Cinematic Titanic is coming to the Keswick Theatre New Years Eve-Eve (Get tickets here!), and in preparation for that I got to chat with the man himself behind both Cinematic Titanic and Mystery Science Theater 3000, Joel Hodgson.

The Godfather of Movie Riffing was nice enough to impart on me not only some of his philosophy on riffing, but the origins of MST3K and what goes into putting together a show like Cinematic Titanic.

I hope you enjoy this behind the scenes conversation about probably one of the greatest shows in all of geekdom .

For the people who may not know, what is Cinematic Titanic and how did it come about?

Well to know what Cinematic Titanic is you first have to know what Mystery Science Theater 3000 is. I actually have to explain what MST3K is a lot. Whenever I meet people and they ask what I do, I never presume they know, because it was a cult show.

I basically say, it’s the show where they run bad movies and they super impose little silhouettes at the bottom of the screen; who say stuff during the movie. Then if they are familiar with it they usually brighten up a bit or they just matter of factly say, “no I have never seen it.”

Cinematic Titanic is the original cast of MST3K and we have our jokes all setup and we riff on a movie based on the success of MST3K. That is what I usually say at that point, so the people who haven’t heard of it at least know it’s successful.

Is there a reason you tend to choose more obscure films to riff on than some of your contemporaries?

There is a couple of reasons, the first being cost.

People like Rifftrax are doing it and they just have to put their voices in. I have seen other people do that too where you don’t know who they are, you just hear talking. I guess you could do that, but to me that is only part of movie riffing. The other part is your physical presence; what you’re doing when you’re riffing.

I think people do that, it’s my impression that they think it’s a marketing thing. That if you have seen this movie you might want to see someone riff on it.

So we don’t really do that. I see MST3K and Cinematic Titanic working another side of the street.

To me what I think people like about MST3K and Cinematic Titanic is that we show movies they haven’t seen before. So it’s kind of like a new place, which is part of the value and mystique in it. So we are a lot like your tour guides in this place.

Take something like Manos: The Hands of Fate, when I watch that show it’s not even my favorite riff. But because the movie is so strange and unusual, it just has this bizarre attraction for people.

With that in mind how do you find some of these films?

Well there are a couple of routes. Some of the films are public domain so you can use the internet to find those. We then have a guy that does copyright searches to make sure the film is actually public domain. The problem with that though is sometimes the prints aren’t really in great shape, so half of the movies we get we license.

That is a whole other thing where we find someone who represents different movies so you can kind of look through their catalog, which is easier. The prints are usually nicer with licensing and that is what you want when you’re projecting them. A big part of our business is performing live, so they have to look nice enough projected on the big screen.

Are there any films you would have liked to riff on but couldn’t for some reason or another?

It doesn’t really work that way.

To me its kind of like re-finishing a house and you are looking around for a house that has good bones, so you can work with it and it’s within your budget. I really don’t do window-shopping. Because the way you have to get into a film when you movie riff is you really have to live with it and wade through it.

We are doing a movie right now that we are going to do for the Keswick and right now we are each doing a section. So I get everyone’s riffs and right now I am doing what I call line assign, which is really fun because it’s like painting with jokes.

Because you see a point that opens up, and you look at what everyone has written and then I pick the funniest thing or the thing I like the best and drop it in. If there isn’t something good I will try and alter it or come up with something new, which at often times is influenced by what everyone is saying at that moment.

It’s a lot like animation. I think I worked on it yesterday and today and I got about 5 minutes, and that is after everyone has put in their jokes.

That’s crazy, how long does the process usually take to finish a riff on a film?

When you’re going through it, writing it, it can take 3 weeks to go through it.

Well, a movie is like 80-90 minutes and I think on an average day I can get through 10 minutes when I am doing my initial joke paths.

Then after that we do line assign where everyone sends in their jokes and we go through them again. Then we start to practice it and watch it a couple of more times with the lines. When we did MST3K we would do 8 full passes on a film. But its little different for us because we perform it over and over again live, so some films we would have watched a total of 20 times before we perform them.

Do you think because of some of your choices you have opened people up to checking out more off-beat films?

I’m not too sure how it works. I know that we have exposed people to a lot of films they have never seen before and wouldn’t have seen. When were doing MST3K in the late 80s early 90s we were showing film from the 50s, 60s and 70s, so we were showing people films they NEVER would have seen otherwise.

I think its kind of still true, because there is so much product out there.

I think that is what people like about it.

I mean just even the premise of learning who Gamera is, and just going “are you kidding me?” There is a giant turtle like Godzilla but he shoots fire out of his legs and flies.

So I think that has a certain value to it.

So, finally what does it feel like to be known as the “Godfather of Riffing”?

Well it fits, because it was like we really bumped into it. When I thought of it I was in High School, I saw this image that was in an Elton John album of theater seats and 3 people sitting in the theater looking at a movie. I remember saying to myself, that would be a really cool TV show to have people sitting there saying funny stuff about the movie.

That is how it all started, but I didn’t have the resources or the know how to put it together. It was weird but when we started at TV 23 I didn’t know we would get to the level, that it quickly became in a couple of years. So I guess its true but I had a lot of help, especially Trace and Josh who really helped figure it out.