did a lot of meddling. What happened?
Skittish Gramercy executives cut and rewrote some riffs, which may explain why — as many MSTies noticed — the movie has fewer of the really obscure references that make the TV series so delightful. One example: When “Scrotor” the bug-eyed monster first appears, the original riff was “Bootsy Collins!” This was changed in the movie to “Leona Helmsley!” reportedly because the Gramercy executives had never heard of Bootsy Collins. (The irony of a bunch of white guys from Minnesota trying to explain Bootsy Collins to supposedly hip L.A. movie executives did not go unnoticed by BBI.) The same nervousness about the movie on the part of Gramercy executives led to the film being subjected to the appalling “focus group” process (riotously parodied in a host segment of episode 704- THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN; at the second convention Jim Mallon said those host segments were very much like the real thing, and were BBI’s way of expressing their anger at the infuriating process). For reasons BBI d
