I don’t think I was ever so sad after spending an evening laughing as I was this past Friday night.
I had just watched the crew of Cinematic Titanic at downtown Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater as they lit up a terrible Z movie from the 1970s, The Doll Squad. I was no stranger to watching Joel Hodgson, Mary Jo Pehl, J. Elvis Weinstein, Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff riff movies as I’d attended live events with them on several occasions in different cities. But, this night was special and undeniably bitter sweet.
This current short tour is the last for Cinematic Titanic. The members are still on good terms, but their individual schedules and geographic locations make it tough to put these tours together.
For me, it wasn’t sad just to see Cinematic Titanic make its last call. It was more the end of an era that defined and shaped my sense of humor and that of my family and friends. This was the last blossom sprouted by 10 years of TV’s Mystery Science Theater 3000.
I’m not going to go into a grand rehash of the MST3K premise, so we’ll make it quick. Evil scientists trap a man in space and experiment on him with bad movies. He builds two robot companions to keep him company, and they proceed to sit down in a theater and quip away at the screen.
Mystery Science was the high point of snark before that silly term was even a word. It popularized the art of moving riffing — the art of affectionately mocking bad movies with rolling commentary. Most of us had done it, and many of us still do. But, the MST guys made a profession out of it — perfected it with a spot-on blend of sarcasm, smart references and occasional silly humor just to keep it all inclusive. If you got the jokes watching at home, you felt like you were in on it.
Now, anyone who tries to trot out real-time mockery of bad films has to face the question, “Aren’y you just doing a Mystery Science Theater?”
The original MST was produced in Minneapolis by predominantly native Midwesterners. A dry, occasional grim Midwest sense of humor tempered by five months of hard winters steeped into every joke. That disconnect from Hollywood or New York meant Hodgson and company weren’t afraid to get up the collective showbiz nose. Like Monty Python’s Flying Circus a couple decades prior, the MST cast and crew obviously never felt like they answered to anyone. They just made a show that made them laugh for two hours.
Even though Hodgson was already a nationally known stand-up comic before he conceived MST3K, he was still a corn-fed Wisconsin boy at heart. He and his teammates were not out to impress anybody in LA, and the non-showbiz nature of the “cow town puppet show” meant that the stars and writers of the show hadn’t already disappeared up their own asses with pretentious. The show was never political, rarely topical and always more creative and clever than any 10 network comedies.
For folks of my generation (30 somethings and early 40 somethings) Mystery Science arrived right around our college years — an immensely important time in the shaping of any adult’s personality and sense of humor. Through grades nine through 12, my friends and I had a niche in that horrific high school power structure. We all participated somehow, somewhere in school. We played football, but we weren’t the best players. We dated the girls and hit the dances, but we weren’t the most popular kids. We got good grades, but we weren’t the top 10 students.
However, we were always the best at making fun of the top athletes, the student government, the most popular kids and brainiacs. That was our function — taking the piss out of everybody.
Personally, the more aggressive aspects of all that mockery was sharpened by two entities: Late Night with David Letterman (back in the days of Chris Elliott and Larry “Bud” Melman before Letterman slid down into the pablum of smug self-importance) and Mystery Science Theater 3000. Both shows were post-modern and hyper-intelligent. The analytic, satirical humor of both rose above the sitcom and stand-up malaise with a welcoming wink to their fans that said, “We’re all a little bit sharper than the folks that don’t get it.”
The added appeal of Mystery Science was that it made the viewer work for their laughs. You needed to know your cultural references. You had to pay attention. You had to get off the tired sitcom rhythm of “line, line, joke, laugh — line, line, joke, laugh.” It was creative comedy for people desperate for something completely out of the mainstream.
After 10 years on air, MST3K packed it in — only to resurface in spin-off entities like Cinematic Titanic. With that now moving on, it’s almost like losing a mentor — a source of inspiration. My sense of humor was largely inspired and educated by Hodgson and company. I’ll keep that humor with me, but that show in Milwaukee was time to bid farewell to one limb of the MST3K tree.
Rifftrax is still going strong. It sprung from MST’s later years, with Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett serving up live and recorded riffs of everything from classic movies to current releases. It’s funny. It coexisted well with Cinematic Titanic. But, the latter has decided to close shop, while the former riffs merrily onward.
I plan to enjoy what’s to come of Rifftrax, while quietly honoring the passing of Cinematic Titanic.
In the end, I’ve spent about 1,000 words writing what I find annoying from other scribes. I’ve essentially gone on about a little piece of my life like a fanboy. I’ve made other people read my therapy as I grieve lost comedy. I’ll wrap it up back in Milwaukee.
The performance on that last show went off without a hitch, with Joel and the gang honoring The Brew City as their favorite gig because it’s so close to their original homes — and because they eat well while in town.
When The Doll Squad finally tapped out, the Titanic cast drew a long standing ovation from the Pabst Theater crowd. Obviously, I wasn’t the only person on hand who wanted to show more than just appreciation for a little entertainment. We were all thanking the five comics for doing a hell of a lot to shape how we view the world.
