For a couple years I’ve been making Mining Accident Theater, in which two coal miners are trapped by a terrible accident in a mine shaft with a bunch of mysterious old film reels and a projector. It’s a premise that explains why there’s no light so I don’t have to make sets or costumes or be in the same city as the other actors, and because I have a background in audio drama. There’s brief opening and closing sketches sandwiching shorts.
There’s 5 episodes so far. The first two are slightly rough so the third, “About Fallout”, might be the best introduction point:
Just started work on the 6th (Boredom at Work II: The Search for Zest). If anybody here ever feels like doing a little riff writing or acting, I’d love to have some help. Tis not for profit, of course.
Cute, and I like the voices. That’s the one area that trips up a lot of fanvids, there’s not much personality in the voices, and the delivery can be a bit stiff. But that wasn’t an issue here. I especially liked the person who sounds like a cross between Michael Cera and Crispin Glover - a distinct, kind of laid back voice. Plus there’s some good quips (She’s cross-eyed).
As an aside, I misheard the narrator in the short as saying “We have a rape meter”, and did a double take, “The hell? Let me replay that…” Thank goodness, a “rate” meter. Phew.
A while back, Rifftrax (Bridget & Mary Jo) did a short called “Boredom at Work”. Today, Mining Accident Theater #6 tackles the even more exciting sequel “Boredom at Work II: The Search for Zest”. Watch Hugh go to therapy, fondle his face in a restroom mirror, and try to rekindle his sex life by thinking about his mother.
Today marks the first 3 riffer episode and my first television episode riff… of practically the first television show. It’s actually a good story, considering the severe limitations of having only 2 actors and 1 stationary camera doing a 30 minute continuous take (probably performed live?) with the director’s repurposed clipboard as the only set piece.
Just finished uploading the first ever Mining Accident Theater Holiday Special:
I don’t normally like to insult the film much because I feel that’s lazy riffing, but this one… this one forced me to fight it to survive. It’s just so incredibly, unbelievably slow. Because they weren’t good enough with the puppets to make them move at a reasonable speed, I guess. This was actually supposedly “screened in several cinemas in Vienna” in 1935, but I imagine only once at each.
Help to continue writing it from where I left off… or from the beginning if you prefer, improved early jokes welcome. But since it earned my first ever youtube dislike response and only one like and zero writers so far, I should probably drop this one unless somebody comes along someday wanting to write a serious percentage of it. A shame because it leaves so much room for riffing (in terms of long silences, as well as absurd cheapness), but it’s too long to write alone.
I haven’t done anything with Mining Accident in 7 months, but I’ll probably pick it up again within a few months after I finish up the third season of the audio drama I’ve been busy with.
After almost a year (okay honestly I wasn’t working on it for the vast majority of that time), I finally present my first and last full movie riff to my only fan, @rodneylives . I used to think MST3K got too mean towards some movies and that it was lazy humor. Now I realize it wasn’t meant to be funny, it came from a place of deep personal anger and resentment toward a film while slogging through it a few seconds at a time. I think I made it funny, at least I made me laugh, but writing over 500 riffs and having to rewatch this turd so many times for editing (even though I wrote the vast majority of the riffs on the first watch) has soured me on movies.
This movie stars Escape 2000’s Toblerone as Captain of a crew of Italians (one of them pretending to be Texan) exploring the galaxy’s ancient sewers and staircases in search of red buttons to push. Challenge your mind by trying to work out who’s a robot and who isn’t. Come for the love triangle between Toblerone, the evil Empress, and Padawan Anakin Skywalker… then stay for the fuzzy dots.
