From left: Crow, Jonah Ray, Joel Hodgson and Tom Servo
Three decades down the road, it still dazzles that the origins of B-movie-heckling comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000 trace back to a panel from the gatefold of Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. The image accompanying the lyrics to “I’ve Seen That Movie Too” — two characters silhouetted against a screen showing Gone With the Wind — stuck in the back of writer/actor/comedian Joel Hodgson’s mind, eventually emerging as one of the more enduring sci-fi/comedy hybrids of our time. The series — featuring a spaceship known as The Satellite of Love and a pair of irreverent robots — is now celebrating 30 years.
After a substantial amount of time in the realm of video and the hearts of fans, Mystery Science Theater 3000 (originally on Comedy Central, now on Netflix) resurrected itself last year with a triumphant new season and national tour. Now, to commemorate 30 years of riffery, Hodgson is returning to the role of Joel Robinson on a new MST live tour, which comes to Nashville Halloween night with a take on the Canadian sci-fi epic The Brain. The Scene spoke with Hodgson via phone.
What led you to bring out the red jumpsuit again?
Well, it was that this was the 30th anniversary. MST turns 30 years old three days after the tour ends, on Thanksgiving. And the question was, “What do we do?” And a friend said to me, “You started it, and Jonah [Ray] is the latest guy, and that’s 30 years right there. Why don’t you go out there together?” Now I went out last year [on the Watch Out for Snakes Tour], just there to introduce the show, to feel it and work with it, and it was crazy. So when someone suggested that, I had to stop and think about it, and I realized that it sounded really fun.
It was so scary and stressful bringing back MST — there were all these questions flying around, like, “What are you thinking?” and, “Why are you trying to bring back an all-new cast and all-new writers?” But our last season on Netflix, we’re still sitting at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and we’re their highest-rated show by that metric. So it’s a little bit of a victory lap, that we were able to pull it off. Although now that I think of it, you probably shouldn’t say, “Joel said ‘victory lap.’ ” Now that I hear that, it sounds arrogant. ... But just between you and me, we’re going to be celebrating that we brought back Mystery Science Theater. We did a Kickstarter, and there were 50,000 people who helped us do it, and they’re in the audience, and we celebrate them as well. It’s one of those things where I feel so grateful to be in this position. So I’m gonna be out there riffing with Jonah and the Bots.
As you’re making episodes of the series, do you ever find yourself getting caught up in the legacy of MST, this giant sprawling thing that you’ve built and that the fans have run with and helped spread?
There are certain types of episodes that emerge that are loved by the fans. Last season, Cry Wilderness was the one that people really went for, and from the Mike era, Final Sacrifice is the one that people just love. It’s funny, because we have no idea when we’re making a great episode. That’s really up for the audience to decide. They’re the curators who decide what the great ones are. I was really looking forward to how the Doug McClure movies were going to go over last season, and then Cry Wilderness emerged as the fan favorite. So I can never tell.
Was having your chief mad scientist named Forrester a shout-out to the ’50s War of the Worlds?
Oh absolutely. Dr. Clayton Forrester from War of the Worlds. I love George Pal movies.
The 1951 film When Worlds Collide does not seem too far from the world we’re living in at the moment.
And all this interest in going to Mars because we’ve screwed up the planet so badly and must leave.
What are your thoughts on the new line of MST comics?
Well, it’s been a really interesting experience, and kind of an adventure. Randy Stradley is the executive at Dark Horse Comics whom I’ve known for 10 years, and we’ve been talking about this. When we finally brought back the show, all of a sudden the comics became something that we could actually do, and it made sense. We’d been looking at something as simple as, “Oh, you take an old public domain comic and you treat it like it’s a film, where you take the robots and Jonah into it and have them riff on it.” But once we started to look at that concept, we realized it didn’t work quite right. We were creating a visual barrier between the comic panel and the reader with these theater seats and the riffs, and it wasn’t letting the medium of comics do what it does well. It’s a different medium, and it required using it differently than we do with the TV show. So we had to really rethink it, and fortunately, my business partner Harold Buchholz, who’s an executive producer on MST, he used to be a vice president at Archie Comics. He worked there for years, and loves comics, and we dug in and just started talking about how this could work, and I think we’ve made it work in the context of comic books — rather than patching MST into comics, we’ve found a way to make it function as a comic. I’m pretty happy with it. I loved getting to make it, and it’s a great process. I’ve always loved comics, and I could read them but I could never really speak them, and now I feel like I can speak comics. And they’re so important in our pop-culture world right now, and I loved getting to make them, and I love that people seem to like them.
Have you ever heard from Elton John or any of his people about the “I’ve Seen That Movie Too” connection?
I’m so curious, but I can’t imagine him giving a shit about it.
He might.
Yeah, I guess. But there’s one of 25 illustrations in the gatefold of this record, and on this particular one, some guy saw that and thought this might make a good TV show. … Truthfully, I’d be honored if he even knew what Mystery Science Theater even was.
I guarantee he has a TV. I am certain that at some point, Elton John has been aware of MST.
[Laughs]I would love it if he was. That record, especially in my life, was so big, and he was so iconic to me at that age — he was the biggest rock star in the world, and I was just a kid in Green Bay, Wis., and I was amazed by him and his work.
The Brain is such an inspired choice for the Halloween show. I love that film.
Oh, I can’t wait. We have so many Brain-based surprises that we’re going to do. It’s got that particularly ’80s magic, where it seems like every song on the radio should be by The Cars, and like MST, The Brain is also celebrating its 30th birthday.
