Said fatigue may have started with the first Scream film and then crescendoed with the DOA “Snakes On A Plane.” However it happened, I’m just worn out by it.
It seems that in popular culture everyone is snarky, every comment is sarcastic, and it seems nothing earnest can be taken at face value. I used to thrive on snark, and now I feel isolated by my aversion to it – kind of like the strange isolation I felt in high school, where I never knew how to fit in, and forget about ever talking to girls.
I think isolation leads many of us to gravitate towards science fiction – a genre whose characters are often loners, due to a variety of circumstances. Spock doesn’t fit in on the Enterprise because he’s the only alien on the bridge. Dave had to discover the meaning of the monolith on his own in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” thanks to HAL.
I have little doubt that Hollywood’s most infamous science fiction director, Edward D. Wood, felt very isolated in his professional and personal life. Most of my knowledge of the director comes the biopic “Ed Wood” and whatever films of his were roasted on Mystery Science Theater 3000, a show that could satirize without condescension – a lost art. Mystery Science Theater has been off the air 10 years now, but the spirit lives on in DVDs produced by Cinematic Titanic and Riff Trax.
Riff Trax provides riffing on often-popular films that you synch to your own copy of The Matrix or Road House. Recently, Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbert presented a version of Riff Trax wherein they roasted “Plan 9.” It was a live event simulcast to movie theaters across the country and will be shown again tomorrow.
When I went to the live broadcast at a local theater, I was a little worried that people other than my friends and myself would show up. Riff Trax works for me as a really good, private joke. For example, if the Riff Trax-derived phrase “He’s on the thunder bucket” (see “300”) were to become the next “who’s your daddy?” I would have to abandon Riff Trax forever.
There was a decent-size gathering for Riff Trax Live. But even before the actual riffing of Plan 9 began, any trepidation turned to comfort, as everyone around me was singing along to the chorus of Jonathan Coulten’s “RE: Your Brains” and laughing at the same absurdist humor I was so enjoying.
Leaving the theater, I heard some people debate the virtues of TV’s Frank vs. Professor Bobo. Good Lord, I thought. I can’t believe other people have these conversations! I am not alone!
Isolation, as it turned out, was bested by a sense of community. A community that likes to laugh at really bad films.
Just as a side note, it seems like the Riff Trax people could have just roasted the film and called it good. However, they seemed to really want us to get our monies’ worth. There was music by Coulton and the Rifftones, faux commercials and even riffing on a short. It’s amazing how much heart was put into the event. I wonder if Michael Bay thinks that the more CGI crap he can fling on the screen, the better his audience would respond. But I felt much more connected to the Riff Trax presentation than I could have ever felt to Pearl Harbor.
Thank you, Riff Trax. You’ve restored my faith in irony.
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