Few can riff as well \u2014 or as lucratively \u2014 as the alumni of \u201cMystery Science Theater 3000,\u201d the 1990s cult TV show about a human and his robot buddies skewering B-movies while stuck in space.<\/p>\n
And former host Michael J. Nelson, aka Mike Nelson, should be applauded for taking clever commentary to a place where it had never successfully gone before: crowd-funding site Kickstarter. A campaign seeking financial help from strangers ended Wednesday, raising nearly $264,860, about five times its goal.<\/p>\n
But it may be Nelson\u2019s move to give power to the people that really encouraged riffing to thrive. Nelson moved to San Diego and created RiffTrax in 2006 as an outlet to offer fans his quirky commentary on movies. A few years later, he opened the system to anyone, with iRiffs, which enables people to create and sell their own movie commentaries.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d say the market definitely exists and is fairly strong,\u201d said Jim Hanson, an Ohio resident who resurrected his old Cinematic For The People riffing troupe in 2010 to take advantage of the resurgence of riffing. RiffTrax\u2019s iRiff platform has, he said, \u201craised the visibility of the \u2018riffing community\u2019 on the whole, making it accessible for people who would never have known that this sort of thing was going on otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n
For those just tuning in, let\u2019s rewind a bit. \u201cMystery Science Theater 3000,\u201d affectionately abbreviated as \u201cMST3K,\u201d was hard to miss in the 1990s. The show featured three silhouettes superimposed on the bottom of a movie screen jabbering away as a cinematic stinker played on the big screen. The wisecracking commentators were two robots named Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot, and Nelson, who replaced the show\u2019s creator Joel Hodgson as host in 1993. Nelson had been head writer since 1989, the second year of \u201cMST3K,\u201d when Comedy Central picked it up.<\/p>\n
While the show ended its 11-year run in 1999, \u201cMST3K\u201d lived on through reruns, the MSTie\u2019s (its fans) and eventually, alumni efforts like Nelson\u2019s RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic, a movie-riffing project headed by Hodgson. While Hodgson\u2019s troupe stuck to the B-movie genre, RiffTrax expanded to blockbusters and respected movies like \u201cLord of the Rings,\u201d \u201cCasablanca\u201d and \u201cStar Wars.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI moved to San Diego with this in the back of my mind,\u201d said Nelson, who created RiffTrax while working for Legend Films in San Diego. \u201cI had a couple of ideas, but it was just the notion that there had to be a way to riff on blockbuster films.\u201d<\/p>\n
RiffTrax, which soon added \u201cMST3K\u201d alums Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, skipped the hassle of negotiating film rights. Instead, it mainly sold its riffs as downloadable MP3 files and offered free syncing software. Users needed to buy the DVD separately and sync the movie to the RiffTrax. For a few movies, the combined riff and video were available as a DVD or download.