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Post by monkeypretzel on Nov 28, 2023 21:15:24 GMT -5
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Post by Diet Kolos on Nov 28, 2023 21:20:46 GMT -5
Perfecto!
Man, imagine if Joel had somehow swung getting a new MST made in 2011-12 with the Cinematic Titanic crew. Gotta wonder what made him change course to a solo project after CT ended.
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Post by monkeypretzel on Nov 28, 2023 21:39:46 GMT -5
It was VERY late that Trace, Frank, and MJ were written out, well after the end of CT. Josh had declined earlier due to working on his Michael des Barres documentary, but I don't think the others backed/walked away until the falling out over pay or whatever it was, and I've got that pegged to August/September 2015. I'd give anything to see the original "Kickstarter video" (it might have just been a pitch video) with them in it; one of the writers did an interview with the old Revival League podcast and mentioned that it existed because she wrote for it.
Anyway, an MST3K with Bill Hader as host and the CT cast doing some sort of talk show like format for the host segments would have been at the very least entertaining.
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Post by missionpanic on Nov 29, 2023 14:11:17 GMT -5
Bill would have been an amazing writer - and his sensibility is perfect, sort of a middle ground between Joel and Mike.
I wonder how much creative control he would have had. Is there a good place to find out all of this into? I genuinely didn't know this existed.
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Post by BoB3K on Nov 30, 2023 12:12:14 GMT -5
I don't think the others backed/walked away until the falling out over pay or whatever it was, What's this, I never heard anything about this. I only heard how angry some of them like Trace seemed when asked about the 2015 KS
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Post by kracker on Nov 30, 2023 17:31:03 GMT -5
After watching Barry, its pretty obvious Hader is just great at everything. But how much interest did he actually have compared to lifelong fan Jonah?
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Post by monkeypretzel on Nov 30, 2023 20:55:35 GMT -5
I don't think the others backed/walked away until the falling out over pay or whatever it was, What's this, I never heard anything about this. I only heard how angry some of them like Trace seemed when asked about the 2015 KS Over the weekend of September 25 -27th, 2015, Joel, Trace, Frank, and Bill were in attendance at the then Salt Lake City Comic Con. That's the con where Joel met Felicia Day and asked her to be Kinga during on 9/26/15. There's a video of the MST3K Panel they did at www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZT9eW-kgEE . At about 32:50 an audience member asks Joel if the internet rumors about an MST3K reboot are true. Joel says yes, audience cheers. Trace and Frank have very, very deadpan expressions after smiling before the question was asked/answered, while Bill smiles. As the applause dies down, Trace cracks a joke about it being an A-Team reboot. Frank follows up with "They can't do it without Mr. T, c'mon," looking over at Trace and Joel. Joel glances at Trace, who doesn't look at him. (There's a table between Trace and Joel, Bill is sitting next to Joel, Frank on the end next to Bill.) Put a pin in that for later. Fast forward to the time of the Season 11 release, and Joel does an interview with Coming Soon 4/14/2017. ( www.comingsoon.net/tv/features/837945-creator-joel-hodgson-talks-bringing-mystery-science-theater-back-to-life ) He's asked about the cameos from MJ, Bill, and Kevin: CS: It was cool to see Mary Jo Pehl, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett do their cameo in the flying VW. Was it important for you to acknowledge the whole of “MST3K” and not simply your years on the show? Hodgson: Oh my god, yeah. I mean, that was like a really big issue when we did the Kickstarter. My idea was six weeks before we shot the video for the Kickstarter, everyone was involved. Like Trace, Frank, Mary Jo and Felicia [Day] were all going to be in the trailer. So we were booking air travel and I’d written a script and sent it out. The premise was going to be originally Dr. Forrester, TV’s Frank, Pearl Forrester, and Felicia were all kind of in the film and in my mind, it was going to be kind of like “The Addams Family.” Felicia had a little bit smaller of a part, and then prior it all fell apart and for different reasons everyone from the original cast kind of passed on getting involved with the Kickstarter. And so, I was kind of confronted with, “Oh, I guess we’re just going to have to lead with all the new people, with Baron and Hampton and Jonah and Felicia.” And that’s when I kind of thought, “Oh yeah, if Trace and Frank aren’t going to be in this, I’ve got to have another mad for Felicia,” so that’s when the idea of approaching Patton [Oswalt] came along. So that’s kind of the construction of it.
And then, once we got on the other side of the Kickstarter, then we were able to get Kevin and Bill and Mary Jo involved, and that’s how that happened. But at the same time, when we did the Kickstarter, people are going, “What’s going on? Where are all the other people? Why are you doing this without them? What’s happening?” We had to, in an elegant way, go, “Well, we’ve invited them and hopefully they’ll come back,” but we had to kind of lean into the idea of refreshing it and using new people. We were kind of forced to lead with that, with new people, but having them back was really great and they were very gracious. All the crew and the writers and performers were really excited they were there. They got a lot of attention from everyone, so I think everybody really loved that they’re a part of it. They did an awesome job, and Mary Jo and Bill wrote on a couple of episodes, too, as well as Paul Chaplin, who was a longtime writer on the show.
The first Kickstarter went live on 11/10/2015, the second Tuesday of that November. There were six weeks between the final weekend of September (SLCC) and the weekend before the Kickstarter began. All those promo videos had to be filmed no later than the first week of November. Now Joel isn't the most reliable narrator in the world, but assuming he's somewhat accurate, you can surmise something happened between him and Trace and Frank either during SLCC or right before it that lead to Joel's plans "falling apart." Now, according to what fans have reported Trace and Frank saying at live Mads events, the original "falling apart" had to do with money. They say they asked Joel to be paid for their contributions to the reboot, in their words "a reasonable ask." (I don't know if this was acting and writing or one or the other, except there's another interview (that may be a dead link in my folder because I can't find it) where Joel said he offered Trace head writer and Trace turned him down. I've never seen any other interview or quote that confirms the head writer offer, though.) Joel's answer to their "reasonable ask" was, according to Frank, an upturned middle finger. Not literally, figuratively, although when Frank related this story he used his own finger to demonstrate. Then there was the story Frank told on Bill's podcast, where he detailed not having any idea Joel was hiring Patton to replace him because Joel never contacted him, and how Patton didn't know Joel never mentioned it to Frank until Frank posted on Twitter, and "one of the kind of top" Kickstarter people insulted Trace and Frank by saying they were too old and would look bad in their costumes, and how Frank was hurt that Joel didn't communicate with him at all after being a kind of family during Cinematic Titanic and touring. However it shook out, it ended up with Trace not speaking with Joel. Despite everyone thinking that because they were onstage together during the RiffTrax MST3K Reunion show, they must have been friendly, if you look closely at the end - they never interact. They don't talk to each other. They don't shake hands. They didn't interact at the VIP gathering or the press conference, either. The Reunion Show is where Joel asked Kevin and Bill to be on the reboot for the first time, and I assume MJ agreed then to come back as part of the package deal since she dropped out when Trace and Frank did in 2015. One other little anecdote I'd like to share from someone who was at SLCC 2015 and met Trace and Bill. It doesn't prove anything, but it does add a little insight into the relationship during that weekend: "At SLCC, I asked Bill a question about making the Soultaker episode, since Joel seemed to be in kind of a bad mood in that one (if I may be permitted to vastly understate things). Bill kind of hemmed and hawed and told me I should ask him myself at the panel. I told him that I couldn’t do that because when you ask Joel directly, you get a BS answer. (In hindsight, that was awfully bold of me to say to somebody who actually knows him, and maybe I shouldn’t have >_>) But Bill was like “No, you should. I’ll give you five dollars.” and then Trace leaned in and said “I will give you five dollars.” I laughed, but of course, I didn’t ask Joel about it at the panel. Point is, I don’t know what that says to you about how Bill and Trace were feeling about the guy. That was last September, but it seems like the overall vibe hasn’t changed much since then."
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Post by starschwar on Nov 30, 2023 22:20:47 GMT -5
When the "reboot" question gets asked, there's a weird glow happening around Trace's face. No doubt it's some quirk of autofocus or some other camera setting. But it looks like a comic book character desperately trying to contain their super-powered rage. Purely coincidental, but it's a little funny. Sad that, for whatever reasons, they didn't/don't get along.
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Post by dc41 on Dec 2, 2023 22:33:26 GMT -5
To turn a phrase, this is absolutely fascinating. Over on Reddit, there was a post that the Hader led incarnation of the reboot was much more of a collaboration between Joel and Trace occurring before Shout was involved. Would assume that Joel had convinced Mallon to let them move forward, which he’d previously refused to do. Once Shout got involved, Joel essentially ghosted Trace before offering the head writer role, which if this is what occurred, would be the source of the rift as Trace went from being a collaborator to an employee.
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