Empty Love Stories #2 - reprinted August 1999 by Funny Valentine Press

This is a completely unauthorized reprint

JOEL HODGSON

The story goes like this: Joel Hodgson was a stand-up comedian who'd been a smash on Saturday Night Live and Letterman for his wild and strange inventions, but by the late 80s, he'd abandoned stand-up for his home of Minnesota. In fact, when Minneapolis producer Jim Mallon approached Hodgson about soliciting ideas for television, Hodgson -- assuming Mallon wanted a show centered around stand-up -- declined. Upon further reflection, he came to Mallon with his robot puppets (who were quickly turned over to friends Trace Beaulieu and Josh Weinstein -- who quickly turned his over to Kevin Murphy) and the idea for MST. A year later, it made its way to the Comedy Channel, and television history was born.

Today, five years after leaving the show, Hodgson is back in Hollywood running (along with his brother Jim) Visual Story Tools, a company devoted to producing new and unusual visual effects and "media inventions". The brothers created The TV Wheel, an HBO special that took place in real-time with a single camera and a rotating stage, and Statical Planets Filmed in Static-O-Matic, a short film due to debut soon as an Internet webcast. Hodgson returned to MST for the first episode of the show's tenth season. Though a native of Minnesota (MY NOTE: He's a native of Wisconsin, NOT Minnesota!), Joel Hodgson also remembers going to Chicago:

Joel: My very earliest trip was the Brookfield Zoo. I was pre kindergarten. My dad took summer courses in DeKalb, Illinois and we lived there in a dorm. (laughs) They used to do that back when there were master's degree students who had families. We all lived in the dorm in DeKalb in the summer, and then we went to the Brookfield Square. So I remember that. Then I think I remember...I get this picture of Jay's Potato Chips. Do you have Jay's Potato Chips there? I had my first bag of Jay's Potato Chips that trip. I was really into food at the time as a child. I still am.

ELS: Well, you looked good on the tenth anniversary show.

Thanks. I still fit into that jumpsuit! I'm really happy about that. It's like going back and putting on your army clothes for your class reunion.

ELS: Was it strange to be back in that jumpsuit and back on the set of MST after five years?

Honest to God, I was really happy it still fit. I was certain I was gonna be too fat for it, and it was a tribute to the woman I had make it. Going back was really interesting. It was really important to kind of go back and work again with those guys..the people that remain there. It was honestly like going back to grade school, because everything was smaller than I remember it The last time I was there, I was an adult. I was a full-grown man, but in my mind...you know, it's so funny. It's like looking for a house; you're supposed to take Polaroids when you're looking at a house, because in your mind, things get bigger. It was like that. I was going, "Oh, the studio is so tiny." It's really funny.

ELS: In what other respects was it important?

In the press release, I kind of say the reason I left was that I was struggling with Jim Mallon with creative control. When I left the show, I didn't really want to put too much heat on me leaving, so I didn't really publicize that. I just kind of said, "Hey, I'm gonna go do other things." But that was one of the motivators. So going back was kind of a gesture to kind of solve those things. That's one of the things that was at work, and also...you know, Mystery Science Theater from its very inception has been an experiment in creating a show, let alone producing a show and marketing a show and all that. Part of it for me was to go back and see what was happening, you know?

ELS: I want to ask you about the early days, but I also want to talk about what you're doing now. You're working with Jim Henson Productions, is that right?

Yeah! We've done some development work for them and we're currently consulting on their new channel, which is called the Omni Channel, and that's Henson and Hallmark. We're helping them repurpose some footage for that.

ELS: What else can we expect in the not-too-distant-future?

The other thing...we did this movie, this short film called Statical Planets Filmed in Static-O-Matic. We're going to do it as a webcast. We found a way to do Static-O-Matic through the Internet. We're trying to find a partner to do the webcast with, but that will be shown sometime this year. We're kind of hoping we can find someone who wants to do that with us. But we've decided that's kind of where it should end up.

We were trying to make a film and learn how to make film, and at a certain point, we just said, "Well, let's just make a short film and demonstrate Static-O-Matic." That's kind of how we left it, and then, we couldn't really solve the distribution problem. Then, when it became evident that people were showing movies on the Internet, it kind of gave us a solution. We figured it out at that point. Fortunately, the Static-O-Matic works in that situation, so it became an even better way of doing it.

ELS: Can you describe "Static-O-Matic"?

It gives the illusion that powerful sparks of electricity are jumping off your computer monitor. The premise of Statical Planets is it's a universe where they broke the physics of electricity -- they plugged in way too many things and basically they changed the atomic count or the atomic weight of electricity, so it didn't function anymore. The only electricity they have left is this annoying strain of static electricity that clings to everybody. So whenever characters in this movie touch, they get electrocuted. At home, when you're watching this on the webcast, the person who's the host for the event has to put their hands on the Static-O-Matic template, and it looks like they get a shock. That's kind of it.

ELS: When you came back to Minnesota -- after four years in Hollywood -- was it strange to be reminded that it's real easy to do a television show? That you didn't have to wade through Hollywood muck to get on the air?

Well, that's really been my thesis from the very beginning, that...all the tools are available. I still maintain that. My brother and I work together, and we do demonstrate every show we create. We are really into the concept of exhibiting ideas. I think Mystery Science Theater was the first example of that, but I created a show, The Higgins Boys and Gruber, for the Comedy Channel, and we made that as a tape first. We didn't sell them a script, we made an actual demonstration of the show. Same with TV Wheel. I don't really get to ideas that somebody else could get to (laughs), and so most of my ideas really need to be demonstrated. Mystery Science Theater is really just an example of that. It's just this example of all these things came together and worked properly and you got a show that other people like, that's inventive and feels like nothing else, and it works. It just kind of suggests there's a whole universe of ideas like that that are out there waiting to be hatched.

ELS: Absolutely. A friend and I worked on a strip for Disney Adventures last year about a child inventor. Suffice to say, I was tapping into that zeitgeist as best I could.

I'm really glad to hear that. That was really the attitude in which we did it. Mystery Science Theater is really a postmodern show, it's really derived of many influences. The idea of a guy alone with robots is from the movie Silent Running. I saw that as a kid and it had a huge influence on me. There's this hippie in space who wanted to grow plants and built these three robots to keep him company. It really had a huge influence on me. The very opening show that we did for the local channel in Minneapolis was about me caring for these plants, so I have a feeling that was a very big influence on me.

ELS: Wow. Up to now, I felt pretty smart catching the Lou Reed reference.

Right, "Satellite of Love". "Rocket #9" is Sun Ra. Even the name Mystery Science Theater is from a Sun Ra poster. He didn't say "Mystery Science Theater"; I think it was something like "Mystery Science Arkestra" or something like that.

ELS: Have you heard Sun Ra: The Singles?

No.

ELS: It's quite amazing, because back in the 50's he was recording with doo wop groups and R & B singers, but they still managed to sound like nothing else.

Yeah, and I think...it's that same collage sensibility that runs throughout Mystery Science Theater. The set's made out of found objects and the show's made out of that. I'm always really enthused when I hear people were inspired by it, because we would be really unfair to go, "We weren't inspired by other people," just because it's so referential.

ELS: When you constructed the robots back in the early, early days, did you have designs in mind or did you go to the secondhand stores, see a bowling pin and say, "Oh, let's get that. We might use that"?

Well, really the way worked was that I had probably built fifty robots before Mystery Science Theater, and I had sold them in a store in Minneapolis in a store called Props, which was kind of a high end gift shop. So I had built about fifty robots using the same method I used when I built the robots for Mystery Science Theater. So when I got to the idea, I knew I could realize the set and the puppets and everything, and they would have a look. That look was really developed by making fifty robots over a period of a year. Trace Beaulieu and Josh Weinstein and I were in a writers' group together, and they were the most open-minded guys in this writing group, so I recruited them to be puppeteers. So when we all showed up the day of the shoot, they had never seen any of this stuff, and they just walked over and Trace picked up Crow and Josh picked up what was to become Tom Servo, but it wasn't Tom Servo yet, and Gypsy, and he wanted to do both of them. So he did for the first twenty shows, and that's why you see lots of Gypsy, generally (laughs), because he was the guy doing both.

ELS: And from what Kevin was telling me, the creative end of the show would sort of take place the day of taping.

The content of what we were doing, absolutely. The only thing I would bring in was the Invention Exchange, which was stuff from my act. Then we tried to come up with ideas for the sketches, and then, when we actually shot the movie, we really just sat down -- never previewed the movie -- we just really winged it. So the actual riffing came out of us just sitting there and doing it the way I think some people think we really did it, which is all spontaneously, and it really was. When we went to do it professionally -- to get paid for it -- at the Comedy Channel, I just said, "We have to write this." I was probably the worst guy at riffing off the cuff on camera. Josh was better than me and Trace was brilliant at it, cause he was an improv guy. After that, it really started to make sense regarding the way that could really feel, as far as how funny it could be.

ELS: What is it like at this point to have people come up to you and quote jokes from the show? Do people still get in your face and shout "Hi-Keeba"?

You know what? It's the most amazing thing, because...people found Mystery Science Theater. None of the partners we ever had have really worked that hard to promote the show, and so people really find it on their own. And that has to do with the silhouettes. You click the channel and you see an old movie and then you see the silhouette that's not going away. And people find it. It really made its fans individually, like one at a time. Because of that, people understand its origin and because of that, the fans are really cool. They seem to understand. When I did Saturday Night Live and Letterman, that's when I had the really strange fans come up; people who couldn't really gauge if you were extremely famous or just on your way up. It was very disorienting and I didn't like it, but the people who like Mystery Science Theater all seem to understand the story. I get recognized fairly often, and they're always really cool people. I'm always really happy and it always makes my day. I have other friends who are, like, really big celebrities and it's kind of a drag because you get the more desperate people. It's like a really big thing to meet somebody who's famous. That hasn't happened to me.

ELS: Given the way the television landscape has changed, do you think a show could come into being the way MST did?

I think so. A lot of the shows that really become hit shows are often demonstrated, like Mystery Science Theater. South Park started as a little video Christmas card. Beavis and Butthead started as a short film. Even The Simpsons began as those little interstitials with Tracey Ullman. I think the concept of demonstrating your idea is a really strong one. I think that's the core of Mystery Science Theater. We did 20 shows locally in front of a real TV audience and showed these people in New York -- who ultimately picked up the show -- what the show was going to be before they saw it. I mean, Mystery Science Theater could not be written on a piece of paper and given to somebody. It would have to be seen. Given that, I think more and more shows are coming out that way. Computers are allowing us to become much more visually literate, and use the moving image more than ever before. I think that's obviously going to have its effect on the shows people see.

ELS: If you're game, I'd like to send you the strip I did for Disney, because it owes a certain spiritual debt to you.

Well, I'm really glad about that. It was really my intent to just try to do something that was encouraging, as well as funny. I just kind of wanted to demonstrate this kind of fun, positive thing. I'm really happy when that happens, and I appreciate you mentioning it.