I got to thinking about TV theme music today. Most networks dramatically reduced the length of opening credits years ago, because of studies that showed they gave the audience more of a chance to change channels. But I miss the longer, more generous openings from years past. I decided I’d give you a countdown of my favorite instrumental TV theme songs, followed by some vocal TV theme songs. I’m doing this by the seat of my pants, so it’s certainly possible that I’m missing something. Of course, it’s also impossible to separate your feelings towards the theme from your feelings towards the show. There may be some quickly-cancelled show with a great theme song, but it just wouldn’t come to mind when one sits down to make a list like this. Feel free to disagree and put your own choices or rankings in the comments.
5) “Wiseguy”
Mike Post theme songs always have a bridge to them. Sometimes it works; sometimes it just seems arbitrary. Here, the bridge works perfectly. The main theme speaks of danger, while the bridge – during which our protagonist and the two men who often save his life are introduced – is a nicely heroic counterpoint.
Regular readers know that I’m a fan of the late and lamented “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” a Minneapolis-based cable TV comedy show built around really bad movies, with characters silhouetted on the screen making a constant stream of wisecracks.
Mary Jo Pehl started out as a writer for MST3K, and popped up in some of the skits as, most memorably, “Jan In The Pan,” an impression of the decapitated but artificially-preserved head featured in one memorable MST3K-mocked movie. Then, after Frank “TV’s Frank” Conniff left the show, she joined the regular cast in the role of Pearl Forrester, a role she played during the last part of the show’s run on Comedy Central and its entire run on the SciFi channel (now SyFy).
Since that time, two separate groups of alumni from different points in the show’s run have developed MST3K-inspired projects. Creator Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, Josh Weinstein and Mary Jo Pehl, among others, riff on old movies as “Cinematic Titanic,” on direct-to-DVD releases and at live shows. Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett produce “RiffTrax,” audio commentaries you can download onto your computer or MP3 player and then play in sync with a movie as you watch it on DVD. They also do live shows, simulcast to theaters across the country.
Anyway, I stumbled across this interview with Mary Jo Pehl the other day in which she mentioned having a self-published book available on Kindle. I couldn’t resist that, and the price was right, so I sprang for it.
I suppose I was expecting the kind of pop culture references that make MST3K / Cinematic Titanic / RiffTrax successful, but Employee of The Month And Other Big Deals is something different. However, it’s quite enjoyable, and I’d certainly recommend it. It’s a series of autobiographical comic essays, most of them telling the story of Pehl’s life after MST3K – moving back in with her parents for a while, conquering the Big Apple, then falling in love in her 40s and moving to Texas with her new husband. The stories are warm, funny and relatable, self-deprecating and sometimes touching.
The one false note in the book is the chapter that most closely relates to MST3K – the last chapter, when she talks about her encounters with a certain breed of obsessive fan at public appearances. (The MST3K theme song actually urges fans to “repeat to yourself, ‘It’s just a show – I should really just relax,’” but apparently not all of its fans heed the advice.) I didn’t care for the chapter, because I thought it was sort of low-hanging fruit (remember Shatner on SNL, telling “Star Trek” fans to “Get a life!”?) and because sometimes, even if something is true, it sounds a little ungrateful to say it out loud. You were part of a Peabody-award-winning show that is still loved and warmly-remembered, and the support of those fans is what allows you to sell your book, your “Cinematic Titanic” DVDs and tickets to your live “Cinematic Titanic” performances. Yes, we all know some genre fans can act like idiots. I don’t think that’s new information. But they’re expressing their love for something you were a part of which meant something to them. If you find some of them annoying, that may be understandable, but keep it to yourself. By the end of the chapter, Pehl acknowledges her debt to the fans, and tries to end on a conciliatory and self-deprecating note, playfully imagining dressing as her favorite “L.A. Law” character while asking for an autograph, but I think the chapter might have been better skipped altogether.
Also, and I have no idea whose fault this is, there are some major formatting errors in the Kindle version. On my Kindle, Pehl’s name and/or a chapter title sometimes turned up unannounced in the middle of a paragraph, and what I assume are supposed to be oversized “drop cap” letters at the beginning of a story appear normal-sized but on their own line, above the rest of the paragraph.
UPDATE: Pehl now says on her Facebook page that a reformatted version will be available for download later this month.
Still, there’s a lot to recommend the book, whether or not you’ve ever heard of MST3K. Well worth $3.99 if you’ve got a Kindle, and probably worth 11 bucks for the paperback.
Our local Hollywood Video is closing, and at the going-out-of-business sale yesterday I picked up three episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), and two episodes of The Film Crew; each of the pre-viewed DVDs was $3.99.
I think most of my regular readers are familiar with MST3K, but in case you aren’t, the quick explanation is that it was a comedy series which started on local Minneapolis TV before running for seven seasons on Comedy Central (beginning when it was The Comedy Channel) and then three seasons on SciFi (now SyFy). The meat and potatoes of the show is that each episode is built around a really, really bad movie. Three characters (a human being and two robots) are silhouetted against the bottom corner of the movie and make a constant stream of wisecracks about it, ranging from pop culture references to complaints about plot holes, slow pacing and what have you.
Since MST3K went off the air, two different groups of alumni have done MST3K-like projects. Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) and Bill Corbett (Crow T. Robot, during last three years at SciFi), have stayed in Minneapolis. They produced a few MST3K-like episodes as “The Film Crew” for the DVD label Shout! Factory. Now, they have a similar project called RiffTrax, which allows you to download their snarky commentary online and synch it up at home while watching the movie on a DVD which you have rented or purchased on your own. The genius of RiffTrax is that they no longer have to acquire the rights to the bad movies, which was always a problem for MST3K. They can make fun of recent, big-budget movies as well as older ones. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t actually watched a RiffTrax movie, however.
My North Carolina brother and sister-in-law are also fans and actually went to see a live simulcast of RiffTrax for their anniversary last year.
The other MST3K alumni project is the L.A.-based “Cinematic Titanic,” with MST3K’s creator and original host, Joel Hodgson, along with Trace Beaulieu (Dr. Clayton Forrester, and the voice of Crow during the Comedy Central years), “TV’s Frank” Conniff, Josh Elvis Weinstein (Dr. Larry Erhardt and the original voice of Tom Servo, before Murphy) and Mary Jo Pehl (Mrs. Forrester). They release direct-to-DVD movies given the MST3K treatment; all five of them are silhouetted against the screen in a multi-tiered arrangement meant to suggest the ballroom of the Titanic.
Neither group uses MST3K’s puppets or other characters. Technically, of course, Mike Nelson is using his MST3K character name, but that’s because it’s also his real name. (Joel Hodgson used the character name Joel Robinson when he was on MST3K.)
The two Film Crew episodes I purchased, neither of which I’d seen before, will therefore be the first new pseudo-MST3K I’ve seen in years. I watched one of them, based on the movie “Killers From Space” with Peter Graves, last night and tonight. My brother tells me that the other, “Hollywood After Dark,” is kind of depressing. (I assume he means that the source movie is kind of depressing; hopefully, the Film Crew treatment will leaven that, or what would be the point?)
My brother, after reading my last post, pointed out that some of the short subjects I referenced are available on YouTube. After the jump, in two parts, you will find one of them. Continue reading →
While looking for another video tape today, I found my old VHS copy of “Mystery Science Theater 3000: Shorts,” the first volume of short subjects from MST3K. Although the show’s meat and potatoes was making fun of full-length movies, sometimes they’d have time to work in a short subject, usually an educational film from the 1940s or 1950s — and the humor that Joel (or Mike) and the ‘bots use during these shorts was often darker than the full-length features. I love a scene in “The Home Economics Story” when the young female protagonist is wondering what college will be like. Joel or one of the ‘bots interjects, “….will I smoke thin black cigarettes and reject the triune God?” For some reason, that line always makes me laugh.
In addition to “The Home Economics Story,” the collection includes “A Date With Your Family,” “Junior Rodeo Daredevils,” “Chicken Of Tomorrow” and “Why Study Industrial Arts?”
“A Date With Your Family” is about how children should be polite to their parents at dinner. (“Emotions are for ethnic people,” interjects Crow T. Robot.)
Newscoma found this … a promo clip for one of a couple of similar projects from alumni of the late and lamented MST3K:
This project, Cinematic Titanic, features Joel Hodgson, the creator and original host, along with Trace Beaulieu, who played Dr. Forrester and was the original voice of Crow, and “TV’s Frank” Conniff. The second host of MST3K, Mike Nelson; the voice of Tom Servo, Kevin Murphy; and the second voice of Crow, Bill Corbett, have a similar project called The Film Crew.
What we all really want is new MST3K, but all of the participants say that various rights issues make that unlikely to ever happen.
And now, your unnecessarily anal-retentive commercial review of the week.
The new Old Navy commercial drives me crazy. It promotes their women’s sweaters, and in the background there’s this song. Thanks to the Internet, I have discovered that this song is entitled “The Way I Am” and is sung by Ingrid Michaelson. I’m not familiar with Ingrid Michaelson, and so I don’t know if that’s actually her singing in the ad, or if the ad agency got someone else to cover the song. In any case, here are the most notable lyrics from the song as it’s used in the commercial:
If you are chilly, here take my sweater….
Cuz I love the way you call me baby.
And you take me the way I am.
OK, so, here’s my problem. Who is offering their sweater, and to whom? The woman we see on screen (and she is a beautiful woman, so I should probably just shut up and keep watching) is wearing what are clearly women’s sweaters. Speaking on behalf of men, I have to say that we would freeze to death in the Yukon before putting on one of these sweaters, even if it were offered to us by the woman in the Old Navy commercial.
But of course, how many couples do you know where the guy gets chilly and the gal offers him a sweater, Old Navy or otherwise? I’ll tell you how many: zero.
The other possibility, I suppose, is that the song is supposed to refer to one woman offering another woman a sweater because she loves the way the second woman calls her “baby.” If so, that doesn’t match up with the visuals, which clearly feature a man and a woman. (Although, in the visuals, no one offers their sweater to anyone.)
It’s at times like these, that I have to sing another song — a theme song — which contains these wise words:
“Repeat to yourself, ‘It’s just a show — I should really just relax.’”
is something different. However, it’s quite enjoyable, and I’d certainly recommend it. It’s a series of autobiographical comic essays, most of them telling the story of Pehl’s life after MST3K – moving back in with her parents for a while, conquering the Big Apple, then falling in love in her 40s and moving to Texas with her new husband. The stories are warm, funny and relatable, self-deprecating and sometimes touching.
