With the success of its thirteenth season, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has just launched a new fundraiser for a fourteenth season. As of writing, they’re about a third of the way to their initial goal, $4.8 million for six full-length episodes, six shorts, and eighteen remastered classic episodes. MST3K creator Joel Hodgson joins GVN to talk about the show’s upcoming fourteenth season and what longtime fans can expect next from the Moon 13 crew.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Geek Vibes Nation: You guys are in the middle of your fundraising campaign for the 14th season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. How’s it going so far?
Joel Hodgson: Someone told me we’re at 30% of the goal for six episodes. We’re encouraged that we can get that. I’m not sure we’re going to get twelve. I don’t think that that’s likely based on what we know about fundraisers. Right now, I’m focused on that. We’re at 30%, and that’s tracking time-wise as far as how much time we put in. So, we have a shot at making it.
GVN: Fingers are very crossed. I really liked last season, what you guys did with the Gizmoplex. With that season, the Gizmoplex was a really big part of the narrative as well as what you guys were doing behind the scenes. I’m curious if you’re still planning on going that route this time around.
Joel Hodgson: Well, I think now that it’s a known quantity with the fanbase, we don’t have to spend so much time doing any exposition on it. In this fundraiser, what’s unique is we are announcing the movies we’ve cleared, as we go. We’ve announced two of the features. One is Battle Beyond the Stars and the other is Deathsport, I think it’s called. It’s a David Carradine movie; it’s not to be confused with Death Race.
In doing that, we also started to lay out what the season would be like. My memory is not so much about the Gizmoplex. It’s more about all the characters, you know what I mean? Besides job one, which is movie riffing, we always try to lay in some narrative. So that’s kind of it. My impression is we’re not really going to spend a lot of time on [the Gizmoplex], as we did last season.
GVN: Speaking of last season, last year was the year you guys did the show for the first time in a long time wholly independently. What did you take from that experience that you guys might be using this time around to tweak things or improve on the process or anything like that?
Joel Hodgson: Well, I want to reiterate that Netflix did not give us any notes. The only one thing they asked us to stop was we would do these little breaks that would be these kinds of moments where we’d reiterate the world of the show. They were kind of like ad breaks. They asked us not to do that because they felt that the viewers might go, “Oh, why is there an ad break?” You know, it doesn’t have to be there. So, that was the only note we got. For example, they weren’t reading our scripts and giving us notes is what I’m saying. We never got that. In fact, while I was working on this show, we’ve never gotten notes. I think that only happened during Sci-Fi [Channel].
I don’t think it’s going to affect us very much. You know, the craziest thing was shooting during COVID and how unknown that is and supply chain issues. I think we shipped a Crow from our home base, which is in Horsham, Pennsylvania, to Los Angeles. during the shoot. It took over 25 days to get there, and it was really badly damaged when it got there. I think we were able to glue it together so it kind of looked okay. But I think we got money from them to fix that.
There were things like that that made it harder. Of course, having to shoot on green screen for the host segments, which we’ve never done, was really hard because we had to shoot both in L.A. and in Pennsylvania. It wasn’t practical to move the sets. The whole premise was 80% of the show’s already shot on greenscreen because of the silhouettes, but we had to do that last 20%, the host segments, on greenscreen too. So, that will not remain. People didn’t seem to like it. It was a necessity because of COVID. Next season we won’t be doing that. We’ll go back to in-camera sets for the host segments.
GVN: I know we’re looking at there being just the six episodes, probably, this season, but in an ideal world, if you had an unlimited budget, what’s something you would really like to try and do on the show that maybe you haven’t been able to do before?
Joel Hodgson: Oh, that’s interesting. I don’t know if there’s anything that works that way. I’ll give you an example of that question. People always ask, “Okay, what movie – if budget isn’t an issue – would you riff on?” I simply don’t really go there because you can’t do it, right? Because I realize my ideas, I don’t spend a lot of time ruminating on ideas that aren’t likely to happen. It’s not really part of my wheelhouse. Like, “God, I wish they could just all fly,” or something. It’s not how I’m wired.
It’s really incremental having ideas that can be realized within the context and within the budget you have. That’s kind of the secret of it, and not writing outside of that. So, nothing really comes to mind. Like, what do I want that I can’t have? It’s not really in there. I apply that to other things, I think, but not to MST.
It’s such a group activity at Gizmonic Arts, where we are – formerly Alternaversal. There’s like seven of us who meet daily. Right now, we’re doing the fundraiser. But prior to that, we had to really lay out season 14. We had to very carefully create a budget. We actually had to kind of see it before we sold it. That’s kind of where it all goes. It’s not as interesting, but it’s the truth.
GVN: What do those meetings look like when you’re trying to plot out the season or visualize what you’re going to be doing? What do those look like?
Joel Hodgson: There’s certain things that I’m kind of interested in. Like, one thing we want to do is the story arc for Cabal, who is a new character for season 13. He kind of fulfills his story arc in season 14. That was one thing I wanted to talk about.
We lost the Boneheads. There was this thing that happened, this accident that happened that basically flooded all the lower floors of Moon 13, that was thirteen floors deep. And so, all the Boneheads are down there and are unavailable. I think in season 14, we figure out a way to get them out of there. So, they start coming out. There’s a unique Bonehead that emerges that kind of becomes a new character that behaves differently than the other ones, that has a little more gravity than the traditional Boneheads, which are really like assistants, you know for Kinga and Max.
There’s things like that. It also is about looking at what movies we can get, which is something that really was tough last season because we hadn’t cleared all the movies before we did the fundraiser. We figured that would be cool, but it actually became quite a production pinch to the point where it was really a bit of a time sink for us to clear the movies and put them in the schedule and stuff like that.
For example, I think the way we initially had it, we were gonna have Emily do Demon Squad. I looked at it and I just said, “That’s a tough one for her first one.” I think I was set to do the Atlantis movie [Beyond Atlantis], and I looked at I go, “Man, that’s a way better movie for Emily to start on.” It’s just so nice. It’s very deliberate; it’s well-made. It’s got all the features we like in a movie, but it’s just a nicer experience because, visually, it’s a better movie than Demon Squad.
So, we switched. In doing that, it just was a little kink in the hose production-wise. What we’ve learned in the meantime is just to clear all the movies before we start. That’s how we’re able to announce. We never did that in other seasons. We never announced what movies there would be.
GVN: We’re very close to the 35th anniversary of the show. I’m wondering – it’s probably a little early – but are there any ideas or plans you guys have to celebrate that yet?
Joel Hodgson: Well, to me, it’s doing another season. Other than that, I don’t really know if there’s anything that’s unique about it that we have booked. Like, what do you got in mind? What do you think we should do?
GVN: I know it’s been complicated by the pandemic some, but I would kill for another tour. Those are so fun.
Joel Hodgson: Oh, thanks. That’s interesting. We’re talking with our producer. We’ve been meeting with them a couple of times now to kind of see if that’s practical. We took a risk going out during COVID. It was a tough one. I mean, the cast did brilliantly. As a coach, I think the investment was really on the talent and it really paid off. When you look at Emily’s episodes – especially Atlantis or Batgirl – they were really, really good. For their first time, it was like they had chops because they had done the road. It really paid off in that regard. But other than that, it was tough. So, we’re just working on it. I’m not sure if that’s going to happen again, but I appreciate it. It is really fun doing it live. It’s really cool.
GVN: The thing I like about the show is that it’s such a communal thing. Even if you’re just watching it alone, it’s like you’re watching it with friends. It’s like the host and the robots are your friends. Getting to actually go to an event with other people and have that experience, I think, is just something that’s really unique to this show. It’s complicated to pull off. But I think when you do, it’s almost worth it.
Joel Hodgson: Yeah, and you’re in the theater seats.
GVN: Yeah, exactly. You’re a kind of a part of it now.
Joel Hodgson: Yeah. You’re in the theater seats, and they’re just one row ahead of you. Yeah, I agree. We were so happy that it worked. We did the first live version back when we were still at Best Brains. I think it was probably season four of the show, we did our first live show in Minneapolis and it worked great. We were astonished because the thing that’s peculiar about it is it’s not like stand-up where you can let the audience laugh. When the audience laughs, the movie keeps running.
You’re constantly having to edit. You’re constantly having to drop out jokes because they’re laughing over your setup. One of the active things the performers are doing is going, “Oh, they’re laughing now. They’re laughing more than last night. They’re now erasing the setup for the next joke. If I do the joke, it will not make sense. Ergo, I’m going to lay out.” You don’t want the audience to ever think they’re laughing too much, right? That’s kind of the thing at play with the live show.
GVN: The last thing I’d like to ask is if there’s just a note that you’d like to end on for all of the MSTies. Something to look forward to, maybe, or just a piece of hopeful feeling about the future.
Joel Hodgson: Oh, yeah, I mean, to me, I’m so grateful. What we’ve been able to do is outrageous, and there’s no other show that’s gotten to come back the way we did. It’s not some executive saying, “I like that show, I’m going to take a risk on it.” It was really people going, “Oh, yeah, we’re going to shoulder up and we want more shows.” I think that’s profound, and I just really want them to know that I’m super grateful that got to happen.
I think it has to do with, back in the day, when we used to tell people to keep circulating the tapes. I think, because we involved them in kind of our own homemade distribution system, they’ve been there for us. I’m just over the moon happy that that got to happen. I’m really, really grateful. I think that’s what I’d want to say.
Our thanks again to Joel Hodgson for speaking with us. For more information about MST3K‘s fundraising campaign for season 14, please visit their official Showmaker website at showmaker.mst3k.com.