The silhouette of a guy in front of a silver screen, sitting beside what appears to be a gumball machine and a weird catcher’s mitt, has become an iconic one for many. Cult-classic TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000 featured a guy and his robotic cronies wisecracking while watching old films. And though the series was laid to rest in 1999, its spirit lives on with RiffTrax—a live performance simulcast to movie theaters nationwide— dropping the characters but keeping the heckling alive. The City Paper sat down with Bill Corbett, the voice of MST3K character Crow T. Robot to get the scoop on the upcoming live beatdown of a B movie you can’t help but love to hate. The crew will riff on Sharknado in a simulcast to be shown locally Thursday, July 10.
Can you tell me a bit about how you got involved with Mystery Science Theater 3000?
Bill Corbett: With a couple of makeshift puppets that were made out of hot-glued junk, basically, they somehow hooked up with what was eventually going to be Comedy Central. It was sort of the most improbable thing to happen that this little local cable access thing… It was just the right time and the right place for cable in its state at that time. I was hired as a writer [for MST3K] for a while and when one of the main guys, Trace Beaulieu, left the show, they asked me to step in.
What made you and the crew decide to bring it back as RiffTrax?
They’re completely separate things, officially speaking. So, Mystery Science Theater 3000 was never really on a hiatus; it was just canceled. Mike Nelson (head writer for MST3K) was hired to write some commentary for a San Diego company that basically released old public domain movies or movies that they bought, and that was sort of the beachhead. RiffTrax grew out of that and now it’s something, mostly based on the internet, but now we do these live events periodically. We’re doing four of them this year.
So is there a muscle memory aspect to it or is it a little bit higher stress being in front of a live audience?
It’s definitely that, but it’s also for me higher fun. I think that’s true of all of us. We’re not really doing improv up there, all of our stuff is pretty tightly scripted and I mean we deviate if we need to, and sometimes we flub it, because it’s really live.
What’s the process for a typical RiffTrax? How many times are you watching say Twilight before you put something out and how sick of it are you by the end of it?
Depends on the movie. If it’s Twilight, it doesn’t even take one time through. We all have varying degrees of contempt or love for any of the movies we do. Some of them I could watch a hundred more times and still enjoy them. Other times it’s like I cannot get away fast enough. Really our process is, we sort of divvy the movie up into chunks and we each drill down our part and write funny lines for the three of us. For that one chunk, I’ve probably watched it a dozen times and with the other ones probably more like half a dozen.
What’s the all-time best movie to riff on?
One that I just love because it’s so bad, but good for our purposes is The Happening, the Mark Wahlberg movie by M. Night Shyamalan. I don’t think I’m giving anything away, but the deadly enemy of mankind turns out to be trees. Well that and Mark Wahlberg’s acting.
If you could create a movie that you would find to be perfect to riff on, what would it be?
Whatever it would be, the best thing for us is when movies take themselves pretty seriously, but it can’t tip over into that tragic gear; we would never do Schindler’s List or Hotel Rwanda.
Those aren’t gutbusters to you?
No, I think we’ll stick with Mark Wahlberg.
Thursday, July 10, 8pm. $11.50.
Franklin Park 16 and Rave Cinemas Fallen Timbers 14. cinemark.com
