With some help from his robot (puppet) friends, TV’s Joel Hodgson will heckle the movies “Circus of Horrors” and “No Retreat, No Surrender” live in San Francisco today — before heading out to 26 other American cities (including Austin, Denver, Boise, and Salt Lake City).
It’s a final farewell tour for Joel, as local media outlets try to find an appropriate appreciation for his legacy:
These days, the act of reacting is everywhere. Twitter is essentially one giant stream of people’s snappy takes on current events. An entire cottage industry of YouTube reaction videos thrives. Twitch allows you to watch thousands of people around the world narrating video games. Go back in time, though, and you won’t find too much in the way of reacting-as-entertainment. That, is, except for Mystery Science Theater 3000, the quirky, groundbreaking TV show that premiered on a small Minnesota TV station in 1988… It predated even DVD commentary tracks, and presaged the way we consume entertainment today.
That’s San Francisco’s local PBS station KQED, reminding readers that these really will be Joel’s final live shows:
Hodgson is calling it his last Mystery Science Theater tour — he’s been on and off the road since the show was crowdfunded to resurrection on Netflix in 2017 — and, in a short phone conversation from the road, he says he means it. “I’m turning 60 next month,” Hodgson says. “My whole job now is to work with the brand and get it ready for the next guy.”
That “next guy” is new host Jonah Ray, who stars in the new Netflix episodes. (“He’s just a natural, positive force, and he’s amazing in that role,” Hodgson says.) But fans will always be particularly attached to Hodgson, who has had three decades of understanding the nerdy cult around the show. On tour, he meets many fans face-to-face, “and they’re all super-sweet,” he says. “You get a few people who are a little socially awkward, but I’m awkward in my own way, so it kind of works out….”
if Hodgson is sad about this being his final tour, he doesn’t show it. “I’m pretty happy, and I’m totally thinking about the end of it, for me. You kind of age out of it at a certain point. I’m not going to be one of those guys that’s so attached to it that they do it until they take him out in a box.”
In 2008 Hodgson answered questions from Slashdot readers.
“I’ve been a fan so long, I can’t even remember when,” posted CmdrTaco.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot