Q: First, I'd like to thank both of you for taking the time to answer these questions for MSTies and quite a few Cheapies (of the non-trophy variety). First, I'd like to start with a some fairly standard MST3K questions. First, from Vlad89, what are your favorite MST3K episodes?

A: We own the DVD of Mitchell, a true classic. Anything Gamera-related always made us laugh. We loved their Hamlet, and the Nordic Mythology one as well.

Q (Vlad89): What do you think were the worst movies shown on MST3K?

A: “Worst” can mean many things. In our world, the worse the program, the better the show. ”Manos” The Hands of Fate was pretty damn bad, and anything involving a werewolf, or Hercules is inherently bad. But the show was predicated on the worst movies ever, so maybe we’re misunderstanding your question – please don’t hold it against us, we share a brain.

Q (Vlad89): And the eternal question- Joel or Mike?

A: This will sound like a totally diplomatic answer but it truly is the way we felt and feel. We both loved Joel and the weird goofy energy he brought to the show, it’s what helped hook us in the first place and when he left, we weren’t sure if anyone could fill his shoes, but Mike’s dry wit, and deadpan sarcasm was in our opinions the only way to go. We honestly feel like the show never lost a step and episodes were just as funny but in a new way.

Q (Vlad89): How did you managed to get Mike and The 'Bots to make a guest appearance in one of your episodes?

A: We met Mike and Kevin and Bill at a MST3K symposium we hosted at the San Francisco Sketch Comedy Festival a year and half ago, and we got along with them so well. Well, we were drooling, being big fans, and they put up with us. They were cool, humble and just as funny in person. We were honored to find out that they were familiar with our work as well. We had a blast doing the show and told them of our show Cheap Seats which was set to premiere a month after the Sketchfest show and asked them if they’d ever be interested in coming on and doing something on the show. They said yes and it just made sense to have them come on in the premiere episode of the second season. We wanted to give a nod to them from a genre standpoint and show them taking us down a few pegs on Cheap Seats which is always fun, when you can be made fun of by the masters. They were so great through the process too. And we hope to work with them again, perhaps in a future Cheap Seats/MST collaboration.

Q (Vlad89): If you guys were riffing on movies, which B-movies or mainstream Hollywood movies would you make fun of?

A: Well anything where Juliette Lewis and Giovani Ribisi are playing retarded people, that’s a start. Starship Troopers writes itself from a MSTie stand point. Two of a Kind with John Travolta and Olivia Newton John, The Burning Bed (a Lifetime Channel Classic). The Bad News Bears go to Japan, The entire Jim Varney “Ernest” cannon, and of course The Passion Of The Christ.

Q (Ro-Matt): Why did the show go from 1 hour to only 30 minutes?

A: Unlike movies where every frame is a choice made by some idiot, sports is a lot harder to comment on for a whole hour. We were finding that the show would be ideal if it were 45 minutes long, and unless BBC America was going to pick it up, we were screwed, so we felt, as comedians, that we should honor an old comedic adage and leave audiences wanting more rather than out stay our welcome. Also, our staff is relatively small, from a writing perspective, so it would take us too long to finish up each episode if it was an hour long. The half hours work better for our set up.

Q (Detective Mitchell): Could you possibly lobby get it back in hour form?

A: Since ESPN really endorsed the move to the ½ hour format, and have programmed around our show accordingly we don’t think that they’ll go back to the hour long format. And even though there are die hard Cheapies out there who love their hour longs, we enjoy doing the show in its half hour form. In the end we feel like it’s better for the show. And plus, if we are able to get a DVD for each season going, it will allow us to provide extra game action material for that.

Q (Ro-Matt): Which episode has been your favorite to do so far?

A: Well, we loved doing the Creative Breaking Episode with Mike, Kevin and Bill, that was really fun. We also had a blast doing the “Best of Season 1” show, which was a fake Sportscentury for Cheap Seats, hosted by Chris Fowler and utilizing quotes and footage and music from other Sportscenturies. We were really proud of that show as was ESPN. They’re actually submitting it for a sports Emmy this year. And finally, we love the first Spelling Bee episode we did, 1997 with Rebecca Sealfon. The material, the kids, the comedy just wrote itself. We have to say, though, (and this isn’t just a shameless plug) some of our favorite stuff, is coming up in Season III. We are doing another Spelling Bee from 1995, a kid’s putt putt and kid’s double dutch tournament from the late 80’s, a Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest from 2004, and a Title IX show about women’s sports which includes footage from an old Bass N’ Gal tournament – really classic stuff.

Q (skyroniter): How large is your writing staff?

A: Our writing staff is fairly small. Our staff in NY, producers and AP’s contribute material as do about 4 freelance writers for each episode. We rotate a stable of about 10 freelance writers, picking about 4 for each episode. One writer, Eric Friedman, works on all the shows with us, he’s been a longtime collaborator of ours and good friend for 15 years. Matt Price a very talented sketch comedy writer, writes a bunch of the sketches we do. And we just started working with Jon Glazer, a great writer who spent a long time working on Late Night With Conan O’Brien, and Patrick Borelli, a very funny comedian and writer in NYC who help us with the studio bits that we do.

Q (skyroniter): Who are they?

A: A lot of the other writers are people we’ve worked with before, people who have written on shows like Mr. Show and Chris Rock, and the Family Guy, etc. By this point the writers know the show well. The two of us, also have a heavy hand in creating lots of material and polishing what’s there, putting it into our own voices.

Q (skyroniter): Who chooses the sporting events that you riff?

A: Our phenomenal staff in New York, Todd Pellegrino, Jason Weber, Ted Butler, Jory Hirsh, Omar Reid, Matt Belinke, and Zach Fox, all help select shows that will make great cheap seats fodder. We’re trying to do some mainstream sports this next season as well, showing that anything can be Cheap Seated. But if we’re up late one night watching the deuce and we see competitive juggling, you can bet that we’re on the horn the next day having the staff request that from the ESPN folks.

Q (skyroniter): Anyone or any event off limits?

A: Sadly yes, many events are off limits, regular season Major league Baseball, NBA, NFL. And perhaps most crippling, Battle of the Network Stars, oh, how we wish the ban on that show could be lifted. Gabe Kaplan pulling a groin is just priceless and we can’t even touch it. There’s enough Wide World of Sports stuff from the ‘70s to last us while though, thank god.

Q (DefenseMechanism): Since your show is obviously inspired by MST3K, did you worry about the MST3K crew's reaction to it, or did you work that out ahead of time?

A: We did worry about that, and that is why we were very up front about what the show was and why we really wanted MST fans and our fans to know that we had a reverence for what they did. We knew from the beginning that we weren’t inventing the wheel here, we were just doing our version of it. The fact that they came on our show was a gracious unspoken nod to us and we so appreciated it.

Q (GoldenTriangle): Were you wary of the obvious comparisons between Cheap Seats and MST3K, and what else have you been careful to do or not to do to avoid them?

A: If people say that our show is like MST3K meets Wide World of Sports, that makes us proud. We just don’t want people to think that we’re a bad MST3K rip off, which we’re sure there are those out there who feel that way. Our intention was to create a universe on our show that was unique and to follow the brand of comedy that we’ve been cultivating for years on stand up stages across the country and on other programs we’ve created to differentiate Cheap Seats and make it original. That’s all we can do.

Q (Gamera): Was the MST3K appearance a one-shot wonder, or are you considering another visit sometime in the future?

A: We’ve spoken to the guys about doing something else and the interest is there. We just have to find the right thing. Hopefully when we do, they’ll still be taking our phone calls.

Q (Blurryeye): Are you guys restricted from doing certain things on the show? Have there been any limitations put on your ideas by executives? Or do you feel that you have creative freedom and the show is just the way you want it?

A: Well, we’re not doing the show on Comedy Central and so there are some censorship issues we face. It’s forced us to get more creative and take things on the show, comedy wise to a more absurd place because many times we have to avoid really edgy material.

Q (Ellmist): Did Mike, Kevin and Bill contribute to the writing of the episode they were in?

A: Yes they did. We told them where we wanted them to appear, sent them the footage and they wrote great stuff that they ran by us and we of course loved it.

Q (gihdora): How did you guys get involved in the Oblongs?

A: We auditioned for the parts of Biff and Chip. They weren’t sure if they wanted brothers because it was animated, it’s a perfect situation where you could cast anyone you wanted, one person with a recognizable voice and have them do both parts, two women if you were so inclined. You’d never see them. But the casting director and the producers, the studio and the network really liked the actual brother and more specifically the twin brother energy we brought to the roles and that really helped us land the parts. It was such a fun show to work on and it brought us in contact with some genius people: Will Farrell, Pam Segall Adlon, Billy West, Becky Thyre, Laraine Newman…

Q (Van Hagar): First, it seems like at least one of you or one of your writers were a pretty big wrestling fan with reference to several wrestlers through the series. May I ask whom? You've also already mocked two wrestling shows, both of which from my experience are just the tip of the Iceberg of bad or even terrible wrestling. To be honest the Mid-South show was pretty good, but I digress. If you had a choice is there some kind of wrestling or wrestling promotion that you'd like to riff on?

A: We’d love to do a Wrestlemania, but one of the early ones, because the pageantry of it was so absurd, and the speeches and the outfits or lack there of, were so great. We both grew up on wrestling, we used to go to matches in St. Louis when we were kids. We knew all the moves and even back then, we were making fun of the wrestlers, like Koko B. Ware who’s signature move was the sunset flip into a small package.

Q (Van Hagar): On a slightly related note, has there every been anything you've regretted mocking so far, that you didn't think really deserve it or have been particularly harsh on someone or something that you thought may have went to far?

A: Yes, a couple of times we’ve felt like we were a little mean and that is not the intention of the show. We never want to attack a person, and in nearly 40 episodes, we’ve been really good about not doing that, but attacking their behavior, choices they make on camera. But even people we really have given it to, like Michael Floorwax from the Garvey show, we were quick to point out on the show that he’s now a successful morning DJ in Denver making more money than both of us combined so the joke’s on us. Garvey himself is fair game though, we feel like his smugness needs to be taken down a peg every chance we can do it.

Q (colemanfrancisfan): Do you plan on brining in more comedians for the show? If so, who? I love the guests on the show, like Slovin and Allen, Kerri Kenny, Sean Salisbury, etc. Please keep including parts for other comedians, they are really funny.

A: Thanks, yes, we plan on having many appearances in the coming season from friends of ours in the comedy community. People like Zach Galifianakis, Patton Oswalt, Brian Pohsain, Michael Ian Black, Lewis Black, are all going to appear in the first handful of episodes of the new season starting September 19th.

Q (MaryTRobot/Gemini Man): How long does it usually take to put together one episode? What are the processes involved?

A: It’s a big process that takes a while. We first pick the shows as a staff which involves our staff requesting bizarre things from the ESPN library and screening them, then our staff in NY cuts down the best ones to about 18 minutes of game action. Then we send the tapes out to the four freelance writers for their joke passes. Then we get all the joke passes in LA where we live, along with the tape of the footage, and we pick the best jokes and write a good amount of our own jokes and that makes up the meat of the show. We then collaborate with the studio bit writers to come up with the studio stuff and we fly to NY to shoot the studio stuff and record the jokes. If there are any out of studio sketches to shoot, we write those with Matt Price and tweak them with our staff and then shoot them with the actors wherever the actors are, NYC, LA, wherever. We then send those to NYC to be edited into the show. Our staff edits the show and sends us out a copy. We make our suggestions as well as any jokes we need to re shoot or any new jokes that spark us as we are watching the show with all the elements in place. Once all the re shoot material is added in and everyone is happy with the edit, it can be sound mixed and mastered and sent up to ESPN. We try and stay far enough ahead of the game that if we want to make changes, we can do so. We really want these shows to be the best that they can be so we take every step to put in necessary filters so that the best comedy comes through.

Q (Van Hagar): When was the decision made to add a studio audience? What's your reception to it so far?

A: The fan reaction was pretty negative towards the studio audience from our perspective and based on a number of factors, we will no longer be having a studio audience moving forward with Season 3.

Q: On behalf of the MSTies who asked these questions and for myself I'd like to thank you both for this interview.

A: Thank you so much for not discriminating against the fact that we are not robots. We are simply two Jews who are huge MST3K fans and the opportunity to participate in this online interview has been our pleasure completely.

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