Interesting story. I recently bought a DVD of the terrible Joe Don Baker movie "Mitchell" off of eBay. I'm sure you are as surprised as I was to learn that somebody even bothered to master Mitchell into DVD format (the company that did so, Intercoastal Studios, seems to specialize in releasing crappy movies on DVD.) "Master" isn't the right word either; it's not like you could expect a fully restored print, audio commentaries and supplementary features for a goddamn 1973 Joe Don Baker movie. But anyway, I owe a perverse amount of comic allegiance to the film, stemming from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version. So I eagerly bid and received.

Intercoastal Studios is obviously a seat-of-their-pants organization, but I applaud their pluck in offering films that might rightly be otherwise forgotten. Take a look at the DVD's cover:

First of all, that ain't a headshot of Joe Don Baker from Mitchell. Perhaps that's a Joe Don from the Eischied days? I don't know. You can't see it very well in this scan, but that's a frosty glass o' beer to Joe Don's right... Mitchell's generic beverage of choice. The bullet stand-in for the "i" is a nice dramatic touch, and the tagline seems to sum up Mitchell's crappy career a little better than the official movie poster's "Brute force with a badge." (The DVD's back has more inspiring copy lines, and a twotoned pic of Joe Don in yet another movie that isn't Mitchell.)

But take a look at the little pictures of Mitch's supporting cast. Those are my screengrabs. Those are stills from my VHS copy of MST3K's Mitchell that I used in my Mitchell: the Card Game, as filtered through my VCR, my old PowerMac 7600, and my illegal copy of PhotoShop! When Intercoastal's design team needed to design a jacket for the film, they must have searched the internet and ended up right on my front door. In fact, you can see the very top of Joel Hodgson's round black head peeking up on Martin Balsam's white collar (right under the "B".) Here's my final card images, as posted to the internet since 1998:

I checked out the movie itself, and it doesn't look like they used any of my images for the DVD chapter menus. I must admit that was disappointing. The DVD menu features yet another non-Mitchell JDB headshot and some hilariously terrible background music, also not from Mitchell.

Actually, when I saw the DVD cover scan on the eBay auction, I didn't even notice my screengrabs. And when I first opened my package and gazed semi-lovingly at the box, my first thought was "Wow. Those are really lousy jpeggy pictures." Then it struck me like a cap popped into Johnny Mathis that those lousy jpeggy pics were my lousy jpeggy pics. For about .00001 of a second I was miffed, and then I realized that I had no rights to web-publish a card game in the first place. The free distribution sentiments of MST3K's pre-cable-days mantra seems particularly appropriate here: Keep Circulating The Tapes. So I am flattered to have played a small role in the enduring legacy of Mitchell. Viva le internet, Viva la puffiness!