Posted on 12/12/2015 3:10:54 AM PST by Morgana
Mystery Science Theater 3000 smashed through all known barriers Friday night to prove itself the king of geeky TV when its total on Kickstarter (including its add-on shop) soared past $6.3 million. The show, which went off the air in 1999, became the most successful crowdfunded video project of all time, surpassing the Veronica Mars movie, which previously held the title with $5.7 million.
The MST3k project’s ultimate goal had been $5.5 million to produce a new, 12-episode season of the cult series, in an attempt to prove to various networks or online streamers that there was a demand for the bad movie riffing series to return. This could not possibly have been proven more conclusively, as the minimum $2 million goal was immediately overcome. In the last 72 hours in particular, donations to the Kickstarter have been flying fast and furious, taking it well beyond any of the earlier projections. At the time of this writing, more than 47,000 people (including myself) have donated to the cause.
The current donations guarantee a bonus 13 episode season, including a new holiday special, hopefully in the same league as Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. The donations were no doubt helped by the huge number of celebrity endorsements the new version of the show has received, from people who will be cast members (Patton Oswalt, Felicia Day) to those who hope to appear in cameo roles (everyone from Jack Black to Jerry Seinfeld).
(Excerpt) Read more at pastemagazine.com ...
Love it.
I don’t think it will fail. I think they will have to just give the new guys and girls a chance. When Mike came on everyone, including me had a hard time accepting him. In time Mike proved himself and it worked. What did not work was the network, they did not realize they had a good thing. I have seen this show since it was on KTMA and trust me, every new character is hard to accept at first but they “grow” on you. Even Pearl, in her dear sweet way had her moments.
I just say to all Misties..give the new kids on the block a chance, trust in Joel he did this before and he knows what he is doing.
I believe the real chemistry, cadence, delivery, and humor is with Nelson, Corbett, and Murphy. The irony is the show is not about the puppets, its about the relationships and the riffs.
I'm spending more money at rifftrax because they are hilarious and continue to deliver the content I enjoy.
Interestingly, with respect to pop-culture references, I believe they are becoming more obscwure as our media choices are divergent. For example, I might watch a little known show on YouTube rather than a major media broadcast. We see this behavior in music as well -- not as many platinum selling artists given varying consumer chiices, outlets, Indies, etc. I just didn't think the pop culture jokes will have as far a reach without a common foundation. Our people grew up with 3 major channels, bunny ears, party telephone lines, and a few good radio stations. Very different t than today's choices. I watched the kickstarted vids and did not think the new crowd was funny at all. It was too rehearsed, too staged, the lines felt forced. The "mad" (gamer girl) already resorted to cursing, something the show rarely if ever did.
biggest fear is they load up on dark, gamer, video game culture references. Another fear is they lose the homegrown, goofiness with campy props from their garage. Part of the beauty of the original shows were the viewer could watch and envision his buddies sitting on the couch making similar riffs during an awful movie.
I just don't see them catching lightning in a bottle again. It was fun for many seasons, but its time to move on. Sometimes we want to go back so bad, but we can never create that same feeling again. Anyhow, pls excuse spelling errors//on a tablet!
Even Pearl and Mike had it going it was the Sci Fi channel that did them in.
Don’t know if you remember but the fans took out a full page add wanting to keep it but the Sci Fi channel would not do it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000
” Another campaign to save the show was mounted, including several MST3K fans taking contributions for a full-page ad in the trade publication Daily Variety magazine, but was unsuccessful.[26] The shows later moved to syndication.”
No other network would take it. So it went off the air and the fans were like bummer!
I think Joel would have tried this back then but really the internet was not as big and we did not have kickstarter or internet streaming.
It all proves sometimes you do get a second chance.
I "discovered" MST3K back in the early '90's when Comedy Central was The Comedy Channel and have been a fan ever since.
It was a very quirky and amusing late-night program that showed old "b" through "e" rated flicks while the main characters did a running commentary on the multitudinous shortcomings and inadequacies of the writing, acting, screenplay, directing, continuity and so forth.
IIRC the first time I caught the MST3K was not during a late-night TV watching binge but by accident late on a Saturday afternoon when I was bedridden with a very bad cold / flu and channel surfing, and this was back when fledgling cable channels only had so many programs and repeated them often.
I remember my husband coming in after hearing me laughing so loudly, looking at the TV and asking, "What the heck are you watching?" He didn't "get" it. He didn't get Ren and Stimpy either. : )
What MST3K did; "riffing" on, i.e. making a running commentary or jokes while watching bad movies was something my brother and some of my friends and I had been doing for years. Some movies are so "bad" that they are actually "good" as in fun to watch if with the right group of people. My mom even liked to stay up late some Friday nights with me to watch the "Creature Features", especially the Godzilla and Gamera movies, not because they were good but because they were so bad that they were good.
The reason for the crowd sourcing is that for one thing, even though these are "B" movies, they still have to acquire the rights and then the writers and performers, camera crew and others involved in the production need to be paid and they need to pay for other production expenses. They want to produce shows to prove that there is still a sizable audience and demand and perhaps convince some network to pick them up. They may not get picked up by a regular TV network or cable channel, but more likely IMO by Netflix or Amazon Prime. And that's where it is at now days.
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