Rifftrax exclusive: The gang suits up for a Summer Shorts Beach Party
Tonight, the Rifftrax gang will be presenting their Rifftrax Live: Summer Shorts Beach Party, broadcasting live from Nashville, Tennessee, the “Beach Party Capital Of The South.” Longtime friends and Rifftrax collaborators Bridget Nelson and Mary Jo Pehl will join Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy on stage; also joining them will be their Mystery Science Theater 3000 cohorts Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff as the gang takes on a curated collection of educational shorts.
“There were a couple movies that didn’t fill out [the full running time], and early on we realized that these shorts were gold,” Nelson says, explaining how these educational shorts became part of the MST3K lexicon. “It gave the show the feel of an old-time movie show by starting with the short films,” adds Murphy. “I have a really terrible attention span, so the shorts are just made for me,” jokes Corbett.
These shorts may have even been the spark that eventually lit the flame for MST3K and Rifftrax, as a young Kevin Murphy was sent to the principal’s office for pursuing what would eventually become his career. “The first time I got sent to the principal’s office in grade school was for making comments during the showing of an educational short film,” recalls Murphy. “I earned my reputation.”
The youth of today have quite possibly never been in the presence of an 8mm projector, much less seen one rolled into their classroom on an afternoon when their teacher simply wants the room dark and relatively quiet. “That was the time when the teachers would leave the room, sneak out the back door and think that you wouldn’t notice that they were out smoking,” Nelson remembers. “They’d come back reeking of tobacco and asking, ‘do you have any questions about that?’”
“We have some from the ‘60s and ‘70s, which theoretically would have been the time I would have seen them as a kid,” adds Corbett, “but our school was so far behind that the older, creakier black-and-white ones were the ones we got. Those are little more familiar to me, those postwar, very sincere instructions on how to live as a good civic American. How to fall in love, how to comb your hair, clean your toes. I love those because they’re so sincere and they give us so much fodder. They’re like little archeological digs, in a way, into the culture of that time.”
Those films went on to become fan favorites with names such as Alphabet Antics, Mr. B Natural, and The Home Economics Story. So what do the guys look for when they go through the boxes and boxes of beat up 8mm reels that they unearth on eBay? “There was one that we did a long time ago, a safety short where these kids are on bikes and they wear monkey masks,” explains Nelson. “One of the comments on the video was someone recalling seeing it as a kid and having nightmares for years. They said, ’thank you for posting this so I know it was true.’” Then it was just a pile on of people going “me too, I can’t believe this actually happened.” “It was like a mass exorcism for our fans,” adds Corbett.
“I like when they take away an essential commodity and the world falls apart around it,” explains Murphy. “We did one with an anthropomorphic paper bag. This child is imbued with the power to take paper away from the world and we see how the world operates without paper and of course the world falls apart.