By Rikk Wolf So just who has enough free time on their hands to produce a show like ICWXP? Kansas City, Missouri based production company Agonywolf Media does! (There really isn't much else to do around here. Why, there are absolutely dozens of other groups of dudes putting on all kinds of puppet shows in Kansas City).
We're a small group of folks, all tied into the Kansas City metal music scene with a passion for decimating B-movies with hilariously mean-spirited comments.
How the Show came about
It all started back in high school, where myself and co-creator Kyle Chestnut enjoyed riffing on the terribly outdated educational films we students were subjected to in almost Ludovico-like fashion. Much to the chagrin (and sometimes bemusement) of the presiding teachers. I don't know why exactly our films were so horrendously outdated, but I believe it had something to do with the fact I attended school in a town that had just heard of "those new-fangled paved roads".
Kyle would occasionally tell me about a show on Comedy Central (and later the Sci-Fi Network) called Mystery Science Theater 3000 in which a man and two robots make fun of bad movies. Unfortunately, due to the rural location of my residence, anything beyond what our TV antenna could manage was out of the question (boy, did I ever enjoy unceasing reruns of Mr. Rogers and the local news) . So, when I occasionally was treated to a visit a home that did have cable, I would immediately search for this grand program with the Mystery and the Science and the 3000…
…didn't really pan out.
Plus, I had other things to concern myself with like crushes that didn't like me in the least, pimples, and an overabundance of facial hair.
Jump a few years into the future (skipping over that whole embarrassing Y2K deal) and I discover lovely virus inviting p2p platforms like Zazaa and Limewire. I finally get to download and see just what this Mystery Science Theater 3000 thing is all about.
I instantly fall in love with the format and unprecedented wit displayed by the writers. I downloaded as many as I could and would often fire them up to have playing the background as I toiled into the wee hours of the morning on my musical endeavors. Later, I would make it my mission in life to watch each and every episode I could (only got about seven left to go… god I'm lonely…).
A few more years passed. I tooled around the country in a Chevy Astro-Van for a long time with a bunch of smelly dudes playing aggressive music (and still do) for some time. This led to starring/writing/directing/producing/editing a music video for my band "The Messiah Complex", in which I enlisted the massive help of one Rob Atwell (who is now my band mate in "At the Left Hand of God"). As he had co-directed and filmed all of the story elements of the video, I had him join me for the video commentary on the DVD release of the video. Rob and myself had quite a lot of commentary chemistry and he was also a fan of MST3K. The pieces began to fall into place.
I had rekindled my friendship with high school chum Kyle, and the two of us seemed incapable of viewing a movie without adding our own mean-spirited commentary track (never go to a movie with either of us, especially me – I'm a talker).
I approached Kyle about starting our own movie-riffing show for distribution on DVD and the internet. The original idea was for it to be a little bit Tales from the Crypt (creepy, overly-Halloweened set and dark humor) and a lotta bit MST3K. Kyle and I began downloading movies and educational shorts with expired copyrights that had fallen into the public domain to riff on. The results were pretty damn good.
Topsy-Bot 5000
Kyle and myself began to work up ideas for a puppet co-host. At first, he was to be part popcorn tub and part zombie, having a cutesy robot-like face on one side, and a hideously rotted zombie face on the other. We really couldn't come up with a decent reason why such a creature would exist, or we were simply too lazy. Obviously, we ditched that idea and ended up adopting more of a Garfield meets Top Man (from Capcom's Mega Man video game series) look and Topsy was the result. I began assembling him as we wrote riffs for the (debatably) educational short, "What About Drinking?"
It was around this time that I asked Rob to come by and try his hand at writing and recording riffs on the project. We had intensions of him portraying the voice of Topsy. He was extremely well suited and that was that.
The Original Premise
The original storyline I had envisioned was two guys stuck in a movie theater surrounded by zombies, waiting out the apocalypse. They've got nothing to do but watch the terrible old movies in supply at the theater, and joined by a robot left behind by the theater's former owner, they make commentary on the films.
My character, "Rick Wolf" (not to be confused with real-life me, I have two k's cluttering up my name) was to be a commando sent in to combat the zombies a la Resident Evil. Kyle's character was to be an action movie archetype-like fellow (because the man honestly has a six-pack from hell) that helps out Rick in the chaos and they both end up hiding out in the theater when his squad is killed.
We went ahead with this idea, and I wrote and recorded the theme song for the show.
Johnny Cylon
We completed the recording session for "What About Drinking?", as well as overlaying the silhouettes on it. We had also completed all the riffs for our first full length film, "Bride of the Gorilla", and had started on our second, "Lady Frankenstein".
Kyle decided to leave the show at this point, so we had to then seek out another voice actor. Rob and I made the decision that the new character should be another 'bot, and I drew up some early sketches of Johnny Cylon. We held auditions for the new voice actor, and my band mate Zach Legler (drummer of "Behold the Alliance") made the cut. We then had Zach sit in and re-cord all of "the third man's" comments and we constructed the puppet.
We edited out the verse in the theme song that explained Kyle's presence on the show, and had to do some post-production trickery to some of the lyrics. A new version will probably appear on episode two or three, as Cylon's not mentioned in the lyrics because of this.
"What About Drinking" will resurface at some point, but we're glad we get to re-riff it, as we did what we like to call "over-riffing" on it (i.e. we talked to damn much).
Dr. Blackwood
Rob and I theorized that the show would benefit greatly if it had an antagonist, so we ditched the whole "they watch bad movies because they've got nothing else to do" idea and conceived Dr. Blackwood.
We came up with the name because MST3K's Dr. Clayton Forrester was named after the protagonist of the original "War of the Worlds" film. Dr. Harrison Blackwood was the name of a child Dr. Forrester adopted in the War of the Worlds television series (a pale attempt at a sequel in which Dr. Forrester makes no actual appearances).
Rob is entirely responsible for the nature and humor of the character. We just slapped the makeup on him, turned on the camera, and let him go.
Sadly, because of this, it made for another problem with the show's theme song. The lyrics state that the characters watch the films to "prolong their sanity" – very much the opposite effect the movies have on them (never record your theme music early on in a project!) We'll fix this later as we're lazy, shiftless bastards who don't care right now.
The Final Premise
Having our story in place, we tied up all the loose production ends, finished building the set, and began writing and shooting host segments. We employed the payment-free help of many of our music scene pals and many of them are going to become forces well known on the show, both as technical assistants and character actors!
So there we have it – a zombie-killing commando trapped in an old movie theater forced to watch bad movies by a deranged old inventor with two robots. If he doesn't watch, the Doc lets in the hordes of zombies. Zombies of course don't eat robots, but for the sake of the show's premise, shut up.
We of course discovered Rifftrax, The Film Crew, and recently Cinematic Titanic as we worked on this pet project. Although when we set out, we had no idea there was any competition in the least, we're glad that the whole MST3K gang is out there still providing us all with hilarious movie mockery. We collectively hope that perhaps one day, we could meet some of our heroes and earn at least a chuckle aimed at our humble attempt.
However, as this is being written, we've already sold about a dozen copies of the first episode online (we've only been online for five days now), and we're hard at work on episodes three and four. So from all of us here at Agonywolf Media – thank you for making this all worthwhile and thank you for your amazing words of encouragement!
RW
If you can read this, you have too much time on your hands. Might I recommend strolling through the park, playing a friendly game of chess with your endearing grandfather, or kissing a lady.
Or… just sit there and play Warcraft until 4 am. That's fine too.