MST3K Cast Reunion - Part 3:
A Report on the 2001 Toyota Comedy Festival's MST3K Reunion!

By Dannielle

Next they discussed the origin of certain obscure references in the show. The origin of "Wha Happa?" was particularly funny. Mary Jo said that when she was a college freshman, she had to attend a "getting to know you" type of mixer where everyone stood in a circle and held hands. She ended up having to stand next to a woman who had a fake arm and was hard of hearing. Mary Jo said she took hold of this woman's hand and was holding it so tight that the fake arm came off! The crowd and Mary Jo were laughing so hard, she barely managed to squeak out that the woman turned to her and said "Wha Happa?" Something else that I found to be interesting was that Joel told everyone that in the beginning "he was going to make and introduce a new robot every week to the show" but after having to pull an allnighter to get the original ones ready "I knew that there were gonna be no more."

When asked next about their favorite puppet, Joel said he liked the "blowing up of Servo's head" which is a reference to playing Kaboom! with Servo's head (with a balloon attached). The next question was about how Joel came up with the Invention Exchanges. He said that he has been keeping notebooks full of designs since college and he would take them out of there. Joel said "It's not like (and here he grunts five times) There! An Invention Exchange!"

The entire cast when then asked "what was the most joyless movie you worked on?" and Trace jokingly (I think) said "MST3K: The Movie" to the groans of the audience. Mary Jo said "Laserblast", Frank said "Once we hit the 5th Gamera movie...", Trace came back and said "Sidehackers" mainly for the reason that was referred in the Amazing Collossal Episode Guide, Kevin said "Red Zone Cuba" and Josh said "Robot Holocaust". Joel said that "Manos" was the movie that bothered him because "as we were watching those driving scenes where they are just repeating and reversing the same driving footage I thought: I am really worried about this..."

They were then asked about any negative reaction that they received during the show. Frank said that he and Joel had worked with Robby Benson on "Sabrina the Teenaged Witch" and that Robby had actually seen the "City Limits" episode and liked it! But Joel then said that he had heard that Vince Van Patten had been upset and Trace said that they had been sued by the guy who owned the rights to "I'm a Little Teacup"!

A real funny part came up where Kevin referred to a joke direction that they had put in a script which read "Joel enters, hammered off his scrawny a*s" and they got a note back from the network requesting them to remove "hammered" (but not "scrawny a*s") which led Kevin to say "Not that your a*s is scrawny Joel..." where then someone made a reference to Joel's "sexy calves" and everyone encouraged him to show them off, whereupon Joel stood up, turned to his left and pulled up his right pant leg to show off his right calf! Frank then said "The 51st sexiest man in America!" Trace then jumped in and said that "when we'd get bored in the Puppet Trench, we'd carve our initials in his leg".

After talking about the editing of scripts and the effect of a bigger budget on MST3K, Josh and Joel were requested to sing the KTMA version of the theme song! Josh got his guitar and they both stood up front, where Joel sang most of the song (Josh joined in). The audience enjoyed this immensely, clapping and singing along too! Once this was over, the show was (in my opinion) abruptly brought to a close, all cast members walked to the front of the stage, held hands and bowed together, waved and yelled thanks to the audience and left the stage. The lights came up and it was all over...too soon for me!

Soon after the lights came up, a number of people waited around to see if any cast members would come back for autographs. The only one who came back in was Kevin Murphy. If you are interested click here for my picture of Kevin. I found out soon after that Frank and Joel left immediately afterwards (rats!) so there went my chance for a picture of Joel!

All in all, I really am glad I made the trip to see this. It was my first trip to New York and, regardless of the trauma it caused me, I don't regret it one bit! I just hope that sometime in the future, Joel will be able to attend (and stay after) another event to meet and talk with his fans. Now that would be worth the trip!