All right, here we go, quiet. Hello, and welcome to the big picture podcast, where we take a look at the latest movie news in the films of today, and yesterday, I came up with them all into some sort of context. You, you see it across the mic. I can't keep this guy from me.
His film of online, Editor-in-Chief, Rich Dries. I tried, it was hilarious. See it across the microphone from me, his film of online, contributing editor Natasha Bogutsky, who started off this podcast by telling me she wanted to be a little goofy. I didn't know you were actually gonna do a goofy impersonation.
Oh, I didn't even think about that. Oh, geez. I just went straight into whatever impersonation I thought I could pull off. Hi guys, welcome back to the show.
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that, boy, sorry, it never ends. Anyways, so how was your week? It's been a good week for the actors? Yeah, it has.
Now the sax track ended finally this week. I was actually sitting at home, I think it was Monday nights. No, Wednesday nights? I had to think about it in terms of my plans for the past week and what it coincided with.
So Wednesday night, and I saw the release actually on Instagram that it was going to be ending at midnight. And I think I immediately sent it to you. That was one seven o'clock. Somewhere around there, yeah.
I know on Friday, I watched the live stream of the SAG president, Fran Drescher, delivering her speech about everything. It was a fantastic speech. Took a few questions too. I wanted to say that, I didn't get a chance.
I'm pretty sure it's probably still on the SAG YouTube channel. But overall, they got more than a billion dollars in wages over the next three years, excuse me. And that's also benefit plan contributions, which is great. Some new formulations for streaming shows that are very successful, that will help actors participate in that instead of like regular residuals.
I had a tough time with the mouth today. You want some of this? No, thank you. That scotch will just make it worse.
There's some immediate increases in the base SAG after minimums for actors, which is fantastic as well. I'm very excited. We have friends who are in SAG. I'm happy for them.
They can get back to work. I know they've been itching to get back to work. I'm itching to get back to work. Well, you're not even SAG, but I mean.
No one needs to know that. As long as they pay you at those rates and not on a way for contract. I want to be SAG. I'm working on being SAG.
It's going to take a while. So you'll get there. I have faith. I have faith.
But that's very exciting. I think it was the third longest or the second longest actor strike in history of the union. I started thinking back to long before the strike, probably about a year or two ago. Some actors were making complaints about how they weren't receiving their residuals from their TV shows, because streaming services and.
Yeah, there's different formulations there. Yeah, and it was cutting a lot of the actors out of getting extra, getting the rest of the pay on the back end. One of them was Sidney Sweeney. Yes, that was a big thing.
I remember that in the spring. And people were like, she's not a big successful show. Why is she complaining? Well, if you're not a big successful show, you should be sharing in that success.
And she couldn't. She couldn't even take any time off, because she couldn't afford to live in LA. Yeah. And she actually did a breakdown of her expenses and how the show had not been able to cover them.
And how much she had to pay her agent, her publicist, this one, that one. And the reason why she was taking so many brand deals, which is no different than should I say, like an Instagram content creator, is just because she was trying to scrape together whatever extra money that she could, because Euphoria wasn't covering even enough for her house. Yeah, people forget, you hear an actor make so much per movie. But a percentage of that goes to their management.
A percentage of that goes to their agent. A percentage of that goes to their publicist. Their team. Yeah, and then the rest of their team.
And unfortunately, they have to have a team. And Texas, yeah, it's. The only person I know of that doesn't have a team or doesn't have an agent is Bill Murray. And at this point, I was going to say, he doesn't really need one, but he really sure to have one at this point.
Yeah, it's if you can somehow manage to get a script to him, he may read it. That's how that's how you get Bill Murray in your movie, or unless you have a friend who has his phone number. Or if you're like my older brother and you just see him walking around Martha's Vineyard, like this past summer. You were so jealous.
Oh, yes. You would have creamed yourself. I don't I don't know what I would have done in that situation. I mean, I probably if he was walking by us, I wouldn't like, oh my god, there's Bill Murray over there and like dashed over, I probably would have tried to play cool.
And I feel like kind of was like walking towards or something like that, or we were sitting somewhere and he was walking by. I probably would have said, you know, something on the lines of, hey, thanks for all the laughs, you know, because. Okay, okay. I'm going to call you a hypocrite right now.
You're calling me out because of Barnes and Noble in New York City. No, I'm calling you out because of Dennis from The Goes Wrong Show on the freaking street in New York. No, it's not who immediately, well, years ago, did the exact same thing and chased down Billy Connolly. I did not chase down Billy Connolly.
I walked by him. I heard him say something to his friend and I heard the Scotch accent and I turned right around. I was like three steps away from him. I turned right around and I said, oh my gosh, Billy Connolly?
And he's like, yeah. And only because I had watched Fido like two nights before with my friends on our movie night. And I really wanted to just say, hey, my friends just watched Fido the other night and we loved it. And of course he was, oh, the guy in a fucking movie in it.
And we had a chat. It's not like I saw him across the street, you know, and jumped over the hood of a taxi cab like I was in Starsky and Hutch to get to him. He wasn't that far ahead of us. He was literally right in front of us.
Well, well, yeah, Dennis from the mischief theater and The Goes Wrong Show, true. I thought you were gonna say something else. And that's a story for another time. I told you about the time when Isaac Hayes walked by me in a group of friends as we were just standing there.
We didn't say anything. We just nodded. He nodded back because Isaac Hayes just needs to nod because he's so cool. He's just, yes, I am Isaac Hayes.
And that's what his nod says. That's okay. Our friend Brandon will forever carry in his heart that he said his favorite joke from The Goes Wrong Show, which was cab and this guy turned around and smiled at us. And that was it.
And that is all we ever got. And it was more than enough for him. I know it's weird that outside of what we do when we're interviewing people who are gonna have an interview coming up too. So stick around, ladies and gentlemen.
Yes, this is exciting. Because we haven't had anybody as a guest on in forever. I feel bad about that. So I was like, you know what?
There's a good reason to reach out to somebody I know to get them on the show. And we'll get to that in a little bit. But outside of like the people we do interviews with at film festivals and things like that, it's weird that sometimes we develop these parasocial familiarity with certain celebrities whose work we like and enjoy and that we're fans of. I mean, if I'm talking about a Jackie Chan movie, I'll be like, oh, then Jackie did this, Jackie did that.
And it almost sounds like I was there. And you've said it too in relationship to certain actors and you just kind of refer to them by their first name. I'm trying to think of which ones. It's not like I'm saying it, yes.
Russell? Yes. It's not like we should say, well, Ms. Green or Mr.
Chan then did this in the film, but. Usually when I say Jodie, it's Comer and not Whitaker. Yes. That's gonna change at the end of the month a little bit, I think as we get to Doctor Who.
And the 60th. But we also have the bike riders coming up. That's true, that's true. So it's always kind of, I always feel like a little weird like when you actually see a celeb in the wild that you're like, I'm so familiar with their work.
What's the appropriate level? I should approach. How should I approach? True.
And like I said, I'm lucky enough to consider a few people who are actors and directors and such as people I'm acquainted with on good terms with, friendly with. It's tough. Now beyond you. You know what I mean?
Yeah, I know what I mean. So that kind of helps me, I think, be a little cool. Although I almost lost my shit the time I met Mark Hamill at a stage door after a play he was in. Well, yeah, it's Mark Hamill.
And as I said, I was very surprised because to my mind, he was always, you know, 20 feet tall because that's how tall that movie screen is. And when I realized he was pretty much my height, that was like, that's really weird. And then my second thought was, wait a minute, that means according to transitive properties, I'm too short to be a stormtrooper. So, there you go.
Yes, you are. Oh, thank you. But there's lots of fun, great stuff coming up. Just as we were sitting down to record, I found out they announced that James Cameron's The Abyss is coming out for a one night screening on December 6th, 4K restoration.
This is a movie that has been missing pretty much, I think on Blu-ray or a decent version of it on Blu-ray. And everybody's been like, when is this coming out on home video again? I know my DVD is kind of dusty and it looks okay, but I'm sure this movie looks a lot better. Bitch, please.
I haven't seen it since it was on VHS. Oof, oof. So I'm excited about that. Just like I am about the 8th of December.
That's right. On the 8th of December, you're a local regal or cinema tech fan dango to see where it's playing in your area. There is going to be a 20th anniversary, one night only screening of the modern Christmas classic, Love Actually. And that week, we can project this far ahead, at least.
Yes. The episode of The Big Picture podcast, that drops that week, will be all about Love Actually. It's like people into going out to see it at the theater. And one of the questions I want you to carry with you as you're also doing a Christmas curated run of films for our friend over at Generation Movie, was 2003, the last great year for holiday movies.
In that year, we had Elf, Love Actually, and Polar Express come out all at once. And I don't think we've had a year like that since. I don't think so. So keep that in mind.
I would have to go back and take a look at Christmas releases over the years, but I think you might be right on that. You might have to watch Polar Express again. Oh boy, I just didn't like Polar Express. I thought the animation was not quite there.
There was an uncanny valley thing happening, especially with the eyes on a lot of those characters. It was the same problem that was also in Mayowulf. Yes, I would agree with that. So I mean, I really- You don't really watch it for the animation.
You'll watch it for the spectacle, but you'll watch it mostly for the music. Yeah, okay, I'll give you that. And I appreciate- And that amazing train off the rail sequence. That scene so freaks me out, by the way.
Yeah, that was well-stayed. This is Robert Zemeckis here, when he was really fiddling around with that motion capture technology. And I appreciate that he wanted to go out and experiment. I appreciate that he got some studios to fund him for it too.
I'm not quite sure the results are everything he wanted. I think it's kind of a mixed bag. I think the story is better than the animation. Yeah, and I think though that these films are very important in the overall arc of the development of that kind of technology as well.
Agreed. In terms of- I would even say in terms of the idea of holiday films from the genre. I look at everything that comes out now on streaming in terms of holiday films. They all reek of hallmark lifetime.
So when I pull up on Amazon or on Netflix, and I write just Christmas movies. Yeah, I'll get like two or three major hits. And then the rest of it is just junk. Give me something with some, I want some meat to it.
I still want to come out of it feeling good. Guys, I highly recommend, it's not exactly considered a Christmas movie, but it can be considered a Christmas movie. If you really, really watch it. I mean, for God's sake, the movie's called The Holiday.
Great film, Jude Law Cameron D as Kate Winslet, Jack Black's Eli Wallach. It's Jack Black doing a dramatic performance that I like. It's really cool. Yeah, I'll grant you that.
Directed by Nancy Myers. We talked about Jack Black a hundred times on the show, whereas sometimes he's good, and sometimes he needs a director to haul him in. And this is where he's really good. Him and Kate Winslet have a similar chemistry that kind of reminds me, but a lighter version of when she worked with Jim Carrey and Eternalson Shine.
You have an actor who's primarily a comic actor, and then you have an actress who is primarily dramatic, cross them and see where they land in the middle. It's fantastic. Yeah, it is. It's a vastly underrated film.
I would definitely grant you that. So guys, if you're looking for a Christmas movie that you've never seen before, check that one out. And one other thing I wanted to bring up that I saw was coming in December, and it's to the Criterion channel. Oh, tell me.
Josie and the Pussycats. Really? Yeah. I just saw that like two minutes before you walked in here, and I immediately jotted it down on my notepad.
OK, ladies and gentlemen, that one's a fun movie. Share it with your kids. Share it with your teens. Yes.
Y2K is coming back. Particularly your daughters are going to be all about it. They're going, where can I get that fashionable clothing? I think it's fantastic satire on MTV.
Product placement, the state of pop music at the time. It's just hilarious. You're goofing on boy bands. Which is actually starting to come back as well as Trolls.
Was it banned together? Yeah. Comes out this week. They're absolutely in the trailer riffing on Backstreet Boys.
In Sync is returning to actually do new music for the film. They joke around about a couple of other things. I have to check because I get my favorite t-shirt manufacturer. I know that they did a run of Josie and the Pussycats shirts a while back.
I can't remember if I got one or not. They had a whole bunch of different styles, including like du jour, which is the boy band. I don't like the Metallica fonts, which was really cool. And is there anything else that you're looking forward to between Thanksgiving and the New Year?
It's apart from Dr. Ho? Apart from Dr. Ho?
Yes. We're going to definitely talk about Dr. Ho. And Napoleon is coming out Thanksgiving weekend.
I know you're going to see Salt Burn this week. I'm seeing five movies in three days. All of your content. Holy shit.
Yes. It's my screening schedule is now insane. I'm seeing Salt Burn. I'm seeing, I can't remember what my Wednesday night is.
And then Thursday, I have three movies, and I don't think I can even talk. I don't think I can even publicly mention which what some of them are. Well, they're not on your list here. For Wednesday, two of them are.
Oh, I see the other two. Yeah, I don't have the one in the middle there. You didn't go to the one night. Oh, because we have this wonderful interview coming up.
Yeah, we have the interview, and then I have tonight's film is so damn good from what I'm hearing. Same here, but that's going to be out in about a week and a half. So that I'm not concerned about getting too early. So a lot of the other stuff is December releases that I'm going to need to see before the end of the month before Philadelphia Film Critics Circle voting.
Damn. Yeah. Guys, stay with us because we've got some stuff coming your way according to the schedule. Holy shit.
Lots of great stuff. I'm super jealous of Thursdays. The 10 AM screening? You?
Yes. Yeah. I think it's much. Yeah.
I told you though, I know, I know, I believe me. If you could come along on that one, I would tell you to take the day off and drive down and meet me. Because I'm actually saying overnight, nearby have my brothers and my brothers. I'm finally taking him up because here's the thing.
I'm not going to get into it. I just hate like because when I'm doing movie trips on like that for screenings and stuff, it's a lot of that and I don't have a lot of time to be social with family. So I don't want them to feel like I'm just treating their hospitality like it's a hotel. No, I understand.
I'm actually, Wednesday night, I'm going to be in Easton myself for something that does not include this podcast. But it does include filmmaking. Yes. They've talked about our filmmaking journey a little bit more.
Yeah. Easton, Pennsylvania has a great filmmaking community. Actors, directors, writers, and special effects. We actually have a wonderful SFX artist coming into lecture on Wednesday night and it's a great time for people to get together and network and find out who is out there.
So that's where I'll be. I know. You'll be repping our filmmaking arm. So thank you for that.
I appreciate the work you do. You've done so much over the past couple of years. I thought it was my turn to kind of step up and do some work. Oh, thank you.
Well, you're off working for film buff online. Yes. It's all movies. It's all good.
It's all fun. It's all movies all the time. Yes. That should be our tagline, our motto, whatever you want to call it.
All movies all the time. Which is why? Why have I? Butter flavored syrup that they pour onto popcorn pulses through our veins.
Ew. Terrible idea. I'll take a wine from the concession stand. I know you will.
Now I think, though, it's time to kind of move over to reveal, I guess, who our guest is. I know it is, but you guys don't tell me tell me tell me tell me. I just throw to the interview. Let me find the right sound clip to play to take us into the interview and away we go.
See you on the flip side. My guest joining us right now is an award winning filmmaker. But you probably know him better as one of the writer producers on Mystery Science Theater 3000, as well as the host of so many of the live MST 3K offerings that they have on the gizmoplex. Please welcome Matt McGinnis.
Hey, Matt. Thank you. Thank you so much. What an inmate.
I've never been called an award winning filmmaker before, but you're not wrong. You won the very first shorty. I was there. I did.
Yeah, 2007. Yeah. I probably have pictures somewhere on our part. You know, if you do, I'd love to see them because I have none.
And all they remember from being there is just like the nerves of like having to be up on stage and address a crowd of 600 people and just being like, oh my, it's like that like you like me. I really like me. And I feel like it was really strange. Yeah.
But I mean, it's funny too, because I was going through several batches of photos from Blotfest over the years. And I know I have at least one year from you in a costume contest and master. Yes. And I seem to recall you had some mustache malfunction at one point.
Yes. So there were a couple of things that malfunctioned during that. So I was the master and my, my friend Sean was Torgo and God bless and we shoved like six like bath towels into his pants to like give him the Torgo legs. Keep in mind, it's like 100 degrees in the shade on this day.
So we're, we're both wearing these heavy uncomfortable costumes. And I had grown my mustache thinking this will be enough. Not realizing that five days isn't really enough to grow like a satisfactory mustache. So I bought one of those like adhesive ones from like a costume store in town.
And when I went up on stage and delivered some line from the movie, the mustache projected off my upper left, twirled around in the air for a little bit. And I like caught it and like put it back on, but I had to like act like, oh, you know, that was all part of the plan. You saw nothing. When in actuality, we did not think that was going to happen at all.
You know, I'm really happy it did actually. Cause it's a really funny moment. Yeah. And I believe one of the judges that year was your future boss.
Yes, he was. Yeah. And it was funny because I had just finished like the year before had just finished his movie or a thing workshop that he was doing at my college. So when he was.
Yeah. Were you part of the, the final when they performed on the stage at Phoenix Hill? Yes. So my, I have a poster of that somewhere because I was at that show.
Oh, very cool. So I love that show. That was one of the most fun days of my life. And yeah, my group was the Aquanauts.
And it was myself, Seth and Mary Robinson, who both also went on to work on a MST and then another friend of ours, Kaley, who was a, another person who was at the workshop with us. And it was so funny because like I had been going to Blobfest so long before that show. So to like have this thing that I was really proud to work on coming to the colonial where like, like, you know, I went like almost every week to like worship was like, it was like full circle. I was like, it's never going to get better than this.
Yeah. Yes. I was going to say was, was it, is it a direct line from Joel's workshop to your job at the show? Yeah.
One hundred percent. Yeah. It was so the workshop itself was in, I want to say like the spring of 2012. And we did a show at, we did a show at bucks.
Then we followed it up with a show at a colonial theater. And after that, I didn't hear from Joel. I didn't really, I kept in contact with my group from the riffing class, but didn't really hear from Joel at all. And then that's for about like early 2013 or so.
And my phone rings and it's Joel Hobson and I'm like, Holy crap. Like I answered that. And we're catching up and you know, he's, I just had a new job and he's asked me how everything's going. And then somewhere along the line, he just kind of like drops the tidbit like, yeah, we're thinking about bringing the show back and I wanted to know if you wanted to work on it.
And like, you know, like when people mentioned like a life changing call, like that was it for me. Like from that point on, it was pretty much understood like, yeah, we're going to be doing, you know, eventually in the future, we're going to be doing mystery science theater again. And, you know, Seth, as I mentioned, he eventually became my co-worker at Alter Universal where we make the show. He since gone on to other projects.
And Mary, who remains a writer for the show. We all just kind of like, I guess we did a good enough job that Joel asked us to come on. It was, it was really weird because I just remember being so nervous. I did not think I did a good enough job to one day be asked to work on the revival of the show was so weird to me.
Still is. Now, were you being brought in just as a writer or like a low producer or what have you? Yeah, I mean, at the time, the writing was a big part of it. I mean, at the time, we were kind of helping like Joel with like brainstorming, helping come up with like new ideas for the characters, the setting of the show, et cetera.
And we all understood that writing would be a part of it. Well, we didn't understand was that Joel also had like other things in mind for us. So when I first, when I first got the job, yes, I was a writer, but I was also what we called internally. I was called the silhouette plotter.
And what that meant was I would bring our movies into After Effects, and I would have very rudimentary, like After Effects puppets of our characters, because I don't know if you remember, but during the Netflix seasons, Tom would fly around. Crow would walk around. He would like interact with the screen. And we needed to basically have an animatic of that to show the puppeteers like this has to happen at this point.
And then it's going to be like this one fluid movement. So my job, my full time job was primarily doing all those animations. And, you know, it's since evolved, we don't do like the visual gags like that anymore. So the silhouette plotting role has kind of just like evaporated.
But yeah, that was sort of like where I started was like, you know, we joked that I was like the low end of the totem pole, but, you know, everybody's job was so important on the show. Well, in a way, though, you've directed a couple of episodes of the most recent season, if I'm recalling. The season finale. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So that feels almost like an evolution to that directorial post there for you in terms of that type of responsibility. And I was wondering, you know, it's one lockdown camera.
How do you direct that scene? Is it with all these comics coming in who have all these great ideas already? Is it a great question? Or is it a little weird?
It's, it's not too dissimilar from what I do during our live events. Yeah. It's a lot like herding cats. And more often than not, yes, it is a lockdown shot.
So visually there's not too much room to like play around in, but that's just the visual nature of the show. So a lot of times it's sort of working with the actors on like, you know, for instance, like I know the script or I have a copy of the script. I know it well in advance. And I may have an idea of like how I think a line needs to land.
And maybe they're doing it a little differently than what I anticipated. And it's partially one working with them to make sure like, oh, we need to emphasize like this word for the joke to work. We need like, you know, maybe shorten this gap a little bit so we need to do that. We need to do that.
We need to do that. We need to do that. We need to do that. We need to do that.
We need to do it sooner. A lot of it is working on timing and delivery. But also a fair amount of it is just kind of making sure like, you know, we shot all on green screen last season. So a lot of it is making sure like, okay, if we have a shot with all three of the test objects together is Jonah not getting cut off because he's so tall.
It's Emily not like drowning underneath the desk. We need her on Apple crates. Like it's a lot of decision making. But it's also a lot of collaborating.
Like Joel is also a director. Joan is a great director. I think it's like, discuss idea. I could go to any one of them and they would give me their thoughts.
And it was all just a collaborative process, which I think was really truly the best way to make something. Okay. Well, I know that, you know, we're in the middle of the fundraiser for season 14. So I appreciate you finding the time to talk to us.
Of course. So this is, this will be your third fundraiser then. We did, you know, for the first season of Netflix. Correct.
Yeah. And then season 13. And now 14. What about the process of preparing for a fundraiser and trying to manage the project.
I think we're going to have a lot of time to energize the fan base. It's remained the same. What's changed about the whole thing? Well, the big change is that this fundraiser is not on Kickstarter.
We've partnered with a site called Crowd Funder, which I'm a white label service. It allows us to host the campaign on our site. That's the biggest difference. The other big difference is that when we launched the campaign, the actors gilled with still on strike.
So there was this whole, you know, fear of like, Oh, my gosh, the part of me. The actors can't promote the show. What do we do? We kind of were very reliant, you know, very line on the fan base.
But, you know, there's still like, there's still some challenges. It's always an uphill battle. And if there's one thing I've learned from, you know, crowdfunding campaigns is that they are unpredictable. Like, honestly, if you had asked me during the last campaign, how many episodes I thought we would have made, I would have said like seven or eight.
We ended up making 13. So we can never tell really, like, even at this state in the, in the campaign, like where we, I think like as of right now, I think we have like 13 or 14 days left. It's, we still just have no idea where it's going to end up. So it's like, it's the most agonizing part.
But it's also pretty exciting to like just keep looking and be like, Oh my gosh, like, what are we going to do today? Well, you've already announced a couple of planned films for next season. That'll be on the stars, which, and I have to kind of ask this, was that chosen because it's a sci-fi remake of Seven Samurai and Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon is also a sci-fi remake of Seven Samurai. Yeah.
Just with movies on spaceships. Exactly. So that'll be on the stars is so funny to me because in seasons 12 and 13, Joel and I both considered it. And for whatever reason, we kept saying like, no, let's like, we got to save this.
It's not, it's not time yet. And honestly, like one of the things I see the most, one of the most requested movies I see online from fans is, when are they going to riff that? I'll be on the stars. And so it just seems like right now, like, you know, let's just do it.
You know, I think, I think we've hopefully reached a point with the fan base that we've shown, like, you know, hopefully we know what we're doing. And we can, we can take this on. And what, what Joel and I love the most about it was, I mean, yes, the Seven Samurai remake is valid. But you know, one of the things that I love, one of the main kind of movies I love showing on MSD is just when a movie so blatantly rips off an enormous Hollywood franchise.
And there's so much Star Wars in battle beyond the stars. And like, you just can't, you can't let that go. It's just like, obviously, this came out at a time and, you know, the, the filmmakers probably thought like, Oh, everybody's doing it. Like, you know, like they did Star Wars Disney's doing black hole.
Let's do whatever battle beyond the stars. But the thing that's also noteworthy about it, if I'm remembering correctly, I think it's James Horner's first score. If I'm not mistaken, I believe you're correct on that. Yeah.
It's definitely an early one. And like, and James Cameron worked on this movie, like, there's models for it. Yeah. Yeah.
So there, there's talent behind it. It's not a, it's not a poorly made movie. It's just very blatantly a Star Wars ripoff. And I think that's all right.
Well, yeah. Well, you know, I'm old enough to have lived through that whole 80s sci-fi cycle. And yeah, everything was a blank rip off of Star Wars. Yeah.
Or E.T. So, like, especially, you take Mack and me, which you guys did, which was wonderful. I'm very proud of that one. Have you guys, like, either you or Joel, like suggested a movie and some of the writers have pushed back on it saying, Oh, come on.
I'm actually a legitimate classic. I don't feel comfy. There was a little bit of that last season, actually. When we got the rights to Dr.
Mordred, one of our writers, Devon Coleman, basically said, like, guys, I've rented this movie from Blockbuster. I don't know how many times. Like, I don't think I can riff on this one. And I love that episode.
I think it's a great one. But I saw a couple of people online going, like, Dr. Mordred's too good. Like, why are you, why are you riffing Dr.
Mordred? Now, I will say it's the most competently made movie we've done on the show. It's not that good of a movie though. I think it holds up to the riffing, I think.
Yeah. Yeah. I would say that flipping back to the fundraiser here, you know, I was looking through a few things. I saw that.
And you would even mention it in the wording that you're not doing as many rewards this time around. I mean, you did, you know, pandemic kind of, you know, host you guys a little bit on fulfilling all that stuff. Was that part of the reason why you're just like, you know what? Maybe we've been off more than we could chew or.
Yeah, that was a big part of it. And we also wanted to be sensitive to the fact that, you know, so many of the rewards went out late. And so many of them, you know, just like, it was just an unfortunate, like circumstance, what went on with last campaign's rewards. And, you know, I do appreciate the backers and the fan base that we're patient enough.
I totally understand why people were angry with us. Like it's understandable. But we kind of learned from that and kind of decided, like, you know, the last time the last campaign was a big one because not only were we doing a third season, but we were launching the gizmo plaques, which is our custom like streaming service for the show. And now this time it's kind of like, well, we did a lot of the heavy lifting.
This one's not as grandiose. We don't have to really like, you know, balloon the fact that we're making something other than new episodes. So what have we learned from that? And can we scale it back a little bit so it's more a bit more manageable?
And hopefully, you know, hopefully that things go a lot smoother this time. We do have a new partner for our rewards that will not be the same as the last one. So I feel, and I think the rest of the team feels that we're pretty confident that hopefully this time around the rewards get out of a much more reasonable pace. I know for me, I've, you know, done a couple of Kickstarter for various things.
So I was just kind of like, when it gets here gets here, these guys, I can really trust. It's not, you know, other things I may have donated to that and resolve the comic. Yeah. I have backed campaigns.
I don't know how many years ago, like some 10 years ago, and I've never seen the rewards. So I get it. I guess that I understand where some people are coming from, but I also understand like the behind the scenes thing of like, sometimes things get away, you know, the last campaign we did, there wasn't a global pandemic. There were no supply chain issues.
But also again, some campaigns we even sent out the stuff. So at least we made, at least we followed through on it. Yep. And hey, you know, we got the Gizmo Flex.
We got 13 episodes, a bunch of new shorts. And I do want to, who came up with the, I'm going to get this name wrong. The super sizing the episodes or the not super sizing, but oh, surgically enhancing surgically enhanced. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. That's, that's a boy. You know what? I wish I could remember where that started, but it's, it's long been something Joe's talked about because the original shows are visually speaking compared to where the show is now.
It's night and day. I mean, like if you look at the silhouettes, even in like season eight, they're still a little pixelate and obviously very like standard definition. And so when we found a partner who would help us basically with uprising the episodes, we kind of jumped at the chance because we also thought like, well, not only does it help the episodes look a little better, but it helps the Gizmo Flex a bit too, because then you're not just watching a classic episode, you're kind of like revisiting it in a new form. Or people who may not know what we mean by surgically enhanced.
We're not, we're not George Lucas in the show. We're not adding anything to it. We're not adding riffs. We're not adding sketches.
We're not taking anything away. Really what it is is we're taking the original shows, which at their highest quality were like 540 P and having them up as to 1080 P. So they're now in high definition. And if you go to the Gizmo Plex, I believe if I'm not mistaken, the Puma Man is up there surgically enhanced and you can compare it to the original episode.
The movie is easier to look at. It's much clearer. The colors are sharper. The shadows are darker.
It's just an overall, just like just easier time watching the movie. To be honest, I was a little skeptical about the idea maybe because I've seen like other TV shows that have kind of like been adapted for high def and then suddenly you're in a situation with like Buffy the Vampire Slayer where they just open up the mat from the original film and you're seeing the film crew on the side of the shot. So I was like, okay, I know that's not what they're doing here. They're just doing as simple as and then when you guys debut Puma Man, I was sitting here watching it going, holy shit, this looks really sharp.
This is a much better picture in terms of just being able to distinguish a lot of that night action. That's in the movie. And I was like, oh, I can actually see what's going on here. Oh, that's that's.
And I'm happy to hear that because like, you know, the old shows like, you know, they were dealing with movies that were on VHS shot the show on videotape. And it's like what 60 frames per second or something like that. So, you know, at the time it worked for what they were doing by today's standards. It's obviously just a little, I don't know, you know, low budget is the right term, but like it just, it just looks different.
So by to the standards, we just wanted to sort of help the original show sort of, at least look kind of sympathetic to what we're doing now. And we did certainly enhance a couple other episodes that debuted during last year's Turkey Day marathon. And that's another thing that we're hoping to do with the campaign is for every episode we make, we also want to have like three surgically enhanced titles to release as well. So if we were to do six episodes, we'd love to surgically enhance 18 classics and get them out to people.
Well, speaking of Turkey Day, that's coming up next weekend and you're hosting it this year. Yeah, no pressure. Yeah, no, it's, you know, it's so funny. This is another one of those like weird trajectory stories that just kind of blows my mind.
So the first year we brought back Turkey Day was 2013. And I remember Joel reaching out to myself and Seth and everything, asking us to help write the interstitials. And right then I'm there, I was like, Oh my God, I get to work on a Turkey Day marathon like signing up. Like, again, I thought that was like the peak of my career at that point.
And then I remember getting this. I don't remember, but some message from Joel saying like, Hey, I need you to come to the sets house on this day. I need to show you guys how to work the bots. I was like, what does that mean?
Worked like the bots, the bots. And for anybody who remembers that Turkey Day or may not, at the very end of the Turkey marathon, it ends with Joel going to sit down at the dinner table and Tom and Crow come down to sit with him. And then that's how we fade to black. So, uh, Seth got to operate Crow and I got to operate Tom Servo.
And again, I'm on cloud nine. I'm like, I'm Tom Servo. And again, I'm thinking this is it. This is like plateaued doesn't get better than this.
Now I'm hosting the marathon this year. And it's so crazy to think about that. But yeah, I will be introducing the 24 movies in our 48 hour marathon. It is our longest Turkey Day marathon yet.
All in the gizmo blacks. Is that going to be a free or do people need to pass with it? So, um, I know currently with the Turkey Day marathon, I believe, and I'd hate to get this wrong. So I'm going face on speculation.
I believe it is free for anybody with an account. However, if you don't have a gizmo plex account, if you can't get one for whatever reason, it will be on if you have Pluto TV or any of those services that have the 24 seven mst 3k channel. It will also be playing on those mst channels as well. The difference between those channels and the gizmo plex is that it's very likely the gizmo plex probably won't have ads.
Whereas Pluto TV will come down to preference. Okay. And I hope I didn't say anything wrong about that because if people go into the gizmo plex and see ads, it's not my fault. All right.
Now, this is probably just you probably landed this hosting game just because you've been so good at hosting all the other events on the gizmo plex the the game nights. The Q and A's after premieres and stuff like that. And and watching all of that stuff as it was rolling out. I really got the idea that a lot of the writers are just movie nerds as well as being good comedy writers.
Oh yeah. Oh my God. Can you write for the show if you're not a movie nerd though, or do the two have to kind of go hand in hand on that. It helps.
I'll say that much. What helps so much about it is a lot of our writers are moving nerds and some of the ones that aren't specifically moving nerds are nerds about something else like Jonah and I love horror movies. So pretty fair to say a good amount of heart references might come from Jonah or myself. Rebecca Hanson, for instance, loves like drag race and HGTV.
And so my throw in references to that kind of stuff that we might not get to. And so I think that's a lot of the things that we're all of course is an earned about like magic and things like that. So it's a wide spectrum of nerdiness. And I think it just helps make the show that much more fun.
Because you truly never know what kind of reference you're going to get. I mean, I actually just this weekend rewatched. Gamma versus Jagger with a friend of mine who hadn't seen it. And we had references to like, I mean, they ran again, we had a reference to Frank Hennenlotter.
We had a reference to make out of my totally gapping on some of them, but it was just all over the map. So it's just all kinds of things, but it just I think it kind of is the way the old show was too, except a lot of the original show is references were a lot more obscure. We tend to skew for a more like well-known reference if we can. Yeah.
What's the discussion is there always like we have two jokes here. One is referencing a pop music star of now and the other is referencing Vic's vitamin back from the 30s. What's the decision making process that I'm like, what do we go with? Yeah, it happens.
I mean, like a lot of times the decision process is like whoever is reviewing the riffs, just kind of like, you know, like, for instance, like I'll get the riffs script after the writers have finished it. And my role as Riffs supervisor on the last season basically meant that I went through every script, every line, make sure the timing was right, make sure the jokes fit in the spaces they were supposed to. And I know the writers had already done that work, but sometimes there needed to be some fine tuning or sometimes, you know, there were spots where it seemed like, oh, we could have like one or two jokes here. Or maybe we have to take a joke away.
But when it comes to references, all that I'm looking for is, did it make me laugh? Did I necessarily get it? Maybe not. But like, okay, I know this line is from Futurama.
I might not remember the episode it's from, but it's a funny line. So I'll keep it in because I know somebody could probably do a good gender impression, like stuff like that. So a lot of the times I'm just looking to see like, do I think it's funny to me? Is it funny to anybody else on her crew?
And maybe that's enough. If it makes a couple people laugh, then it should go into the show. Okay. And with you hosting Turkey Day, are there any surprises we should be looking forward to in the next couple of weeks we know?
There are two surprises. One that I am, well, two that I am wants to really say, I will say, all I will say is that two previously unavailable episodes are back. And you will have to tune in to the marathon to find out which two they are. Already I'm speculating in my head.
I'm not going to say anything until we get on the recording part. But yeah, I mean, again, we have 24 movies, 48 hours. We're really just throwing a lot of episodes in here. A lot of them were picked by our writers on the show.
Some of them are surgically enhanced titles. We're throwing a couple of season 13 titles in case anybody still hasn't seen those. The whole point of our marathon this year, we're calling it the mega Turkey Day marathon telephone. And we're basically counting down the last 48 hours of the campaign with this marathon.
So, so many people watch Turkey Day. We figured, well, if they haven't seen an Emily episode, let's put a couple in there so that if they like what they see, they'll go to the crowd from the page and hopefully help us out. But mixing the old with the new, I think, is also good because we represent every host this way. We've got Joel, Mike, Jonah, and Emily.
And I think it helps to kind of unify the show a little bit more because I still feel like there might be some people out there who might consider it like the new show is a separate entity, perhaps, or like maybe they might not even think they're on par with the classic shows. But if they see an episode they might have previously written off and like, oh, wow, this is funnier than I thought, then that's all we can ask for. Well, I've always viewed the show as a bit of a continuum anyways. I mean, there is a little bit of continuity and I know I should really just relax.
But as a writer myself, I'm always about world building and stuff like that. So I always appreciate those things in the last couple of seasons. You've had storylines arc through, you know, very lightly to the end, which is always fun to me. The reason we started doing that mostly was because when we were on Netflix, all the episodes dropped at once.
And so it was very likely people were just going to watch them in order. So we thought, well, if people are going to sit here and binge the show or whatever, there should be some kind of like payoff at the end of it. There should be like some kind of a through line. And we just kind of kept that going.
And it's fun to like explore this world and grow it out a bit and just keep, you know, keep adding to the world of the show. I'm some of us may have taken the day off from work to watch the first several. That's the one thing about the Netflix era, you know, in the opening, you suddenly have that wide open space with where Jonah after Jonah lands in the theme still in the theme song. And, you know, you walks through and you have the boneheads, you have all sorts of stuff going on.
I was like, wow, this is some scope. And then boom, back to to the control room and the theater. And that's about it. You know, it immediately opened up.
And then we go right back down. Yeah, I mean, part of that was, you know, we really wanted to make a big deal of the fact that we were on Netflix. And, you know, King's whole MO is to blow up the brand and make it a billion dollar enterprise. But, you know, at its core, it's a puppet show about talking over movies.
We don't want to make it too big. You know, we don't want to go the late 90s lost in space route and make this enormous robot that will blow up and, you know, be in the theater riffing and it's like a seven feet tall and having all kinds of like weird CGI effects and stuff. But, you know, we want to keep it as simple as we can. And even though the Netflix show did have a bigger scope, we didn't want it to feel too different from what came before it.
All right. Well, if people are looking to check that out, they can go to msd3k.com or gizmoplex.com on Wednesday and Thursday, or is it Thursday and Friday? It is Thursday and Friday. And I believe if my math is correct, yeah, Thursday, Friday, it'll end very early on Saturday morning.
Okay, so there's your weekend plans. Thanksgiving day plans. If you hate football, you can always check out the four of you love it in the game. Well, yes, very true.
You can check out the fundraiser at showmaker.msd3k.com. Matt, always a pleasure chatting with you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.
Wow, that was a lot of fun rich. I didn't even know that was actually. Yeah, okay. So now maybe you see why I watch movies on Turkey Day.
Oh, no, I completely get it. Let's thank Matt for finding the time. I know they're in the midst of the fundraiser for the new season. We talked about ease in the midst of getting ready for all of that.
He has a lot to do and he found some time this evening. And it's great and I will probably buy him a beer at Blobfest next July. I hope I finally get a chance to meet him and go down to Blobfest one of these days. I've been meaning to for years.
And it's just always one of those things that it clashes up against something else and I just can't make it. We are going to figure that out. Even if it's just one day, I feel like I'm overdue. Yes.