My interview with Todd Park Mohr of Big Head Todd and the Monsters. The band performs Sunday at the Clyde Theatre:

https://whatzup.com/music-comedy/big-head-todd-and-the-monsters-band-stays-fresh-even-with-decades

My interview with Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood, who will appear together at the Honeywell Center in Wabash on Friday:

https://whatzup.com/feature/colin-mochrie-and-brad-sherwood-rare-art-of-listening-the-heart-of

 

One of the joys of repeated viewings of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” (aka MST3K) is delayed comprehension of jokes.

The show’s writers have never shied away from obscure references: references to TV shows that lasted only one season, British rock bands that broke up before Woodstock, long-forgotten commercial pitchmen, comedy routines that were mostly delivered at Catskill resorts, Golden Age radio programs, poets and Soviet premiers.

The show rewards polymaths and “Renaissance men” of all genders. Returning to an episode is like panning for gold: Every so often, you find a nugget.

If you are not a fan of obscure references (and many people aren’t), you might be able to blame the late musician George Harrison for this tendency among early MST3K writers and performers.

In a phone interview, the show’s creator, Joel Hodgson, recalled hearing Harrison’s 1976 hit “Crackerbox Palace” and realizing that when the former Beatle sang, “It’s twue, It’s twue,” he was referencing Madeline Kahn’s character in “Blazing Saddles.”

“I had such an amazing gestalt moment when that happened,” he said. “I go, ‘Holy (expletive). George Harrison knows about Mel Brooks movies.’ And ever since then, I have always loved those deep references.”

In 1988, Hodgson, a stand-up comic who had appeared on “Late Night with David Letterman” and “Saturday Night Live,” debuted “Mystery Science Theater 3000” in a place where he could be assured that almost no one would see it: Minneapolis UHF channel KTMA.

Hodgson had gotten a taste of major league fame, but he wasn’t much enamored of the creative constraints that went along with it.

At KTMA, he could do almost anything he wanted, as long as it didn’t cost much (or any) money.

“Mystery Science Theater 3000” consisted of Hodgeon and two robots (crude puppets, in actually) sitting in what looked like a theater (but which was constructed mostly of foam core board) and mocking bad movies.

Hodgson is currently making his final appearance as Joel Robinson, his reluctant astronaut character, in a live tour that will visit the Embassy Theatre on Friday.

“I’m still going to work with the show,” Hodgson said, referring to the version that can be accessed with a Netflix subscription. “But I kind of wanted to go, ‘Hey, I’m 59 years old, man” and kind of have a chance to say, ‘Goodbye.’”

The movie that Hodgson and “The ‘Bots” will riff (meaning, mock in a pleasurable fashion) in Fort Wayne is “No Retreat, No Surrender,” a “Karate Kid” knock-off that has the dubious distinction of being the film that made American viewers aware of the existence of Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Throughout his stint on the first iteration of the show, Hodgson surrounded himself with fellow Midwesterners who shared his idiosyncratic comic instincts and love of pop cultural ephemera: J. Elvis Weinstein, Frank Conniff, Trace Beaulieu, Kevin Murphy, Mike Nelson and Mary Jo Pehl, among them.

The show became popular thanks in part to Hodgson’s unusual strategy of encouraging piracy. On every episode, Hodgson recommended that viewers videotape the show and share those tapes with friends.

“Mystery Science Theater 3000” moved to Comedy Central (then called the Comedy Channel) after its first KTMA season, moved to the Sci-Fi Channel in its eighth season and to Netflix in its eleventh.

As delightful and light-hearted as “Mystery Science Theater 3000” is, the show’s long-if-patchy run has not been without its trials and tribulations.

Hodgson left the show in its fifth season in a dispute with producer Jim Mallon over creative control. After the show was cancelled by the Sci-Fi Channel, Mallon tried to extend the brand with animated webisodes that almost nobody thought were a worthy expansion of the source material.

Eventually, Mallon sold the rights for a tidy sum to entertainment distribution company Shout Factory and Hodgson launched a Kickstarter campaign for a revival.

A reimagined version of the show with an entirely new cast and new stable of writers was eventually sold to Netflix.

Some of the show’s former cast and crew members were miffed at Hodgson for not including them in the new project in a more substantial way.

What really occurred depends on who you believe. Hodgson said he offered Weinstein, Conniff and Beaulieu major behind-the-scenes roles in the reboot. Conniff and Beaulieu have disputed this.

“I think in a way they want my job,” Hodgson said. “I think that’s the heart of it. They want to be in charge of ‘Mystery Science Theater.’ I can’t think of anything else other than that. Because I have offered them pretty much everything.”

Hodgson wonders too if the speculative nature of Kickstarter might have scared them off. There are never any guarantees when someone launches a campaign of that sort that it will be as successful as its organizers envision. Promises can turn out to be empty ones, even when the person making them is being as sincere in that moment as he can be.

But the campaign proved to be hugely successful and the second Netflix season of the show (12th overall) debuted one year ago.

Hodgson said he hopes Conniff and Beaulieu decide to join the show in some capacity in the future.

The original show debuted years before the Internet came into common use. People who wanted to communicate with “Mystery Science Theater” back then were encouraged to do something barbaric: Write and mail letters on paper.

The Netflix version, however, has been dissected then vivisected online by the sort of aging fans whose childhoods are purportedly subjected these days to repeated ruination.

Creating new episodes is not a matter of competing with the old show, Hodgson said. It’s a matter of competing with people’s memories of the old show.

“We’re competing with their memory of being 13 and watching MST,” he said. “Right away I said, ‘I can’t do that. I can create a show that’s as good as the old show. But I can’t make you 13 again.’ That’s what was bugging them. ‘Why is this new show not making me feel 13?’”

Hodgson said he wants to be gentle about all this because he is grateful to the longtime fans for their devotion.

And one of the underlying themes of this tour is something that doesn’t usually generate a lot of laughs: mortality.

Hodgson lost 25 pounds so he could fit into his original jumpsuit, but he said he is otherwise a man who is obviously in his late 50s rather than the twentysomething guy he will always be in episodes of the show.

“That’s why I am always outspoken about my age,” he said. “They may not perceive that they are getting older. The message I get sometimes is something like, ‘Why can’t you do it again forever?’ And so it’s this thing where I kind of go, ‘Oh man. I have to do so much to just be able to wear the jumpsuit and feel like I look good in it.’

“You can’t turn the camera toward them and say, ‘Look, you’ve aged too,’” Hodgson said. “They’re not thinking like that. So I feel obligated to put a sense of reality on it and, at the same time, be funny about it. It’s just about saying, ‘Time is passing and I am doing the right thing. I am creating a really deep bench for “Mystery Science Theater” so it can keep going whether I am involved or not.’”