.
620- DANGER! DEATH RAY
803- THE MOLE PEOPLE

[mfunk9786]

Yes! Alien from L.A. is fucking HILARIOUS.