I’m in Boston now– the band, not the town. The snow is falling in a light, fluffy, and menacing manner, and I’m getting the feeling I may be sitting in the airport terminal a long time. Trace and I were honored last night to visit and speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And just an emotional weather report from MIT: the geeks are getting even geekier. Last night was the apex of their yearly Mystery Hunt, a weird intellectual puzzle and scavenger hunt, and as part of the festivities, we presented our talk, “The Design and Speculative Technology of MST3K”.

It was fun to be in an academic setting, spending more time discussing the ideas behind the show. Trace pulled from his impressive archive of images from the development of MST3K, and we discussed the unique design of the Satellite of Love and the influences and references built into it, as well as features built into the interior that rarely get seen. We were able to spend time charting the physical and psychological development of “Beeper” the robot who transformed into “Servo” and then “Tom Servo” with the help of J. Elvis Weinstein. We were also able to show the trailer of “Silent Running”– the movie I transposed into the pilot of MST3K– the tender story of a radical hippie environmentalist astronaut with his three robot companions.

Because we were sponsored by the Media Studies department, we also spent a fair amount of time fielding questions about intellectual property and how it’s evolved over the last twenty years, no thanks to us. I’m sure we appeared “old fashioned” to the kids because we suggested people should pay for their media, even if we did once say “keep circulating the tapes”. We compared the current thinking that “all content should be free” with the horny beatniks in the sixties who suggested that “all love should be free”, and as Trace said, “Just look what happened.” A cautionary tale to be sure. We were also able to compare and contrast the differences in producing and distributing movie riffing and what goes into acquiring movies.

A big thank you goes out to Generoso Fierro and Jim Scott Begy for inviting us and leading the presentation. It was also wonderful to meet our friends in Boston after the show, as well as promote the upcoming “Cinematic Titanic Live” at the Somerville theatre on February 20th and 21st… there I just did it again. Getting to meet everyone is one of the best parts of this whole thing. I am stunned and humbled that you still care about “MST3K” and its goofy half brother “Cinematic Titanic”.

Once we had gotten to the end of the line of people who wanted to say “hi”, a group of about ten students and alumni participating with Mystery Hunt ‘09 came running in with a piece of the puzzle which was composed of our old invention exchanges from the show. Trace and I tried our best to crack the strange code that had taken our work and elegantly repurposed it into something new and inventive and ultimately too complex for me to probably ever understand, and I realized once again that the most abundant renewable resource this country has is its ideas.

Happy New Year.
Joel

Blogger’s note:

The song Razzle Dazzle is from the musical “Chicago” and not “Billy Elliot”. Thank you. I’ll resume the Doug Henning thread at a different time.

Just wanted to check in and say thanks to everyone in Minneapolis for the warm welcome and response to Cinematic Titanic Live. It was so cool to come back to the town where movie riffing began and do it all over again. As you may know, we performed “Blood of the Vampires”, a film that takes place in Mexico in the 1800s, but which in reality was shot on location in the Philippines, with Mexican land barons, their families and slaves portrayed exclusively by Filipinos. The audience really seemed to like this weird film, and I can’t tell you just how fun it is to be back together and riffing in concert. Of course, “Blood of the Vampires” will be a DVD we’ll be releasing in the future, sometime early in ‘09.

Also, we’re starting to plan more live dates for early next year, but as of this time we don’t have any specific dates or locations set in stone. When we do, I’ll be sure to announce it here first.

October 30th– that’s today– marks a full year since I announced the beginning of Cinematic Titanic. It’s been so much fun, and so much work, but the good kind of work.
Let me thank you personally for supporting and watching our new pass at movie riffing. We hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Now the big news:

This Saturday, November 1st, Cinematic Titanic rolls into The Family Arena in St. Louis, and since it officially is the beginning of the Holiday Season, we’ve decided to do a movie riffing holiday classic. That’s right, we’re re-riffing “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians”! This edition has completely different riffs from our MST3K version and also features several bonus minutes of the original movie that weren’t featured in the MST version. We thought it would be a cool experiment to see what revisiting a movie after all these years would produce. Not to brag, but it’s likely to be the riff-jam of the year!

Naturally, this means we’ll be releasing a DVD version of Cinematic Titanic’s “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” just in time for the holidays on November 20th, as well as a series of holiday e-cards you’ll be able to send to everyone on your gift list, whether you deem them “naughty” or “nice”.

That’s all for now.

Happy Halloween/Happy Holidays,

Joel