MST3Kd: Hopping Mad Over Mademoiselle
Lisa D. Jenkins
MiSTied by Lisa Jenkins
from an idea by Petrea Mitchell
DISCLAIMER:
_Mystery Science Theater 3000_ its characters and situations are copyright
1994 Best Brains, Inc. "Movies from Outer Space" is copyright 1992 Ron
Rosenbaum. This publication is not intended to infringe on the copyrights or
personal beliefs held by Best Brains, Comedy Central, Mademoiselle, or its
employees. This article is free to distribute so long as this notice and the
article's contents remain intact.
* * *
[Satellite of Love]
[Crow and Servo are looking at multiple copies of a magazine.]
TOM: Hey! Take a look at our color spread! We don't look too bad, if I don't
mind saying so myself!
CROW: Say away, Tommy! May I tell you how fetching you are in your tux?
TOM: Why, you flatter me! Crow, did anyone ever tell you how champagne brings
out the color in your eyes?
CROW: Why, no--
MIKE: [walks in] Hey, guys, what's all this? [picks up a magazine]
CROW: Simply a couple hundred copies of _Entertainment Weekly_'s December
third write-up about us.
TOM: Ben Svetkey knows a good thing when he sees it.
MIKE: Wow. This is pretty cool. I must admit, you two clean up quite nice.
Um, say, why isn't there any mention about me in this article?
TOM: Come on, Mike. You know these interviews are done months in advance. We
hardly knew ye.
MIKE: [shrugs] That's true. But I still have one question -- why so many
copies of the same issue of the magazine?
TOM: In case we smudge a copy. Or accidentally step on one and leave a
footprint.
CROW: Mike, you're stepping on my face.
MIKE: Oh, sorry. [picks up foot and bends down to pick up another magazine on
the floor; the Mads' light flashes] Great. Wall Street Journal and New York
Times are calling.
[Deep 13]
DR F: Just for that, I'm not giving you a by-line, paper boy. And I'm making
you do your invention exchange first.
[Satellite of Love]
MIKE: Fine. Boys, show 'em what you got.
CROW: Thanks, Mike. You know, Tom, the other night I tuned in to NBC--
TOM: You did? Wow! That's a neat trick.
CROW: TUNED! I said TUNED!
TOM: Heh heh. Sorry.
CROW: As I was saying, NBC's two-hour premiere of _Viper_ was on, and I regret
saying that I actually watched it.
MIKE: Wow, Crow. You're a really big 'bot to admit that.
CROW: Especially when the whole fiasco could have been prevented! Just think
about it, Mike -- a car, an outcast, bad computer graphics -- it had all the
elements of _Knight Rider 2000_! So I created the TV Critic.
MIKE: What does it do?
CROW: It's easy. Just feed in a promo for a new television premiere, and the
TV Critic will automatically review the program BEFORE you subject yourself to
it!
TOM: And the TV Critic is also well-versed in the history of television. It
can predict with 99.9% accuracy which new shows on the market are doomed to
fail.
CROW: Just imagine -- that whole _Paula Poundstone Show_ could have been
avoided.
MIKE: What does it say about _Babylon-5_?
CROW: Let's see.... [reads] "Question unclear. Please ask again."
MIKE: Huh?
TOM: No promos yet.
MIKE: Ah.
[Deep 13]
FRANK: Can I get one of those? Please, can I? I don't want to be
disappointed again like I was with _Space Rangers_.
DR F: Nobody could have predicted that show. Fine pilot -- bad CBS
executives who showed the series backwards. Well, this week's article is not
from USENET at all. Frank gleaned it from an old magazine from our review
archive.
[Satellite of Love]
MIKE: Wait a minute. Where's your invention?
[Deep 13]
DR F: [chuckles] I'm saving the best for last, review-critic. So sit back and
relax with this review of your predecessor's performance.
[Satellite of Love]
MIKE: Watch out! Unauthorized reprint sign!
[door sequence]
[Satellite of Love Theater]
> From: Mademoiselle
CROW: Ah! An INTELLECTUAL magazine!
> Date: February 1992
> Headline: Movies from Outer Space
TOM: Couldn't be any worse than the ones here on Earth.
> Subline: Think bad movies are hell on Earth?
MIKE: Or could they?
> You're not alone
CROW: I'm scared, Mike.
MIKE: Don't worry. You're with me.
> Photo: Joel Hodgson and friends [l-r Gypsy, Crow, Joel, Servo]
MIKE: So THAT'S the other guy.
> Author: Ron Rosenbaum
> Page: 54-55, 60
>
> Well, I've finally joined a movie cult. Or maybe it's an antimovie cult.
MIKE: I can't make up my mind.
> But it's definitely a cult.
TOM: [doing an impression] Yeah. That's it. Yeah.
> Because it offers those of us who are
> initiates both the secret of happiness and a profound truth about the
> human condition.
TOM: And it's MINE! All MINE, I tell you!
CROW: The answer is 42.
TOM: Crow! You gave it away!
MIKE: What's the question?
> It's called _Mystery Science Theater 3000_. Laugh if you will;
ALL: Ha ha ha!
> I did at
> first--before I discovered the profound truth beneath the laughter.
MIKE: Young Timmy's life was distraught because of his alcohol abuse, and
Brent's marriage broken by domestic problems.
> On
> the surface, MST3K, as it's referred to by initiates, is a two-hour TV
> show devoted to the absolute worst, cheesiest, sleaziest, stupidest,
> shlockiest movies ever made by man.
CROW: And some of them were made by Sandy Frank.
> Ranging from sub-sub-sub-_Godzilla_
> Japanese horror films (like the infamous _Gamera_ series, which features
> a gigantic rocket-powered box turtle with really bad teeth, and jet
> engines situated in his butt)
MIKE: That must hurt!
> to incredibly lame U.S. products like
> _Teenage Caveman_, _The Slime People_ and _It Conquered the World_.
TOM: Where he learned too late man was a feeling creature--
MIKE: Okay, I've heard that speech one too many times now, Tom.
> These are films that make the notorious Golden Turkey Award--winner _Plan
> 9 From Outer Space_ seem as nuanced and sophisticated as Ingmar Bergman's
> _Persona_.
TOM: _Plan 9_? Please! You're not even close!
> But MST3K doesn't merely show these films; it doesn't merely deconstruct
> them (although it certainly does that);
CROW: It just doesn't do them merely.
> it has generated an entirely new
> comic-art form based upon the disintegrating corpus of the world's worst
> horror films.
TOM: Yeah, I can see -- HUH?
CROW: Ick! Disintegrating corpus! Nobody told me this was an article from
_Mad Monster_!
MIKE: It's not. It's from _Fangora_.
> I have to admit, I didn't quite get it at first.
TOM: Now there's a surprise.
> One day while I was
> channel-surfing,
ALL: [singing] Everybody's gone surfin' -- surfin' USA!
CROW: Hang five on the remote, dudes!
> I landed on Comedy Central
MIKE: Ouch!
> and found myself transfixed
> by what seemed to be the cheapest, stupidest science-fiction film I'd
> ever seen: _Rocketship X-M_.
MIKE: Then I realized I was staring at the blinking time on my VCR.
> I came upon it in midpassage at the point where the rocket men (and
> women)
CROW: Don't forget the women!
> from Earth first encounter the Martians on the Red Planet--
TOM: Which, in the film, looked quite a bit more gray, being a black and white
film and all.
CROW: Like you'd even notice being color blind and all.
TOM: Hey! Keep my personal problems out of this!
MIKE: Let's play nice, now.
> primitive-looking bald dwarfs with bad skin, who make confusing signals
> to the Earthmen.
CROW: I've got a signal for you I doubt you'd confuse.
MIKE: Crow!
CROW: Hey, Mike, it's not like I have working digits or anything.
> Suddenly, from offscreen, a voice called out, "Cheese it! It's an entire
> race of *mimes*. We've got to get back and *warn Earth*!"
CROW: Who said THAT?
MIKE: Don't look at me. I have no idea.
CROW: Could it have been Jo--?
TOM: Watch it!
> There
> followed a nonstop stream of sarcastic, ridiculing remarks directed at
TOM: --you. No, I'm kidding.
> the movie emanating from three small figures silhouetted at the bottom of
> the screen, sitting in what looked like movie-theater seats, as if they
> were in a screening room and we were watching them watching the movie.
CROW: Ooo! Good work, Sherlock.
> What was this?
CROW: You mean he wrote this article and he DOESN'T KNOW?!
> Why did two of the figures at the bottom of the screen
> look like Toys "R" Us robots,
CROW: Hey! Take that back!
TOM: Yeah!
> yet still seem to possess a vast repertoire
> of incredibly hip, sophisticated pop-culture and literary references at
> the tips of their tongues?
TOM: Why thank you. I try to keep up with the media.
CROW: I can balance a TV set on my tongue.
> I had to leave before I could figure it out.
MIKE: Like this guy stood a chance.
> But what I'd seen was so
> fresh, funny and inventive, I kept searching the Comedy Central schedule,
> dodging the stand-up bores, before I found MST's fairly irregular
> schedule (Friday and Saturday mornings at 10 A.M. and Saturday evenings
> at 7 P.M.).
TOM: That sounds pretty regular to me.
CROW: And this was BEFORE Comedy Central's clock was five minutes off!
MIKE: And it was even before they made last minute schedules to their
programming.
> Still, I hadn't figured the whole premise of the thing out until
MIKE: --you listened to the theme song?
> I
> happened to bring it up at dinner with a group of writers.
ALL: [sounds of disgust]
TOM: Oh, gross! Ron! Don't bring things up at the dinner table!
> One of them,
> a poet and novelist, told me about the rapidly growing cult surrounding
> _Mystery Science Theater_. She'd been introduced to it by a group of
> "splatter punk" science-fiction writers who avidly traded tapes of MST3K,
> and she finally explained the premise of the show.
TOM: After Ron had rattled on for hours!
> "See," she said,
CROW: Why, yes! Now that you've explained it to me, I understand completely!
MIKE: I can't see a thing. It's dark in here.
> "this guy Joel is being punished for some obscure crime
> on Earth, and his punishment is he's shot into space on this rickety
> satellite and forced to watch the worst horror films ever made on the
> planet while these evil scientists from Earth monitor his reactions.
MIKE: Oh, man. I helped a convicted felon escape! That explains everything.
CROW: No, you did not. I mean he did not! I mean--!
TOM: This splatter punk writer doesn't know what she's talking about.
> And
> he's so miserable up there, he creates these two robot friends, Crow and
> Tom Servo, to watch with him and ridicule the films.
TOM: You know, of course, that's not true. It was the other way around. WE
made HIM.
MIKE: I don't believe you.
CROW: It's true. It really is.
> You know how
> everybody loves to sit around and make fun of old movies,
MIKE: [sarcastically] Oh, I love my job. I really do.
> but this is
> like doing it with three friends who just happened to be the hippest,
> smartest, funniest people you'd ever meet,
TOM: --And Ron's not one of them.
> like having these droll post-
> modern Marx Brothers in your living room." That alone would be enough to
> make MST3K the object of cult worship, sure.
MIKE: Sure. Why not? Nations have been destroyed for less!
> That and the fact that its
> creators have succeeded in devising what cultural historians will
> ultimately come to regard as the emblematic new comic-art form of the
> era, a hybrid form that brilliantly reverses the power relationship
> between spectator and spectacle in the cinema experience.
CROW: Oh, sure I -- HUH?
MIKE: Wow. We're a part of history. Cool.
TOM: I don't want to be part of Ron's vision of the future!
MIKE: Big Brother and Joel are watching over you.
TOM: D'oh! You said THAT NAME!
MIKE: Who? What name?
> After years of
> vitimization by bad art, it's pay-back time, and MST3K, or _The Revenge
> of the Million-Eyed Audience_, becomes the horror movie to end all horror
> movies.
CROW: So why do they keep making them, hmm?
> But in fact, there's more to it than that. The appeal of MST3K, the
> reason it's attracted a growing cult of viewers, goes deeper than that.
TOM: So what is it?!
> The real source of its appeal, I'm convinced,
ALL: GET ON WITH IT!
> is that the conceptual
> framework of the show is a profound metaphor for the human condition.
CROW: Gee. And I just thought it was funny.
> Poor Joel's predicament--marooned on a disintegrating satellite,
MIKE: And I heard it wasn't in very good shape when it launched, either.
> condemned to watch dreadful horror movies--mirrors our existential
> predicament as humans: trapped on a decaying satellite (Earth), condemned
> for an obscure crime (Original Sin? Our corrupt hearts of darkness?) to
> be helpless spectators to the unending
TOM: --so's this drivel.
> series of bad horror movies that
> is our reality, our bloody history. A tragic predicament to which the
> only sane response is derisive humor directed at whomever scripted it.
CROW: Wait a minute. YOU wrote this, so we're making fun of -- YOU!
TOM: That's the first thing Ron's got right all day.
> The only consolation is the kind of communal solace we gain from the
> mockery we make
CROW: --of you. Heh heh.
> together of the ludicrously bad scripts of fate
MIKE: Mademoiselle -- the magazine of fate.
TOM: Ron Rosenbaum -- the reviewer of fate.
CROW: Lisa Jenkins -- the writer of fate.
MIKE & TOM: Who?
> in which
> we're all entrapped.
CROW: Help me! We're inside a theater inside a satellite trapped with Ron
Rosenbaum's review of us!
ALL: AAAAARRRRRH!
> That's my opinion, anyway.
TOM: And this is ours!
> In a way, it's akin to what we all went through
MIKE: --as young children growing up to adulthood. But then puberty was over
and our faces cleared up.
> watching the Clarence
> Thomas hearings--watching them alone was too awful, but if you had
> friends to watch with, whether in person or on the phone, to kibitz and
> share the feeling of outrage and absurdity, to talk back to John Doggett,
> it made the badly scripted reality of the hearing more bearable.
CROW: Ah! I always wondered about that! So the whole thing was scripted by
CNN?
TOM: Maybe they should've given it to Court TV.
> Who are the people behind the MST3K phenomenon?
TOM: Right here.
CROW: Me!
MIKE: Yo!
> The creator and the guy
> who plays the character Joel trapped on the Satellite of Love (as he
> derisively refers to it) is Joel Hodgson.
TOM: [scoffingly] Take that, you Satellite of Love, you!
MIKE: This guy's got to polish up on his Lou Reed.
> He's a young guy who started
> out as a stand-up comic in L.A., was discovered by former NBC programming
> guru Brandon Tartikoff, thrown into a lot of network specials (he even
> was creative consultant for a Superbowl halftime show)
MIKE: Wow! Really?
> and then suddenly
> fled Hollywood for Minnesota where, in the tiny town of Eden Prairie,
MIKE & CROW: How tiny was it?
TOM: It was so tiny, it didn't even have it own post office!
> he
> and a gifted crew of writers and actors (among them Mike Nelson,
MIKE: Lookee there!
> Kevin
> Murphy,
TOM: I see it.
> Trace Beaulieu
CROW: Say it, brother.
> and Frank Conniff)
ALL: Who?
> spend their lives sorting
> through
TOM: Their retched, miserable lives.
MIKE: Do you know who you're talking about?
CROW: I'll speak for myself, thank you.
> the world's worst movies in order to turn them into MST3K
> episodes.
>
> When I reached them one morning recently by phone out there in Eden
> Prairie
MIKE: Is it me, or does this guy write like a midwesterner?
> studio of Best Brains, Inc., they were just putting the finishing
> touches on their version of _Santa Claus Conquers the Martians_.
TOM: Not to be confused with the version starring child-actress Pia Zadora.
> After a few preliminary questions,
CROW: Hi. How are you? How are the kids? How's the weather? How do you eat
and breathe?
> I plunged right into my theory about
> why MST3K was a P.M.F.H.C. (profound metaphor for the human condition),
MIKE: Look -- a yuppy MiSTy.
CROW: S.I.A.S. -- say it ain't so!
> the whole bit about the reality of our history being like a bad horror
> film, etc. Their response was, predictably, sarcastic:
CROW: "Like, are you crazy, man, or what?!"
TOM: Get a life, Ron.
> "Oh, wow!" said one.
>
> "That's really *heavy*," said another.
>
> "I think I'm *crying*," said a third.
MIKE: "I think I'm DYING."
> Nonetheless, on a less metaphysical plane,
TOM: Where they run out of those little peanuts and nobody really cares
because they're too salty anyway and have probably been around for years so
who cares?
> Hodgson did acknowledge that
> there was an underlying, serious, satiric vision behind MST3K. He said
> it was
MIKE: --to make money.
> addressed to the mentality behind these films--"to the white-male
> reality from the fifties," the peculiar kind of smug dumbness that
> infuses
CROW: --articles like this one.
> _Jungle Goddess_, _Women of the Prehistoric Planet_ and _Viking
> Women and the Sea Serpent_.
>
> In fact, lately the MST3K crew has taken to going beyond the horror genre
> for vehicles to ridicule, and has been doing schlocky '50s and '60s
> youth-movie classics like _Daddy-O_ and _Side Hackers_ (the latter truly
> one of the clumsiest, most half-baked things ever to be filmed by
> anyone).
MIKE: And is it true you want to hack your side after viewing it?
> And they've also taken on some creaky antiquated "educational"
> short subjects as curtain raisers for the main attraction. One recent
> one
CROW: One gets the feeling one needs one nice square kick--
MIKE: Nu uh, Crow.
> --a '40s-era film promoting Home Economics majors for college
> students--was, inadvertently, a kind of horror film even more chilling
> than the blatant beast-monster movies. The horror here was in the smug,
> condescending, unbearably circumscribed vision of what the limits of
> women's lives were not so long ago.
TOM: You tell 'em, Ron!
> Anyway, after the initial rocky start,
MIKE: Which obviously had nothing to do with your P.M.F.H.C. -- profound
madness for the horribly conceivable.
> we got into an animated discussion
> of the aesthetics of badness.
CROW: Where he learned that Trace draws great caricatures while his own
drawings suffered from very large word balloons.
> "You sit there watching this awful, stilted, pretentious stuff and yet
> you realize this is someone's *crystalline vision*."
TOM: Uh oh. I better not touch that one.
> "That's the true horror?" I ask,
MIKE: No, but I don't think you're ready for that one, yet.
> "the sincerity of belief in something so
> bad?"
>
> "That's 'The horror! The horror!'" another responds, quoting,
> apparently, from the climax of _Heart of Darkness_.
TOM: Why, yes, he is!
> They start to cite some of their favorite auteurs of badness, including
> Bert I. Gordon, director of _King Dinosaur_ and the classic _The Amazing
> Colossal Man_. ("*Very* sincere," says Joel.) They cite Robert Lipper,
> producer of the astonishing bad _Rocketship X-M_. They recall lamest
> monster (the "killer shrews" from
CROW: --what else--?
> _The Killer Shrews_--"basically dogs
> with papier-mache heads").
>
> Talking with them, you begin to get the feeling that the amazing baroque
> diversity of the badness they've been witness to is
MIKE: --really beginning to rot their brains.
> a perverse tribute to
> the human spirit, the continued *inventiveness* of the badness being
> brought forth, a kind of inspiring marvel in itself.
CROW: Especially after talking with YOU.
TOM: Yes, that is inspirational. But sad.
> "There's just no bottom for bad movies,"
MIKE: --And bad writing.
> Joel says happily.
CROW: Tom, do you remember him saying this happily?
TOM: Well, he always had a different perspective on things.
> More than anything, I was impressed by the MST crew's ability
MIKE: --to put up with me--
> --after so
> many, many thousands of hours of badness--
CROW: [doing an impression] I'm a BAAAAD boy!
> to summon fresh reserves of
> outrage and wonder at the hideous spectacles they subvert on our behalf.
> That's what makes them great--
TOM: --we're "gods"!
> that combination of outrage, wonder and
> wit.
MIKE: I'm outraged at the wonder we still have our wits.
> I have a feeling I'm going to be laughing at my MST tapes for the
> rest of my life.
TOM: And we'll be laughing right back AT you, Ron.
MIKE: All right. It's over.
[door sequence]
[Satellite of Love]
MIKE: I can't believe it. Even the people reviewing this program are no more
coherent than the movies we have to watch.
TOM: Why is it reviews of _Mystery Science Theater 3000_ give the critics
delusions of wit?
CROW: Well, as Joel once said, "Comedy's too important to be left to
professionals."
MIKE: All right, sirs, we're waiting for that invention exchange.
[Deep 13]
FRANK: As you can see, reviewing is hot business -- even if you can't support
your argument with something that makes sense!
DR F: So we've invented the Instant Critic. Simply feed in the item you want
reviewed -- Frank, if you would.
FRANK: Certainly. [pops in video tape into machine]
DR F: And out comes a review with your by-line! You can choose any approach
to reviewing you like. Pompous, intellectual, eminently uninformed -- even
unapproachably happy, just like early morning D.J.s.
FRANK: It even works for food reviews!
DR F: But quite messy.
[Satellite of Love]
MIKE: We waited through the whole article for THAT?
CROW: Cheese it.
[Deep 13]
DR F: Just remember who signs your checks, broaster! Frank, push the button.
FRANK: Yeah! And don't forget who pushes the button, buster!
DR F: And what's THAT supposed to mean, Frank?
FRANK: I want a raise! And my own parking spot!
DR F: Frank, you don't even own a car.
FRANK: [shrugs] Oh well. I tried.
[button pushed]
--
Lisa Jenkins "...the show is a profound metaphor for the
jen...@mhd1.moorhead.msus.edu human condition." --Ron Rosenbaum
Bruce Gilbert
jen...@mhd1.moorhead.msus.edu (Lisa D. Jenkins) writes:
A heckling of an "article" from Made, Mada, well, whatever. Sample sentence:
>> I plunged right into my theory about
>> why MST3K was a P.M.F.H.C. (profound metaphor for the human condition),
>> the whole bit about the reality of our history being like a bad horror
>> film, etc.
Well, duh!
The Horror! The Horror! To think, that a person who conceives of such
a monumental inanity is drawing breath; even worse, he was told by his
editor, "Oh, yeah, we'll print that," and was PAID for it!
Thank you Lisa, for making us laugh at pomposity again.
--
Bruce Gilbert Internet: BG7...@ACAD.DRAKE.EDU
David Hines
ironic to write a fanfic that ripped on another fanfic.
I think it's *really* ironic to write a fanfic ripping on an article
about that show the fanfic is about.
It is really funny, though. Good job.
Wish I'd had Crow's invention before I watched "Viper."
Deeeeeeep hurting.
David Hines
dzh...@midway.uchicago.edu
Spatch
And the scary thing is; it was in "Mademoiselle". Metaphor for WHAT?!
Gee, and he based his metaphor on the inaccurate description of the show
(imprisoned for what crime?! "doing a good job cleaning up the place"?) Oh,
yeah, that's it, making better inventions than the Mads. (I read the FAQ.)
At least Ron likes the show, although for the first couple of pages I honestly
couldn't tell.
Next up: Hopping Mad over "Sassy!"
(Oh, great job, Lisa. I really enjoyed it.)
spatch
--
_____ spa...@titan.ucs.umass.edu
|\ /|
| O | What about reality, you ask? Well, as far as I'm concered reality can
|/ \| go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. - Stephen King
Brian Thomas
MIKE: Who? What name?
--
A pleasure to read, Lisa. Thanks :-)
Brian Thomas
SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
talk 834...@nessie.cc.wwu.edu
Jennifer J McGee-1
Brian Thomas <n834...@gonzo.cc.wwu.edu> wrote:
>OM: D'oh! You said THAT NAME!
>
>MIKE: Who? What name?
>
>--
>
>A pleasure to read, Lisa. Thanks :-)
I think my favorite lines were:
TOM: Do you remember Joel saying that "happily," Crow?
CROW: Well, he always did have a different perspective on things...
I'm glad to see this expanded and posted! Lots of fun, Lisa!
Jen
Charles R. Ragan
: A pleasure to read, Lisa. Thanks :-)
Yes indeed, a pleasure to read. I recently read the mstied Star Trek fanfic
"Enterprised". and found it to be quite a joy to read as well. Perhaps these
talented writers could collaborate and msty the worst of the fanfics out
there. Oh, and one question, what the hell is a "splatter punk"?
-Mobius re...@cyberspace.com
Nadine Smith
>
>--
>_____ spa...@titan.ucs.umass.edu
>|\ /|
>| O | What about reality, you ask? Well, as far as I'm concered reality can
>|/ \| go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. - Stephen King
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
this part of the above quote originated with Vonnegut
Ned Raggett
Charles R. Ragan <re...@cyberspace.com> wrote:
>Oh, and one question, what the hell is a "splatter punk"?
As best as I understand it, a supposed member of the new wave of incredibly
graphic horror writers, or a follower of said genre. Though I could be wrong.