Arts & Entertainment
NYT Profiles ‘Chaos at the Colonial’ Star
Joel Hodgson is the creator of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
In the media-blitzing runup to his performance Saturday night at Phoenixville’s MST3K creator Joel Hodgson–after earlier in the week–sat down with the New York Times to talk about film, comedy, and teaching both to college kids.
Hodgson told the Times that he left his show–cult classic Mystery Science Theater 3000–in 1993 when he and a producer had an unbridgeable difference of opinion over a feature film based on the show that they were developing.
After the split, he spent the better part of the last two decades working in television and touring with former MST3K castmates as “Cinematic Titanic,” before he was asked, and accepted, an opportunity to teach Bucks County Community College students about riffing on film.
The Times characterized his approach to comedy as that of a, possibly mad, scientist:
Mr. Hodgson, in this way, has long approached comedy as a chemist in a lab does, noodling with a drug protocol to make it more effective. In Minneapolis in the late 1980s he briefly taught a workshop called Creative Stand-Up and Smartology that was based on communication paradigms he’d read about in college. This was after he had earned appearances on “Late Night With David Letterman” and “Saturday Night Live.”
After noting that MST3K, while classic insult-comedy, rarely came off as mean-spirited, they pointed out that Hodgson tried to teach his Bucks County Community College students to do the same.
“Mr. Hodgson’s first lesson was simple,” the author wrote. “When riffing don’t be a jerk. (He used a different word.)”
See the full article here, or stop by the Colonial Theatre June 2 at 8 p.m. to see Hodgson and his students perform.
