When news broke in January that Austin's preeminent team of professional movie hecklers, The Sinus Show, had called it quits, it was a dark day for fans of live comedy juxtaposed with bad movies. Fortunately, Sinus veteran John Erler and Sinus pinch hitter Joe Parsons are carrying the torch of hilaritude with Master Pancake Theater.

Since we first talked to them in February, they've been busy lambasting such gems as Titanic and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Now they're giving the Pancake treatment to Pretty Woman--the foremost feel-good prostitution romp of our time--and they're bringing noted funnylady and former Austinite Martha Kelly on board as this month's "guest heckler."

We recently called John, Joe and Martha during an apocalyptic thunderstorm (they assured us they were "snuggled up together") to talk a little about gender constructs, C + C Music Factory, and the transformative power of Julia Roberts.

So The Sinus Show has tackled both Crossroads and Showgirls. Now, Master Pancake Theater is taking on Pretty Woman. Have you guys been auditing Women's Studies classes?

John: (laughs) We've been studying Showgirls in Female Studies...We here at Sinus/Master Pancake have always fancied ourselves proto-feminists. But after six and a half years of not having any women on stage with us, we decided to put our money where our mouth was and break through that glass ceiling. So we decided to bring on an actual woman, in the form of Martha Kelley, and tackle a woman's movie. And what more womanly movie is there, I think, than Pretty Woman? Besides, you know, Crossroads and Showgirls.

How did Master Pancake and Martha Kelley decide to collaborate?

John: Well, Martha and I go way back. Martha was the Funniest Person in Austin back in 2000, and I was doing standup at that point, and that's kind of how our paths crossed. We were in standup circles together--I was doing this really lame Skeletor [show] ...

Martha: It was not lame, it was really funny, and seeing John do that made me go and see Mr. Sinus and then I became a hardcore fan.

Martha, how is it being back in Austin?

Martha: It's weird to be back. It's fun to be with Joe and John. I used to drink a lot here, so that's a weird feeling, but I never got drunk with them, so that's fun.

John: Martha's a brave person.

Are you also a lover of bad movies? Have you been doing any special preparations to get ready for Master Pancake?

Martha: I do like bad movies. I used to like to smoke pot and watch bad movies. Especially Showgirls, but I was back in California by the time they did Showgirls--I wish I'd seen it. I don't know if there's been any special preparations...We've been practicing getting along for short spurts, and then fighting, and then getting along, and that's my favorite part of the practice.

Like being in a band.

Yeah, I imagine. I actually have never been in a band, but that's what I thought it would be like when I dreamt about it. Fighting.

And since you're bringing that rare female voice to the table, the Alamo Drafthouse website indicates that this performance will be "dismantling the gender barrier." Do you feel pressured? Have you been reading Our Bodies, Ourselves?

Martha: What does the website say? It's dismantling what?

The gender barrier.

John: I'm afraid I've gotta take the blame for that. I wrote this very sort of pseudo-intellectual feminist copy for the website, and um...basically what I meant was, we got a woman to make jokes with us. Plus we're going to be quoting from Lacan extensively.

Joe: I have to admit, it's extremely intimidating and we're certainly not paying her as much as a male counterpart would make.

So, dismantling gender barriers, just not breaking through the glass ceiling!

Joe: Don't be ridiculous!

John: When we say dismantling the gender barrier, we mean that we hired Martha, a woman comic. It also means that I'm going to be getting dressed up in women's clothing.

Sounds like Master Pancake is staying pretty faithful to the Sinus tradition.

John: Indeed. And we're hoping that Martha is going to dress as a man, and we're pretty sure that she is, so we're going to cross over the gender barrier in both directions.

Are you incorporating more of your own original footage into the films?

John: We're working on it. It's something we've certainly wanted to do for a long time. Whether or not it gets done is another question. But if not this Friday, then the following Friday, for sure. One thing we've been doing that's kinda fun and new, like for Thunderdome and Titanic, is incorporating new music into the soundtracks, sort of sneaking it in on the sly and surprising people to very good effect. Like with Titanic, when the camera cuts to a scene down in the bowels of the ship in the boiler room, we start playing C & C Music Factory's "Everybody Dance Now" and for some reason it's just hysterically funny, that kind of juxtaposition. Because, you know, it takes place in the early 20th century.

So you're giving it the Baz Luhrman treatment.

John: Exactly! And we'd like to play "The Sunscreen Song" as much as possible during Pretty Woman, but we haven't found a place for it yet. And we did a funny thing in Thunderdome with The Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps" at a very strange moment, which I'm not gonna go into, but it was pretty funny.

If you each had to pick, what would be your favorite movie you've made fun of?

Joe: Tough call. Very tough call. Either Showgirls or Titanic, I'd say.

John: That's so hard. I'd say top three classics would be Crossroads, Top Gun, and gosh, I loved Xanadu. My favorite one that probably very few people saw was Mac and Me.

Martha: I saw that one.

John: Also, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park was a favorite one that probably few peeople saw.

Gene Simmons, a brilliant franchiser.

John: You said it.

Any thoughts on what elements a movie must have in order to qualify as a guilty pleasure?

Joe: Yeah. Earth, Air, but not Fire...I would say it absolutely would be a movie that we are fans of. Even though we make fun of movies that we watch, it just simply doesn't work if we don't like it. I think that the jokes you make as a fan of a certain movie just end up being of a more benevolent manner.

John: I think the best movies for our purposes are ones that feature Hector Elizondo as a really a very underrated sexy guy. He really is smolderingly hot in this [Pretty Woman] performance. I don't know how recently you've seen Pretty Woman, but my God, that man deserves an Oscar.

Do you have any exciting celebrity guests on the radar?

John: Well, we have Martha Kelly, which is no surprise anymore...

Martha: No one exciting.

John: And you might have heard we had everybody's favorite celebrity transient transvestite, Leslie, for Titanic.

Joe: In the future, we're not really sure in what capacity, but we're planning to use Austin comedic legend Les McGeehee. Ben Bartley, my old comedy partner. And we're hoping to get a few people like Mike Nelson and Mary Jo Pehl, both from Mystery Science Theater.

Final question: Why do so many hookers have hearts of gold?

John: Because they feel so guilty after committing such sinful acts that they have to compensate by being really nice.

Joe: I'd say because at that level of society, I think you're only left with the capacity for good. The only place to go is up.

Martha: I've known some ladies of the night, and very few of them actually have good hearts. I'm sorry to say that, as a feminist, but a lot of them are just dirty whores.

But everyone thinks Pretty Woman is just adorable.

Martha: It is adorable. I really do love Julia Roberts, but in real life, she would be a dirty whore.

Joe: It does say in the movie that she does absolutely every act imaginable.

Martha: She does the Hot Carl.

John: She does the Cleveland Steamer.

Joe: She does the donkey punch.

Martha: She does the Philadelphia Hot Plate.

Joe: And she French-kisses!

John: When we first approached this movie, Martha and I talked about it--I went to a really liberal, liberal arts college in the late 80s when this movie came out, and everybody I knew was incensed about it, not only because it was perpetuating the Cinderalla story--that if you just find a man, you'll be fine--but it was glamorizing prostitution and being a hooker and combining that with this sort of retrograde Cinderella myth. But then after watching it a few times as we've done over the past few days, we're just totally endeared by Julia Roberts in this movie, kind of completely won over by her.

Even though she does sort of mid-level cheesy stuff now, this was really an amazing performance by her back then, and you can see why it was so popular because of, and despite all the anti-feminist trappings in the movie.

So, the key to being an endearing hooker is putting on an amazing performance?

Martha: Exactly.

John: You make it sound so hollow. But yes.

Master Pancake Theater: PRETTY WOMAN
Alamo Drafthouse Downtown
Fridays in May
[Tickets]