Sci-fi movies come in for a ribbing at a theater near you

Sci-fi movies come in for a justifiable ribbing at a theater near you

By Alex Neth, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Friday, March 28, 2008

Photos By Linda Mcconnell / Special To The Rocky

Local comedians Harrison Rains and Matt Vogl ham it up at the Starz Film Center at the Tivoli Center, where they host Mile High Sci Fi.

Anyone who's attended a midnight movie knows about The Shouter.

The Shouter knows all the jokes as they happen and happily demonstrates that awareness. The Shouter can mimic creepy sound effects, handy during love scenes. The Shouter pounces on the smallest scrap of potential double-entendre. The Shouter won't - can't - let Jamie Lee Curtis walk up those stairs unaware.

Maybe you've even been The Shouter. It is, after all, a universal impulse, particularly after a few adult beverages. Add the anonymity of the darkened theater and you get Don't answer the phone! Of course it's coming from inside the house! We're here to tell you that, yes, we understand, but no, what you said wasn't funny. That's not a reflection on your character - that's simply because you are, like most Shouters, a rank amateur.

Funny happens only when you involve the professionals. Like working comedians Matt Vogl and Harrison Rains, who take yelling at the screen to a level of actual hilarity in their monthly movie rip-fest, Mile High Sci Fi.

The idea, as the two readily admit, isn't exactly new. Cult television show Mystery Science Theatre 3000 did much the same thing during its 11-year run - albeit on a soundstage, with homemade robots as stars - but Vogl and Rains added a twist of their own that has Denver in stitches: doing it live, in an actual theater, with an actual movie playing.

At the close of every month, Vogl and Rains' growing audience shows up at the Starz FilmCenter at the Tivoli to watch the two - often with an assist from fellow local comics like Chuck Roy or Josh Blue - funny up such low-hanging fruit as Barbarella and Battlefield Earth. But the folks in the seats don't realize how much effort goes into building each chuckle.

The two put in hours of work arguing over which cracks to make when. They deal with audience members who too fully take advantage of the twice-per-show beer cart. They deal with The Shouters.

We sat down for a few questions about their project, their method, their relative sobriety and, of course, the movies they most love shredding to bits.

How did this all come about? The obvious influence is Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

Rains: Obviously MST3K - about two years ago, we were sitting around drinking, watching a movie, and Vogl wouldn't be quiet. I said, we should do something, make some money, with this talent of yours.

Vogl: About three cents an hour. Harrison and I always loved movies, loved MST3K. We also do comedy and have for nine years each. But this is totally different, it changes every month, it's a new outlet. It doesn't get stale. We discovered we're good at it, we can make ourselves laugh, make others laugh. For a comedian to add 10 to 15 minutes to a (stand-up) show is a big deal. With this, it's like we're writing a new two-hour show every month.

Describe how this has grown. What are the biggest differences between now and when you guys first started?

Rains: We started at the Oriental Theatre. We were getting a different customer, different attendees. . . . Then we moved to the Tivoli. Now we are getting a younger, bigger crowd.

Vogl: I think we're becoming the draw as much as the movies themselves. We were (initially) picking movies that had some nostalgia value, but then people started coming back.

Rains: We've started to build a fan base of 12, people who have been to every show at the Tivoli.

Vogl: Obviously, this means Den- ver's hurting for entertainment.

Do you both do stand-up on the side?

Vogl: Everyone's on Comedy Works' regular opener list, so at least a couple of weekends a month we do. I used to travel more, and this is a way to do comedy without traveling. Doing comedy as anything other than a hobby, you're away a lot, and I have a 5-year-old boy. If this continues to grow, it can be a way for us to support ourselves.

How do you deal with hecklers, audience members who think they're comedians?

Rains: We had an incident during Escape From New York with a drunk lady. She just kept shouting out stuff over us, and the way that ended, I think we killed her.

Vogl: There are always people who need to shout out a line. Sometimes it's really funny, and you have to give them credit.

We want the audience to have as much fun as they can. But mostly, we just say that we tell the jokes. In comedy clubs, it's easy to shout a heckler down and have him removed, but with movies, you have lines coming up, sound cues. You can't just pause the whole thing.

Rains: It's in the opening monologue now: "We wrote the jokes - so let everyone enjoy them."

How does your writing process go? Do you just open a bottle of Yukon Jack and watch a movie? Play it over and over?

Rains: That's pretty much it, except for the Yukon Jack. Other brands are involved.

Vogl: Sometimes you just watch them and take notes. There's no fast way to do it. Every time you watch it, you pick up new things, like a weird face in the corner of the screen. We argue and fight a lot because we're bullheaded. But we're looking for the perfect way to phrase the joke.

Rains: It's not just writing stand- up. It's almost theater, playing off each other.

Vogl: Harrison and I are the main guys on this - we started it and do all the shows and then we have other people join us. Chris Atencio did it with us for over a year, but he got too busy with work so he quit. And we've had Ben Roy and Jim Hickox work with us for a few shows. And now Chuck Roy is really getting involved and we'll be having him at more shows coming up, and we're trying to find a month when Josh Blue is in town so he can join us, too. We're the two central players, but having the new guys definitely brings a different voice.

Is there a film you wouldn't touch?

Rains: Schindler's List?

Vogl: The Passion of The Christ, next month!

Rains: Obviously, we're open to anything. Most of the ones we pick, like Poltergeist, are actually pretty good movies. WarGames. Sometimes we raise some eyebrows, but we'll make fun of anything.

Vogl: You've gotta have enough to make fun of.

Rains: Mostly we choose sci-fi for the implausibility, the sets, the ridiculous robots - Logan's Run is a perfect example.

Vogl: But the long, drawn-out battle scenes, with the guy fighting the robot - you don't want to burn all your "guy fighting robot" jokes right away.

Rains: We also did Tango & Cash, a really bad action movie. We're not afraid to take on any challenge. Mostly older movies, from the '80s.

Do you ever think, when planning a movie, that, man, this is already so funny/weird/ridiculous that there's nothing we can do?

Rains: I just watched The Neverending Story. We'd been talking about it for months. There was so much there that people remember that was silly: the flying dog, the dude who ate rocks. Then I started watching it and fell asleep halfway through. Blade Runner, the same thing. A lot of drawn-out slow parts.

Vogl: Barbarella was one of the hardest ones we've ever done. Really - the soundtrack is so ridiculous. If we were going to pick joke songs, those would have been the ones we'd picked.

Rains: We generally won't do comedies. We're not out to outfunny Chevy Chase. We did Gremlins a while back. It's sort of funny, which was good for us - we could tell a joke and then let the movie tell a few.

So, what do you tell people who ask, "What makes you guys so funny, anyway?"

Vogl: We're not so deluded to think we invented the concept. At the time, no one was doing it in Denver, and we had the connection with Comedy Works, we have a good friend who owns the Oriental Theatre. . . . We don't have big egos. We know we're not the funniest guys in town.

Rains: But second- and third-funniest, sure. Anybody else is free to do this, but when people you love start showing up dead . . . well, that's competition.

Mile High Sci Fi

* This month's movie: WarGames

* Special guest: Josh Blue, winner of NBC's Last Comic Standing, will help deliver punch lines.

* When and where: 7 and 9:45 p.m. today and Saturday, Starz FilmCenter on the Auraria campus

* Tickets: $9.50, $7 for students

* Information: denverfilm.org or milehighscifi.com

* On deck: Forbidden Planet on April 25 and 26

Mile High Sci Fi's all-time favorite films to make fun of

Escape From New York

* 1981

* The stars: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Isaac Hayes

* The beauty behind the movie: "Cheesy '80s action movies where the day gets saved by some unbelievably implausible hero. So ridiculous that you wonder how the flick even got made. That's what I like," says Vogl. "Air Force One has crashed into Manhattan with the president on board, only Manhattan is now a maximum-security prison filled with the meanest thugs in the world. The president of the U.S. is in imminent danger. So to rescue him you could send in the Green Berets, Delta Force, the Navy SEALs, the Secret Service, the Coast Guard and the Marines all at once. But no, we have a better idea: We're going to send just one guy, an ex-con with one eye and a hang glider, because that just makes more sense."

Red Dawn

* 1984

* The stars: Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson

* The beauty behind the movie: "The Russians and Cubans invade the United States in a massive coordinated attack, and when our Army cannot defeat them, it is left up to a handful of high school kids from Leadville to beat them back, proving to the world that military brigades with advanced weaponry are no match for school spirit," Vogl says.

Flash Gordon

* 1980

* The stars: Max Von Sydow, Sam J. Jones, Timothy Dalton

* The beauty behind the movie: "Another one of my favorite heroes. Earth is being destroyed by Ming the Merciless and who do you think can save the whole planet? You guessed it: a quarterback from the New York Jets with feathered hair who wears white jeans and a T-shirt with his name on it," Vogl says. "It is just so incredibly dumb - how could you not love it?"

WarGames

* 1983

* The stars: Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, Dabney Coleman

* The beauty behind the movie: "The military has put our entire nuclear arsenal under the control of the WOPR, the most advanced computer ever made. But this was the early '80s and computers basically all sucked, so essentially it meant that every missile we had was controlled by a machine with less computing power than a Nintendo Wii," Rain says. "Oh, you want to launch nukes at the Russians? OK, well, first we will need to reboot, and then I'll have you go to a DOS prompt so we can reinstall Windows. We should have you ready to launch in a couple of hours or so."

Logan's Run

* 1976

* The stars: Michael York, Farrah Fawcett

* The beauty behind the movie: "In the future, they decide that once you reach the age of 30 you're done, and basically they just kill you, only they call it something nicer than that. So you have a world without any old people. Think about that for a minute: Sure, traffic moves a lot faster on the freeway, but when you go to vote, who is working at the polls? Nobody. It would be chaos," Rain says. "You walk into a Wal-Mart - you're on your own, man. Nobody is greeting you. It is just you vs. the store. And all the Furr's Cafeterias would go out of business, so really it isn't as great as they make it sound."