{"id":4041,"date":"2023-06-24T19:39:22","date_gmt":"2023-06-24T23:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/?p=4041"},"modified":"2023-06-24T19:44:33","modified_gmt":"2023-06-24T23:44:33","slug":"the-mads-get-meta-with-dark-star-the-interactive-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/2023\/06\/24\/the-mads-get-meta-with-dark-star-the-interactive-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mads Get Meta with Dark Star: The Interactive Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fans of The Mads and Mystery Science Theater 3000 have seen a lot of odd stuff over the years. They\u2019ve hummed \u201cTorgo\u2019s Theme.\u201d They\u2019ve seen Santa fight Martians. Rock climbing. But The Mads live riffing subject, Darkstar: Terror At the Edge of Time<\/em>, gave fans something even they had yet to see \u2013 The Mads and MST3K compatriots Mary Jo Pehl, J. Elvis Weinstein, and Beez McKeever riffing themselves acting in a movie made culled from hours of cut scenes from a 2001 computer game in which they starred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little background. Darkstar: The Interactive Movie <\/em>was a hybrid video game\/film in which the user controlled the fate Captain John O\u2019Neil after he wakes up from a 312-year nap on a spaceship and has to figure out who he is and how he got there. It was released in 2010, designed by J. Allen Williams, who directed his actors with a greenscreen set and then lovingly placed them into a CGI world he created himself for the game. There is reportedly thirteen hours of film footage with live actors \u2013 which includes The Mads (Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff) plus fellow MST3K alums Joel Hodgson, Mary Jo Pehl, J. Elvis Weinstein, and costume designer Beez McKeever. Clive Robertson plays O\u2019Neil, and Peter Graves provides the voiceover. The game was in color, but the film version was treated to look like a classic black and white sci-fi film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film riffed by the Mads with Pehl, Weinstein, and McKeever is just one way the game could play out, made into a roughly one-and-a-half-hour movie. And that is plenty enough time for this crew to dissect every choice they made as actors and bust each other\u2019s shops, especially never having seen this cut before the show. They are reacting in real time in what amounts to five very funny friends delivering an entertaining commentary track from the heyday of DVD bonus material. But this bonus material can stand on its own.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of the movie is a surprise to the riffers, since the project is more than a decade old and they hadn\u2019t seen this particular cut. Mary Jo comments she hadn\u2019t even realized Williams had gotten Graves to narrate. J. Elvis remembers trying to read cue cards without his glasses. And there are the requisite MST3K easter eggs \u2013 lots of big pneumatic doors opening and closing (pizza?) and even an appearance from the Satellite of Love. Says Trace of the CGI experience, \u201cI brought my own tennis ball to act with, but they wouldn\u2019t let me.\u201d And it seems only Beez made it through the actual game \u2013 the others were mostly video game novices and didn\u2019t make it much father than the opening scene. Which means most of them don\u2019t really understand how the scenes they shot fit together in the final product.       <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first thing Conniff notices is that the CGI looks really good, especially considering how much money bigger Hollywood productions spend for not much better results. \u201cIn Hollywood, they spend money on actors,\u201d says Weinstein. \u201cWell, they save money in our case,\u201d Frank responds. Mary Jo gets the biggest ribbing, since she is present throughout as Westwick Main, the voice of O\u2019Neil\u2019s computer companion, and was inadvertently left off the opening credits. \u201cYou all remember that Leonard Nimoy episode, \u2018In Search of\u2026 Mary Jo\u2019s credit?\u2019\u201d riffs Conniff. It becomes the episode\u2019s best running gag as the others keep trying to make Mary Jo laugh as she pretends to be angry about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frank has the best roll in the movie as a wisecracking helper robot (which he sarcastically notes is the first time he\u2019s seen that in a film) named Simon, a short, rolling thing with a pipe frame and what looks like the metallic head of an Italian greyhound. \u201cThat\u2019s not CGI,\u201d says Trace. \u201cFrank had to wear that.\u201d We learn from Beez that there are a great many errands to run in space, as O\u2019Neil solves his smaller quests on the way to saving the universe. And we also learn that puns make Mary Jo\u2019s skin crawl, which elevates her to near saint status for the amount of wordplay she has surely heard onscreen and in the writers room for the past few decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Darkstar: The Watch Party <\/em>is delightfully loose, and offers something new for the MST3K fan who thinks they\u2019ve seen everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Darkstar: Terror at the Edge of Time: The Watch Party is available for download now on <\/em>https:\/\/dumb-industries.com<\/em><\/a>.  <\/em><\/p>\n

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Fans of The Mads and Mystery Science Theater 3000 have seen a lot of odd stuff over the years. They\u2019ve hummed \u201cTorgo\u2019s Theme.\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[379,2541],"class_list":["post-4041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedy","tag-mst3k","tag-the-mads"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/DarkstarVimeoPoster.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7lGwW-13b","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4041"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4046,"href":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4041\/revisions\/4046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}