Today we’d like to introduce you to Liz Barksdale, Danny Gallagher, and Albie Robles.
Hi Liz, Danny, and Albie, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Danny – Liz and I became friends when we were doing comedy together at the old Dallas Comedy House. We both love “Mystery Science Theater 3000” and went to UT-Austin when Master Pancake Theater started doing shows at the original Alamo Drafthouse. We wanted to write and perform a show where we make jokes during a cheesy movie just like Joel (Hodgson) and the bots. So, five years ago, we just decided to do it ourselves. Liz, her fiancé and my other good friend Kevin Beane and I started just watching bad movies together seeing if we could make jokes that worked, and thanks to the objectively awful “Jaws 4: The Revenge” and “Plan Nine from Outer Space,” we kept cracking each other up and figured if it makes us laugh, it’ll make an audience laugh.
We started workshopping a concept for a live, movie riffing show and realized we needed a hook besides just movie riffing since it’s basically become this new comedy artform. I had this idea in my back pocket for a book project at least a decade before with my old writing friend Kevin Reifler called “Mocky Horror,” in which we give the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” treatment to other famous movies. The book never got off the ground, but I still loved the idea, so Kevin said I could have it, and we became The Mocky Horror Picture Show.
We pitched the idea to Pocket Sandwich Theatre at the old Mockingbird location and Stomping Ground Comedy Theater and both let us do late-night shows. We had to use public domain movies since getting copyright movies cleared for a screening is a legal minefield but thankfully there are a lot of cheesy old movies to riff on, like “House on Haunted Hill” (which is actually an awesome William Castle movie with a lot of forced, cheap effects and Vincent F***ing Price), “Reefer Madness” (the movie we’ve done the most) and “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.”
Then the pandemic hit, which happened right when we started to gain some momentum and it wiped out a year’s worth of scheduled shows. So, we started riffing on movies on Twitch (twitch.tv/themockyhorrorpictureshow), which we do every Monday at 6 pm. We originally didn’t want to improvise riffs at all because we think the show works best when it’s written, but on Twitch, it’s a fun, freewheeling format, so we ignore most of the rules and formulas we use in our live shows, which take a couple of months to write for one movie.
When it was finally safe to go back to movie theaters, we wanted to get back to doing live shows and pitched our idea out of the blue to Barak Epstein, the owner of the Texas Theatre (thetexastheatre.com) in Oak Cliff. He gave us a shot starting with our “Reefer Madness” riff in the summer of 2022 in the new second-floor theater, and we had the biggest audience we’ve ever had for a show. Since they are able to get big-budget movies to riff on for us, we’ve written shows for the “E.T.” rip-off “Mac & Me” and the original “Super Mario Bros.” movie, which had an audience of 100 people. Our next show is on Thursday, June 29th where we’ll roast a super cheesy, low-budget remake of “Captain America” from 1999.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Danny – Absolutely not! The first year was learning how to write this type of show through trial and error, transcribing the whole movie word for word, writing over 500 or so jokes for the thing, marketing and advertising (with some help from Kelly Kitchens PR at kellykitchenspr.com) and rehearsing it.
The writing was the first obstacle. It’s an insane amount of work for a comedy show, and it took a while to develop a method so we can produce a full script to read from during a show. Stuff like timing and voice are crucial to a joke. You have to time it so you’re not talking over any dialogue as little as possible. Sometimes you have to watch the movie a minute at a time to come up with jokes and make sure they fit in the spaces provided. We’ve got it down, so we can finish a new movie in around two or three months.
I had the bright idea of parodying “Rocky Horror” in our promotions and logo for our first show. So, I used the same bleeding font and a pair of red lips from the opening on our poster and social media but with a tongue sticking out over a poster of the movie on which we were riffing. Then on opening night, we had a packed house that was really responsive and loved the show, but a couple of them showed up in “Rocky Horror” costumes. I went over and introduced myself and explained the show we were doing. We realized that we needed to differentiate ourselves from “Rocky Horror” if we wanted to call ourselves The Mocky Horror Picture Show because the title is just too catchy and perfect for what we do. Liz remembered that Master Pancake’s old logo was that famous black kite in the eyes with the giant yellow eyes on it when they called themselves Mister Sinus Theater 3000 so she suggested finding another toy we could use as our mascot. I came across a usable toy windup robot and added a giant tongue sticking out of its mouth. So, in a very loose way, it’s a tribute to “Rocky Horror,” “MST3k” and Mister Sinus and our own mascot that we’ve used ever since as our Alfred E. Neuman that we can dress up depending on the movie we’re roasting.
LIZ – Before we started working with the Texas Theatre, we were limited to public-domain films so that was a challenge. People would suggest different films we could riff on, but mostly those weren’t doable. Working at a movie theater helps us get permission to screen more films, so that’s been amazing.
Our ticket page for our next show (https://thetexastheatre.com/film/mocky-horror-picture-show-riffs-captain-america-1990-mocky-horror-picture-shows-riffs-captain-america-1990/) and the Texas Theatre’s ticket page (https://www.prekindle.com/events/thetexastheatre)
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
Danny – The Mocky Horror Picture Show is a live, movie-mocking comedy that runs at The Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff. We (Liz Barksdale, Danny Gallagher, and Albie Robles) make fun of a movie with a prepared script in the theater in front of a live audience. We also put lines and instructions on the screen so the audience can yell jokes that we’ve written for them and throw or use props to make fun of the movie with us. It’s a very fun show that is starting to attract an audience at the Texas Theatre and elsewhere. There’s a lot of different types of comedy in the show from satirical to just straight-up silly, which makes it fun for us. We love trying to link references to movies, shows, songs, or video games into movies. Recently, we’ve started filming sketches for openings like the one we did for our big “Super Mario Bros.” show
Mocky Horror is something we built, Liz and I; we also had help developing and growing the show from Kevin Beane, Bryan Hickey, Nicholas Harris, and Albie Robles. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since I first saw the “Pod People” episode of “MST3K,” but for a long time, I was either told I couldn’t do it logistically or even comedically. The show came about during a time in my life when I felt like a total failure as a writer and comic. It took a while to get through that, but once I did, it was actually freeing because I didn’t have to ask for permission to create something I wanted to try. It’s how the whole thing got built because failing is part of building something, and there were moments and shows that would’ve stopped us in our tracks if we had not gone after at it on our own. We didn’t have to prove anything to anyone except ourselves. It’s something I’m very proud of and has taken us and myself to places I never thought I could go.
There isn’t any show like this in Dallas that does these kinds of shows regularly like us. We’re very dedicated to the writing that goes into our shows. We’ve developed a process for creating and performing a show, and it just gets better with time. It takes a lot of time and effort to write a movie riff script, and it’s a lot of fun to do as a group since Liz and Albie are so funny and just really great friends to have. There’s also a lot of little, boring things that have to be done around that to create a show like this and bring in an audience, but the majority of it is so fun that we don’t notice it.
LIZ – When we starting out, I got advice from a friend who did a similar show called Wondercrust Movie Watchers club. She said that any show with movie riffing wasn’t going to be completely original because the format was invented by MST3K.
That was good advice, but I think we’ve found our own voice and put on a unique show.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
Danny – We’d definitely like to do more shows, which can happen when we have enough new scripts for movies and the time and audience big enough to do them. Our big goal is to build the biggest audience we can so we can do movies in the main theater on the first floor of the Texas Theatre. Hell, we’d do one at The Majestic or the American Airlines Center if they’d let us. We’d have to figure out how to buy all those props for the audience, but we’re pretty resourceful as a group. We’d love to do the show on TV with a live audience so people can participate at home on a channel like Shudder or hell even Netflix, that have a lot of those types of cheesy movies that are right in our wheelhouse.
Contact Info:
- Website: mockyhorror.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/themockyhorrorpictureshow
- Facebook: facebook.com/TheMockyHorrorPictureShow/
- Twitter: twitter.com/mockyshow
- Other: bit.ly/mockyhorrornewsletter
- Ticket page: https://www.prekindle.com/
event/42774-mocky-horror- picture-show-riffs-captain- america-1990-dallas
Image Credits
Mocky Horror Picture Show
