A few weeks ago, we were saddened to hear that Austin’s long running, movie-skewering comedy institution, The Sinus Show, was calling it quits. But we were also incredibly happy to learn that Sinus alums John Erler and Joe Parsons would be carrying on the troupe’s proud, hilarious tradition with a brand new weekly show titled Master Pancake Theater.

We recently had the chance to sit down with John and Joe over seafood to talk about Master Pancake, words that rhyme with hippopotamus, and James Cameron’s bizarre hand fetish. It may help you to imagine that during the course of our conversation, John is eating a blackened catfish po’boy, and Joe is eating some kind of hearty seafood soup.

First of all, is there any kind of Star Magazine scandal story you can give us about the Sinus Show breakup?

Joe: (laughs) No, but it would be a lot sexier if there was.

John: Well, after six and a half years—like a marriage or a relationship or a band—it was just time for us to go our separate ways. But the truth is, and I haven’t told many people this, it had to do with Owen’s foot odor.

Not really. I mean, we had our ups and we had our downs but it just seemed like it was time to go in our separate directions.

What’s the new show going to be like?

Joe: I’d say it’ll be similar. But there’ll be some new things. I think we’re going to do more with the medium. More with the film aspect of it, which is something that Sinus never really did. There were never really any filmed sketches or bits or anything. There are a few things in Titanic that’ll happen during the movie that are videos or other gags.

It’s going to be a shortened version of Titanic, right?

John: Yes. It’s gonna be lean and mean. We took out all the scenes with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and we’re just focusing on the Old Lady and Bill Paxton dynamic.

Joe: We are?

John: Not really. But wouldn’t that be fun?

Joe: Yeah. I’d prefer that, actually.

John: We’re going to try to put together a video homage to James Cameron’s hand fetish. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but if you watch Titanic—or Terminator, or I assume Aliens or The Abyss—he has this hand fetish. You see it all throughout Titanic. Most of the love scenes involve close-ups of Jack and Rose’s hands. There’s the famous scene where he’s sketching Rose and there are close-ups of the sketching hands. And James Cameron actually substituted his hands for Leonardo DiCaprio’s during those scenes. I don’t know if it was because he didn’t like the way DiCaprio’s hands looked or….

Joe: Well, he was the one who could actually draw. He did the drawing.

John: So he was actually doing the drawing?

Joe: Yeah. I read that one in a book!

John: There’s also the famous scene where they’re making out in the jalopy, and the windows are getting fogged [and the hand comes up]. So hopefully we’ll get that together in time for the premiere, but if not then we’ll do it for the second week.

You’ve been making fun of movies for a really long time. Is it hard to sit down and just watch a movie for enjoyment?

John: Yep. Well, let me put it this way—I always love watching movies. I hardly ever get tired of watching movies. I can watch the same ones over and over again, but my mind is constantly trying to come up with jokes. Filling in the blanks, reading into the subtext and adding in the gay subtext, wherever possible.

Joe: It doesn’t really affect me. In a way, [Master Pancake is] kind of like work; so when I go watch a movie, I don’t have to turn off the snark-o-meter. But generally when I see a bad movie, something that NEEDS to be made fun of, I can’t resist doing it. But good movies, I can watch.

Are there any movies that are bulletproof? That you feel can’t be made fun of?

Joe: He doesn’t think so, but I take great issue with that. Could you do Citizen Kane?

John: Oh yeah. That’d be easy.

Joe: You can’t do it! It’s sacrilege!

John: Of course you can. Here’s the thing though— comedies are probably impossible. Especially if they’re good, they’re already making fun of themselves, and they have irony and a sense of humor. Even if it’s a bad comedy it’s probably not doable, because they’re trying to make jokes onscreen and it’d be hard to joke over jokes.

The best moments [to make fun of] are always the most serious moments. That’s when the laughs come. It’s like the in-school phenomenon: when you’re not supposed to laugh, that’s when the back of your brain says, “It’s time to laugh”.

But, for example in the Brady Bunch Christmas, there are parts that are supposed to be funny that you successfully joked over.

Joe: True. But I’d say those are closer to tragedy than they are to comedy.

John: Did you see the Brady Bunch show with Robert Reid?

Joe: Not Robert Reid – Barry Williams.

John: Right. What am I saying? The ghost of Robert Reid, I meant.

Joe: Now that would be a show!

I did. And I was wondering if he was angry at any of the jokes. Did he know what the show was about beforehand?

John: He knew the general outline of what we were doing. I heard through the grapevine that he may have been a little upset at some of the gay subtext we were adding to the Mr. Brady stuff.

Joe: Mr. Brady, in real life, was gay. And died of AIDS – which I didn’t know. I thought he died of cancer. But luckily we didn’t make any AIDS jokes. Or cancer jokes, for that matter.

John: No, we just made child molestation jokes. Windowless van jokes.

Joe: That sounds pretty bad on the surface, but they were tasteful jokes.

John: I felt a little bad, because Owen said that Tim had seen Barry maybe [covering his face] during a couple of the gay subtext jokes. And I felt terrible because I love the Brady Bunch. I loved Barry Williams and Robert Reid – those guys were my heroes. So I’d feel terrible if I offended anybody. So me and Owen went over to Barry during the break and we said, “listen, if we crossed any lines, we apologize. We just want this to be a really funny experience”. And he said, “hey, no big deal. You guys are comedians, so you do what you have to do, buddy”. It was hard to tell whether he was mad in the first place, and whether the apology smoothed things over.

But I think he had a good time. He’s been in that role for so long now that I think he’s perfectly willing and able to give the audience what they want. And they want to see him dish the dirt on his castmates. That was also the performance where he started rapping.

Joe: He rapped. He did a Greg Brady rap! We’re in the process of posting it on YouTube – you’ve gotta see it to believe it.

Was that the first time you’d had someone who’s in the movie actually there during the show?

John: No. For Xanadu we did a roller-skating party at Playland Skate Center, and we invited Michael Beck, who was the male lead. For that show, they were very political and tactful and decided to take him out to dinner during the actual showing of the movie, and to bring him back during the roller-skating event. So he never saw us make fun of the movie. Which is probably good because we make some remarks about his acting ability, and some somewhat personal jokes. Though Olivia Newton-John comes off untouched.

And the other one was Red Dawn. We’d been doing Red Dawn since the first or second Year of Sinus, and a year or so ago, this guy calls us up and says, “My name’s Radames Pera, and I play a Russian Soldier in Red Dawn. Do you think I could come to the show and talk a little bit?” But then as it turned out, Owen decided to take a vacation, and we got Radames Pera to be in the skit every night, playing the same Russian soldier that he played in the movie. He had such a good sense of humor about himself, and he was totally willing to experiment.

Joe: And his name is Radames, which is great.

John: It’s one of the few words that rhymes with hippopotamus. So yeah – three times we’ve had stars in attendance.

Joe: Hopefully with plans to do more in the future. I think that’s something we’re very excited about.

John: We’d like to get Mel Gibson to do Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

Joe: And Tina Turner. I think we’ve got it in the budget. And frankly, Mel could use the publicity.

John: If he doesn’t do Thunderdome, he might be available to do Schindler’s List with us. Did I just go there? Oh my god…

How do you guys write? Do you just sit in your living room together and watch the movies and write jokes down?

Joe: Pretty much, yeah. I’ve found that if you watch a film exactly eight times before the show, then it’s finished. Of course, the show morphs and evolves during the course of the run. But in rehearsal, if you watch the movie exactly eight times, you know it.

Do things change a lot from show to show?

Joe: Yeah, it’s flexible. Audiences react differently than we expect them to sometimes, and things like pacing will often change. And also, current events change.

John: Mel Gibson was a gift. When that happened, we were about halfway through the run of Point Break, and so every time there was a scene with someone driving erratically and the police were tailing him and they’d get on the walkie talkie and I’d say, “yeah, we got Mel Gibson in the car up ahead if us” – and everybody would go “wooooo!” It was easy, but effective.

Joe: And it happened with Snakes on a Plane. There’s a Mark Foley joke that found its way in there. But the funny thing is, whenever we go back and do one of the old shows, and you tell one of those jokes, everybody’s like, “Who’s Mark Foley?”

John: It’s an evolutionary process. It’s easy to make each other laugh in the confines of our lonely living room, but when you take it out in front of an audience, that’s the real test. And hopefully our egos are strong enough to know what works and what doesn’t, and to implement the changes.

So, are the new shows going to be a two-person deal?

Joe: So far, yeah. If we found the right third person it might stick. But right now we like the idea of having it flexible. It could be two, or three or four people. It could be a famous celebrity guest.

John: It’s sort of a long audition process. If we find somebody who works, we might end up going with them on a more permanent basis. But for the next few months, we’re just gonna see what’s out there. We’re going to invite people from the improv community and the standup community. We’re gonna let our sound guy do a couple gigs with us. We’re gonna let our projectionist do some gigs with us – and I’m actually only half-kidding with that. Sean’s a funny guy. He’s given us four or five golden jokes.

Obviously, you have to have a solid background knowledge of films to write this kind of stuff.

Joe: Sure. That’s’ the good thing – I feel like John and I have a pretty good database.

John: Yours is probably better than mine, though you’re too modest to say it.

Joe: I don’t know – at the very least, they’re complimentary.

John: Seeing movies helps.

Joe: Yes. I can’t stress that enough. And the audience doesn’t even have to get it necessarily. One of the things I loved most about Mystery Science Theater is that they’d make these references like, “hey, it’s the guy from Pet Hospital!” And you’d be like, “what? That’s so bizarre!” But it cracks you up anyway.

John: Yeah, or like “That reminds me of David Naughton’s face in Makin’ It!”

Joe: Exactly! And you’re like, “what?” They used to do this thing that I loved where they’d say, “Bobby…Timmy…Chief, MCLEOD!” And it was the funniest thing ever, even though I didn’t know until years later that there was a TV show called The Chief & McLeod. It was the way they delivered it. Even if jokes are way over the audience’s head, they’re still funny if they’re well-delivered.

John: Yeah. People are like sheep.

Joe: In that they’re good with mint sauce.

Obviously, Mystery Science is a huge inspiration to you guys.

Joe: Yeah. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that I was possibly the biggest fan of the show.

John: I loved it when I saw it, but I’ve only actually seen four or five complete episodes.

Joe: I think I’ve watched every Joel, and half the Mikes. It’s like the difference between David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar.

John: I’ve since come to have a respect for Mike Nelson though.

Joe: Well, he was a head writer on the show since the beginning. He is, by the way, on our dream list of people we’d like to guest star on our show. But that’d mean he’d have to come down for about a month and a half, so I don’t know.

John: He has an internet thing where you can download movie commentaries, and it’s just exploded in terms of the number of movies he’s done. Six months ago, he only had a few movies up there – Road House and Fifth Element and Star Trek V. But now he’s got dozens and dozens. And they’re good.

Have you ever thought of doing something like that? Downloadable shows?

Joe: We have. It’s a whole different animal though. It wouldn’t be hard, I don’t think.

John: We’d cast our hand on it, and it’d turn to gold like everything else we touch.

Does Master Pancake feel like starting new? Or does it feel like a continuation?

John: It’s both.

Joe: It’s kind of a new thing for me. Because I’m kind of getting a promotion.

John: Obviously it’s going to be very similar to Sinus, because we’re doing basically the same thing, and we have two members of the cast. But at the same time, some of the old folks are gone, so we’re not going to have their particular influences. And we’re adding new elements. So we’re excited to see how it turns out. And what a great choice for a first show – a maiden voyage!

Joe: I don’t know…I think it’s a little too ironic.

John: Yeah, I hope it’s not true to life. We’ll see!