Catching Up With... Mike Nelson

Mike Nelson may not be a household name, but for a while one of his projects was. Head writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000 for all of its real seasons and replacement host when creator Joel Hodgson left, Nelson went from struggling stand-up comedian to geek superstar. Since MST3K ended, Nelson founded Rifftrax where he continues to rip apart lousy movies like no one else. Paste caught up with Nelson about RiffTrax, the MST3K reunion, and his plans for future projects.

Paste: You recently had a reunion with the rest of the MST3K crew at Comic-Con, in promotion for the 20^th anniversary set.  How did you feel about meeting up with Joel and the rest from The Cinematic Titanic?
Mike Nelson: It was great. I mean, for the most part we keep in touch. I see those guys every now and then. I’m sort of uncomfortable about the reunion aspect of things. Coming onstage to talk about your past work is something I find a little unseemly. It’s not something that should be. But it seems sort of curmudgeonly to say that and tell that to an audience. I always got along with those guys, so it was fine.

Paste: What you do now with RiffTrax is very close to the MST3K stuff but without all the sci-fi trappings. Do you miss that aspect of the writing?
Nelson: I like how it is now.  The sci-fi angle was for most of us so light.  It was comedy first at all times, that was really our mission.  There were times when if we got off track they would remind us: funny first.  Not some plot or gimmick we were trying to get across, funny first.  My favorite part of the experience was fine-tuning a script, and with RiffTrax that’s such a concentrated thing.

Paste: How long does it take you to produce a new riff?
Nelson: From writing to recording it would probably be about a week and a half if we take out all the other stuff that comes up.  The writing itself is by far the most work.  When you get to the actual recording, that’s where the fun and the spontaneity occurs.  The performance is almost like a live performance when we get into the studio, where you basically know how things will be but not quite.

Paste: You’re involved with almost all of the riffs, but some shows feature other writers (specifically Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy). How does the writing work then?
Nelson: We just split it up—we take chunks of the movie and everyone has his first pass at it.  We’ve done this long enough so that the first pass is fairly close to how things end up.  But then we work on cross-over jokes and not exhausting a comic topic up-front.  That comes towards the end, but at the beginning we all just take a chunk and write it out as if we were doing the whole thing. 

Paste: What’s your most popular riff been? 
Nelson: People really like the Star Wars ones, and the Harry Potter ones as well.  The bigger the movie, the more people like it.  My favorites aren’t always the ones that are most popular—I really l like '80s movies and Crossroads with Britney Spears, but those aren’t movies people are likely to have in their libraries. 

Paste: Have you ever been contacted by studios about riffs, for instance regarding their legality?
Nelson: Not at all, no. 

Paste: What about the chance of them being attached to an actual DVD?
Nelson: Behind the scenes we’ve been asking them about doing stuff officially and in theory they’re for it, but mostly they worry as they always do about relationships with the stars and hurt feelings and all that.  In a large corporate structure they’re afraid, but privately they tell us they want to do it.  We’re working on that and we now have software that syncs up downloaded videos for you that kind of does the same things.  There’s a chance with certain movies that they would license it, though.  We did a live show for Over the Top and they licensed it without any issue.  Since on certain movies this will bring an audience, it seems possible.

Paste: RiffTrax is known due to your past with MST3K, but other than that cult audience do you think you’ve added any new listeners, or do you think it’s been something just for fans who couldn’t get enough? 
Nelson:  Certainly that’s a large part of it.  But I know there are people who couldn’t possibly be old enough to have watched the show who love it.  I think there is, but I have no idea how large it is or how people find it.  I’m assuming the hook is Mystery Science, but I think that the little samples we’re putting out there helped it out. 

Paste: Have you thought about going back to work in television?  Or perhaps writing your own movie?
Nelson: When things ease up a little bit I do have four or five movies that I could probably go and hock.  I’m not as interested in television because in TV it’s so hard to sell something.  The effort that goes into is immense, combined with the compromises you make up front for the payoff just don’t seem worth it in an age where you can deliver something directly to people who like what you do.  Rather than trying to convince someone else, it seems easier to just go out and do it.  As far as my scripts, I’ve got a couple of smart comedies and a couple of dumb comedies I want to sell, and I’ll probably take some time off in the next year or two to get that done.