Over time, though,Hodgson became more forthcoming about his real reasons for leaving “MST3K.”He’d been clashing with the show’s executive producer, Jim Mallon, and wantedto leave before those tensions destroyed the show.
“We were fighting, andit wouldn’t have been good for the people who stayed if I kept making theshow,” Hodgson says. “At the time a MysteryScience Theater movie was looming. I didn’t want to be part of the moviesince we weren’t getting along, so I said I didn’t think I wanted to be oncamera anymore. Really, it was just an excuse for me to get out.”
In 2008, 15 years afterHodgson’s bittersweet departure from “MST3K,” he launched Cinematic Titanic, anew project built around the same basic premise: comedic riffing over badmovies. The project reunites him with much of the show’s early cast, includingTrace Beaulieu (Dr. Forrester) and Frank Conniff (TV’s Frank), as well as MaryJo Pehl, who played Pearl Forrester in the show’s post-Hodgson years.
CompetingShows
In 2006, along with theprogram’s late-period cast, Mike Nelson, who replaced Hodgson on “MST3K,”debuted a similar service called RiffTrax, quipping on downloadable audiocommentaries to mostly modern films like Twilight,Iron Man and Lord of the Rings. Cinematic Titanic, on the other hand, sells DVDsthat tread closer to the traditional “MST3K” template, with the cast filmed assilhouettes watching B-movies like Roger Corman’s 1959 relic The Wasp Woman or 1974’s Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks.
Though fans havespeculated about bad blood between the two factions of the show’s cast, bothcamps have had only kind words about the other, and each stresses there’senough room in the market for both projects (while politely affirming theirpreference for their own).
“What I like about movieriffing is that the audience comes in and they’re seeing a movie they’ve neverseen before,” Hodgson says of Cinematic Titanic’s obscure selections. “That’spart of the adventure, wondering what’s going to happen. If it’s a famousmovie, like Lord of the Rings, theneverybody knows what they’re getting.”
Cinematic Titanic alsodistinguishes itself with its emphasis on tours and live screenings. Thetroupe’s initial DVDs were recorded in the studio, but their most recent, a viewingof the 1974 blaxploitation kung-fu flick EastMeets Watts, was filmed in front of an audience. They’re now planningfuture live DVDs.
Through these liveperformances, Cinematic Titanic picks up one of the lost threads of “MysteryScience Theater.” Hodgson had long wanted to perform the cable show on stage,but the pressures of producing 22 episodes a season precluded it.
“It’s more state of theart for us,” Hodgson says of performing live. “It’s got more of a feeling toit. You really have to sell the material more to get laughs. You get a littlebit competitive, because you want to do as well as everybody else. Performingin front of people really is the fastest way to improve.”
Cinematic Titanic does a double featureat the Turner Hall Ballroom on Saturday, Feb. 20. The 7 p.m. screening is soldout, but tickets are still available to the 10:30 p.m. show.
