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Red Letter Media, LLC is an American film and video production company operated by independent filmmakers Mike Stoklasa, Jay Bauman, and Rich Evans. It was formed by Stoklasa in 2004 while he was living in Scottsdale, Arizona, but has long been based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The company and its members have produced a number of low-budget productions including Oranges: Revenge of the Eggplant, Feeding Frenzy, The Recovered, and Space Cop.
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| Company type | Private | |||||||||
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| Industry | Film | |||||||||
| Founded |
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| Founder | Mike Stoklasa | |||||||||
| Headquarters | , U.S. | |||||||||
Area served | Worldwide | |||||||||
Key people |
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| Products |
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| Owner | Mike Stoklasa | |||||||||
YouTube information | ||||||||||
| Channel | ||||||||||
| Years active | 2007–present | |||||||||
| Genres |
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| Subscribers | 1.5 million[1] | |||||||||
| Total views | 1.10 billion[1] | |||||||||
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Last updated: March 2024 | ||||||||||
| Website | www | |||||||||
| Footnotes / references [2] | ||||||||||
The company attracted significant attention in 2009 through Stoklasa's 70-minute Mr Plinkett Review video essay review of the 1999 film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Red Letter Media have produced a number of other web series, including movie and TV reviews (Half in the Bag, Best of the Worst, and re:View), satirical fandom parodies (The Nerd Crew), and video game-based web series (Game Station 2.0, Previously Recorded).
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Mr. Plinkett's Reviews (2008–2020)
Stoklasa created his first video review for Star Trek Generations after watching the film again in 2008. Stoklasa believed his own voice sounded "too boring" for the review and adopted the persona of Harry S. Plinkett, a character he had previously used in several short films (originally portrayed by Rich Evans).[3] Plinkett has been described as "cranky", a "schizophrenic", and "psychotic"[4][5] with a voice that has been called "a cross between Dan Aykroyd in The Blues Brothers and The Silence of the Lambs' Buffalo Bill".[4][6]
In an interview, Stoklasa stated that in creating a review, he and a friend would watch the film only once while taking notes, frequently pausing the film to take a drink and discuss scenes. After that, he would write a 20–30 page script for it in the Plinkett character, voice it, and edit it together along with some improvisations.[7]
The Star Trek Generations Plinkett review was met with many favorable comments, inspiring Stoklasa to review the other three Star Trek: The Next Generation films—First Contact (1996), Insurrection (1998), and Nemesis (2002).[3] When creating his review for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Stoklasa cited his dislike of the franchise's prequel trilogy, in particular how it influenced a trend of films characterized by CGI spectacle in lieu of the live-action stunts and meticulously crafted sets that characterized films of earlier decades.[4]
Despite a long run-time of 70 minutes, Stoklasa's review of The Phantom Menace went viral, receiving over a million views in the first four months of its release[3] and being shared on social media by Simon Pegg and Damon Lindelof.[6] The review took Stoklasa between seven and ten days to complete.[8] Red Letter Media has also released an audio commentary track done in the Plinkett character for Star Wars, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.[9]
Subsequent Plinkett reviews have covered the James Cameron films Avatar[10] and Titanic, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones,[11] Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith,[12] Baby's Day Out,[13] Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,[14] J. J. Abrams' Star Trek,[15] Paul Feig's Ghostbusters (2016),[16] Star Wars: The Force Awakens,[17] Star Wars: The Last Jedi,[18] and the first season of Star Trek: Picard.[19]
Half in the Bag (2011–present)
Half in the Bag is a movie and TV review series in which Stoklasa and Bauman review films in a more traditional format, while being framed by an overarching plot where Stoklasa and Bauman play VCR repairmen who discuss movies while finding ways of avoiding their scheduled repair work. The show often features the character of Mr. Plinkett being portrayed by Rich Evans. Stoklasa has described it as a cross between Siskel and Ebert and a 1980s sitcom.[citation needed]
The series premiered on March 12, 2011, with a review of Drive Angry and The Adjustment Bureau.[20]
Best of the Worst (2013–present)
Best of the Worst is a comedic series focused on B-movies. Episodes typically feature a panel of four recapping and analyzing three cult films and subsequently voting on which of the three is the "Best of the Worst", generally defined as most entertaining that night for any reason, while viewing material that is deemed to be insulting, offensive, or especially poor is sometimes destroyed. Additionally, certain episodes feature home media instructional tapes and informercials in lieu of B-movies.
The series includes a number of sub-series based around specific gimmicks used to select videos to watch, which includes "Wheel of the Worst", "Plinketto", and "Black Spine Edition" (tapes lacking any identifying information as to content), as well as their "Spotlight" series, in which the panel has an in-depth discussion on a single, specific B-movie that they find noteworthy.
Regular panelists include Stoklasa, Bauman, Evans, Jack Packard, Josh Davis, and Tim Higgins, and has featured celebrity guests such as Macaulay Culkin, Jack Quaid, and Patton Oswalt. The series premiered January 23, 2013, featuring Russian Terminator, Ninja Vengeance, and Never Too Young To Die.[21]
re:View (2016–present)
re:View is a review series with a more stripped down format where two participants will examine a typically personally important film or television series in detail, offering thoughts and insight on their productions, structure, and motifs. Films chosen for this feature are often cult classics such as Pink Flamingos, Freddy Got Fingered and Martin, or well renowned genre-defining films like The Thing and Ghostbusters, while television series' featured have included Twin Peaks and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The series premiered 24 May, 2016, with an episode on Tremors.[22]
The Nerd Crew: A Pop Culture Podcast (2017–present)
The Nerd Crew is a parody series that features Stoklasa, Bauman, and Evans playing self-described "manchildren" demonstrating excessive enthusiasm for popular media properties such as Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where it is frequently made clear that such enthusiasm is performative due to having either received payment to promote the properties or in the hopes of receiving future preferential treatment from the owners of said properties. The videos produced as part of this series have been identified as parodying the content created by groups such as Screen Junkies and Collider.[23]
The series premiered January 5, 2017.[24]
Previously Recorded (2014–2018)
Previously Recorded was a video game oriented channel run by Rich Evans and frequent Red Letter Media collaborator Jack Packard. The channel was Red Letter Media's second attempt at producing gaming content after Game Station 2.0 (2012). The channel premiered July 18, 2014, with a discussion on Risk of Rain[25] and ended with a livestream in July 2018.[26]
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Since 2012, Red Letter Media has produced commentary tracks for various films, releasing them on Bandcamp.[27] These began with three commentary tracks by Stoklasa as Mr. Plinkett, but the company has since released tracks by Stoklasa, Bauman, and Evans as themselves.
In early 2023 Red Letter Media auctioned off a graded VHS copy of the "infamously bad" 1987 film Nukie for charity, with the auction being inspired by reports that a VHS copy of Back to the Future had previously sold for $75,000.[28] Alongside the auction, the group released a video documenting the practice of grading previously otherwise disposable media items, such as VHS tapes, to create a form of desired rarity. The company explained that they had collected over 100 copies of the film over the previous decade after fans began mailing them copies of the film, and had destroyed all of them, bar the one they had sent off for grading, via a woodchipper to increase the remaining tape's rarity.[29] The release of the video saw some social media controversy over the perceived ethics regarding the destruction of the other tapes to raise the price of the auction.[30][31][32]
The auction closed at $80,600 and was believed to have set a record for the most expensive VHS tape sold of all time.[33] Proceeds from the auction were donated to the Wisconsin Humane Society and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, with the donation to the Wisconsin Humane Society being the largest donation via a community fundraiser in the organization's history.[34]
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Red Letter Media has received positive reception and has been called "the reigning champ of online review culture".[35] Chicago-based newspaper Daily Herald praised the company for their "wonderful" videos, identifying Best of the Worst as their most entertaining series.[36]
Film critic Roger Ebert spoke positively about Red Letter Media prior to his death; upon viewing Mr. Plinkett's Revenge of the Sith review, Ebert posted it on his website, stating, "I was pretty much sure I didn’t have it with me to endure another review of this one. Mr. Plinkett demonstrates to me that I was mistaken."[37]
In an interview with Esquire, comedian Patton Oswalt noted that the Mr. Plinkett reviews are an example of "amazing film scholarship" on the Star Wars prequels that demonstrate how much of the Star Wars universe is squandered by them.[38] The Daily Telegraph called the reviews "legendary" and described them as being more popular than the actual films.[39]
Literary and cultural critic Benjamin Kirbach argues that Plinkett enacts a kind of détournement by recontextualizing images that would otherwise serve as Star Wars marketing material (such as behind-the-scenes footage and interviews), and that Stoklasa uses this tactic to construct a subversive narrative that frames George Lucas as "a lazy, out-of-touch, and thoroughly unchallenged filmmaker".[40]
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Feature films
- Gorilla Interrupted (2003)
- Oranges: Revenge of the Eggplant (2004)
- The Recovered (2008)
- Feeding Frenzy (2010)
- How Not to Make a Movie (2013)
- Doc of the Dead (2014) (segments)
- Space Cop (2016)
Web series
Ongoing
- Half in the Bag (2011–present)
- Best of the Worst (2013–present)
- re:View (2016–present)
- ...Talk About (2018–present)
- The Nerd Crew: A Pop Culture Podcast (2017–present)
Discontinued
- Produce Isle (c. 2006–2007)
- The Grabowskis (2007–2008)
- Mr. Plinkett Reviews (2008–2020)
- The Dude Bros (2009)
- Game Station 2.0 (2012)
- Quick Cuts (2013–2014)
- Previously Recorded (2014–2018)
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