MST3k---a bunch of damn hecklers?

There are a few ironies about Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was about a guy being tortured by being forced to watch bad movies, and, in order to produce the show, he was forced to watch those very movies over and over.

But there's also the fact that the people involved in the show were stand-up comics. I think one of them was a local theater guy, but the rest were comedians.

And yet they were acting basically as hecklers. You know how those people hate being heckled themselves.

The first thing I posted on this blog was about Jamie Kennedy, a stand up comic who was incredibly bad when he starred in Son of the Mask. I mean incredibly bad. If you haven't seen it, he was far worse than you're imagining. But he was so pained by criticism that he made a movie called Heckler in which he and other comedians express the depth of their outrage that people don't always enjoy their work. This included people talking back to them in clubs, movie critics, bloggers and pretty much anyone else who doesn't like their work and says so in any context.

"Don't you want me to improve?" Kennedy kept asking, sulking his way through the movie. He kept saying he wanted constructive criticism, like he wanted acting and comedy advice from critics and hecklers.

He confronted a couple of cheerful hecklers from a club. They didn't back down. Kennedy asked one what he did for a living. He was a babysitter.

Kennedy crudely suggested he listen to a baby's excretory functions instead (an example of his brilliant comedy).

It'd be better than listening to you, the babysitter said without missing a beat.

Of course, I like Mystery Science Theater 3000. A lot of people who worked on the movies they attack like them, although some have been disturbed by personal attacks made against them on the show. But after reading message board for MST3K fans, I'm beginning to have my doubts. They seemed like jerks. They seemed to imagine that the show was really sticking it to those low budget filmmakers, but I can't figure out why they want to. They didn't seem like the brightest people, one of them explaining at length why a racist "joke" wasn't racist.