In what’s quickly becoming a multi-holiday tradition, Rifftrax returns this Thursday, December 5th with another live event, this time tackling Santa Claus Conquers the Martians just in time to kick off your holiday season.
The good people at RiffTrax.com and Fathom Events were nice enough to give our very own Matt “Surly” Summerfield (one of the co-hosts of the Drinks and Discourse podcast) some time with Kevin Murphy (aka Tom Servo) to talk MST3K, Rifftrax, his love of film, and all things riffing. Here are some of the highlights:
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Before you started MST3K were you a fan of films, or was this just a gig you fell into?
Kevin: Oh yea,h I’ve always been a movie aficionado. Part of my college education was in film. Film theory and film history, that sort of thing. I was a nut for the art house and just good movies in general.
One of my fondest memories from college was going to a small theater that was showing a preview of a film that was a collaboration between Steven Spielberg and George Lucas that turned out to be Raiders of the Lost Ark.
It was one of the best movies experiences of my life. It was the kind of thing that made me fall in love with movies again and make me think Spielberg is a god.
Do you have a specific genre of movie that you like best?
Kevin: I don’t know if I have a favorite genre. If they are well crafted, well written, well performed I’m right there. Just last night I saw The World’s End which was great. It was really fun. That’s the way a comedy should be in my mind. It beat the hell out of any of the Hangover movies. It hit that combination of being better than most science fictions movies and being better than most comedies at the same time. It was really funny. It’s on my list this year, for sure.
Are you a home movie watcher or do you still feel like the theater experience is worth it?[pullquote_right]I love going to the theater but I generally hate the audiences.[/pullquote_right]
Kevin: I used to love going to the theater a lot, but I don’t as much as I used to. I am starting to go back. I don’t know if you know this, but I wrote a book about going to the movies back in 2001 called A Year at the Movies. I spent a year, I promised to be in a theater every day for a year and chronicled the experience in the book.
I’m a theater guy for sure, but I also have a nice big screen at home. I love going to the theater but I generally hate the audiences, so that’s my problem. I’m very happy to see thing like assigned seating and liquor cause it means more grown-ups are going to the theater. You’re not sitting around listening to distracted families or teenage kids who don’t really care about the movie and would rather text.
On MST3K you worked on movies and Rifftrax is generally movies and shorts. Why haven’t you done more TV shows?
Kevin: They weren’t terribly popular for one. A television show is paced a lot differently than a film. It’s not a self-contained thing. It’s an ongoing thing that we’re just sort of dropping into the middle of. It was an experiment worth doing and we haven’t pursued it for those reasons. It just doesn’t quite work for what we are trying to do.
What’s your favorite film you had a chance to riff on and what film are you dying to get your hands but haven’t yet?
Kevin: You know the one that I got really excited about, and we got to do all of them, is the Twilight films. They are just perfect for us. They are so monumentally stupid. Really elaborately crafted in only that way Hollywood teen movies could be crafted. There’s just so much to make fun of in those films, it’s like candy for us. It’s great.
[pullquote_left]There’s just so much to make fun of in those films, it’s like candy for us. It’s great.[/pullquote_left]There’s a whole bunch of films that are stuck in this gap. We do two types of funny that we deliver. We do films that are in release right now, more popular films that we couldn’t afford to license. We do a MP3 commentary track for those. You download and sync up with the movie. We have a program on our website or you could use or any MP3 player or tablet. Those are the big Hollywood movies we do that for.
Then we do all these old cheesy films that are either public domain or they don’t have a terribly large license fee. Then there is this whole bunch of films in the middle. These 70’s, 80, early 90’s films that we would love to get a hold of and do, but there aren’t enough of these out there to do a film commentary. We don’t really have the authority to do a video on demand release. So it’s this weird middle ground. We’re trying to figure out how to do that.
Think about all those films that came out around that time. Your Mannequins, Ben Affleck as Daredevil which is a more recent film. We did that one live one time and it was a really fun film. One of my favorites was a Sylvester Stallone film, Over the Top, where he plays a truck driving arm wrestler. I’d love to do more films like that, so we are trying to figure out how to do more of those.
I know a lot of people think they can do what you do. I’ve talked to a few who have said it must be great to show up for work, pop in a movie, make fun of it, and go home. I know it’s not that easy, so could you explain a little of what going into make a MST3K or a Rifftrax commentary?
Kevin: Imagine, if you will, a movie you don’t necessarily like and having to sit for a week with just a half hour of that film. Watching it over and over and over again. Then making that experience funny. That sort of caps the challenge right here.
[pullquote_right]There aren’t a whole lot of us in the world that are experts, but the three of us are.[/pullquote_right]Yeah, it’s really a challenge. There aren’t a whole lot of us in the world that are experts, but the three of us are. I’ve been doing it for more or less 25 years. Mike’s been doing it for the same amount of time. Bill slightly less time than the rest of us. Together we have over 60 years of riffing under our belts. So that’s a lot of time spent doing what we are doing. So that’s a lot of time spent doing what we are doing. So we’ve gotten pretty good at it.
It’s always a compliment when people say we make it look easy. It’s always a compliment people saying it’s ad-libbed. Neither of those things are true, but it’s great it comes off that way. I’m never really upset when people say “that looks easy.” I’d challenge them to sit down and try it sometime. It’s not easy.
In fact there’s this thing on our website called iRiffs and we invite people to put up their own riffs of movies. You can even sell them on iRiffs. There is this whole community of people who do it themselves. I’ve talked to some of them and they say “yeah, this really is a lot of work, it takes a long time to do one of these.” That’s always what I’ve found to be true too.
Everyone on the Nerd Rep staff went to see the simulcast for Night of the Living Dead and had a great time. Do you like performing for a live audience or do you enjoy the recorded shows more?
Kevin: I love doing the live shows, they are fantastic. Doing what we do in front of a live audience is one of the most fun and gratifying things we do. To work your butt off in order to make a script funny enough that people will come to the simulcast and see you in a theater… that’s an incredible reward.
[pullquote_left]Doing what we do in front of a live audience is one of the most fun and gratifying things we do.[/pullquote_left]It’s also a lot pressure. I think we all feel responsible to the audience. We want to give them a good time with as many laughs as we possibly can and the return on that investment is great.
People come and they have a great time and that’s the number one reason why we do it. I love doing the pre-recorded thing cause it’s a little less stressful. You get to stretch out a little. It’s a different style of what we do. There’s more jokes per minute, I guess you’d say. You don’t have that pressure of performing for an audience, but you don’t get that satisfaction or thrill of doing it live.
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RiffTrax Live: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is in theaters for one night LIVE on Thursday, Dec. 5th at 8:00 p.m. ET / 7:00 p.m. CT and tape delayed at 7:00 p.m. MT and 8:00 p.m PT/HI/AK. For a list of participation theaters, click here.