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Post by majorjoe23 on Jul 27, 2023 19:50:45 GMT -5
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Post by majorjoe23 on Aug 4, 2023 12:53:17 GMT -5
Myka Fox will be the Q&A guest.
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Post by kmorgan on Aug 15, 2023 14:16:37 GMT -5
I saw the movie on tape delay, but I haven't watched the pre-show or the post-movie bits yet. I thought the riffing was good, but why did Chris cut two of the songs? ("Are You Happy in Your Work?" was left in.) The songs are the best parts of the movie.
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Post by JLH on Aug 15, 2023 14:23:29 GMT -5
Because Frank & Trace are old men now and need the movies edited down so they can be in bed by 8pm.
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Post by monkeypretzel on Aug 15, 2023 19:01:23 GMT -5
I saw the movie on tape delay, but I haven't watched the pre-show or the post-movie bits yet. I thought the riffing was good, but why did Chris cut two of the songs? ("Are You Happy in Your Work?" was left in.) The songs are the best parts of the movie.
This time around the editing was done by that Emmy Martian person who does those Weird Wednesday movies and the Discord group. Emmy doesn't like those old "horrible" songs, so Emmy cut them. Why you have to edit a movie with a 68 minute run time I'm not sure, but I guess they all thought it was a good idea. I can see where it's hard to write jokes while someone's just singing on screen, the same way it's not easy to write jokes for driving and parking scenes. You're right about those songs being the best things in the movie. The songwriting team of Jay Livingston (music) and Ray Evans (lyrics) won three Best Song Oscars for "Buttons and Bows," "Mona Lisa," and "Que Sera Sera," and also wrote the Christmas standard "Silver Bells." This was one of their first movie credits. |
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Post by giantservo on Aug 17, 2023 9:46:25 GMT -5
We edit the movies down because they are very bad movies. If you want to watch the full movies, they are all widely available as they are all in the public domain.
Trust me, we aren't editing them for the sake of it, or because Frank & Trace are "old men now" or because Frank needs to pee. These movies are TERRIBLE, and our goal is to make them more entertaining for folks watching at home. What's weird is that no one complains when we edit movies NOT previously featured on MST because no one even notices the scenes missing.
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Post by monkeypretzel on Aug 17, 2023 11:00:00 GMT -5
I understand that mentality. And I know that I've already lost the argument both here and in the wider riffing culture, but indulge me in giving my reason why I think riffed movies should be edited as minimally as possible:
You say the point is to make the movies more entertaining to watch. But for me, the entertainment in watching a bad movie, riffed or unriffed, is in seeing HOW it's bad. I like to see the bad choices made by the director, to see the bad choices by the writers, the actors, the editors. And that means leaving in dull scenes that serve no purpose, because then I get the fun (to me) of wondering WHY that choice was made. That wonder is what a lot of riffing is built upon, questioning the choices, pointing out the flaws of what was left on screen. It's paying close attention to the movie in what I like to think is one of the same ways riffers approach it, not just to mock what's there, but to laugh at WHY it's there.
This goes to another complaint I see about a lot of these older movies, that they're "boring," because they don't have the amount of quick cuts, editing, and "action" scenes ("They're too dialogue-heavy!") modern audiences are used to. Again, I admit I've lost this argument, but maybe whether a movie is "boring" or not depends a lot on the attention span of the person watching, and frankly, when you've been served up a steady diet of Things To Constantly LOOK At since birth, your skills of listening and noticing small details might not be as well-polished - and you might have a tendency to say something is "boring" when it's not constantly shifting to a new scene or a new setting or back and forth quickly, red-flagging plot points and ushering you very quickly through the experience so you don't stop and think about whether it's good or bad. Not having time to digest a movie as it's happening means you have a much harder time seeing how good or bad it really is until and unless you take a second look later.
Editing down a old bad movie to make it more entertaining means changing how the movie is bad to make it bad in a way that more modern (younger, I guess, although that's not a universal truth) audiences relate to, and not leaving it stand as-is for the audience to come to its own decisions about why it's bad. Yet again I emphasize I understand why you do this, and why you disagree with my opinion. I still get great enjoyment in the riffing of the edited versions. If it's a movie I haven't seen before, most times I will seek out the unedited version to watch, in order to compare and see what was cut, and if I agree with those cuts. Sometimes I do, more often I don't, but I don't see much use in complaining all the time about a very personal preference that pretty much everyone else doesn't share.
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Post by giantservo on Aug 17, 2023 13:16:13 GMT -5
But how is removing a scene entirely any different from adding silhouettes and audible jokes over it? If the argument is to be made that you're not getting to see how truly bad the entire movie is, then watching it with added graphics and jokes completely invalidates that. You're almost making the same argument that Joe Dante or Roger Corman have made against the concept of riffing.
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Post by kmorgan on Aug 17, 2023 15:42:26 GMT -5
I can't speak for every movie, but I just thought cutting the songs in "I Accuse My Parents" was a bad idea, since I actually enjoyed them. And cutting the "combat rod" scene in "Phantom Planet" was, too, since it directly relates to later scenes in the movie.
Still, as mentioned, the scenes are still available elsewhere.
Oh, by the way, I got to see the pre-show for "I Accuse My Parents". Two points: first, the "futuristic" cars in one segment were actually pretty cool. And the clearly British-made drive-in ad was a surprise. They have (or had) drive-ins in the U.K.? I thought they were a strictly American thing.
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Post by BoB3K on Aug 21, 2023 9:10:45 GMT -5
But how is removing a scene entirely any different from adding silhouettes and audible jokes over it? If the argument is to be made that you're not getting to see how truly bad the entire movie is, then watching it with added graphics and jokes completely invalidates that. You're almost making the same argument that Joe Dante or Roger Corman have made against the concept of riffing. It's completely different. One is adding to and overlaying comedy (and possibly some commentary and insight) to a piece of entertainment, hopefully making it more entertaining. The other is literally editing out and fundamentally changing the original piece of entertainment. I totally agree with monkeypretzel, by the way, but I'll state it in a different way-- when I'm watching a riffed movie, I want to be watching the original piece of work as I would have watched it myself, maybe stumbling across it on a midnight showing, but with a group of friends who just happen to be professional (and often pre-written and rehearsed) comedians and commentators. That's true movie riffing in my personal opinion. It should feel like you're watching the original movie but with a couple very funny friends. Some people like to point out that many/most movies were edited even back on original MST3K, which my response is always-- yeah okay, and when I found out later I was kind of bummed and wished they didn't have to. Just because something is a precedent doesn't mean it's a good one. Also, final thought, whenever a riff team says they're editing out the 'boring' parts or the 'hard to riff parts', my response is the same--aren't those the parts that are possibly the best comedy fodder and the opportunities to show off ones true master riffing skills? Or you know, maybe that's where you throw in a more general comedy bit. MST3K did that sort of thing all the time during credit sequences, and some of those bits are great, some of my favorite MST3K bits come from credit sequences. |
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Post by monkeypretzel on Aug 21, 2023 16:41:14 GMT -5
But how is removing a scene entirely any different from adding silhouettes and audible jokes over it? If the argument is to be made that you're not getting to see how truly bad the entire movie is, then watching it with added graphics and jokes completely invalidates that. You're almost making the same argument that Joe Dante or Roger Corman have made against the concept of riffing.
I didn't think that disliking editing done not for the sake of time or content (nudity, violence) but for a subjective judgement like entertainment value meant that I agree with Corman and Dante's opinions on riffing in general. For the sake of posterity, I do not agree with Corman and Dante's opinions on riffing. Removing a scene is subtracting from the original. Riffing, with or without silhouettes, is adding to the original. The proper answer for my view (and Dante's and Corman's) is that the original movie is still out there, uncut, for me to watch as it was meant it to be watched, and often I do. But when you lay a riffing audio track over the movie, or add silhouettes, you're not changing the actual movie as it was presented to an audience. When you edit, you are. To me, it gets very tricky when you're editing for riffing, because are you intentionally creating things to riff that weren't there in the original? As a viewer, I have to trust that you aren't, that the cut parts aren't necessary, and that you're not creating badness where it didn't exist for the sake being able to make a joke. The original MST3K unfortunately did do that a few times, as I found out when I watched the uncut movies. I understand WHY you remove scenes. I accept that you remove scenes. I even agree that the edits are necessary with the context that the movie won't get riffed unless those edits are made. I enjoy the finished, edited, riffed movie. But in my perfect world where everything goes my way, I would PREFER the movies to be unedited. That's my personal preference, and I know I'm not going to get it, which is OK. That doesn't make me less of a supporter or appreciate what you and Trace and Frank do any less. I do appreciate it, and I do thank you for it. |
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