Michael J. Nelson had a good run on “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” the TV series on which he, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett delivered a running commentary of wisecracks and put-downs over bad B-movies with names such as “Girls Town,” “Night Of The Blood Beast” and “The Horror of Party Beach.”
But when that much-loved series reached the end of its run on Comedy Central and later the Sci Fi Channel, Nelson says not much time passed before fans started asking for some new way to get their bad movie-good commentary fixes.ADVERTISEMENT
‘Rifftrax Live: “Manos: The Hands Of Fate”’
When: 8 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 16

Where: Orange County theaters include the Aliso Viejo 20, Huntington Beach 20, Irvine Spectrum 20, AMC The Block 30 and the Orange Stadium Promenade 25.

How much: $12.50

For more: Rifftrax.com

Rifftrax is the name Nelson eventually gave to his new venture. Primarily downloadable audio commentaries, Rifftrax occasionally broadcasts a B-movie with live riffing, beaming it into movie theaters around the country. On Thursday, their latest such live show, a Rifftrax to the movie “Manos: The Hands of Fate,” will be broadcast into more about 550 theaters including five in Orange County.
“The Rifftrax thing was kind of brewing for a while because of all the comments people would give us about, ‘Wow, I wish you could do “Titanic” ‘ or whatever blockbuster was out there that summer,” Nelson says. “And we said, ‘Well, we would, but we’d get sued out of existence.’
“So we were experimenting. Could you release a CD or a DVD with commentaries? And once MP3s took off we saw we could do that.”
Nelson, who lives in San Diego, started by himself, riffing an audio track to the Patrick Swayze movie “Roadhouse.” “People really liked it and I brought the other guys in and we’ve been doing it ever since,” he says.
For the live Rifftrax of “Manos: The Hands of Fate,” Nelson says he, Murphy and Corbett will all be on stage in Nashville, Tenn., while the movie screens behind them and they crack wise about its hilarious badness.
“It was a thing where I had seen it again, it was a new print or something,” he says. “It’s currently been restored. And I thought, ‘Wow, it’s been 19 years (since they did it on “MST3K”), and I looked at the episode we’d done. It was funny, but I think we’d have a different reaction to it now.”
Murphy says the live shows are both nerveracking and fun.
“It is absolutely thrilling,” says Murphy, who lives in Bloomington, Minn. “It’s a little scary right before we go on, but once we get in front of that crowd and start hearing them laugh with us we just have a ball.”
Both said that as opposed to their usual work on Rifftrax, writing jokes and comments to go with the movies, then recording them in a small studio, the live shows are their chance to get out in public with their people.
“For me, what makes it so much fun, usually we do our work in a little, tiny sound booth, and then it goes out into the world and we get no reaction until people see it and get back to us,” Murphy says. “But in a live show, the feedback is immediate. We really want to step up our game for a live crowd.”
Nelson, in a separate interview, agreed. “You spend a lot of your year huddled in your basement, writing jokes you think are funny but you’re not really sure,” he says. “‘Am I being funny or am I just a madman?’ So getting out and field testing them is a lot of fun.”
Nelson and Murphy have known each other since “MST3K” aired on a local station in Minnesota for its first season in 1989 – Nelson was the head writer, Murphy was the tech guy, though both eventually moved into on-camera roles. Corbett has been part of the group since 1995 or so, Nelson says, so live they have a quick rapport.
“It’s sort of a jazz trio thing we’ve got going,” Murphy says. “We know how to pick up on each other’s rhythms and react to each other in ways that will keep things going.”
And while they can only judge the reaction by the crowd in the theater in Nashville with them they’ve heard that the experience in the other movie theaters around the country is quite similar.
“From what we understand it mimics the experience of being there very well,” Nelson says. “Most of the people who come out for these things, it’s a niche product, it’s a cult-y kind of thing. And people like to meet other people who are fans of movies like ‘Manos’ and ‘Mystery Science Theatre 3000.'”
Nelson and Murphy both had thoughts on what makes the perfect movie for Rifftrax treatment.
“The choice of a movie is mostly just does it amuse us in some way,” Nelson says. “There’s an inherent belief that we hate the movies we do or oh, it’s so bad. But no, there’s always something that we enjoy about it. It’s a movie that you’d want to watch with your best friends and enjoy and rip and have fun.”
Murphy, meanwhile, says he likes picking movies that take themselves too seriously and don’t get their unintentional humor.
“There’s a certain charm or appeal to films that are really deadly earnest in their approach,” he says. “We have a film coming out soon that’s called “Neutron Vs. The Death Robots,” which is a Mexican film (that has) a superhero who is a masked wrestler. He walks in and stands there in his tights and bare chest and wrestling mask and talks earnestly to people.”
Action movies are difficult to riff to, Nelson says. “Transformers,” for instance, doesn’t work because it’s so much noisy action. Both he and Murphy say they wish they could do more movies from the ’80s, but for the downloadable Rifftrax that make up the majority of their work, it’s difficult because the movies aren’t that readily available for viewers to sync with. (Rifftrax essentially works by starting the Rifftrax audio at the same time as you start playing a DVD of the movie.)
“We did an experiment with the Sylvester Stallone movie “Over The Top” where he plays a travelling arm wrestler,” Murphy says. “The thing is, nobody has the film. It was a great riff that nobody saw.”
After the live Rifftrax for “Manos” the next live show will take place sometime around Halloween. Nelson says he’s already getting excited about that one, so much does he love the bad movie they’ll be riffing over.
“It’s truly a movie that delights me,” he says of the upcoming Halloween show.
“It’s called ‘Birdemic: Shock And Terror.’ It’s along the lines of ‘The Room,’ where a guy tried to do a real Hitchcock movie and badly missed the mark.”