From: City Pages#

Date: July 8, 1992

Headline: Arts: Live Action Wacky Rolling Figures!

Subline: Mere tapeheads no longer, the folks at "Mystery Science Theater 3000" are taking it to the streets.

Cover: The Final Frontier: Mystery Science Theater goes live (Sutton, 14)

Photo(s): [Of Gamera breathing fire while Joel and the 'bots look on from their theater seats.]

Author: Sutton, Terri

Page(s): 14

Note: IT'S ALIVE! preview; fowl language by author (really)

"Dear Mystery Science Theater: Hi, my name is Z-burger otherwise known as Zeek the Geek or bugetta, but you can call me Zackary or just plain Zac (no K's--I hate K's). I always watch your show--even at 12:30 on Friday nights!"

"Dear Joel and 'bots: We play your show 'til we pass out--it's an amusing end to a night of drunken imbecility."

"Dear Joel, Servo and Crow: MST3000 has convince me that I am not a freak of nature. You have changed my life."

Hang on there, son. It's one thing to be a precocious child into gadgetry or an overgrown kid who enjoys the effrontery of mixing sarcastic hi-jinks with the lo-junk of bad sci-fi movies. It's quite another to be tossing around words like "life" and "changed" in the context of a cable TV *comedy* show. We're not even taking major network, fer Conky's sake.

The bag of fan mail is thigh-high and bulging in the promo room at Best Brains Inc., the Eden Prairie-based company responsible for "Mystery Science Theater 3000"--we've only skimmed the surface, and already we're dealing with Messianism. Next up is a note from a fourth-grade teacher who recommends her students watch the show. A pink kiss adorns another letter (with an arrow pointing out "real lipstick") whose writer reveals she's "hot" for Tom Servo (a robot). Still another card comes from an appreciative thirtysomething couple: "At our age, we find so little to laugh at."

And these are the "normal" missives (the packet of toenails went in the circular file). In its four years of existence, "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (MST3K) has amassed a startling 18,000 letters, most so overwhelmingly positive that producer (and voice of robot Gypsy) Jim Mallon worries about getting jaded. Fan letter support has been instrumental in keeping the little satellite that could in orbit, first at Channel 23 and then at the fledgling Comedy Channel. And it definitely was a factor in Best Brains' gamble to take MST to the people *live* this weekend at the Uptown Theatre.

"The fans have had a direct link to the success of the show," explains Mallon. "So it's really kind of a nice circular thing where we canactually see the fans, and they get to see the puppets and Joel and the

whole performance."

"Television is kind of a bell jar," add Kevin Murphy, the melodious voice behind Tom Servo. "You produce these things, and you don't get any feedback immediately."

"And you know what Sylvia Plath said about living in a bell jar,"jumpsuited exile Joel Robinson a.k.a. Hodgson recalls. "You breathe your own fetid air."

And no doubt the air does get a mite stale up there in the satellite of love where, according to the show's conceit, "Joel Robinson" has been sentenced (by evil overlords on Earth) to live out his days watching bad B-movies. Along with his robot buddies, the bowling-pin-jawed Crow and bubblegum-dispenser-headed Tom Servo, Joel has earned a short furlough on Earth--although another atrocious movie is part of the bargain.

"World Without End", a '56 Technicolor widescreen sci-fi classic (burp!), is slated for the weekend's two Uptown shows. Joel and the two puppets will take their usual places in the silhouetted seats up near the stage. Any vision problem arising from the screen's proximity will be tempered by a handy nearby TV monitor (although the guys insist, with the shy eagerness of seven-year-olds, that they can see quite well close up due to much practice with nose-to-screen TV viewing). Acerbic commentary by Hodgson, Murphy, and Trace Beaulieu (who channels Crow) will be overlaid on the movie soundtrack via mixing board.

And if you don't think they're nervous, you haven't heard how many rehearsals are scheduled (um...up to 10). Yes, that means they have to see this presumably pathetic excuse for a movie...up to 10 times. At least. For a gag that comes off like a bunch of friends, bored, kinda stoned, watching late-night TV and talking trash, MST is one hella organized organization. Writing those seemingly off-the-wall jokes (now 700 per show) take 16 hours of finger-on-the-pause-button analysis, and then the wisecracks must be assigned exactly to the second and practiced, practiced, practiced.

"Everybody gets very *intimate* with these films," is how Mallon puts it.

Yeah, but *these* films? "Hercules Against the Moonmen"? "Pod People"? "The Sidehackers"?

"I think we've built a unique resistance to it," drawls Hodgson. "We tend to download right after the shows are finished. When people come up and they're real specific about parts of movies that we've done,...I have a hard time."

And there I was, asking if they ever had a problem controlling their laughter.

"Constantly...constantly," moans Hodgson.

"I think it's a real tribute to these guys," Mallon stresses, "and [production coordinator] Jann Johnson, who has sat next to these guys through all 60 shows, that I've never heard the show interrupted by laughter."

"Sometimes if the laugh comes, it kind of naturally incorporates itself into the show," says Murphy. "But there's some kind of nice satisfaction in firing off a joke and knowing...sometimes you can just hear the little echoes of people busting up in the control room from way over the studio."

"There's so many things there," Hodgson muses, "that you can't really...you're constantly getting ready for the next thing, 'cause there's so much."

Murphy concurs: "It's a little like juggling. If you distract yourself, you'll drop the balls."

I don't know about you, but I was slightly disillusioned by these revelations. If what we see on TV is this sort of tense reading of well-practiced lines, where's the genesis? How do they come up with happy juxtaposition of intellects, the cultural hopscotch that skips from Dr. Pepper Lipsmacker to "Carnival of Souls", from Jay McInerney to the Bee Gees to "Alias Smith and Jones"? What, besides a talented reading, accounts for the casual but inspired idiocy that so defines MST?

Well, in a phrase, casual but inspired idiocy. Pull back the curtain, and you find five people sitting around on ratty couches yapping at the TV. It's Best Brains Inc., at 11 a.m. on a Thursday, and head writer Mike Nelson is driving the box as Mary Jo Pehl, Frank Coniff [sic], Paul Chapman, and Bridget Jones call out lines and cackle over each other's comments. Business manager Heidi LeClerc types the salient jokes into a computer; the writing staff is currently working on that soon-to-be-legendary flick "World Without End".

The comments come thick and sassed: A quick couplet from Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Indian Reservation" segues into a riff on Jesse Jackson's "I am somebody" speech; soon the group is aping telemarketing techniques and rapping on economic and cultural colonialism. The scene is relaxed but competitive, a raucous hubbub of catcalls and laughter. Yes, people get paid to do this.

Except for one season on Channel 23 that was completely ad-libbed, MST has always been scripted. But it's only as the show has become more successful that Best Brains has been able to expand their writers' stable and thus take some of the burden off Hodgson, Murphy, and Beaulieu.

As for me, that writing scene definitely eased my mind. It seems to me that MST has a decidedly punk-rock premise: Your words--with Joel, Servo, and Crow as audience stand-ins--are worthier than the movie's own script; go ahead and diss that ridiculous hairdo or outfit; what sort of lame acting is that--my cat could do better; what fucked-up ideological assumptions is this movie resting on, anyway? And at MST, that lovely process of cultural dismemberment, of gleeful demystification, is very much alive.

Which is why I'm nodding my head when Mallon says this live project is an experiment and admits to being scared. Darn tootin'! You should be shaking in your boots. A friend of mine has already confessed plans of a major subversive action: "We're gonna get really *baked*," she relates with relish, "and then go down there and YELL SHIT." Blame yourselves, dudes. You showed how.

Displaying a charming naivete about his newly freed audience, Hodgson notes, "We expect to get people that really like the show, and so they'll probably wanna hear what we're doing."

Suddenly I'm thinking of another fan letter: "Hey, Joel, what drugs are you on and can they be bought over the counter?" Beaulieu has a better grasp of the situation. "We have the Hell's Angels as security, so..."

"They promised no knives this time," maintains Murphy.

Meanwhile, the cranky hordes bestir themselves. Who knows what rough beast slouches toward Uptown to be born(e)? After all, MST has received some pretty strange gifts amid the torrent of congratulatory mail. Like 40 pages of computer bulletin discussion concerning a change in spelling in the MST credits. And Crow love doll, constructed out of Tupperware, panties, and a bra. "You just wanna wash your hands," shudders Beaulieu, "or take a full shower after that."

These are the fans MST is so eager to glimpse face-to-face? One more letter: "Joel! Your [sic] the most magnificent hunk of man I've ever seen! You're so hot! I love the way those jumpsuits cling [to] your succulent expanse of chest and your finely molded buttocks!"

Shows start at midnight on Friday (sold out), 11:30 a.m. Saturday. You asked for it, guys.