Mandy Kaplan:
Hello everybody, and welcome to Make Me a Nerd. I’m Mandy Kaplan, Nerd in Training. I’m a mainstream mom whose mission it is to explore the world of nerd culture that I’ve been missing out on and afraid of my whole life. And my returning guests have been such an integral part of this journey, I would be half a nerd without them. It is Krissy Lenz and Kyle Olson. Welcome back.

Krissy Lenz:
Hi, we’re so excited to be here. I’m speaking for both of us.

Mandy Kaplan:
I was gonna say, let Kyle speak for himself.

Kyle Olson:
That’s right.

Krissy Lenz:
We’re both excited.

Kyle Olson:
Yes, we’re sharing a little time in the Satellite of Love together.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Before we even jump in, tell the world what podcasts you host, what you’re up to, if you should so choose to do so.

Krissy Lenz:
I am one of the hosts of The Most Excellent 80s Movies Podcast, also on TruStory FM, as well as Gank That Drank, a supernatural drinking game. And I am one of the directors and a performer at the Neighborhood Comedy Theatre, an improv comedy theater in downtown Mesa, Arizona.

Mandy Kaplan:
And spoiler alert, you and I are partnering up to launch a new podcast soon.

Krissy Lenz:
Ooh, it’s gonna be so exciting.

Mandy Kaplan:
What?

Kyle Olson:
Ooh, a tease.

Krissy Lenz:
Get your cocktails ready, everybody.

Mandy Kaplan:
Kyle, what are you up to?

Kyle Olson:
I’m a writer, a playwright, and a podcaster. So my play Answer Key is available from Gitelman & Good. So if anyone is looking for an Ocean’s Eleven meets Breakfast Club style play for their high schoolers, it is available and it’s not that expensive. But I also am a podcaster. I am on The Marvel Movie Minute, digging deep into Marvel movies, and also on Craft & Chaos, which is more about the creative side of things and making weird stuff for weird people.

Mandy Kaplan:
On the TruStory FM platform.

Kyle Olson:
That’s right. Co-starring podcast impresario Pete Wright.

Mandy Kaplan:
Never heard of him.

Krissy Lenz:
Pum pam.

Mandy Kaplan:
So I reached out to both of you because I had a sixth sense about this. I have never watched Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I thought it was about time. And I took a shot in the dark and I reached out to two of my nerdiest nerds and I said, is that something you’d be into? And my phone blew up in my hands with how fast the reactions were.

Kyle Olson:
Let’s refresh this, specifically.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I was so excited because I often think of topics I want to cover, but I want to make sure it’s something my guests are genuinely passionate about and excited about. What is it you love about MST3K?

Krissy Lenz:
For me, it was a core comedy learning tool. It was on Comedy Central when I was in junior high and high school, and it would always come on in the morning before I went to school and in the afternoons after I got home from school. It was just that perfect sweet timing so that I could watch a little bit of it before I went to school and see a little bit more after I got home from school. And it just formed my nerd DNA and taught me comedy, basically, at a time when my brain was still all wet and smushy and just needed to absorb all things MST3K. And so especially the movie is just so quotable to me. I’m constantly like, “Are you building an interocitor in there?” No. And nobody knows what the hell I’m talking about.

Kyle Olson:
Normal view.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah, this normal view.

Kyle Olson:
Normal view.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, this is on the nerdier side of nerdy for me because of the old movies and the types of movies they’re watching, and the little interstitial play-acting they’re doing, being about outer space and robots. It’s just the height of nerddom. Kyle, what do you love about it besides that?

Kyle Olson:
Yes. I was really surprised, actually, when you reached out about this, because I’m like, oh, this is deep nerd. This is very much a cult family. I mean, I’d say MSTies, as we are known, are an incredibly inclusive, loving community. They’re generally older, but now with the Netflix thing, that sort of brought in new things. Like we were talking about different fandoms, this fandom is fantastic. Like Krissy, I discovered it off of Comedy Central, and again, I would say it was a pillar of my comedy DNA, nerd dump. It was like everything intersected, and it was like it was made perfectly for me.

And the other thing that resonated with me is that they’re Midwesterners. So this show was created in Minnesota. My parents are from Minnesota. I spent many, many years there, and I even lived in Minnesota for ten years. And I have a lot of connections to this, as we’ll get into as the show goes on. But the idea that something like this so resonated with me, not just because it’s funny, but also like, I get what you’re trying to do, and I could not be more excited about it.

That’s from around me. That wasn’t something from New York or LA, these distant lands.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. No.

Kyle Olson:
Full of strange people. It was like, oh no, I know these kind of guys. It’s this amazing thing of…

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. You are one of these kinds of guys.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah, like we’ve done this kind of stuff.

Mandy Kaplan:
What do you mean you know them? Look in the mirror.

Kyle Olson:
I’ve gotten bad movies with my friends and watched, and so it was like, oh, they took this thing that we’re doing anyways and then did it on a professional level.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Yes, I think that’s a very important thing.

Kyle Olson:
It is way harder to do than you think. You look at it and like, oh yeah, I could do that. And then you try and do it and go, oh no, what they do is actually really, really difficult.

They’re so good they make it look easy.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
I have a sidebar question. Because you said you’re a MSTie. I know Krissy is a Browncoat. How many fandoms would you genuinely say you are an active participant in?

Kyle Olson:
Oh. Well, I mean, there are some fandoms that are kind of, I usually say dead, I nicely say dormant. So there’s a lot of those that I could…

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Kyle Olson:
…say that are not really active. Like, you did an episode on Farscape, the Scapers.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, okay.

Kyle Olson:
That’s the thing. That is kind of a dormant fandom, but I would still say that I’m a Scaper.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure.

Kyle Olson:
But I don’t know. I mean, how much time do you have?

Mandy Kaplan:
Kyle, as you started talking, did you see what Krissy did?

Krissy Lenz:
I know, right?

Mandy Kaplan:
I’m gonna narrate this for those who are not watching us, which is literally everybody. You started answering, and Krissy backed away from her mic and started counting on her fingers slowly, like, which fandoms. So what would your number be, Krissy?

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
I’m gonna say ten.

Mandy Kaplan:
Hmm.

Krissy Lenz:
I’m gonna ballpark it at ten.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. I’m dying to know what they are, but we got too much to cover for that.

Krissy Lenz:
I know, there’s just not enough time.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
How do you have time to devote? Anyway, I’m overwhelmed. So I got a little confused because we had a text chain and an email chain, and I told you to prioritize them in order of what you wanted me to watch, and then I messed it up and I watched Eegah first.

Kyle Olson:
Yes. Yeah. Our original plan, which, we still don’t know exactly what it is that you watched…

Mandy Kaplan:
And I gotta tell you.

Kyle Olson:
…was for you to watch a later season, so from the Netflix things. Season one of the Netflix one, episode six, Avalanche.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes. Well, I gotta push back because…

Kyle Olson:
And then our number two was Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, and then the third choice was a classic Joel episode, Eegah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, I didn’t do the movie, so maybe we have to have a follow-up episode.

Kyle Olson:
Okay. So what did you watch?

Krissy Lenz:
Okay.

Mandy Kaplan:
Eegah, and that was the right choice.

Kyle Olson:
Okay.

Mandy Kaplan:
It was a perfect introduction to this world. And for anybody who doesn’t know what Mystery Science Theater 3000 is, basically the premise is that a guy gets shot into outer space and he’s trapped there, and part of his torture is watching terrible, terrible, terrible movies, and he comments on them as they play with his puppet robot friends.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
How’d I do?

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. And if you’re wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts, just repeat to yourself…

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Kyle Olson:
…it’s just a show, and you should really just relax.

Krissy Lenz:
It’s just a show.

Mandy Kaplan:
I love that they don’t get bogged down.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I love it. It’s so childlike to be like, oh, because that’s just how it is.

Kyle Olson:
There is a continuity, but it honestly does not matter.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. So you said they’re Midwestern.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
Do you know how this was born, this concept of commenting and watching?

Kyle Olson:
I do. It was essentially Joel Hodgson, who is the Joel that you saw in that episode of Eegah. He was a stand-up comic and he came up from the same group as Seinfeld and Elayne Boosler and that whole scene, but he did his time in Hollywood and didn’t really like it. Didn’t really like the vibe. He was doing the network development thing, and he was attached to a Michael J. Fox show, as I was looking at today, which I didn’t even know until I started reading up for today. And then he was like, I don’t, this is not my vibe, I don’t do this. And there is some stand-up of his you can find.

He was what was called a prop comic.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Olson:
Which I think is kind of defunct by this point. Carrot Top is sort of the last of the prop comics, I think.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
But he was an early one. And he’d been on Late Night with Dave Letterman and a bunch of different things. But then he just basically came back to Minnesota and got a regular job, and then started messing around with design and puppets and things. And then made a connection to a guy who was running KTLA, their local station, kind of in the UHF vein, and they just needed…

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Olson:
…content. They just needed, like, hey, between the hours of ten to midnight, we don’t have anything.

And so they just said, here’s half an hour. What can you do?

Mandy Kaplan:
What a dream.

Kyle Olson:
And he came up with this idea.

Mandy Kaplan:
I mean, I fantasize about somebody saying, we need content.

Kyle Olson:
And then it just sort of built from there.

Mandy Kaplan:
What do you got?

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s just a dream.

Kyle Olson:
So basically you have half an hour…

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And for this to take off the way it did is remarkable.

Kyle Olson:
…and you can do whatever you want in that half an hour as long as you don’t violate FCC rules.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
Which they kind of did violate FCC rules. Because they didn’t actually have the clearances to riff on the movies.

Krissy Lenz:
Hey.

Kyle Olson:
So that’s why those episodes are kind of harder to find, because they’re not legally allowed to release them.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, really? But by the time they made it to Comedy Central, they had the clearances.

Kyle Olson:
Yes, exactly. And so all that stuff, the KTLA days, are kind of like free continuity.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Kyle Olson:
They’re not really considered part of the canon, if you want to be that way. It properly started when it moved over…

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure.

Kyle Olson:
…to Comedy Central. It was actually The Comedy Channel, which then merged with HA!, for those of you who are that old, and became Comedy Central. And that’s where I think I discovered it.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Uh huh.

Kyle Olson:
That’s where Krissy discovered it. That’s where most people found out about it.

Mandy Kaplan:
So this movie Eegah that they watch, Krissy, could you elevator pitch Eegah for me?

Krissy Lenz:
Eegah is the thrilling tale of a young hip-swinging gal who encounters a mysterious caveman giant by the side of the road one day, and it’s the tale of her and her father in friending, in friending, is that a word? Enfolding in friendship…

Mandy Kaplan:
It is now.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, uh huh.

Krissy Lenz:
…while being captured by Eegah, the beautiful tall caveman who is immortal, question mark.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Don’t leave out the hero of the story, though.

Krissy Lenz:
And the hero of the story is her hip-swinging boyfriend, who is in a band.

Mandy Kaplan:
Tommy. Oh God.

Krissy Lenz:
And it’s the story of, she wants people to believe that this giant monster exists, but as they get to learn to love him, they don’t want anyone to know he exists, and then he shows up at a house party and gets shot to death by the cops. So.

Mandy Kaplan:
The budget on Eegah was fifteen thousand dollars, and it has a…

Kyle Olson:
Wow.

Mandy Kaplan:
…zero slash zero on Rotten Tomatoes.

Kyle Olson:
And deservedly so.

Mandy Kaplan:
And deservedly so.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
It’s pretty awful.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s really awful. But is it Kiel or Kyle? Richard Kiel, who I recognized, is the only actor I recognized.

Krissy Lenz:
Oh, Jaws from the Bond movies.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
Moonraker, and I think one of the other ones he showed up in too.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. He is bearded, he is giant, he is caveman-y. And at one point somebody said, “Oh, I heard Kiel ad-libbed the entire scene.” And that got me. That was the first time I guffawed, because the character Eegah only goes [grunts].

Kyle Olson:
And it’s dubbed over. He’s not even doing it live. It was somebody who did those sounds later on, just watching the movie with a microphone going [grunts].

Mandy Kaplan:
You’re kidding.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, it’s all that. So he…

Mandy Kaplan:
You just sounded like Yoda.

Kyle Olson:
Not even his voice.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I know that because I’m a nerd now.

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm. You’re one of us.

Kyle Olson:
One of us.

Mandy Kaplan:
I delighted in their commentary on this episode. Absolutely delighted in it. It shifted in the later episode, which we’ll talk about, but I thought they had so many fantastic jokes. Is it scripted? It is.

Kyle Olson:
It is scripted, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Krissy Lenz:
Oh, yes.

Kyle Olson:
It used to be ad-libbed in the beginning times, but then they realized it’s better if we just have the best joke as opposed to whatever is off the top of our head.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right, and it prevents what often happens in conversation, and particularly in improv, Krissy can testify, people talk over each other.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Everybody comes up with the joke at the same time and everybody jumps in and it’s a clusterfuck. Pardon my French.

Kyle Olson:
But it is recorded live, essentially. They don’t just have everyone record their stuff separately, then cut it together. They are literally there. So when you’re seeing them in the silhouettes, the three of them are sitting there. The guys who are puppeteering are the same actors. The guy who plays Dr. Forrester is Crow. And then Tom Servo. They’re both ducked down.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s like Wizard of Oz.

Kyle Olson:
So they’re both sitting lower, and then Joel is sitting higher, and then they’re puppeteering it.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure.

Kyle Olson:
So they’re puppeteering live, and they’re recording it live as they’re doing it, which is why sometimes they’ll make each other laugh or they’ll mess stuff up, because it still has that DIY feeling.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Kyle Olson:
They’re not trying to make it nice and smooth and perfect and every audio is crisp and clean. It’s like, no, it’s them literally in a warehouse in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, recording all of this stuff.

Mandy Kaplan:
Wow. Well, not surprisingly, I was confused and I need clarification, which I’m gonna ask you guys for right after this.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And we’re back. And coming back, I want to tell you that Make Me a Nerd is a production of TruStory FM, engineering by the peerless Pete Wright. My theme song is “Wonderstruck” by Jane and the Boy. If you want to get me on Instagram, it’s at Mandy underscore Kaplan underscore Klavens, both with K’s. On TikTok, it’s Mandy Miscast. If you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, please, please take a second, write a review, leave me five stars. It helps more people find the podcast. And if you’re feeling extra supportive, go to makemeanerd.com/join. Hitting that button will get you your episodes ad-free and early.

Okay, I will shut up. Kyle, what were you saying?

Kyle Olson:
I was just trying to say that I am delighted that you’re delighted. When you pitched this, I was like, she’s either gonna love this or she’s gonna hate it.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah, I also had concerns.

Kyle Olson:
And she’s gonna come to us and be like, why did you think this would be funny? And it was like, oh, but I’m so happy that you’re happy about it.

Mandy Kaplan:
I have this sadistic feeling. I love when my guests are afraid. And I hear that a lot. Like, “Oh, Mandy, when that sequence came on, I was thinking, uh oh, Mandy’s gonna hate this. And it made me afraid.” And I’m like, yeah, I’m in your helmet. I’m right there.

Kyle Olson:
And even when you said what you watched, we sort of designed it to have the ones that are on Netflix now, where the references are much more topical, much more current, for now.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
The stuff they’re referencing back in that one, that’s from the early nineties, late nineties.

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Olson:
So there’s a lot of stuff that they’re talking about that they watched when they were kids from the fifties and the sixties.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
So there’s a lot of Green Acres jokes and that kind of stuff.

Mandy Kaplan:
I know what Green Acres is, but there were things that I wrote down, like Zinge and Mighty Jack. What are those things?

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah, I always feel like a third of the jokes just go right over my head, but the jokes come so fast and furious that you can afford to miss a third of them…

Kyle Olson:
Yes, yes.

Krissy Lenz:
…and still be happy with the two-thirds you get. And I’ll even giggle at them and be like, I don’t get it.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. I don’t understand that, but I’m having a good time. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, that makes me feel better.

Kyle Olson:
That’s what’s great about it. If something doesn’t land, if you go, I don’t understand what that references…

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
…there are more jokes coming in the next ten to fifteen seconds. So you can just, all right, catch the next one.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Kyle Olson:
Catch the next one.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, I was completely on board with them watching the movie. The interstitial, I guess if that’s the right word, felt very Pee-wee’s Playhouse, where all the sets are very cheesy and cheap and the characters are over the top.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
I didn’t quite click with that, and I didn’t understand the whole sketch about weird pop culture occurrences. I laughed my ass off. Vicki Lawrence won a Grammy. Charlene Tilton made a workout video. I wrote, I was like, I’m laughing so hard, but I don’t really understand.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
What those segments are. Are they supposed to be nonsense, non sequiturs, or are they supposed to really keep us in some kind of story about Joel and the robots?

Kyle Olson:
No, it is just pure sketch comedy. You could honestly take most of those and just transpose them and it would be fine. A lot of them, they’ll tie in thematically to what the movie is. Sometimes they’ll do, I mean, in Avalanche, they do a whole scene where they’re all dressed like Rock Hudson’s character. But sometimes it’s just for the laughs, or they had an idea. And I think a lot of it is just to sort of break it up, because if you just watch the movie straight with commentary, you can kind of start to check out. So there’s a lot of, let’s break up the flow a little bit and then go back in.

It also gives them a chance to creatively edit.

Mandy Kaplan:
And especially on Comedy Channel, they needed to put in commercials, so yeah.

Kyle Olson:
Yes, exactly. They couldn’t show the entire movie, so they had to sort of hide the cuts.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yep. Do you know if drugs were involved? I asked this about the movie Brazil, which I just did. I recorded with Andy Nelson about Brazil.

Kyle Olson:
Oh yeah. Yeah, that’s a wild one.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I was astounded to know that no one in the writers’ room, they were not on drugs. There were no drugs involved.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. No.

Mandy Kaplan:
What about this?

Kyle Olson:
So I mean, to the best of my knowledge, these are just hardworking Midwestern comedians.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
This is just how they are. This is just their style.

Krissy Lenz:
Just straight-up good people who care so much about the product and care so much about the fans. And I think this is one of the shows and one of the fandoms that genuinely, whenever they put out a Kickstarter to say, do you guys want more? Everyone’s like, take my money.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
Yes, I want more. Please give me more. When it comes out in the theater, we show up with our dollars in our hands going, please, more Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm. Seeing them live is a whole nother thing. I’ve gotten a chance to on the couple of times they toured around. And just being in the same room as everybody and hearing everyone laugh, it is really a communal thing. I mean, that’s one of the great things. As you know, you guys are both comedians. There’s nothing like that, just being in the room, because even a dumb joke can be so much funnier. They did Eegah live with a different script. So they had different riffers and they had a different script.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure.

Kyle Olson:
And I’m gonna describe this joke. It will not be funny, but I can tell you, in the room it killed. There’s a scene where he’s singing the song to her as she’s in the pool, and there’s a…

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Olson:
…a metal slide. So they made the joke of her squeaking as she slid down. But then there’s actually a dialogue scene there where the water’s coming out. And so as they’re talking, every time the water comes out, Crow is just making a vomiting sound. So every time, as they’re having this conversation, it’s just like [retching], and it stops. And I’m like, oh, it’s so juvenile, so stupid. And the longer it went on, that theater was roaring. By the time it was just him continuing on, no jokes, just him every single time timing it to exactly when the water came out. I don’t know how they came up with it, but it’s like, that’s just…

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure. Yep. As Pete would say, chef’s kiss.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah. No notes.

Mandy Kaplan:
I’m gonna end up just basically going, and you know what else was funny? I’m gonna be Chris Farley when I’m like, you were in the Beatles, what was that like? But there are, I wrote down so many jokes. When they end up in the desert and one of them said, “Lawrence of Pasadena.” I mean…

Kyle Olson:
Of course, “Watch out for snakes,” which has become a recurring thing.

Krissy Lenz:
Watch out for snakes.

Kyle Olson:
It was actually what they brought back out. It was the Watch Out for Snakes tour.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Kyle Olson:
They would launch snakes into the audience, like big spring snakes. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. And then my favorite, favorite line of anything I watched in this whole thing. Tommy, the character, the boyfriend who’s supposed to be our hero, and he’s just…

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
…god-awful.

Krissy Lenz:
Such a goober.

Mandy Kaplan:
He’s like a porcelain-faced blonde with a wide face.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
And one of them said, “He’s starting to look like Markie Post.” And I mean, just, oh God, the hair, the blonde.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, I love that it tickles so many parts of your brain. Because not only are you watching the terrible movie, and then with them doing it, but then you have to go back to Night Court, and then to what she looked like. I mean, it’s just up through the cerebellum, down, and back again.

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
There are just not enough Markie Post references in the world.

Kyle Olson:
And then sometimes they’re just right. And what a deep cut that is.

Mandy Kaplan:
I will contend.

Krissy Lenz:
No, we need more.

Kyle Olson:
And this is the thing that Joel’s philosophy was. When the execs got involved, they’d be like, no one’s gonna know what that reference is for. And Joel would say, the right people will know.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes, Markie Post.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
We all know.

Kyle Olson:
And so for anyone who’d never seen Night Court, that joke just sails by, but it’s fine.

Mandy Kaplan:
Night Court, if you don’t know.

Kyle Olson:
There’ll be another one coming in a couple minutes.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Kyle Olson:
But for you, then, zing, right to the funny bone.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh God, it got me. At one point Joel is trying to make Jiffy Pop…

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
…and I have had Jiffy Pop fails.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
That was very triggering for me.

Krissy Lenz:
Oh, yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
Because I have had Jiffy Pop that just never popped.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And you just have to throw that away.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah. And what is it Tom Servo says? “And when does the fun happen?”

Kyle Olson:
Uh-huh.

Krissy Lenz:
I was like, yeah, I’m with you.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes. Yeah, I’m sorry to bring up something painful like that, but Jiffy Pop is not my favorite.

Krissy Lenz:
Very divisive, yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes. I want to know, this is a big question. Have they ever, in your knowledge, heard from these filmmakers and/or actors, and what have those conversations been like? Discuss. I’m putting on my glasses so you know I’m listening.

Krissy Lenz:
Okay, no, I’m sure Kyle knows much more than I do, but they’ll sometimes have little clips of the actors showing up or interacting with them in fun, funny ways. They’ve also done, as RiffTrax…

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
…modern movies. I went to see Point Break, the RiffTrax experiment, and of course they didn’t have any footage of Keanu Reeves being like, “We salute you.” But I imagine that people who made that movie got wind of it. But Kyle, I’m sure, has the receipts.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s the same thing of people take criticism differently. So there have been people like Joe Dante, who is a director who has long been a detractor of theirs, to be like, hey, somebody worked really hard on these movies, and this is somebody’s dream to do it, and they’re just crapping all over it. And they’ve always been like, that’s not the point of this. The movie exists. You can watch it without us if you want to. And we’re not trying to tear down anyone. We’re adding on to it.

But there are people like Joe Don Baker, who was a person who was in a lot of terrible movies in the seventies. They did [unclear], and they were merciless to him, but those are also terrible, terrible movies. And he got really angry and was threatening to beat up these guys if he ever saw them. But by the same token…

Mandy Kaplan:
Not sue, just beat up.

Kyle Olson:
No, he literally, that’s the kind of guy he was. If you are interested, watch Mitchell. Mitchell is also one of the best, because that movie is this weird Rockford, not-quite, any sort of detective thing, where Joe Don Baker’s just this sort of gross, misogynistic cop or whatever, and it’s just terrible. And they’re just brutal on that movie, which deserves it. He did not like that. But there are other people who were very excited about the fact that their movie got this elevation.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, exactly.

Mandy Kaplan:
Seen by more people and talked about.

Kyle Olson:
And there’s one they talked about, like they got the cast and crew together to watch the episode when it dropped, to be like, they’re gonna do our movie.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
And so then they…

Mandy Kaplan:
Great.

Kyle Olson:
…got drinks and had a good time. So I had a chance to go to, they’ve only ever done two conventions.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well.

Kyle Olson:
I got to go to the second one, which was called ConventioCon ExpoFest-A-Rama 2: Electric Bugaloo.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure.

Kyle Olson:
And they had some of the actors from some of the movies they had done there as guests. So that’s how I got to meet the Professor from Gilligan’s Island, because he had been in This Island Earth, which they had riffed on.

Mandy Kaplan:
Ah.

Kyle Olson:
He was Russell Johnson, so he was there. So a bunch of them sort of got into the spirit of it.

Like, yeah, I did a movie. Sometimes it works. I think Cave Dwellers, the guy who played Ator, he was like, that was the worst movie I ever made, and you guys made it an enjoyable thing for me.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure. Because more awareness makes people say, I want to buy that DVD and watch it with my friends, right?

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Or I wanna, it’s all…

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Any publicity is good publicity, I guess. But one of my favorite episodes I’ve done of Make Me a Nerd is my Ed Wood episode, if anybody wants to go back and listen, because that was the kind of thing where I was…

Kyle Olson:
Yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
…like, I’d heard the words Ed Wood and Plan 9 from Outer Space, but I knew nothing. And I was mesmerized, and I fell in love with this ragtag group of people trying to make a good movie and then seemingly embracing their limitations and how little they could achieve. And I think that there’s, have they done Ed Wood on MSTK?

Kyle Olson:
Oh yes, oh yes, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. I wanna see those, because I really have this admiration. And then I watched the movie Ed Wood for the podcast. And seemingly he didn’t freaking care. He wanted to make movies, and he was just, I don’t know, it wasn’t mean-spirited.

Kyle Olson:
No, yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
My fear was that these things would become mean-spirited, which makes me uncomfortable.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
But it’s not. It’s like, let’s celebrate that you made a movie, and let’s all lovingly make fun of it.

Kyle Olson:
Exactly. Dana Gould, who is still a friend of Joel’s, and they came up together, and he was a writer on Mystery Science Theater for a while, has said that he loves Plan 9 from Outer Space, one of those same movies. He says that the best bad movies are the ones that think they’re doing great. They think, we’re nailing this, and they are absolutely not. As opposed to the other side, the Sharknado, where they’re just like, this is gonna be bad.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
It’s like, no, that’s not what makes it fun.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Kyle Olson:
If you’re intentionally making something crappy, that’s different than trying to make something, and then it doesn’t work, and then we love it because of its flaws.

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm. Because you tried so hard. The effort is what makes it all worth it.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes. We are going to move on to Avalanche after this commercial break.

Things took a turn. This show didn’t last on Comedy Central, then it was brought back on Netflix many, many years later with a new cast. Was Joel involved anymore? Like as an EP?

Kyle Olson:
Okay, if we were doing a two-hour show, I could do the whole thing. But essentially it started out as him, and then they got into the Comedy Central times, and then he was kind of done. He was like, I think I’ve done it. And then there was a lot of internal friction. They’re all Midwesterners, all Minnesota nice, so there’s no actual feuds, but there are some cold wars between the groups of them. So the original cast left, and then Mike took over as the host. And then Comedy Central had ended, they moved over to Sci-Fi Channel, and then it went dormant for a while. And then there was some behind-the-scenes thing.

And Joel essentially bought out the other partner and sort of got control of Mystery Science Theater back. And that’s when he started the Kickstarter, which was one of the highest video projects in Kickstarter history. It went past Veronica Mars, which was the one before that, which is another topic worth discussing.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, another episode I’ve done, Veronica Mars.

Kyle Olson:
And then Netflix. Oh, nice. I’m rewatching it right now.

Mandy Kaplan:
Check the library.

Kyle Olson:
And then so Netflix was like, hey, people are interested in this, and now so are we. And so they…

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Kyle Olson:
…brought it back with Joel sort of at the helm, and then bringing back everybody who wanted to come back. There’s always been two sort of camps, where Joel and his group, and then Mike and his group.

They’re not adversarial, but they have moved in different comedic directions and they don’t interact.

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Kyle Olson:
So like I said, I don’t think there’s any actual bad blood.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure.

Kyle Olson:
It was just more like, we worked together and now we don’t. So those are the guys that went off to form RiffTrax. And now that Mystery Science did, like Joel sort of brought this back and had a big thing, when it became administrative and it became a lot of having to manage a thing as opposed to create a thing, that became a lot less interesting, and he has now stepped back. And it has been purchased by a different group. And now currently, as you’re hearing this, the RiffTrax guys are back doing Mystery Science Theater 2000, picking up from where they left off. And those are currently airing. They did a Kickstarter and they did really well with it, but they’re under the RiffTrax banner.

Mandy Kaplan:
So they’re still making this?

Krissy Lenz:
It’s still, yes.

Kyle Olson:
Yes, there are new episodes that are coming out as you’re listening to this.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, okay.

Krissy Lenz:
As we speak, yes.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, there are four new episodes.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, okay.

Krissy Lenz:
They’re being released in theaters and exclusively to the Kickstarter supporters.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, great.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, and then they’ll be available on RiffTrax, their website.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay, cool.

Krissy Lenz:
And they’re so good. I took Rocket to see one in the movie theater. He’s sixteen, and we had such fun.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
He laughed and laughed.

Kyle Olson:
And the first movie they did is just terrible. I mean, it’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

Krissy Lenz:
Oh, so good.

Kyle Olson:
It was really funny. The worse the movie is, the better it is when they’re riffing on it. It’s about a guy who becomes a half man, half Portuguese man-of-war, and then just sort of wanders around to sting people, in another groovy sixties thing.

Krissy Lenz:
Man-of-war.

Kyle Olson:
There’s even a whole extended dance sequence where all the kids are learning how to do the jellyfish.

Krissy Lenz:
So long.

Kyle Olson:
It’s epically bad.

Mandy Kaplan:
Ugh, nothing could be worse than Avalanche.

Krissy Lenz:
But it’s so good.

Mandy Kaplan:
I found Eegah to be a masterpiece…

Krissy Lenz:
Oh.

Kyle Olson:
Oh yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
…compared to Avalanche. Avalanche made no fucking sense to me at any point.

Krissy Lenz:
Yes.

Kyle Olson:
Yes.

Krissy Lenz:
No.

Mandy Kaplan:
Avalanche was a movie in the seventies. Star-studded. Mia Farrow, Rock Hudson.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
“Mia Farrow is Mike Nesmith” is one of the lines that got me so hard.

Kyle Olson:
So good.

Mandy Kaplan:
I mean, it’s a deep cut. If you’re Monkees fans out there, you know she was wearing that hat, and one of them said that, and I lost my mind.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
The movie just didn’t, I just kept writing, this movie makes no sense.

But here’s my essential impression. In the first one I watched, Eegah, I found them to be selectively funny. I found that two-thirds or three-quarters of the jokes worked. In this new version, they were wall-to-wall jokes. They never shut up. And I think that’s one of the reasons Avalanche didn’t make any sense to me, because it was just joke, joke, joke, joke, joke. And I feel they needed to curate and pull back. I found it to be like now they’re all just throwing everything at the wall, and not nothing was sticking.

The things that stuck, stuck. But my percentages went down. Am I crazy?

Krissy Lenz:
Okay.

Kyle Olson:
No, it’s interesting. Having now watched RiffTrax, where the guys are all in their sixties or maybe even older than that now, they are definitely at a slower pace of jokes.

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Olson:
That was an adjustment from something like Avalanche, where like you’re saying, it’s a younger group, so they’re very energetic and they’re throwing stuff out there, to the guys who are much more laid back and take their time. It was a definite shift. So it’s interesting that you sort of resonated more with watching the movie and then something funny, as opposed to bang, bang, bang, bang.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes. Yeah, they were just shooting their shots every frame, and the first guys were waiting for their shots. That was my impression.

Krissy Lenz:
Interesting.

Kyle Olson:
Okay.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah, I…

Mandy Kaplan:
Do you have a preference? I know why you chose Avalanche. We’ll get to it, but…

Krissy Lenz:
Well, I really love the Jonah Ray season because I was a big fan of Jonah Ray. And Felicia Day, of course, and Patton Oswalt and Baron Vaughn, and the last one, whose name is escaping me.

Kyle Olson:
Yount. Hampton Yount.

Krissy Lenz:
Yes. Hampton, yeah.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
And I just was so tickled that that was gonna be the cast that I felt in my heart and mind that it could do no wrong. I was just so excited to be there.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Krissy Lenz:
So I think the cool thing about Make Me a Nerd is that you’re coming at it with these fresh eyes and not these super rose-colored glasses. So definitely point taken, but for me, I was just like, every joke, please. More, more, more.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, I don’t know Felicia Day other than Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which…

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
…you guys nerducated me about. And she’s charming. I’m a huge Patton Oswalt fan. Huge.

Krissy Lenz:
He is quite a lot of…

Mandy Kaplan:
His stand-up, his books, I love him. But again, these interstitial things don’t interest me as much as watching the movie. I just want to get to the movie. Until Neil Patrick Harris.

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And then of course we know I’m a superfan, and he came on, and at several points I was like, oh, it’s a musical.

I get it. I get why they chose this one. Thank you, thank you.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
But Avalanche was tough to watch. Eegah was delightful to watch. Avalanche was uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because we know Rock Hudson was gay and closeted, and kissing Mia Farrow. It all just felt gross.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s why I was happy for more jokes, because the more of that movie I had to experience…

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Maybe you needed them, yeah.

Kyle Olson:
Ooh. Yeah, I needed those guys with me to go along, to go, oh yes, this is as terrible as you think it is. And I think even then it was bad. Some of the movies have aged terribly. This was bad then.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Zero and seven percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
So there’s some ice skating in the beginning of the movie, and I’m gonna make a deep cut here. But often I was writing down, if I were one of the commentary people on MSTK, MST whatever, 3K, this is what I would say. So there’s a skater who comes on, and she’s in red and she’s really good, but she looks exactly like Kathy Geiss from 30 Rock. Is that a reference you guys know?

Krissy Lenz:
Oh, right. Yes. Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
No, Kyle?

Kyle Olson:
No, I’ve watched 30 Rock, but I didn’t get the reference.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Will Arnett ends up marrying her to try to get into the… oh.

Krissy Lenz:
Kathy Geiss is the, yeah. She’s the daughter of the guy who, the very sweet, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Don Geiss. Yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
I get you, Mandy.

Mandy Kaplan:
She looks just like her.

Krissy Lenz:
I’m with you.

Mandy Kaplan:
It was really funny. There was a Welcome Back, Kotter joke that I laughed so hard at.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
“Paper airplane trapped on balcony, need help.” There were so many good jokes.

Kyle Olson:
And that’s what I like about these guys too, is they call back stuff too.

Mandy Kaplan:
There was…

Kyle Olson:
They cut back to that kid, he’s like, “I miss my airplane.” It’s like, oh man, you had to remember that was a riff that they did…

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Yep.

Kyle Olson:
…two, three scenes ago. Yeah, I love that.

Mandy Kaplan:
This is a young Robert Forster, who I know I’ve seen in movies, but I don’t really know what, but he was…

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Jackie Brown, I think, was one of his bigger ones.

Mandy Kaplan:
I know that was.

Kyle Olson:
With Quentin Tarantino.

Mandy Kaplan:
I never saw that. But he is the Kyle Chandler of the seventies, right?

Kyle Olson:
Okay. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right? Kyle Chandler.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Star of Friday Night Lights.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, such a crush.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Do you care about the movie they’re watching, or is that just the shell that holds the oyster?

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, I’m with you in terms of the sketches. I could really care less. They have done a bunch of songs, and so there’s three albums’ worth of music that they have done.

Krissy Lenz:
Mm, mm.

Mandy Kaplan:
No shit.

Kyle Olson:
And oh yeah, some of them are incredibly connected to the movie. But in this modern one, the interstitials where you hear them playing, the Bone, I can’t remember what the name of the band is. Bone Bros? No. They’re playing acoustic versions of classic MSTie songs.

And so even in the current one, there’s enough that it did a full album.

Mandy Kaplan:
Gotcha.

Kyle Olson:
So the music stuff is fun. But yeah, for me, same thing with the sketches. I could…

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah, and I even made the note, I thought there was too much interstitial stuff in the Jonah Ray episode.

Kyle Olson:
Take or leave. It’s just like, okay, can we get to the movie, please? Yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
It was a little too much. Even though I love the Neil Patrick Harris song.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
Of course.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah. Almost every episode, because it was such a big comeback, had a cameo like that. Mark Hamill does a cameo, Joel McHale does a cameo.

Krissy Lenz:
Okay.

Kyle Olson:
Jerry Seinfeld does a cameo. They all came in as a character. They even had the guys that were the villains from…

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, great.

Kyle Olson:
…the Sci-Fi Channel era. They came back in their flying space van, which was a thing, and they stopped in for a minute. So that would have been Felicia Day’s character’s grandmother.

Mandy Kaplan:
All right.

Kyle Olson:
She’s supposed to be the daughter of Dr. Forrester…

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Olson:
…who we saw from Eegah. She’s his daughter, and his mom was the villain for a while too. Continuity-wise, it doesn’t matter.

Mandy Kaplan:
My head is just spinning around, and green soup might come out.

Krissy Lenz:
Yeah, it’s a lot.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
What are your favorites? I mean, I know I asked you to choose just a couple, which has gotta be hard. What movies, like you said Mitchell was a great one.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
What other movies are you like, oh, if you’re just gonna dip back in and watch two or three more, what would your votes be?

Krissy Lenz:
I really love the MST3K movie, This Island Earth. That one’s really worth watching. In the Jonah Ray era, I really liked Reptilicus, which is a kaiju episode where they sing a wonderful song about the kaijus. And then, is it Manos: The Hands of Fate?

Kyle Olson:
Yes, yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
That’s a favorite of mine too, but I always get the word wrong.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
I always want to say Mantos.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, it’s funny, because you said Mandos, and I thought, damn it, I wish we watched that one, because then I would have made my screen name Mandos, and that would have been perfect. So I actually accidentally wrote Mandos on my…

Krissy Lenz:
It’s not Mantos.

Kyle Olson:
Ah, yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
Oh.

Mandy Kaplan:
…list. But this is something I will dip back into, particularly these days. My heart is so heavy with the state of the world…

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
…that I need things that are palate cleansing, good laughs. And so this will be something I turn to. So Kyle, what are your recommendations?

Kyle Olson:
I would say for the modern ones, The Loves of Hercules is a particularly bad good movie. And also because my name is in the credits. Because I was one of the Kickstarter backers, and they went alphabetically, and that’s where my name fell.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, okay.

Kyle Olson:
So if you go to the credits, you’ll see Kyle Olson, and I didn’t do anything clever. It was just my name. But yeah, like we were talking about, for each of them, there’s always some really good ones that they have done. So there’s been four different hosts, and they each have their own Tom and Crow.

And so they each have the episodes that they were particularly great on. So this is gonna be a whole nother episode of us just going through and finding all those. But there’s a lot of running jokes and stuff that get created, like Manos, where Mike Nelson plays…

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Kyle Olson:
…one of the characters, Torgo, and he reprises that character. So his interpretation of Torgo shows up in multiple sketches through the rest of the run of the show. They start playing the creepy music and he starts slowly walking out. And also, they did a bunch of shorts. So if you just want to get a taste of what it’s like, look up Mr. B Natural. It’s a very short thing.

It is such a weird short film they did about musical instruments or something in the sixties. It is so strange. And it was shown to kids, and they riff on it, and that becomes a running gag with them too. The spirit of music as this Peter Pan-esque character, man, woman, you can’t really tell, just coming in to talk about how great music is and how you should buy musical instruments from this specific company. It’s really strange, but bite-sized.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. It is bringing to mind something I hold dear. Did you ever see John Mulaney and the Lunch Bunch gang?

Krissy Lenz:
Oh, the Sack Lunch Bunch.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
I love it so much.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sack Lunch Bunch, and Mr. Music, Jake Gyllenhaal.

Krissy Lenz:
Uh-huh.

Mandy Kaplan:
That is something I hold dear.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm.

Krissy Lenz:
Yep.

Kyle Olson:
Oh, that was so good.

Mandy Kaplan:
I’ve seen it many times. So that’s what that brought to mind for some reason.

Krissy Lenz:
Yep.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh my God, guys, we’re out of time. It’s crazy. Was there more, Krissy? Did I not let you live your dream?

Krissy Lenz:
There’s so much more.

Kyle Olson:
So much more, yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
No, I could talk about this for days and days. I could just talk about individual jokes that I love for days and days, because it’s just written into the source code of my mind.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah.

Krissy Lenz:
But I’m so glad you liked it, and I can’t wait to hear about the other episodes that you watch.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, it’s my show, so I got to say the jokes I liked.

Krissy Lenz:
Yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
And Pete, can you cut their mics at this point?

Kyle Olson:
Hey, what do you got?

Mandy Kaplan:
I would like to, I hope I’m not being too forward, but if I watch the movie, could we revisit this? Would you guys come back on and we could talk about the actual movie of it? Because I didn’t get to watch that.

Kyle Olson:
Oh yeah, absolutely.

Krissy Lenz:
Absolutely.

Kyle Olson:
Yeah, yeah. The fact that it even exists is a miracle.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Krissy Lenz:
Mm-hmm.

Mandy Kaplan:
I love it. I love that can-do, my-mom-will-make-the-costumes spirit of all of this.

Kyle Olson:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I love both of you, and I love all my listeners. Thank you for listening, and until next time.