The Canada Song is always welcome, I guess it’s nice to have it in some official capacity on YouTube.
If only the director (whom I assume controls the rights to the film) could find it in himself to loosen his grasp on the film itself and give people what they really want.
(Original post edited for kindness)
Perpetuating the name calling (and yes, I realize it is one of the riffs in the episode) is not likely to encourage him to release the rights to the people who call him that.
Fair enough.
Though as I’ve said before, if he’s any amount of patriotic, I have a feeling the real issue is that the episode itself uses his movie as a clothesline on which to pin 90 minutes of Canada jokes.
I will try to be more gracious in the future, but I’m hardly the only one to reference that riff in referring to this situation.
He seems like a decent guy to be honest. He did what was by all accounts a really good documentary on COVID.
You have to realize- this was a student film. He did it for a grade. Student films aren’t meant to be good films, they’re meant to demonstrate you understand the skills that go into making a film.
And now, when he has a career as a serious documentary filmmaker, he is notorious for making this movie as if he is the worst filmmaker in the world and is given a mean nickname.
I love the episode, but I really don’t blame him.
I’m sure in the riffing business there’s always the potential for hard feelings among the filmmakers. I remember an interview with Mike Nelson where he said they insisted on doing the show in Minnesota as opposed to LA or NYC partly because they wanted to decrease the chance of bumping into anyone they had made fun of.
Didn’t Mike also say he was very careful to avoid Joe Don Baker when they were staying in the same hotel once?
They’re probably lucky Miles O’Keeffe is a fan.
I know you aren’t the only one, and I (try to) call it out anytime I see it. So while my post was partially aimed directly at your post, it was also directed at anyone who might want to use that riff as an insult due to him holding back the rights.
And even aside from it potentially harming the slim chance “we” would get the rights back to make the episode available, it is just unnecessary to be insulting people based on their name. We aren’t twelve years old anymore.
Fair enough. I edited my original post in case Mr. Final Sacrifice ever visits this board.
I did the same thing in the late 90s with my MST-tapes in a VCR. Entertained the whole studio! 
Here’s what bugs me about that. As a student film, this is a mighty impressive piece of work indeed. It’s clear he had set an ambitious goal for himself and he must have put a lot of time and effort into making this movie. Heck, compare this to Blood Theater (riffed by Rifftrax) Rick Sloane’s first movie made when he was 21 to get an idea of how, even though it has flaws, The Final Sacrifice is really good for a beginning filmmaker. To get this film to look as good as it does (and compared to the works of Coleman Francis or Ed Wood, this movie is a visual feast) for as small a budget as he had to work with is amazing! My hat is off to him and I hope he got a good grade from his instructor.
But MST3K didn’t go around looking for student films to riff on. They took whatever professionally released movies they could find that suited their purposes and for which they could acquire the rights. So Mr. Greidanus’ film must have been picked up by a distributor and made available for commercial broadcast/home video distribution. At that point, once the film has been released with commercial gain in mind, it has passed the point of being just a poor little defenseless student film, and has become a regular old commercial release. That means it is just as suited to bear the brunt of the slings and arrows of MST3K as were regular Hollywood productions like Kitten With a Whip, Space Travellers (Marooned) or Mitchell.
I can see where you’re coming from, but also think of the flattery you would get from some distributor wanting to distribute your student film, even if you were aware it wasn’t a good movie. It’s the first recognition you get as a filmmaker! I wouldn’t blame anyone for turning down that sort of offer.
Also, I guarantee you Greidanus did not make enough on distribution of that film to even buy a used car. This is not something he was making bank off of.
Again, I really like the episode, but I can understand why he feels the way he does. I’m sure plenty of filmmakers would be happy to undistribute a work of theirs if such a thing were possible. I doubt he signed a contract with a “we’ll let them put this on MST3K where they will savage it and let them call you a mean name and there’s nothing you can do about it” clause. More importantly though, he clearly got the rights back and it’s his copyright, so he can do what he wants with it.
At the end of the day though, I think that when you’re talking about mocking a talented living filmmaker’s early work, you need to respect their wishes when they say that they really don’t want that to be what they’re known for. Mind you- this isn’t the same as Joe Don Baker getting pissed at them making fun of him. He was an actor, the film was not his vision.
I remember the interview with the director for Warrior of the Lost World when he was asked about his movie being on MST3k and he basically said something about how he had fun with that when it happened and you just gotta be okay with that stuff and have a sense of humor about it. He was very down to earth and didn’t take anything personally, even though it’s obvious he didn’t make that movie with the idea that it would later be mocked. More directors would do well to learn a few lessons from him.
The thing that gets me with The Final Sacrifice is that, at this point, the damage has already been done. It’s forever enshrined among the MST3k fandom as being a top tier episode. It’s been, what, 25 or 26 years since that episode aired? At this point what are you trying to keep from happening? It’s not like the episode is suddenly going to go viral. It’s not like anyone new to MST3k is going to google “best episodes” and not come across that title. And the episode is still out there and easy enough to find if someone wants to see it. If anything, the controversy surrounding the rights to this film has only gotten it more attention within the fan community rather than less. Can you imagine if Greydon Clark got all uppity about Final Justice and tried to bury that episode? We’d be taking about it more, not less!
Sometimes you just gotta be okay with what mankind did with your artistic endeavor. Sometimes trying to kill it just stirs up more attention.
Minor subject change; does anyone know if Netflix is still holding on to the rights for their episodes and that’s why those twenty or so never get shown on the Forever-A-Thon? I’ve seen several Season 13 episodes, but none from Season 11 or 12 (although admittedly I haven’t been watching constantly; it’s possible they’ve come on when I’m not watching I suppose). But I also haven’t seen them on the MST3K PlutoTV channel, so I was wondering if Netflix is still holding on to the rights for them?
I don’t know, but I think it is very likely that Netflix has exclusive rights and anything else would involve a renegotiation.
I did a quick search and it looks like you can rent or buy eps from seasons 11 and 12 on YouTube or Prime Video, but yeah, given they’re a Netflix thing I doubt we will be seeing Cry Wilderness anytime soon on the free 24hr streams.
I feel confident that Mitchell wasn’t anyone’s vision. Unless vision now means the same thing as cocaine-fueled tax break.
Okay? I’m not talking about Mitchell.
But you mentioned Joe Don Baker.
Yes. I specifically said he was not an example of what I was talking about.