IGN: So is RiffTrax singular, or plural? Like, would one of them be a RiffTrack or would several of them be RiffTraxes? RiffTraxi?
Michael J. Nelson: I think it’s like “pants”. I believe it is a singular and it has its roots in being plural. So in the old days you used to pull on one RiffTrax at a time but then they connected them in the middle to cover up your junk and now they’re called a pair of RiffTrax. But you can also just say, “Hand me my RiffTrax.”
IGN: You guys have a live show coming up at the end of the month, Anaconda. How difficult is it to find flaws in a movie like Anaconda, which is unarguably one of the greatest motion pictures ever made?
Kevin Murphy: Well, it’s almost up there near the level of perfection that Paul Verhoeven has managed to achieve. So it’s a challenge, you know, [it] being the Citizen Kane of snake movies.
Mike: I spot no flaws in the performance of Jon Voight myself.
IGN: Do you think that they had to glue the corners of his lips down so he could make that frowny face at all times?
Kevin: I was thinking he put in a retainer upside down.
Bill Corbett: I think he ate a piece of rotten cheese before every take.
IGN: Are you guys able to give us a little preview, maybe an example of one of the more ridiculous moments in the movie?
Mike: I just love the fact that Eric Stoltz - who is, you know, there’s his name at the beginning, he’s one of our lead actors - I love the fact that he gets stung in the throat like five minutes in and then just has to lay in bed. Like, “Starring Eric Stoltz…who’s in a wasp coma.” I think that’s a great acting job. IGN: Which do you find easier to riff on, great movies like Jaws or awful movies like Manos: The Hands of Fate.
Kevin: I’d say the awful movies. Depending on the level of awful, the more current movies are difficult because there’s so much yammering going on by the actors and so much editing going on by the directors. It makes it difficult. A good old movie like Manos works pretty well for us. Anaconda sort of falls in the middle. It was before movies’ started getting really chopped up and super talky so it’s going to work pretty well for us. We’ve got a lot of shots of Jon Voight and Owen Wilson staring at each other. Those help a lot.
Mike: I do think Anaconda is a little more old-fashioned in its pacing and everything. We did Sharknado and when we originally watched it I was like, this is going to be tough because there’s a shot of the daughter who’s looking out a window and they cut literally about 13 times just to establish, “I am looking out a window,” and that gets really tough. It ended up turning out really well but it was a little harder work. And this one just seems a little more like, “We’re trying to make an average B movie here.” So it has a better pace for us I think, Anaconda.
IGN: Have you seen any recent releases that stand out as potential future RiffTrax selections?
Kevin: Not yet. I saw Edge of Tomorrow just the other day and it’s the kind of thing we could do. I don’t know if we’ll want to but it’s so complicated and yet monumentally dumb it almost seems perfect for us. Tom Cruise is at his Tom Cruise-iest.
IGN: I’ve heard you tend to steer clear of movies that touch on sensitive subjects, things like Schindler’s List, and also that comedies – intentional comedies – can be a challenge. Are there any other movies or genres that you’d be reluctant to do?
Bill: I think every now and then we get some bro who wants us to do porn. You can do that yourself, my friend. IGN: Maybe you could do RiffTraxxx with three X’s at the end. Think about it.
Bill: See, you’re falling into the trap! We usually don’t do super violent stuff either, even if it is cartoonishly violent. I think the closest we got was a Saw movie, the original Saw. But beyond that I find the torture porn stuff a little tough to spend time with, believe it or not. So even if it is sort of ridiculous on its face, I don’t think it would be much fun for us.
Kevin: And musicals are challenging for us because the people in the film just won’t shut up. So that’s a problem. We sort of stay away from Hitchcock for some reason and I think that’s sort of unconscious but I think we could have fun with Psycho.
Bill: We got to do Psycho 2: The Next Day, or whatever it’s called.
Kevin: Excuse me. I forgot we did do Psycho 2 but I don’t consider that one of Hitchcock’s best movies. [Laughs.] It does have the single funniest scene I’ve seen in any of the movies we’ve done, which is Anthony Perkins inviting the old woman in for a toasted cheese sandwich and then hitting her on the head with the shovel. I laugh when I think about it because they did add the sound effect of a huge cartoon, Looney Tunes-style “Clang!” when she got hit.
Mike: It was Yosemite Sam-level shovel hitting.
IGN: You’ve had Neil Patrick Harris, Weird Al, Fred Willard and others join you as guests on your recordings. Are there any non-entertainers you think might be able to hold their own as riffers?
Mike: I’ve always thought that just having a quick actor in there - by quick I mean sharp witted - I’d love to just see if George Clooney could hold his own, Jennifer Aniston, just for fun, just for kind of a stunt thing. And obviously to sell eight million RiffTrax, too.
Bill: I want Donald Trump in the booth. Not writing any lines for him, just letting him blab.
Kevin: If Christopher Hitchens were still alive, I think he would be wonderful for this.
Mike: I don’t think we could survive the smoke in the studio.
IGN: If you could have any historical figure join you, who would you get? Oscar Wilde maybe?
Bill: Sounds good.
Mike: John Adams I’m sure would just tear it up.
Bill: Ben Franklin I think would make it a party.
Kevin: I went right to Samuel Pepys.
Bill: He’d be too busy writing in his diary, man. IGN: Some of you have mentioned having no desire to revisit Mystery Science Theater 3000 but is there any chance of a reunion performance with Joel and some of the others? Maybe having them guest on a RiffTrax in the future?
Mike: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a chance. There’s nothing barring it other than just sort of logistics that exist now, which is just we’re all in different places and we all have different projects and things like that. But yeah, I mean, never say never, right?
IGN: Bill, you’ve said you’d love to do a RiffTrax on Meet Dave, which you wrote, but that comedies rarely work. You’ve also written a number of plays. Is there any way you might riff on one of your plays, or maybe write a play that incorporates kind of a RiffTrax-style peanut gallery?
Bill: Whenever I show up to a performance of a play of mine, I do get drunk and heckle the actors. I am not much fun as a playwright. I have a comic book [Super-Powered Revenge Christmas] coming out now and it has an element of that sort of meta-commentary around it. It’s sort of a story within a story and the story is interrupted every now and then by the person telling it. So that’s pretty close I suppose. As far as Meet Dave goes, yeah it’s a comedy but also I think frankly it just would not sell very well. For RiffTrax you really have to have – a modern movie like that - people have to have copies of it or it has to be readily available. And there aren’t a lot of people who have copies of Meet Dave. I am not averse to doing a commentary track and taking all of my petty grudges into the booth.
IGN: Has anyone who worked on one of these movies ever come up to you afterward and challenged you to a duel?
Bill: Jake Busey is across the street right now with a crossbow.
Mike: Shockingly, no. I think that probably though is something you can’t really - I mean nobody’s going to come to you and argue. Like the guy who played Rod in Birdemic. We were pretty hard on him and he came to see the movie and was Tweeting about it and then he kind of fell silent after he saw his depiction. So you wouldn’t think that he would take to Twitter and be vocal about it. There’s not much you can defend about his performance. I think we tend to hear the more cheerful side of things. We don’t get contacted when someone feels hurt or something. I understand it and we’re sympathetic. We try not to be too personal with our insults. But, you know, you’re critiquing a performance and at some point it gets personal. So occasionally I expect someone to come up out of the street and do the knockout game on me. That’s what I’m saying.
Kevin: I’m not afraid of Jon Voight. He can come at me. I don’t care.
IGN: Are there any plans for new kinds of content or new ways of enjoying RiffTrax in the future, like an all you can eat subscription model? You mentioned Netflix, maybe partnering with a streaming service to add your tracks as an audio option, is there anything like that in the pipeline?
Mike: Yeah, we’re always looking at stuff like that and, exactly, the subscription thing is something I think on RiffTrax day plus-one we suggested that and we’re still implementing it. It’s still in the works. It’s a very complicated thing.
Bill: It’s the longest beta ever.
Kevin: Subscriptions are challenging. And doing it just right, because we certainly want to keep the folks we have and have more people enjoy it too. If we’re going to do it we want make sure we do it right.
Bill: It will be implemented on RiffTrax day minus-one, like literally the day before the business closes for a little poetic bookending.
IGN: I’ll be there to sign up.
Bill: Enjoy that 24 hours
IGN: Is there anything else you’d like to tell IGN readers before we go?
Mike: Just that we love them dearly. Just deeply and dearly.
Kevin: Personally and disturbingly deeply.
Bill: And erotically.
RiffTrax Live: Anaconda will broadcast LIVE to nearly 650 movie theaters around the country on Thursday, October 30, with a second showing on Tuesday, November 4. You can order tickets here! Would you like to know more? Follow @adamdileo on Twitter or adam_dileo on IGN. Service guarantees citizenship.