The Brunch Table

A few Mystery Science Theater 3000 alums have finally figured out the perfect way to capitalize on the skills that they honed in their years on the show. They’ve launched RiffTrax, a site that sells MST3K-style audio commentary tracks to modern movies for three bucks a pop. Justina and I tried their commentary for The Matrix tonight, and I’m happy to report that it was fully up to snuff. In fact, it was good enough to make me willing to rent some of the other movies that they’ve riffed on. (Fortunately, they’ve provided a sample video clip for each movie that they’ve covered.)

The strength of their approach is that you’re buying a vanilla MP3, which means it works with everything, and which allows them to lampoon any movie they want without rights hassles. The downside is that you have to sync up the movie and the soundtrack yourself, Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon style. Fortunately, they’ve worked hard to make this easy—they tell you exactly when to start playing the commentary track. They also have a “robot” that exactly mimics the on-screen dialogue every once in a while, so that you can verify that you’re still in sync. Finally, the commentary track (at least the one we bought) comes with text file telling you where in the commentary each DVD chapter starts, in case you want to pick up from the middle.

All in all, I’m overjoyed to be able to hear the guys back doing what they do best, for movies that we know and love (to hate), without having to wade through any of the skits that were getting increasingly grating in MST3K’s final days. Here’s hoping that it proves to be a rewarding business model for them!

Incidentally, the guys will be performing a live riff of a movie during the San Francisco Sketchfest next month—and we’ll be there!