There’s no need to avert one’s eyes from a disaster. Ask the crew of Cinematic Titanic: They’ve been making a living studying calamities like Danger on Tiki Island for years. And now they want to help New Yorkers rubberneck without guilt; their live show, which lands at the Nokia Theatre Times Square on Saturday 17, comes to terms with cultural travesties—specifically, schlocky B-movie wrecks from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s—by mocking them.
CT was born from the ashes of cult-favorite TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000, which ran and reran on Comedy Central or the Sci-Fi Channel for much of the past 20 years. Its creator and star Joel Hodgson left after the show’s first five years, but soon after missed the camaraderie of his fellow writers and performers. In 2007, Hodgson recruited original cast members Trace Beaulieu (the wisecracking robot Crow) and J. Elvis Weinstein (Tom Servo, another sassy robot), as well as later additions Frank Conniff (mad scientist TV’s Frank) and Mary Jo Pehl (the evil Pearl Forrester), and got back to the business, poking fun at bad movies, touring and producing DVDs.
For MST3K fans, watching a movie with CT will feel like floating in comfortable exile with the cast on their former set, the Satellite of Love. Though the robots have been jettisoned and the concept streamlined, the game remains the same: Players sit silhouetted in the dark, scrutinize the frames of a ridiculous movie and riff. Their comments take many forms, whether quick quips, pop culture references past or present, snatches of song and, of course, barbs about hammy acting and shoddy filmmaking. As Beaulieu describes CT’s job, “We provide the entertainment element they forgot when they made the movie.”
But MST3K was never cynical or mean-spirited, and neither is CT; where this could be an exercise in outright trash-talking, it looks to create a kind of playful dialogue or symbiosis with the movie and its makers. Weinstein says, “We’re there with punch lines and the movie is our straight man,” and Conniff adds quickly, “One part couldn’t happen without the other.”
Beyond just poring over the film, writing and telling jokes, the members of CT think a lot about movies with titles like East Meets Watts and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. The players analyze, critique and celebrate their films: Noting some shoddy monster effects in The Alien Factor on the CT blog, Hodgson defends it despite its shortcomings, writing, “Somebody had a lot of heart and hope.” Upon seeing one of CT’s favorite actors on an old episode of Bonanza, Conniff immediately e-mailed the cast to inform them of the fact, “as though he were a member of our family!”
Because those of CT become so involved in their subjects, not just any bad movie makes the cut; there must be something intangibly, distinctively bad about a film before they’ll touch it. “In a weird way, the bad movies we choose have a kind of a soul,” says Conniff, to which Pehl adds, “If there’s a monster suit with a zipper, that helps.” And without the privacy of a TV studio, both the project and its riffs must be suited to a live venue. “Before, our litmus was, do we think this is funny?” says Weinstein. “Now it’s, will this get a laugh?”
Though it’s been 20 years since this crew pioneered its art form, CT retains much of MST3K’s appeal. Perhaps it’s cathartic to sit back and have one’s perceptions about bad movies validated by a cast of pithy smart-asses. Maybe there’s a thrill in blowing up what might be a naughty, whispered conversation between friends into a community event. Or possibly it’s enough to just sit in the dark, mesmerized by a catastrophe as it unfolds.
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