Note: This is currently a Work In Progress.
Greetings internet traveler! My name is Jordan Garren, better known around these parts as the (more or less) founding member of The Riff Bros.! Whether you stumbled onto this page accidentally, or are one of the few dozen folks that makes up our small (but very dedicated) cult following, please feel free to pull up a seat as I tell the story of how two guys, a microphone, and a stack of bad movies resulted in a fun project that brought a group of friends closer together, and nearly resulted in copyright litigation against us! [record scratch] "You may be wondering: How did we end up here?!"
IT ALL BEGAN ON THE SATELLITE OF LOVE
To find out why (and how) we put together a team of (sometimes inebriated) riffers, let's go back to December 3, 1993 where I stumbled across a bizarre program on PBS that would change my life forever: THE MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER HOUR. Featuring the first half of MST3K's brilliant roast of Juan Piquer Simon's POD PEOPLE, this truncated airing of the third-season episode absolutely delighted me and was my first introduction to the world of "film riffing" (a term coined by MST3K creator Joel Hodgson).
Sadly I never managed to catch the second half of Pod People, and the show mostly went forgotten by yours truly until Rhino Home Video picked up the rights in 1996. An avid movie collector with over a thousand VHS tapes on display in my bedroom, I spent a lot of time (and allowance money) at the Suncoast Motion Picture Company at my local mall which is where I discovered and purchased the POD PEOPLE episode I had seen several years prior! It was like being reunited with a long lost friend! This was the first time I saw a FULL episode of the show, and I was instantly hooked! After that, I began collecting a few of the other episodes on tape, and rented the theatrical film (which featured a hilariously scathing commentary of THIS ISLAND EARTH)!
But my interest in MST3K eventually began to wane, because of my limited access to the show. VHS copies were sparse (out of the twenty-two released, I think I only managed to track down five or six of them) and I didn't have access to Comedy Central or the internet (yet). But a few years later (sometime in 1998) something wondrous happened: I was at my buddy Bobby's house just hanging out and channel-surfing, when suddenly he passed by something strikingly familiar on the Sci-Fi Channel! I shouted "Wait! Go back!" And when he did, I was elated to see the trio of familiar silhouettes lobbing jokes at a godawful low-budget werewolf movie! (The aptly titled WEREWOLF, aka ARIZONA WEREWOLF.)
This was my first introduction to the Mike Nelson era of MST3K, and once again I was hooked. I began setting my VCR to record the episodes ("keep circulating the tapes!") and soon I had a bunch of MST3K on hand that I watched repeatedly, and brought with me every time we had a sleepover at someone's house. While it didn't quite make converts of my high school friends, I will say that some did appreciate the show and found themselves quoting from their favorite episodes from time to time!
Sadly in 1999, Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy) came under new leadership and decided to cut the Best Brains crew loose, and Mystery Science Theater 3000 would once again go into forced hibernation. Thankfully, the show was syndicated for a while, plus Rhino Home Video began releasing boxed sets of episodes with awesomely garish packaging, so the show never truly went away! And honestly I wasn't too worried, because part of me believed.... nay, KNEW, that Mystery Science Theater 3000 would return. Much like the phoenix of legend, it would just rise again from the ashes!
MST3K had a huge impact on my life: It molded my sense of humor, and helped me get through a lot of tough times. (Those awkward teenage years were rough!) I can't speak for the rest of my Riff Brothers in arms about how it affected them, but I'm sure it holds an equally important place in their collective hearts. Perhaps one day I can actually get them to put into their own words what MST3K truly means to them and share it here on our official blog!
VIDEO STORE WISHES & COMIC BOOK DREAMS
In 2001, I moved from Scranton, PA to Susquehanna, PA with my parents, mostly because I had nowhere else to go. I couldn't afford another year of college, and my siblings and parents weren't exactly on speaking terms, so I said "screw it, I'll just live in your basement until I get on my feet. Then I'll save up some money and go back to school." (Spoiler: I never went back to school and I lived with my folks for another two decades.) I initially found work at a local video store called Video King, a small, dying chain that was located in the Southern Tier of New York, and portions of the Northeast corner of Pennsylvania.
Through a series of unfortunate events, I was terminated from my crappy little job that I loved, but as luck would have it, the franchise had different owners! So after two years of working for minimum wage ($5.65 at the time if memory serves), I went and worked at a different Video King, for the brother of the man that canned me! And he paid me a higher wage! I got along with James Wilson quite a bit, and I enjoyed working for him. After a little over a year, I was (un)officially running the joint: Ordering in stock, hiring & firing people, and spending way too much time at the store! This era is where I would meet two of my best friends and eventual Riff Bros. - Chris Morelli and Steven Oldford!
Chris came in often and we'd just shoot the shit about movies and video games, and eventually he suggested we hang out. This was awesome, because even though I was rapidly becoming a fixture of the town ("the Video King guy!") I was plenty lonely and didn't actually have any friends. Chris would eventually steal me away from my beloved video store position to make more money as an anxiety-riddled grocery store manager, but it's a good thing he did because Video King would end up failing after the double-whammy of two floods, coupled with the rise of NetFlix and other streaming services!
Steve would arrive a bit later in my life, with a job application in hand. (Actually his wife dropped it off and, as I would later learn, was the one who filled it out!) Freshly arrived from Florida, Steve needed work and luckily we were looking for a few employees! Upon perusing his application I glanced at the section that had prospective employees list some of their favorite films. I paused a moment when I saw that GMK: GIANT MONSTERS ALL OUT ATTACK was listed - I couldn't pass up the opportunity to work with a fellow Godzilla fan, so I made sure he was immediately hired! We became fast friends, and now, roughly twenty years later, he has returned the favor by hiring me for a job!
Ryan Fuerstenberg strolled into our lives when Charging Star Comics (R.I.P.) opened up in Conklin, NY in the early 2000s (2004 maybe?). Chris discovered the shop and eventually started bringing me along, and soon we were regulars. Most weekends we hung out with Ryan in the huge back room of the shop - playing video games, having movie marathons, and just hanging out and talking about nerdy stuff! During our prolonged visits we also met and became friends with Greg Doolittle, a
As far as business locations go, it wasn't super ideal. Yeah it had plenty of space and parking, was nestled next to a liquor store, and across from a mom & pop grocery store that had fantastic wings, but there wasn't much in the way of foot traffic. Still that place was awesome! We
THE RISE OF RIFFTRAX
CAN WE DO IT?! YES WE CAN!
THE RISE AND FALL
EPILOGUE
Growing up on a rather (un)healthy diet of bad movies and Mystery Science Theater 3000, it was inevitable that the founding members of the Riff Bros, Jordan Garren and Chris Morelli, would eventually try their hand at verbally eviscerating a film in front of a microphone. That event would come to pass in the year of our Lord 2010.
One day, out of the blue, I got my paws on some recording and editing programs, bought a brand new mic, and sat down to watch "Prophecy" (the 1979 mutant-melty-bear eco-horror epic) and adlib a commentary with Chris, just to see if we could do it. The rest as they say (and who the Hell are "they" anyway? Seriously, inquiring minds want to know!) is history.
Many thanks to Joel Hodgson, Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, and Mary Jo Pehl (as well as Weird Al Yankovic and Neil Patrick Harris) for poking fun at, and satirizing, feature films (and educational shorts). Without you, the Riff Bros. would truly not exist, and the world as a whole, would just be a darker place.
Also big thanks to all our friends that actually want us to continue, and have enjoyed our work thus far. And an even bigger thanks to our growing roster of "honorary Riff Bros." You guys make it all the more fun to sit and suffer through some of these movies.
