From: Campus Voice#

Date: December 1992

Headline: Diversions

Subline: Mystery Science Theater 3000: Wiseacres in Space--Bad movies on cable? Nothing new. But bad movies made funny? Welcome to Mystery Science Theater 3000, cable TV's best-kept secret.

Photo(s): Godzilla photograph from movie still archives; hand-coloring by Don Dudenbostel/ [Hand-painted Godzilla distroys town; hand-painted planetoid hangs over city; silhouette of Servo, Joel and Crow at bottom.]

Photo(s): The characters of "Mystery Science Theater 3000": (left to right) Tom Servo, our hero Joel Robinson, Crow, Gypsy, mad scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester (Trace Beaulieu), his henchman "TV's Frank" (Frank Conniff). [All with coffee cups.]

Inset: [on other "pages" with small Godzilla picture] Mystery Science Theater 3000: Cable TV's cult hit mixes sci-fi and sarcasm.

Author: Gardner, Lee

Page(s): [none; poster magazine]

The premise is so ridiculous, it's sublime. As the catchy title song explains, Comedy Central's "Mystery Science Theater 3000" stars a regular Joe--or rather Joel--last name Robinson. Mad scientists blast him into space and force him (and the idle weekend-TV viewer to watch Z-grade movies on an experimental basis, with only some robots for company.

Sound dopey? It is, a little. But while cheesy sci-fi reels or lame '60s hipster flicks unfold, Joel and mechanical magpies Crow and Tom Servo (silhouetted near the bottom of the screen) crack wise with a hail of jokes and comebacks that range from seventh-grade fart humor to the kind of obscure cultural and intellectual references that "Saturday Night Live" gave up on years ago.

For example, when the heroes of "Godzilla Versus the Sea Monster" first enoucnter the sea monster--which is actually a giant lobster--Joel shrieks, Quick, get some drawn butter!" As the crustacean scarfs up some Asian islanders, Tom Servo muses "it'll be hungry in an hour." Cut to a Japanese home scene and hear Joel sing-speak: "And you may find yourself living in a shogun shack." And as Godzilla crushes a towering building by tossing a boulder, Crow calls, "Ohhh, picked up a spare!" Woven throughout such quips are jokes involving everything from Samuel Beckett to "Laverne and Shirley". Suddenly a goofy setup and a waste of celluoid becomes one of the funniest shows on TV--and one with a growing campus following.

As the Minneapolis-based production entered its fourth season, "CV" spoke with part of the show's brain trust: creator-writer Joel Hodgson (who plays Joel Robinson), producer-writer Jim Mallon (voice of the reclusive robot, Gypsy), associate producer-writer Kevin Murphy (voice of Tom Servo), and actor-writer Trace Beaulieu (voice of Crow). We asked about making bad film into good television.

CV: How did the show get started?

Jim: In 1988 I met Joel for lunch to pitch the idea of doing some shows at Channel 23 in Minneapolis, where Kevin and I worked. He wasn't interested, but a week later he called up and said he had an idea. He goes, "There's this guy in outer space, and he's watching bad sci-fi movies..."

CV: How did the robots develop such distinct personalities?

Joel: It's the evolution of characters we've done over 60 or 70 shows. The guys have been doing the robots for years, so they've spent a lot of time with them.

Trace: Maybe *too* much time with them.

Joel: The guys are a lot like their robots too.

Trace: I've got a big gold nose and little spindly arms.

Kevin: And I'm kind of portly, my head is transparent, and my arms don't work.

CV: Where do you find those horrible movies?

Jim: There are people who actually own these bad movies, and they try to sell them to distributors, who try to sell them to HBO, who we originally had our contract with. When HBO sees a package of these goofball movies, they send us video-cassettes, and we set up screenings. One of the reasons this show is so successful is that there are so many bad films out there. And they keep making them.

Kevin: Watch "Highlander II" and you'll be looking at the seeds of our future.

CV: How do you come up with the jokes for each film?

Jim: Our writing staff sits down and watches the movie we're doing a few times--starting and stopping it--adding jokes. Our business manager sits at a comupter and records all the lines as we do them.

Joel: Then the writing staff has to go through all these comments, assign them to the characters, and see how the lines fit in the movie.

CV: Do you have any favorite movies?

Jim: We're all fond of "The Amazing Colossal Man". "Side Hackers" and "Pod People" were brutal to do--they were just excruciating to watch over and over --but they seem to be real crowd-pleasers.

Kevin: It's really strange. Seems like the more pain we go through, the more people like it.

CV: What are your future plans?

Jim: We're still looking for a western to do. And a computer-game company called us the other day; plus we've gotten calls from book publishers and record execs.

Kevin: And, of course, there are the plush toys.

Trace: I'm thinking a "Gold Crow" line of liquor would be good--along the lines of Richard's Wild Irish Rose.

CV: Any last words for the college students of America?

Jim: Let everybody know that you *can* make a living watching television.