Rifftrax If you never watched Mystery Science Theater: 3000, then you have questionable taste and we don't like you. But, if you were one of the very awesome humans who loved watching Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) and Bill Corbett (Crow) riff on the terrible B movies that were sent to the Satellite of Love, then hopefully you already know that the guys are still doing their hilarious riffs, but this time around, no movie is safe from RiffTrax.
Rifftrax was launched in 2006 and features audio commentary that you can download to play alongside films to get the MST3K experience at home. They tackle everything from the big budget films like Twilight, The Avengers and Hunger Games to classroom shorts about grass. (Not the fun kind of grass).
Due to popular demand and a passionate fan base, the guys take their act live to theaters for RiffTrax Live! throughout the year. They've already skewered Sharknado, Starship Troopers and Godzilla, and now, just in time for Halloween, they will be riffing on the horror film Anaconda (starring Jon Voight's crazy accent, Jennifer Lopez, and Ice Cube) this Thursday, Oct. 30, with a second show on Tuesday, Nov. 4. If you don't have tickets already, you'd better get them. It will be the best thing you do this Halloween besides ingesting countless pounds of candy.
We got to chat with Mike, Kevin and Bill before their big show about riffing on a cult favorite, the Twilight craze and how they did their part to mock it and which movies they will never, ever touch:
What made you pick this particular horror "classic?"
Mike: "So much to love: Chiefly Jon Voight just chewing up the scenery doing his Frito Bandito impression. But beyond that, J. Lo, Ice Cube (real name, Isirius Josiah Cubeinowitz), Owen Wilson, Kari Wuhrer, and one giant, horribly laughable digital (and sometimes puppet-tal) snake."
Kevin: "Are you kidding? Jon Voight, J.Lo, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz and Owen Friggin' Wilson menaced by giant cheesy divi-snakes? What's not to love?"
Bill: "Jon Voight hamming it up with a cheesy accent from some vaguely 'foreign' country. Also a giant CGI snake, which is more convincingly real than Mr. Voight."
How long does it take to write an entire live show like Anaconda?
Mike: "A couple weeks. Plus an extra week for crying once it's done."
Kevin: "Anaconda's gone pretty quickly I think, thanks mostly to its pretty brisk pace. That's rare for a modern action/horror movie. No, Anaconda, gets you in there, gets all its characters nice and killed or managed, and doesn't overstay its welcome. I love that. Godzilla, on the other hand took, I think, eleven years."
What is the best part of the process for these live shows? The worst?
Mike: "The best is actually doing them, being in front of other human beings. A lot of my existence is solitarily mining jokes down in the comedy dungeon, so to get out in front of people and have interaction is pretty great. The worst part about it is having to stare so closely at one movie for so long. Even it the movie were Citizen Kane, if you watched it as intensely as we do you'd end up screaming, 'We get it! It's your @#$% sled!! Shut up already!'"
Kevin: "The best part is the actual performance; it's just so damn much fun to do this with a live audience, the energy just builds and builds, and all the stress of preparing and all the pre-show jitters just melt away. The worst part? I don't think there really is one, but that last half hour before we go onstage is excruciating."
Bill: "The best part is feeling the energy of the audience and getting laughs in real time after spending so long writing it. The worst is occasional self-consciousness knowing that my head is being projected at Mt. Everest size to hundreds of theaters across North America. Yikes!"
If you could pick any movie to riff that you haven't yet riffed on, what would it be?
Michael: "What's Shia LaBeouf's next movie? 'Cause it would be anything but that."
Kevin: "I'd pick Miami Connection, an amazingly weird martial arts/rock-n-roll band movie that made my head spin."
Bill: "Boy, After Earth immediately springs to mind, but since nobody actually owns a copy, it wouldn't do anyone much good."
You guys usually stick to movies, but are there any TV shows on right now that you think are dying to be riffed on?
Mike: "All reality shows. They should be riffed on and then banished forever."
Kevin: "Oh good God. Gimme The Walking Dead. Gimme Boardwalk Empire. Leftovers! Gimme Leftovers! I'm drooling for Leftovers!"
Bill: "I think we could have fun with The Walking Dead (speaking of dying) for a few episodes until we ran out of zombie jokes. That or the Charlie Rose show."
Are there any TV shows on right now that you are dying to riff on?
Mike: "All reality shows. They should be riffed on and then banished forever."
Kevin: "Oh good God. Gimme The Walking Dead. Gimme Boardwalk Empire. Leftovers! Gimme Leftovers! I'm drooling for Leftovers!"
Bill: "I think we could have fun with The Walking Dead (speaking of dying) for a few episodes until we ran out of zombie jokes. That or the Charlie Rose show."
Is there anything about the MST3K days that you guys miss besides the terrible B movies?
Mike: "The first class flights to swanky parties in New York and L.A. to hobnob with people I didn't like who, if they thought about me at all—and they did not, detested me for not being famous and connected."
Kevin: "The camaraderie of it all. I'd be standing there in the puppet trench on a shoot day, a very silly script all polished and ready to go, prop people standing by with flames or God knows what kind of hazardous effect, everybody in the studio pumped up and laughing, all this wonderful collaborative effort going into it, and thinking that I may never have a better job and that's okay."
Bill: "I do miss those rascally robots, but I know they're happy being retired in the Bahamas, They embezzled all the money and fled, those scamps."
One of your most popular riffs has to be the Twilight series. It's so freakin' funny. What is it about that franchise that made it so easy to make fun of?
Kevin: "Twilight is the perfect straight man. Twilight is like Margaret Dumont in Animal Crackers. There are a lot of great setups in Twilight. Hell, the whole movie is one big setup for a joke. But writing those jokes, that's where the work comes in. I'm proud of our writers and the skill and talent they bring to what we do. We've carved a very odd little niche in the world of comedy, and it's not the kind of thing everyone can do. And the result of all that effort is that it makes what Mike and Bill and I bring to the screen appear effortless."
Are there any movies that you would never go near due to either respect for the material or any other reason? Or is no movie off limits?
Mike: "Of course, but mostly due to subject matter not quality. Because most of what we do is jokes that have little or nothing to do with the quality or lack of quality in a film. We've done plenty of movies we like and respect and in those cases the jokes match the situation. You can't credibly be making cracks about how lousy the writing is in Casablanca when it's demonstrably not true, so you have to find a different way to go about it. It makes you more creative."
Kevin: "We really set our own limits. We avoid what I guess I'd call the eloquent statements on horrible events—Shindler's List, Twelve Years a Slave, beautiful, heartbreaking works. But we have done movies that we all admire and respect—Casablanca, Jaws, The Wizard of Oz, Lord of the Rings, and those end up to be more like roasts than what we do to a movie like, say, Birdemic."
Bill: "Oh, absolutely. If we did a movie like Shindler's List or Hotel Rwanda we would come off like horrible monsters. And rightly so. It would be... well, not funny, to say the least."
So, besides the live shows and the website, is there anything else coming up for you guys?
Mike: "Our line of ready-to-pour chicken marinades is in the work. At least it is if I have anything to do with it."
Kevin: "Isn't that enough?! ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!"
Bill: "We have another National Geographic Channel (NatGeo TV) special coming up this fall, and we're very excited about that. More weird animals and hapless explorers! And personally, I have a comic book coming out for the holidays called Super-Powered Revenge Christmas. It's a satirical comic where pop culture Christmas icons become superheroes and supervillains."
You can buy tickets to Rifftrax Live: Anaconda on the Fathom Events website. The next live show features the 1959 film Santa Claus, debuting on Thursday, Dec. 4, so make sure your schedule is clear for that dose of Holiday cheer!