In 1999, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett were the final crew to front the long-running movie-riffing series Mystery Science Theater 3000—Nelson as the human test subject of the same name, Murphy as the delightfully pompous Tom Servo, and Corbett as that wily rascal (you know you want him, baby) Crow T. Robot. Having formed a cohesive unit onscreen and behind the scenes on the show’s three Sci-Fi Channel seasons, the trio kept at the unique form of comedy perfected by MST3K following the show’s cancellation. In 2004, they released their first efforts as The Film Crew, before pivoting to (and going audio only as) RiffTrax in 2006.
But in their years of recording humorous commentary tracks for blockbusters and B-movie schlock alike, the Satellite Of Love was never far from their hearts. Their castmates and co-writers Mary Jo Pehl and Bridget Jones Nelson (the latter of whom is married to Mike Nelson) eventually joined the RiffTrax fold; Murphy and Corbett reprised the roles of mad-scientist second bananas Professor Bobo and The Observer for the first season of the 2010s MST3K revival headed up by series creator Joel Hodgson. And now they find themselves at the center of the search for the worst movie ever made once more, thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000: The RiffTrax Experiments, the crowd-funded comeback that will subject Mike, Servo, and Crow to four new episodes of cinematic crud this fall. Before the premiere of the first Experiment—a riff of ’60s creature feature Sting Of Death that Fathom Entertainment is bringing to theaters September 9 and 13—Nelson, Murphy, and Corbett spoke to The A.V. Club about returning to MST3K’s not-so-distant future, the parts of the old show they wanted to maintain, and how they’ve managed to keep their creative collaboration going for multiple decades. (It probably has something to do with the way their natural, off-the-cuff banter just sounds and reads like Mike and the Bots going at it.)
The A.V. Club: When the opportunity to do these episodes presented itself, were you surprised?
Kevin Murphy: I was absolutely surprised, because we were done. 1999, we closed up shop and we all moved on. And so for this to reappear was intriguing. All the stars aligned at the exact same time, and it seemed like, “Well, there’s never going to be another good time to do this.”
Bill Corbett: We didn’t say yes right away. I think it’s fair to say we had to really think “Is this a mistake? On any number of levels?” We just seem like old dogs returning to the farm to the die or something. That’s what they do, old dogs.
How about you, Mike?
Mike Nelson: It is a weird thing to return to something that was formative in your life, but it was a long time ago. That is an odd thing, but there’s such a joy to it—like, “Wow. Hey, all these people!” It was weirdly, weirdly fun in a way that is hard to describe.
KM: The way I describe it is that we managed to get a big part of the old band back together. Our original director of photography. Two of our favorite prop people. Toolmaster Jef Maynard. Brad Keely, our editor. Beez McKeever, Patrick Brantseg—all these folks had worked in and day out to make this thing happen. We’d write these cockamamie scripts, and these people would just, like, move heaven and earth in order to get the stupid things we put on scripts onto the screen. That was the joy in it, was working with these people who we had such a great connection with.
BC: We’d see some of them here and there, every now and then. But to be getting together every day with all of them and hanging out and having fun was, to me, at least 50% of it—just like a reunion with old pals and compatriots in the puppet trade. [Laughs.] They all get it, and they all not only get the kind of range we can and can’t do, but the sense of humor. They developed it with us. And the visual language of it. Having Trace Beaulieu involved, too, and Frank Conniff—Trace really did put the visual language of the whole show in place back before my time.
AVC: You’ve spoken elsewhere about retaining the “hand built” look of previous eras of the show. What was important about recapturing that visual language?
KM: It’s the only thing we knew. To try to do it with green screens and with CGI, that just isn’t interesting. Part of the fun of it was having to write in a way that we knew could be accomplished with hand built, practical effects and props. And most of the visual effects being done in the camera. That’s more of a challenge than, you know, putting on a tight suit with little dots all over your body and jumping in front of a green screen and becoming Bobo or something. That’s just monumentally uninteresting.
BC: You didn’t want to be like Ian McKellen in that footage of him absolutely breaking down and crying after talking to a tennis ball and a stick long enough on the Hobbit movie. [Impersonates McKellan.] “I can’t do this anymore!”
MN: I like to look over and see the puppet mouth that I’m going to. [Laughs.] Then I can cry after—[Impersonates McKellen.] “Oh Crow: Why do you disfigure me like this? This is unbelievable.”
KM: [Impersonates McKellen.] “Croooooow is beyond our sights.”
BC: Not to be too much of an angry old fart, but there was part of me that felt good to reject all that other stuff. At least at this point in history, when AI is just getting shoved into everything whether we like it or not. CGI absolutely has its place, but in a little puppet show like this, it’s such a theatrical kind of affair that it doesn’t need it. So we were lucky enough to have the resources to do it.
KM: That was probably the biggest challenge updating it—in 1999, when we closed up shop, we were using Avid, the editing system, but we were doing it on Beta SP—actual magnetic tape. And 4:3 aspect ratio of a regular television screen. But now we had to do this for 4K and digital video and digital cameras, and so it has to look good enough for that. We were still seeing thumbprints on the paint jobs for the puppets. It’s like Wallace And Gromit in that way. This is where people like Jeff Stonehouse, our DP, were so instrumental to it. He knew how to translate this—keep the same sort of charm and joy we had with the old show and bring it up to date.
An example: Instead of doing green screens behind us, we used a video screen with a star field, and we could do all kinds of monkeying around with icons from the show while we did that. Rather than a big sheet of duvetyn with little pieces of foil stuck to it for stars, we were able to do an actual moving star field, and that sort of brought it into the 21st century.
AVC: Did any of those technological updates impact how you’re performing on camera?
BC: One specific one did: Lights are so much better now. They don’t roast you quite as much. I know this is a very silly thing, but when you have a big ape getup on like Kevin, or even me under Brain Guy makeup, it gets shvitz-y in there very quickly. So it really did feel nice to have it relatively less oppressive under the lights.
Courtesy of RiffTrax
AVC: Bill and Kevin, you both made onscreen appearances in the first season of the previous MST3K revival, but Mike, this is your first time back since 1999. What did it feel like to be back in that “Mike Nelson” persona again?
BC: He’s not very good at it.
KM: You think you’d get more out of the guy, since it’s Mike.
MN: Yeah, yeah.
BC: I don’t think he understands the character of Mike.
KM: I don’t think he gets Mike. The Mike-ness.
MN: I talked to people about it, like, “Was it a young man’s game to do this thing?” But look, at the end of the day, if we aren’t better at what we do now than we were when we were younger, then I would say, “Time to hang it up,” or it’s just a nostalgia thing: [Affects cartoon yokel voice.] “Hey, there he is again, in the thing.”
But the fact that we are better at what we do now—the timing is a little better, the funniness is improved—is something that was really important. I didn’t just want to do it just for nostalgia. I wanted it to be funny, and I think it’s funny.
BC: That was our guiding star: Whatever else we’re gonna do, we’re gonna be funny. We might accidentally do some fan service—you can’t help it if you’re breaking out the puppets again and all that. But it has to be funny on its own. I think with the years of RiffTrax, our sharpness, collectively, in riffing movies, is better than ever. That’s the bulk of the screentime [on MST3K] right there, and we’re very good at that, if I do say so myself.
And we also have a couple of new writers [Conor Lastowka and Sean Thomason] who brought a little bit of fresh perspective. They’re new to MST3K, but they are not new to RiffTrax. And they had a ball, and it was really fun—I don’t know, mentoring them seems a little ostentatious as a way of describing it, but describing what we do and don’t do, and what works, was a good kind of refresher course for me, at least. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, so we’re kind of all kind of relearning how to do these sketches.” And that the key is usually shorter, snappier, funnier.
KM: And relearning the fact that when you write something on the page—like we did at one time when Joel says “ping-pong balls” and 10,000 ping-pong balls fall down on top of him—you actually have to make that happen. So there’s a big responsibility: for what you think is funny right now in your head, and what you can actually translate to the screen with the time and the budget you have, which are never a lot. So that Sean and Conor learned real fast. And they fit right in immediately.
BC: They’re very funny and very weird and they just have a feel for it. Or they wouldn’t have been working with us all the years, and us with them.
AVC: MST3K has gone through all these different eras and incarnations over the years. How would you define the tone and the voice of your MST3K?
MN: I think there was a tone that I didn’t realize that we have. You never know that you have it.
I remember when I was young and I’d watch Monty Python or SNL or SCTV, and I’d go like, “Who are these people? How can this be happening? Is this made for me?” And then you get to make comedy, and you realize, “Oh, if I just do what I think is funny, then that will resonate with someone else.”
I think that, to me, is the joy—is that you just do what you think is funny, ’cause if you try to figure it out, you can’t do it. Like, it’s impossible. Humor is just so specific. And so we all just find this stuff funny, and so we do stuff to make ourselves laugh, and then it resonates with other people.
KM: I’ll add that it was a number one condition of ours that we are completely unfettered by anyone. We write the shows the way you want to. We conceive the shows the way we want to do it. And Radial, they said, “You guys go. We will not stand in your way.” And with that freedom, we thought,”What makes us laugh?” And that’s what we went with every time.
AVC: What does that independence mean to you at this point—after the first decade of MST3K, after two decades now of RiffTrax?
BC: Everything. I feel so spoiled in a way, because I did time in the other world: screenwriting in Hollywood. And, you know, the payday can be nice, but you do have to work, and it’s like hitting the lottery to some degree. But what you’re always going to have is a wall of people telling you about your work—good, bad, or indifferent. And everybody who’s worked there knows the William Goldman rule: Nobody knows anything. They’re always guessing based on the last bunch of things and speculating and it’s always a moving target. And now with everything else that has happened to the business, I am really, really happy that we have built up this approach to humor that is not dependent on a wall of approval or notes from any executive or anything like that. That feels like absolute hell to me now. And it’s a hell I’ve been through. I came out pretty good on the other side, but I wasn’t eager to do a lot more if I could avoid it—unless they were paying me billions every time I walked out of my house. And they weren’t, as it turns out.
AVC: I think that speaks to the simple brilliance of the MST3K concept: The show ended, it endured, it came back once before, and now you’ve been able to bring it back again, and make it fresh and make it new and keep bringing new people into it.
MN: I don’t know, this is probably arrogant, but whatever: A couple years ago, maybe 10 years ago, I saw a documentary about the Guarneri Quartet—it’s a string quartet that’s worked together forever. And we’ve worked together for that long. I always think, like, “Why doesn’t someone study why we can still work together?” It’s a funny thing and it’s a joyous thing that I really love. I enjoy working with these people. We’re all different people, obviously. We have different points of view, but we come together and the one thing that we enjoy is doing this weird comedy.
BC: I don’t take it for granted at all. I’ve collaborated with a lot of people, co-writing screenplays and plays and stuff like that. I try to choose carefully. I’ve mostly had good collaborations, but there’s a whole other rigor to what we’ve been doing for… what do I say? Oh, for 40, 80 years.
KM: Let’s just call it 80.
BC: It does require some care and feeding, but I think the fact that we all like the same kind of comedy—however we got there, we accidentally lit on what we think funny will do. And I think that we got enough feedback for that over the years that we eventually believed it. [Laughs.] That plus a mutual respect for each other and our different abilities—and again, we’ve been very lucky to gather people to us, accidentally or whatever, that are similar.
And that’s what this summer [making The RiffTrax Experiments] was so great for. I got to have my daughter, who’s in college, come along and she just fit in and was like, “You guys are all so great. You’re old, but you’re great.” And I said, “Yes, honey, it’s about time you recognized that about me.” [Laughs.]
MN: The oldness, not the greatness.
BC: You see the numbers now. Putting some big ones on the board, my child.
Courtesy of RiffTrax
AVC: For each of you, what’s the memory of making these episodes that’s going to stick with you?
KM: I’ll… go ahead, Mike.
MN: Dang it, I was going to jump in before.
KM: Start, Mike. Go!
MN: [Feigning conflict.] I hate you! I hate working with you! This is all a nightmare!
BC: [Adding to the bit.]This partnership is done! I’m sick of listening to you guys bicker!
KM: Here we go again!
MN: It’s done right here!
KM: [Concluding the bit.] A long day’s journey into Mystery Science Theater…
MN: It was really funny to go to the studios, and I’d go in and the makeup person is Crist Ballas, who, 30 years ago, he was the last one who makeup-ed my face. And then Beez goes “Here, put on this thing.” So I walk into the studio. It’s dark, but Jeff Stonehouse, the old DP [Laughs.] is like matting the camera. And he’s on the camera deck and he’s going, “Can we see your face in front of the light?” The memory to me was like, “Oh my God. What happened? We just went back 30 years!” It was fun and comfortable and weird in a good, weird way.
KM: It’s the moments like that. I remember one in particular—without giving anything away—but there are six people in front of the puppet trench and back behind the desk, all doing six different things, and I’m trying to hold the puppet in a very absurd way. And Jeff is there on the camera, and Molly Corbett is throwing dust in front of the lens, and there’s fog—everything but fire in this particular instance. And everyone’s laughing. It’s really complicated, intense, takes a lot of timing, and everyone’s just having a ball. So that was just like, “Yeah, this is why I wanted to do this.”
BC: My memories are the same as those guys’, only slightly better.
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