Salon.com > Joel Hodgson http://www.salon.com Thu, 23 May 2013 01:58:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 “Mystery Science Theater” host: Yelling at the screen makes us smarter! http://www.salon.com/2012/08/15/mystery_science_theater_host_yelling_at_the_screen_makes_us_smarter/ http://www.salon.com/2012/08/15/mystery_science_theater_host_yelling_at_the_screen_makes_us_smarter/#comments Wed, 15 Aug 2012 17:20:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12982027 Is there anything worse than one guy talking to a movie screen, ruining the viewing experience for everyone? Get a group of people together talking to the screen, however, and suddenly you have something like a party — a brand-new experience that potentially emphasizes camaraderie as well as comedy.

That’s what Joel Hodgson learned in the late 1980s when he created “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” one of the most beloved — and surprisingly durable — cult TV shows ever. (Time magazine once called it one of the 100 best TV shows of all time.) Well into the third decade of his movie-riffing career, he is exploring the way clever criticism might empower viewers to watch more movies and television shows more actively.

The show began in the late 1980s when Hodgson found some bad movies in the vaults at KTMA in Minneapolis, built two robot puppets out of a gumball machine and a bowling pin, and starting riffing on movies in real time. The premise of the show was simple, sort of: He was trapped in a spaceship orbiting the Earth, while two mad scientists made him watch truly wretched cinema in an experiment that would somehow help them conquer the world. The aesthetic was homemade and decidedly meta.

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