An Analysis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Narrated (Mostly) by Quentin Tarantino
For near-ly thir-ty years, the work of Quentin Taran-ti-no has inspired copi-ous dis-cus-sion among movie fans. Some of the most copi-ous dis-cus-sion, as well as some of the most insight-ful, has come from no less avid a movie fan than Taran-ti-no him-self. Every cinephile has long since known that the man who made Reser-voir Dogs, Pulp Fic-tion, and Jack-ie Brown — and more recent-ly pic-tures like Djan-go Unchained, The Hate-ful Eight, and Once Upon a Time… in Hol-ly-wood — is one of their own. Now the sub-ject of numer-ous video essays, Taran-ti-no could, in anoth-er life, have become that medi-um’s fore-most prac-ti-tion-er. In the Now You See It video essay above, we have the next best thing: an analy-sis of Taran-ti-no’s work nar-rat-ed, for the most part, by the man him-self.
“It’s as if a cou-ple of movie-crazy young French-men were in a cof-fee house, and they’ve tak-en a banal Amer-i-can crime nov-el and they’re mak-ing a movie out of it based not on the nov-el, but on the poet-ry they’ve read between the lines.” So goes New York-er crit-ic Pauline Kael’s review of Jean-Luc Godard-’s Bande à part — as remem-bered by Taran-ti-no in an inter-view in the 2000s.
These and oth-er such clips com-prise “Quentin Taran-ti-no and the Poet-ry Between the Lines,” or at least they com-prise the parts that don’t come straight from Taran-ti-no’s films or the films that inspired them. From Bande à part Taran-ti-no took not just the name of his pro-duc-tion com-pa-ny but also the imper-fect style of danc-ing he had John Tra-vol-ta and Uma Thur-man show off in Pulp Fic-tion, one of the many acts of cin-e-mat-ic “steal-ing” to which he glad-ly cops.
In describ-ing the rule-break-ing work of Godard, the first big cinephile-film-mak-er, Kael inad-ver-tent-ly bestowed a rev-e-la-tion upon Taran-ti-no: “That’s my aes-thet-ic!” he remem-bers think-ing. “That’s what I want to achieve!” That goal has inspired Taran-ti-no to a num-ber of acts of cul-tur-al trans-po-si-tion, and this video essay also brings togeth-er the com-ments sev-er-al oth-er fig-ures have made about his achieve-ment: Inglou-ri-ous Bas-ter-ds star Christoph Waltz remarks on the char-ac-ter-is-tic way that Taran-ti-no, “the prod-uct of the cul-ture that made the West-ern pos-si-ble at all,” would “take the genre once removed into the Ital-ian and bring it back to Amer-i-ca” as he does in his repa-tri-at-ed spaghet-ti West-ern The Hate-ful Eight. To that pic-ture, and to Quentin Taran-ti-no’s greater cin-e-mat-ic project, applies the obser-va-tion Gene Siskel made on Pulp Fic-tion just as it was becom-ing a cul-tur-al phe-nom-e-non in its own right: “Like all great films, it crit-i-cizes oth-er movies.”
Relat-ed Con-tent:
How Quentin Taran-ti-no Steals from Oth-er Movies: A Video Essay
Quentin Taran-ti-no Explains How to Write & Direct Movies
Quentin Taran-ti-no Picks the 12 Best Films of All Time; Watch Two of His Favorites Free Online
The Pow-er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films
Based in Seoul, Col-in Mar-shall writes and broad-casts on cities, lan-guage, and cul-ture. His projects include the book The State-less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen-tu-ry Los Ange-les and the video series The City in Cin-e-ma. Fol-low him on Twit-ter at @colinmarshall, on Face-book, or on Insta-gram.
An Emotional Journey into the Heart of August Sander’s Iconic Photograph, “Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance”
The por-trait is your mir-ror. It’s you. —August Sander
A pic-ture is worth a thou-sand words, and com-pelling por-traits that speak elo-quent-ly to a crit-i-cal moment in his-to-ry often earn many more than that.
Author John Green’s thought-ful Art Assign-ment inves-ti-ga-tion into Three Farm-ers on Their Way to a Dance, August Sanders’ 1914 pho-to-graph, taps into our need to inter-pret what we’re look-ing at.
The descrip-tive title (the piece is alter-na-tive-ly referred to as Young Farm-ers) offers some clues, as does the date.
The sub-jects’ youth and location—a remote vil-lage in the Ger-man Westerwald—suggest, cor-rect-ly as it turns out, that they would soon be bound for what Green terms “anoth-er dance,” WWI.
Green has learned far more about the peo-ple in his favorite pho-to since he cov-ered it in a 2?minute seg-ment for his vlog-broth-ers chan-nel below.
Much of the short-er video’s nar-ra-tion car-ries over to the Art Assign-ment script, but this time, Green has the help of “a com-mu-ni-ty of prob-lem solvers” who con-tributed research that fleshed out the nar-ra-tive.
We now know the young farm-ers’ iden-ti-ties, actu-al occu-pa-tions, what they did in the war, and their even-tu-al fate.
Dit-to their con-nec-tion to pho-tog-ra-ph-er Sanders, who lugged his equip-ment on foot to the remote moun-tain path the friends would be trav-el-ing in fin-ery made pos-si-ble by the Sec-ond Indus-tri-al Rev-o-lu-tion.
A con-sum-mate sto-ry-teller, Greene makes a meal out of what he has learned.
It would pro-vide the basis for a hel-lu-va book…though here anoth-er author has beat-en Green to the punch. Richard Pow-ers’ nov-el, also titled Three Farm-ers on Their Way to a Dance, was a Nation-al Book Crit-ics Cir-cle Award Final-ist in 1985.
Relat-ed Con-tent:
The First Pho-to-graph Ever Tak-en (1826)
Take a Visu-al Jour-ney Through 181 Years of Street Pho-tog-ra-phy (1838–2019)
See the First Pho-to-graph of a Human Being: A Pho-to Tak-en by Louis Daguerre (1838)
Ayun Hal-l-i-day is an author, illus-tra-tor, the-ater mak-er and Chief Pri-ma-tol-o-gist of the East Vil-lage Inky zine. Here lat-est project is an ani-ma-tion and a series of free down-load-able posters, encour-ag-ing cit-i-zens to wear masks in pub-lic and wear them prop-er-ly. Fol-low her @AyunHalliday.
This Is What The Matrix Looks Like Without CGI: A Special Effects Breakdown
Those of us who saw the The Matrix in the the-ater felt we were wit-ness to the begin-ning of a new era of cin-e-mat-i-cal-ly and philo-soph-i-cal-ly ambi-tious action movies. Whether that era deliv-ered on its promise — and indeed, whether The Matrix’s own sequels deliv-ered on the fran-chise’s promise — remains a mat-ter of debate. More than twen-ty years lat-er, the film’s black-leather-and-sun-glass-es aes-thet-ic may date it, but its visu-al effects some-how don’t. The Fame Focus video above takes a close look at two exam-ples of how the cre-ators of The Matrix com-bined tra-di-tion-al, “prac-ti-cal” tech-niques with then-state-of-the-art dig-i-tal tech-nol-o-gy in a way that kept the result from going as stale as, in the movies, “state-of-the-art dig-i-tal tech-nol-o-gy” usu-al-ly has a way of guar-an-tee-ing.
By now we’ve all seen revealed the mechan-ics of “bul-let time,” an effect that aston-ished The Matrix’s ear-ly audi-ences by seem-ing near-ly to freeze time for dra-mat-ic cam-era move-ments (and to make vis-i-ble the epony-mous pro-jec-tiles, of which the film includ-ed a great many). They lined up a bunch of still cam-eras along a pre-de-ter-mined path, then had each of the cam-eras take a shot, one-by-one, in the span of a split sec-ond.
But as we see in the video, get-ting con-vinc-ing results out of such a ground-break-ing process — which required smooth-ing out the unsteady “footage” cap-tured by the indi-vid-ual cam-eras and per-fect-ly align-ing it with a com-put-er-gen-er-at-ed back-ground mod-eled on a real-life set-ting, among oth-er tasks — must have been even more dif-fi-cult than invent-ing the process itself. The man-u-al labor that went into The Matrix series’ high-tech veneer comes across even more in the behind-the-scenes video below:
In the third install-ment, 2003’s The Matrix Rev-o-lu-tions, Keanu Reeves’ Neo and Hugo Weav-ing’s Agent Smith duke it out in the pour-ing rain as what seem like hun-dreds of clones of Smith look on. View-ers today may assume Weav-ing was filmed and then copy-past-ed over and over again, but in fact these shots involve no dig-i-tal effects to speak of. The team actu-al-ly built 150 real-is-tic dum-mies of Weav-ing as Smith, all oper-at-ed by 80 human extras them-selves wear-ing intri-cate-ly detailed sil-i-con-rub-ber Smith masks. The logis-tics of such a one-off endeav-or sound painful-ly com-plex, but the phys-i-cal-i-ty of the sequence speaks for itself. With the next Matrix film, the first since Rev-o-lu-tions, due out next year, fans must be hop-ing the ideas of the Pla-ton-i-cal-ly tech-no-dystopi-an sto-ry the Wachowskis start-ed telling in 1999 will be prop-er-ly con-tin-ued, and in a way that makes full use of recent advances in dig-i-tal effects. But those of us who appre-ci-ate the endur-ing pow-er of tra-di-tion-al effects should hope the film’s mak-ers are also get-ting their hands dirty.
Relat-ed Con-tent:
The Phi-los-o-phy of The Matrix: From Pla-to and Descartes, to East-ern Phi-los-o-phy
The Matrix: What Went Into The Mix
Daniel Den-nett and Cor-nel West Decode the Phi-los-o-phy of The Matrix
Based in Seoul, Col-in Mar-shall writes and broad-casts on cities, lan-guage, and cul-ture. His projects include the book The State-less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen-tu-ry Los Ange-les and the video series The City in Cin-e-ma. Fol-low him on Twit-ter at @colinmarshall, on Face-book, or on Insta-gram.
50 Songs from a Single Year, Mixed Together Into One 3?Minute Song (1979–89)
The con-cept of gen-er-a-tions, as we cur-rent-ly use the term, would have made no sense to peo-ple liv-ing through-out most of human his-to-ry. “Before the 19th cen-tu-ry,” writes Sarah Leskow at The Atlantic, “gen-er-a-tions were thought of as (gen-er-al-ly male) bio-log-i-cal rela-tion-ships with-in families—grandfathers, sons, grand-chil-dren and so forth.” The word did not describe com-mon traits shared by, “as one lex-i-cog-ra-ph-er put it in 1863, ‘all men liv-ing more or less at the same time.’”
The the-o-ry was thor-ough-ly ingest-ed into mass cul-ture, as any-one can tell from social media wars and the fix-a-tions of news-pa-per colum-nists. One such cor-re-spon-dent weighed in a few years ago with a con-trar-i-an take: “Your gen-er-a-tional iden-ti-ty is a lie,” wrote Philip Bump at The Wash-ing-ton Post in 2015. (He makes an excep-tion for Baby Boomers, for rea-sons you’ll have to read in his col-umn.)
All this debunk-ing is to the good. While schol-ars rou-tine-ly inves-ti-gate the ori-gins of con-tem-po-rary ideas, too often the rest of us take for grant-ed that our present ways of see-ing the world are time-less and eter-nal.
Yet, whether gen-er-a-tions are a real phe-nom-e-non or a cul-tur-al con-struc-tion, glob-al-ized mass media of the past sev-er-al decades ensures that no mat-ter where we come from, most peo-ple born around the same time will share some set of near-iden-ti-cal experiences—of lis-ten-ing to the same music, watch-ing the same films, TV shows, etc. Giv-en the way our think-ing can be shaped by for-ma-tive moments in pop cul-ture, we’re bound to have a few things in com-mon if we had access to Hol-ly-wood film and MTV. Maybe what most defines gen-er-a-tions as we know them now is cul-ture as com-mod-i-ty.
Take the video series fea-tured here. Each one cuts togeth-er 50 songs released in a sin-gle year, begin-ning in 1979, along with video mon-tages of some of the year’s most pop-u-lar artists. Cre-at-ed by The Hood Inter-net, “a DJ and pro-duc-tion duo from Chica-go, known for their exper-tise in mashups and remix-es,” the series could serve as a lab exper-i-ment to test the emo-tion-al reac-tions of peo-ple born at dif-fer-ent times. We may have all heard these songs by now. But only those who heard them in their youth will have the nos-tal-gic reac-tions we asso-ciate with gen-er-a-tional mem-o-ry, since music, as David Toop writes at The Qui-etus, is “a mem-o-ry machine.”
Every-one else could stand to learn some-thing about what the 80s looked and sound-ed like. As a his-tor-i-cal peri-od, it tends to get cast in a fair-ly nar-row mold, with syn-th-pop and hair met-al defin-ing the extent of 80s music. The pop music of the decade was fab-u-lous-ly diverse, with gen-res cross-pol-li-nat-ing in what turn out to be sur-pris-ing-ly har-mo-nious ways in these mashup videos. The cre-ators of the series worked their way up to 1987, and we get to see some dra-mat-ic shifts along the way that fur-ther com-pli-cate the idea of 80s music, even for those who heard these songs when they came out, and who have nine years of for-ma-tive moments to go with them. See all of the videos on The Hood Inter-net’s YouTube chan-nel.
Relat-ed Con-tent:
1980s Met-al-head Kids Are Alright: Sci-en-tif-ic Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjust-ed Adults
A Soul Train-Style Detroit Dance Show Gets Down to Kraftwerk’s “Num-bers” in the Late 80s
How a Record-ing Stu-dio Mishap Cre-at-ed the Famous Drum Sound That Defined 80s Music & Beyond
Josh Jones is a writer and musi-cian based in Durham, NC. Fol-low him at @jdmagness
How Humphrey Bogart Became an Icon: A Video Essay
Accord-ing to film the-o-rist David Bor-d-well, there was a major change in act-ing styles in the 1940s. Gone was the “behav-ioral act-ing” style of the 1930s (the first full decade of sound film), where men-tal states were demon-strat-ed not just through the face, but through body move-ment, and how actors just held them-selves. Instead, in the 1940s there is a “new inte-ri-or-i-ty, a kind of neu-tral-iza-tion, of the act-ing per-for-mance, that’s intense, almost silent film-style.”
Part of this is due to increas-ing-ly con-vo-lut-ed, psy-cho-log-i-cal nar-ra-tives, includ-ing lots of voice-overs. Some of it was also due to stu-dios hop-ing to achieve the psy-cho-log-i-cal depth of nov-el writ-ing.
In short, what-ev-er the rea-sons in the 1940s, we got to watch char-ac-ters think.
In Nerdwriter’s lat-est video essay, Evan Puschak exam-ines the icon of 1940s male act-ing: Humphrey Bog-a-rt, whose skill and oppor-tu-ni-ty placed him at the right place and the right time for such a shift in styles. Think of Bog-a-rt and you think of his eyes and yes, the many moments where the cam-era lingers on his face and…we watch him think.
In hind-sight it feels like he was wait-ing for this moment. Puschak picks up the tale with 1939’s The Return of Dr. X, which fea-tures a bad-ly mis-cast Bog-a-rt as a mad sci-en-tist. But the actor had spent most of the 1930s play-ing a selec-tion of bad guys, most-ly gang-sters. He was good at it. He was also a bit tired of the type-cast-ing.
Also tired of of play-ing gang-sters was George Raft, and that turned out to be good thing, because Raft turned down the lead role in the John Hus-ton-writ-ten, Raoul Walsh-direct-ed High Sier-ra. Hus-ton and Bog-a-rt were friends and drink-ing bud-dies, and it was their friend-ship, plus Bog-a-rt con-vinc-ing both Raft to turn down the role and Walsh to hire him instead, that led to a career break-through.
As Puschak points out, though Bog-a-rt was play-ing a gang-ster again, he brought to the char-ac-ter of Mad Dog Roy Earl a world-weari-ness and a vul-ner-a-ble inte-ri-or, and we see it in his eyes more than through his dia-log.
In the same year Bog-a-rt played pri-vate detec-tive Sam Spade in The Mal-tese Fal-con, also a role that George Raft turned down. Bog-a-rt brought over to the char-ac-ter the cyn-i-cism and cool-ness of his gang-ster roles; it feels repet-i-tive to say it was an icon-ic role, but it’s true—it’s a per-for-mance that rip-ples across time to every actor play-ing a pri-vate detec-tive, who are either bor-row-ing from it or riff-ing on it or turn-ing it on its head. You wouldn’t have Colum-bo. You wouldn’t have Breath-less either.
Did George Raft ever real-ize he was a sort of guardian angel for Bog-a-rt? Because for a third time, a role he turned down became a Bog-a-rt clas-sic: Rick Blain in Casablan-ca (1942). As Puschak points out, it’s a dif-fi-cult role as Rick is decid-ed-ly pas-sive and casu-al-ly mean for the first half, leav-ing peo-ple to their fate. It only works because we can see every deci-sion Rick makes roil-ing behind Bogart’s eyes, and we know that even-tu-al-ly he will break and do the right thing.
As he got old-er and the 40’s turned into the ‘50s, Bog-a-rt began to play with these kind of char-ac-ters. His prospec-tor in The Trea-sure of the Sier-ra Madre turns wild-eyed with greed and mad-ness; his writer in In a Lone-ly Place is sus-pect-ed of mur-der, and Bog-a-rt plays him ever so slight-ly mad that we won-der if he might even be a killer. It is one of Bogart’s most uncom-fort-able per-for-mances, tak-ing what had become famil-iar and friend-ly in his screen per-sona and twist-ing it.
He died in 1957, age 57, from the can-cer-ous effects of a life-time of smok-ing. What kind of roles might he have done if he had made it through the 60s and the 70s? Would the French New Wave direc-tors have hired him? Would Scors-ese or Alt-man or Cop-po-la? Again, we can only won-der.
Relat-ed Con-tent:
Beat the Dev-il: Watch John Huston’s Campy Noir Film with Humphrey Bog-a-rt (1953)
Lau-ren Bacall (1924–2014) and Humphrey Bog-a-rt Pal Around Dur-ing a 1956 Screen Test
Jean-Paul Sartre Writes a Script for John Huston’s Film on Freud (1958)
Ted Mills is a free-lance writer on the arts who cur-rent-ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod-cast and is the pro-duc-er of KCR-W’s Curi-ous Coast. You can also fol-low him on Twit-ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.
Albert Einstein Explains Why We Need to Read the Classics
Two pieces of read-ing advice I’ve car-ried through-out my life came from two ear-ly favorite writ-ers, Her-man Melville and C.S. Lewis. In one of the myr-i-ad pearls he toss-es out as asides in his prose, Melville asks in Moby Dick, “why read wide-ly when you can read deeply?” Why spread our minds thin? Rather than ago-nize over what we don’t know, we can dig into the rel-a-tive-ly few things we do until we’ve mas-tered them, then move on to the next thing.
Melville’s coun-sel may not suit every tem-pera-ment, depend-ing on whether one is a fox or a hedge-hog (or an Ahab). But Lewis’ advice might just be indis-pens-able for devel-op-ing an out-look as broad-mind-ed as it is deep. “It is a good rule,” he wrote, “after read-ing a new book, nev-er to allow your-self anoth-er new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.”
Many oth-er famous read-ers have left behind sim-i-lar pieces of read-ing advice, like Edward Bul-w-er-Lyt-ton, author of noto-ri-ous open-er “It was a dark and stormy night.” As though refin-ing Lewis’ sug-ges-tion, he pro-posed, “In sci-ence, read, by pref-er-ence, the newest works; in lit-er-a-ture, the old-est. The clas-sic lit-er-a-ture is always mod-ern. New books revive and redec-o-rate old ideas; old books sug-gest and invig-o-rate new ideas.”
Albert Ein-stein shared nei-ther Lewis’ reli-gion nor Bulwar-Lytton’s love of semi-colons, but he did share both their out-look on read-ing the ancients. Ein-stein approached the sub-ject in terms of mod-ern arro-gance and igno-rance and the bias of pre-sen-tism, writ-ing in a 1952 jour-nal arti-cle:
Some-body who only reads news-pa-pers and at best books of con-tem-po-rary authors looks to me like an extreme-ly near-sight-ed per-son who scorns eye-glass-es. He is com-plete-ly depen-dent on the prej-u-dices and fash-ions of his times, since he nev-er gets to see or hear any-thing else. And what a per-son thinks on his own with-out being stim-u-lat-ed by the thoughts and expe-ri-ences of oth-er peo-ple is even in the best case rather pal-try and monot-o-nous.
There are only a few enlight-ened peo-ple with a lucid mind and style and with good taste with-in a cen-tu-ry. What has been pre-served of their work belongs among the most pre-cious pos-ses-sions of mankind. We owe it to a few writ-ers of antiq-ui-ty (Pla-to, Aris-to-tle, etc.) that the peo-ple in the Mid-dle Ages could slow-ly extri-cate them-selves from the super-sti-tions and igno-rance that had dark-ened life for more than half a mil-len-ni-um.
Noth-ing is more need-ed to over-come the mod-ernist’s snob-bish-ness.
Ein-stein him-self read both wide-ly and deeply, so much so that he “became a lit-er-ary motif for some writ-ers,” as Dr. Anto-nia Moreno González notes, not only because of his par-a-digm-shat-ter-ing the-o-ries but because of his gen-er-al-ly well-round-ed pub-lic genius. He was fre-quent-ly asked, and hap-py to vol-un-teer, his “ideas and opinions”—as the title of a col-lec-tion of his writ-ing calls his non-sci-en-tif-ic work, becom-ing a pub-lic philoso-pher as well as a sci-en-tist.
We might cred-it Ein-stein’s lib-er-al atti-tude toward read-ing and education—in the clas-si-cal sense of the word “lib-er-al”— as a dri-ving force behind his end-less intel-lec-tu-al curios-i-ty, humil-i-ty, and lack of prej-u-dice. His diag-no-sis of the prob-lem of mod-ern igno-rance may strike us as gross-ly under-stat-ed in our cur-rent polit-i-cal cir-cum-stances. As for what con-sti-tutes a “clas-sic,” I like Ita-lo Calvi-no’s expan-sive def-i-n-i-tion: “A clas-sic is a book that has nev-er fin-ished say-ing what it has to say.”
via Men-tal Floss
Relat-ed Con-tent:
Ita-lo Calvi-no Offers 14 Rea-sons We Should Read the Clas-sics
Vir-ginia Woolf Offers Gen-tle Advice on “How One Should Read a Book”
The New York Pub-lic Library Cre-ates a List of 125 Books That They Love
100 Nov-els All Kids Should Read Before Leav-ing High School
Josh Jones is a writer and musi-cian based in Durham, NC. Fol-low him at @jdmagness
Is It Rude to Talk Over a Film? MST3K’s Mary Jo Pehl on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #45
We live in a com-men-tary cul-ture with much appre-ci-a-tion for camp and snark, but some-thing spe-cial hap-pened in the ear-ly ’90s when Mys-tery Sci-ence The-ater 3000 pop-u-lar-ized this addi-tive form of com-e-dy, where jokes are made dur-ing a full-length or short film. Mary Jo Pehl was a writer and per-former on MST3K and has since riffed with fel-low MST3K alums for Riff-trax and Cin-e-mat-ic Titan-ic.
Mark, Eri-ca, and Bri-an briefly debate the ethics of talk-ing over some-one else’s art and then inter-view Mary Jo about how riffs get writ-ten, devel-op-ing a riff-ing style and a char-ac-ter that the audi-ence can con-nect with (do you need to include skits to estab-lish a premise for why riff-ing is hap-pen-ing?), riff-ing films you love vs. old garbage, the degree to which riff-ing has gone beyond just MST3K-asso-ci-at-ed come-di-ans, VH-1’s Pop-Up Video, and more.
Fol-low Mary Jo @MaryJoPehl.
Here are a some links to get you watch-ing riff-ing:
- For MST3K new-bies, you might want to watch some episodes, near-ly all of which are on YouTube. The AV Club has rec-om-mend-ed its top ten episodes. Mark thinks a great intro-duc-tion to the show (from a late sea-son that fea-tures Mary Jo as a reg-u-lar cast mem-ber) is S10E03 riff-ing a rare con-tem-po-rary film, 1996’s Mer-lin’s Shop of Mys-ti-cal Won-ders. For a clas-sic (i.e. fea-tur-ing orig-i-nal host and cre-ator Joel Hodg-son) episode, S03E03’s Pod Peo-ple is much beloved.
- Watch sam-ples of Brid-get and Mary Jo riff-ing the block-buster Grav-i-ty, Mary Jo with Riff-trax founder (and for-mer MST3K host) Mike Nel-son riff-ing Mari-ah Carey’s Glit-ter, the two of them doing a full short at a Riff-trax Live event, and with Cin-e-mat-ic Titan-ic Live tak-ing on Rat-tlers.
Dif-fer-ent teams have dif-fer-ent styles of riff-ing, so if you hate MST3K, you might want to see if you just hate those guys or hate the art form as a whole. The alums them-selves cur-rent-ly work as:
- Riff-trax (Mike Nel-son, Kevin Mur-phy, and Bill Cor-bett, who were the stars of the final MST3K sea-sons, but the new effort involves dif-fer-ent writ-ers. They riff both old B?movies and Hol-ly-wood block-busters like Twi-light.
- Riff-trax Presents includes Brid-get and Mary Jo (who among oth-er things, are able to effec-tive-ly treat shorts and films that aim to dis-cuss “wom-en’s issues”) as well as the very British Matthew J. Elliot and Ian Pot-ter, Janet Var-ney and Cole Strat-ton, and Riff-trax writ-ers Conor Las-towka and Sean Thoma-son.
- Joel Hodg-son owns MST3K and recent-ly did his final tour as a rif-fer, though that entire-ly new group will con-tin-ue per-form-ing with-out him and just issued the Live Social Dis-tanc-ing Riff-Along Spe-cial. Joel led from behind the scenes the recent Net-flix MST3K revival with host Jon-ah Rey.
- Frank Coniff and Trace Beaulieu (who par-tic-i-pat-ed with Mary Jo and Joel in Cin-e-mat-ic Titan-ic) tour as “The Mads,” which does-n’t seem to have any clips post-ed, but you can hear their pod-cast Movie Sign with the Mads.
- Groups influ-enced by MST3K that Mark checked out include Mas-ter Pan-cake The-ater, Ran-goon Riffs, The Guy with Glass-es, Linkara, Snob Riffs, and The Last Angry Geek. Riff-trax allows groups like these to cre-ate and sell their own riffs.
Here are a few rel-e-vant arti-cles:
- “ ‘Mys-tery Sci-ence The-ater 3000’ at 30: How a Cult TV Show Changed Pop Cul-ture” by Noel Mur-ray
- “Col-or Com-men-tary” by Tad Friend
- “ ‘Mys-tery Sci-ence The-ater 3000’ Returns with New Blood for the Turkey Day Marathon” by Mered-ith Woern-er
Also, PROJECT: RIFF is the website/database we talk about where a guy named Andrew fig-ured out how many riffs per minute are in each MST3K episode, which char-ac-ter made the joke, and oth-er stuff.
Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis-cus-sion that you can only hear by sup-port-ing the pod-cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod-cast is part of the Par-tial-ly Exam-ined Life pod-cast net-work.
Pret-ty Much Pop: A Cul-ture Pod-cast is the first pod-cast curat-ed by Open Cul-ture. Browse all Pret-ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.
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