Or “Why I Should Learn To Get My Head Out of My Ass and Stop Being a Douchebag”.
I couldn’t resist spreading the love on this one. Over at Cinematic Damnation, another cinema nut has gone off his rocker with a heaping dose of MST3K hate. After all, as we all know, when you don’t like a TV show that’s been off the air for ten years, you should focus all your “fiery passion” on hating the living hell out of it. Grrr.
He heaps a ton of scorn on the Brains themselves, calling them pretentious, with the help of some five-dollar obscenities to bolster his arguments. Then, he commits the great, grand cardinal sin of all MST3K haters: He treats the movies like they’re the stars of the show. As if the people who want to watch MST3K give a flying frak about whether the movie is pan-and-scan! If you want widescreen, go buy it sans robots, Scorsese. This show is clearly not for you.
But the worst of his acidic tirade, is his claim that the Brains are pretentious. Pardon my salty language, but what a fucking judgmental prick! I (and many others) have spoken to some of them personally and can vouch for not only their kindness, but also their genuine love for movies in general. If this film school dropout spent five minutes alone with Joel Hodgson and Kevin Murphy, he would be blown away. Hell, Kevin has more passion for cinema in his left thigh than this guy has in his entire body.
I don’t mind if he doesn’t find the show funny. Everyone’s sense of humor is different. And yes, he is just some schmuck on the internet, just like me. But still, if you’re going to personally insult and judge the people behind the show, at least find some evidence to back up your claims. Saying that a comedian is a pretentious asshole because he makes fun of something, is like saying that a painter is a horrid vandal because he likes marking things up.
In closing, may the Brains rot in hell for preventing us from seeing Godzilla flying across the screen in full widescreen glory, the way that The Good Lord intended.
deep ape 
Wonder what he thinks of Rifftrax – One can watch, say, Phantom Menace, in all its aspect ratio glory, sans silhouettes, and still have it demeaned and ridiculed within an inch of its life. Probably whine about not being able to hear the “dialogue”, as if that was a drawback….
Oh wow, that was one of the most ridiculous rants I’ve read in a long time. His, not yours. Does he actually believe that a low-budget television series from the 90’s should have shown the films in widescreen? I’d be shocked if even half the films that were riffed were even available at the time in widescreen (even excluding all the made-for-TV movies), not to mention the impossibility of convincing the network heads that they should be aired that way. As for his other point, how many times have the Brains been on record stating that they love cheesy cinema?
You know, we watched the MST3K Magic Voyage of Sinbad a while back and enjoyed it thoroughly. Then we looked up the movie, found out it was a butchered and anglicized version of a Russian classic called Sadko, rented THAT and watched THAT and enjoyed it thoroughly.
I guess what I’m saying is that MST3K led me to a deeper interest in movies and not just the big-budget hollywood dreck but the strange and the unusual as well.
How dare a cable show made in the years before the general public had even accepted widescreen use the only scratchy TV prints available to them via their TV channel’s film library?
What total bastards. We should get a good angry mob together and kill their heads.
I commented on his page already but I have to say I agree with you completely. I met some of the Brains at a live show last October and they seemed like the nicest people in the world. I also mentioned to Mr. Sour Puss that it’s because of the show that I APPRECIATED cinema even more. For example: I was genuinely sorry to learn of Beverly Garland passing away last year. If it wasn’t for MST3k, I’m sure I’d have never have known about her. And I know I’m not the only one to notice that Joel, Mike and the Bots tended to point out what was GOOD with the movies rather than the other way around.
Oh well. If he’s too thick headed to see MST3k’s brilliance, it’s his loss.
Maybe this is some “Primus Sucks!” kind of thing?
I just left a long comment there agreeing with you , Jake.
I enjoyed bad movies long before I got to know MST, and I’ve since purchased many of the movies MST mocked in their original “pristine” versions, and somehow I’m capable of enjoying both.
That guy really made a big public fool of himself, huh?
Well, if his goal was attention and/or traffic, then….mission: accomplished. The comments on his article touch upon everything I thought after reading it. It’s one thing to dislike the show, but his rationale and bitterness seems unfounded.
I, for one, request, nay DEMAND a wide screen print of Space Mutiny, stat!
I think this “guy” needs to quit taking some of these movies so seriously! I compare MST3K to Weird Al:I think it’s an honor to have someone make fun of your movie or your song.I’ve enjoyed the movies that MST3K did long before they were around and I see the humor in them.I appreciate the older horror and sci-fi movies from the 50’s to the 80’s,but if they suck,they suck,but that doesn’t mean I HATE MST3K any more just because they riff on it.I think you can separate the two and enjoy both.By the way,there were other comedy groups that made fun of bad movies,so MST3K wasn’t the only one.It’s just that MST3K is better at it!!!! Have a laugh…You can’t see the humor in something like Battlefield Earth,Manos or Monster A Go-Go??????
This guy just has issues. I saw lots of the riffed movies before they were on MST3K, and I enjoyed many of them. I still watch a lot of old movies that should be on MST3K, but never got their chance. Basically, I viewed the show as a different format to enjoy old movies. I never got upset that they ruined a good flick or that the formatting was wrong. The cast and crew obviously loved the films and what they were doing – they always had such wit and light-hearted humor that riffing a movie was more like teasing a friend than sniping angrily at a foe.
Many of the movies are better riffed. And, the show introduced me to a number of other movies that I love and might not have ever been able to see otherwise because they aren’t popular or widely available.
I also wanted to respond to this guy’s comments on the host segments. Sometimes they were pretty cheesy, but they were fun. The invention exchanges, the songs, the skits, etc.. introduced us to the characters, aided in riffing the movie, and were just another outlet for the writers and cast to entertain us. I saw the panel at ComicCon 2008. The people that brought us this show really loved the films and the opportunity to create this kind of work – especially the host segments. They turned passion into a career – how many people can really say that???
You guys are fucking awesome.
It’s just a post on my blog about obscure movies which nobody reads. I had an opinion. You guys disagreed with my opinion and were threatened by it, so you all went to my blog and wrote me nasty comments every 30 minutes for two days.
I didn’t go out of my way to spew hate on MST3K on an MST3K fan community, I just wrote about on my blog, which as I said, not many people read. As far as I’m concerned, it was just another post. There are a lot of popular things I really hate.
You guys dug up everything you could on me and used it all against me, even going to my YouTube channel and downrating my videos (which are actually pretty popular) and flinging every insult you could at me. Now it’s even continuing on Myspace.
I will say it, you guys win. I truly fucked with the wrong fanbase and I forgot what kind of people I was dealing with.
Again, I apologize, I did put too much venom into my post. I shouldn’t have directly insulted the Brains and I’m sorry about that.
You guys get what you want, I deleted the post so there will be no dissenting opinions on the wonderful, Godly MST3K anymore.
But on top of that, you guys muscle me into doing what you want (getting rid of my post) and then call me a coward because I simply couldn’t take getting shit every half hour and it was distracting me from my work, which is the most important thing of all to me. I’ll never write another word about MST3K again, it’s simply not worth it.
You can shout about how unfunny you think the show is. That’s fine. No reasonably MSTie would fault you for simply not enjoying the show. But you don’t fuck around with the good people who made the show and ignorantly call them pretentious, simply because you don’t like what they do. Next time, if you don’t want venom fired your way, I suggest you act a little more civil. Otherwise, be ready to take that which you dish out.
That said, I can’t vouch for the behavior of others. I’m sorry if certain people went out of their way to attack you unnecessarily on YouTube. And since you took the post down, I have no way of knowing the exact nature of the comments that were left there. MSTies are some of the nicest, most awesome fans on the planet… but internet users will be internet users, and dick will be dicks. I apologize for any excessive abuse I may have indirectly caused by giving you some publicity.
Also, if you’re going to post your opinion on the internet, at least have the balls to leave your post up, even when people disagree with you. This is the internet, and people tend to read other people’s stuff and, usually, disagree with it. Maybe you should reevaluate your participation in The Internet.
I could care less if people disagreed with me.
I took the post down because I got sick of all the personal attacks. I’m sorry, there’s only so much in the way of personal attacks someone can take. It wasn’t cowardly, it was smart. I saved everybody time and effort.
As I said, I went too far and I’m deeply sorry. The Brains and their work aren’t my cup of tea, but it’s fine if you guys like it. I can’t change your opinions just as you can’t really change mine.
J.L. Carrozza, ladies and gentleman. Mature 22 year old adult and the voice of the “official channel of Gen Y film” has spoken. “Oh, woe is me. People were mad when I went on a profanity laced tirade and threw muck at hard working people who actually happen to love cinema, making all kinds of profound “observations” about a cable TV show in the pre-HD age where 4:3 was still mainstream (you were like what? 12 years old when the final season was on am I right?) using pan and scan cuts of the films they got from their providers!” I watch all my personal Godzilla DVDs in widescreen (except Gojira, cuz ya see, like a lot of the movies featured on MST3K, that one wasn’t AVAILABLE in widescreen) and subtitled. But because I have something called *a sense of humor,* I can just as easily watch Joel and the gang make fun of Godzilla vs Megalon or G vs the Sea Monster. As Hugh said, if you can’t be more civil, then don’t dish out what you can’t take! The fact that you act like WE’RE the ones with bad manners is absurd. Read “A Year at the Movies” by Kevin Murphy and tell me that the Tom Servo who apparently taunts your ego so really disrespects the art of film. I’ve grown to appreciate film more just by carefully observing all the great references on the series. Heck, I wouldn’t have gotten around to seeing Silent Running possibly for many years if it hadn’t been for Joel’s love for that movie. Just two examples of many. Anyways, as I said on Sat News, being mad about MST3K is like writing to your newspaper editor in the 80s/90s because Gary larson drew a Far Side cartoon of a snake with a goofy face eating a baby. Garson Larson MUST have complete disregard for babies! In any case, why not try to take something positive from your little experience which could actually help you in REAL LIFE or as you try to work with other people as you try to eke out a film career. That lesson to me would be: Making your point by cursing a lot, showing lack of logic and pre-judging people causes people to have a lack of respect for you. Yelling at people, saying stupid things and getting mad and pouting when the people you just did this to return in kind makes you look like a very hypocritical person. Anyways, best of wishes trying to revitalize “generation Y filmmaking.” And so sorry to hear you’re “no longer” a fan of the show. I hope you’re making whatever professor or peer you’re trying to imitate proud by your antics. I personally suspect you still like the show secretly and this is a sociopathic way to get more hits on your videos from your *fellow fans* maybe? That’s some slash and burn promotion, huh?