FRED Entertainment

–by Ken Plume

Though an accomplished author and performer, Kevin Murphy will perhaps be forever known as a wise-cracking robot with a gumball dispenser head, springy arms, a stout body, and an underwear fetish. Barring that, he’ll probably also be remembered as a giant talking monkey.

For 9 seasons, Kevin performed Tom Servo on Mystery Science Theater 3000, expanding his on-screen time with his frighteningly nuanced portrayal of the intelligent simian Professor Bobo, in addition to his writing duties for the series.

Post-MST, Kevin has been a frequent contributor to NPR, and written the cinematic travelogue A Year At The Movies, which chronicled his worldwide journey to experience a film a day in theaters around the globe.

He’s also re-teamed with fellow Satellite of Love refugees Mike Nelson and Bill Corbett as the B-movie quipping Film Crew, plus he’s been a frequent guest-riffer on Mike Nelson & Legend Films’ RiffTrax commentaries (you can check out their full catalog here).

Kevin was sequestered in his palatial, heavily wooded retreat when he deigned to grant us a sizeable fraction of his valuable (and creative) “me” time…

KEVIN MURPHY: Ken?

KEN PLUME: Hey, how are you doing?

MURPHY: I’m doing pretty well, how are you?

KP: I’m doing well. Is this still a good time for you?

MURPHY: Yep. I’m just sitting here watching The Fountain.

KP: Ah…

MURPHY: Everybody’s reaction is the same! “What are you doing?” “Well, today I’ve got to screen The Fountain…” They say, “Ah.”

KP: Well, it’s not exactly a happy-go-lucky, springtime film…

MURPHY: Well, for Aronofsky, it’s a romp. It’s a lark. It’s a spree.

KP: It’s a celebration of happiness and light and the power of love across the centuries.

MURPHY: It’s true.

KP: For everyone else…

MURPHY: It’s the Bataan death march on film.

KP: Have you made it a good chunk of the way through it?

MURPHY: Oh, I just got started. He’s a conquistador and his movie gets invaded by the cast of Apocalypto. Then suddenly finds himself in a sort of outer space Zen monastery, and that’s where I am right now.

KP: Is this recreational viewing?

MURPHY: It goes into the realm of research. First of all, you’ve got to keep on top of these things. Hollywood keeps whipping these things out, and you have to keep your eye on the thing. I’m always suspicious of Darren Aronofsky, so I need to make sure I know what he’s doing at all times.

KP: Do you sometimes feel like the cinematic equivalent of a Buddhist monk with a gas can beside you?

MURPHY: (laughs) Yeah, but you know, those Buddhist monks, they’re sort of like Karma criminals. They’re not supposed to do that sort of thing.

KP: No, but do you feel like,” This is when I finally light the match, on this film…”?

MURPHY: Oh sure, absolutely. But this is not the one. There are worse.

KP: Did you get a chance to look at some of the other pieces we’ve done recently?

MURPHY: Actually I have not. I ought to.

KP: Oh, so you have no idea what people are saying about you.

MURPHY: What are they saying about me?

KP: Oh, wonderful things. Bill was nothing but complimentary with most of he had to say about you. The other stuff was unprintable.

MURPHY: Bill who?

KP: He writes plays.

MURPHY: Oh, that guy.

KP: And I also have a special guest on the line. He’s a bit frail, but Kevin, I’d like to introduce you to Coleman Francis…

MURPHY: (laughs)

KP: Do you ever worry about a This is Your Life coming out of the blue and hitting you with all these things?

MURPHY: I can go on IMDB and make sure Coleman is dead – and if not, that he’s old enough that I could knock him over.

KP: Six years out, I’m curious if your thoughts on the theater going experience had changed any since doing A Year At The Movies.

MURPHY: You know, it’s better and it’s worse. I don’t think, in my mind, it’s any surprise that generally what comes out of Hollywood is still largely very highly polished shit. And yet there are still some excellent alternatives to the regular fare. I’m delighted to report that the small one-screeners that I love here in town have survived. They’re struggling, but they still survive because there’s enough people to keep them populated.

KP: Struggled in the same way they’ve always struggled?

MURPHY: Oh, it’s the same old struggle.

KP: So it’s not like things have gotten worse for them – it’s maintained…

MURPHY: Oh, the Parkway needs a remodeling job. The letters are starting to fall off the sign every now and again, but the popcorn is still excellent. And one of my favorites, the Riverview Theater, is doing quite well. In fact, it’s thriving. And the Heights Theater, which is up north of town, is also thriving, and that’s very heartening. They’re doing reparatory. That’s very encouraging. One of the things that’s changed significantly since I wrote that book is the spread of the small screen. The really, really small screen, in the case of You Tube and such things. And although it’s allowed the entire world to become a bad film director, or at least very derivative, it is changing things. Somehow I think that’s for the better, because people are hungry for alternatives to big giant movies. Except if you’re 12. You still want to go see Shrek on the night it opens.

KP: I find it interesting how much unseen product has made its way onto You Tube. It’s like You Tube is this no man’s land where anything is possible to be screened.

MURPHY: I love it. My house doesn’t have a basement, so thank god there’s You Tube, because it’s really like rummaging around in the basement that I never had. In the basement of my media memory. It’s great fun. There used to be a show called Night Music. It was produced by David Sanborn and it had Jools Holland as the host. It was on weekends. It was an obscure little show, but dear god they had some of the most wonderful performers on it. For several years I’ve wanted to at least see a copy of the one Leonard Cohen was on. He did a version of the song “Who By Fire” with most of the band Was Not Was and David Sanborn, and Sonny Rollins did this amazing, truly amazing solo on the saxophone, and it just came out of nowhere and it disappeared and there was nowhere to find it. Well, of course, now I found it on You Tube. It’s just one of those very rare performances kinda thing that you’d maybe see in a concert and never be able to recapture it, but this was something that was on a very obscure network television show many, many years ago, and now I can see it again. That’s kinda cool.

KP: How often do you spend time plumbing the depths of your memory in front of You Tube?

MURPHY: I don’t spend a lot of time. I’m not a shopper. You know how some people can just go into a secondhand store and look around for hours and hours? My spouse, for one. I love her, and she just loves to do that. I generally have something in mind. I go in, I look for it, if it’s not there, I leave. If I find it, I grab it, and then I leave. I’m not a browser, much. I just don’t have the time for that. My mind is already too full.

KP: Beyond the Leonard Cohen clip, what has been the most obscure or surprising thing you’ve found? Or wish you hadn’t found?

MURPHY: Nothing springs to mind. Again, I don’t spend a lot of time there. I usually go there with a task in mind. Some little psychic lawn darts from my own childhood are these little animated cartoons that used to be on the afternoon cartoon show when I was a small child. Which were already old when I was watching them. At Christmas time there’s an odd little song about Hard Rock, Coco and Joe, three elves that accompany Santa on his sleigh. I’ve always loved that song. I haven’t looked, but I have to look because the other thing that’s always plagued my dreams is this odd TV show called Diver Dan.

KP: Oh yes, my father talks about Diver Dan all the time.

MURPHY: Diver Dan would be in a brass hat – you know, the old navy deep diver brass hat suit – and he’d interact with fish string puppets. And he had this hot babe mermaid that he’d visit every now and again, although he’s in a brass hat so he really couldn’t get it on. And they film the whole thing – this is what I love – they film the whole thing in front of a giant aquarium. So you’d see fish swimming by. It was in an odd way quite brilliant, and that struck me when I was a kid. Are they really under water? And my brother would say, “No, they sat in front of an aquarium, for god sakes, grow up.”

KP: Was he always condescending to you like that?

MURPHY: My brother?

KP: Yes.

MURPHY: Oh no, no, they always tried to elevate me up to their level and bring me out of the depths of my stupidity.

KP: So it was like an aquatic Howdy Doody?

MURPHY: I guess you could say that, except it was much more serious. Diver Dan would get into some real mix ups, and there was a vaguely German, Eastern European sort of bad fish named Baron von Barracuda, who for some reason had a thug from the bowery as his assistant. He was a trigger fish and they called him trigger. And of course there were good fish and bad fish. The whole world’s about the struggle between good fish and bad fish.

KP: The Incredible Mr. Limpet taught us that.

MURPHY: That’s right. But this was really bad puppeteering and crude puppets, so it’s close to my heart.

KP: Have you found it on You Tube?

MURPHY: I haven’t looked for it, but this has inspired me to do such a thing.

KP: I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a DVD release. Is that something that, just for nostalgia’s sake, you would revisit?

MURPHY: Yeah. I wouldn’t spend a whole lot of time.

KP: The set would never grace your shelf.

MURPHY: I think not. I mean, I liked it, but I didn’t like it.

KP: You don’t need the entire 50 hour run.

MURPHY: There it is! I’ll be damned. It’s Diver Dan. It had a great opening theme song. Sort of sounded like the Kingston Trio or something. Here, listen to this. There, you see, and it goes on like that.

KP: Why don’t people do shows like that anymore?

MURPHY: You know, I think people do. Except they’re about eight years old and they do them in their basement.

KP: And now it’s on the net.

MURPHY: That’s right!

KP: And we’re not being facetious when we say those kind of shows are on the net now.

MURPHY: It’s true. Anybody can have a TV show. Truly.

KP: In many ways MST was a throwback to that sort of ethos.

MURPHY: Oh, I think there was no doubt about that. It generated from our childhood memories of having creature features and hosted movies. That was always in my mind, and it certainly led to the choice of movies we had. Because at KTMA, we had a shelf full of… a lot of films we could have done that were truly just dismal 80s films, but we always went for the cornier ones. For the science fiction ones. The Japanese monster movies seemed to be perfect, because that was the throwback I think was to the creature features.

KP: I’ve always been curious what the initial job description was for your time at KTMA. When you first took the job…

MURPHY: I was hired to shoot commercials. Jim (Mallon) actually called me up. I had worked with him at WHA in Madison, the public station there. And we would knock around, have fun. We’d go out on shoots every now and again. I always enjoyed his sense of humor, and he mine.

KP: What would knocking around and having fun with Jim entail?

MURPHY: Madison. Madison’s a college town, so use your imagination. (laughs) We ran in the same social circles, and that was based quite a bit around the university and the station WHA. And I still have a lot of good friends from down there even though I left there almost 20 years ago.

KP: Does it seem like that long?

MURPHY: Some days. Depends. If the humidity’s up.

KP: What was your initial impression of Jim when you first met him?

MURPHY: He had a sort of… what would you say… a status, having been in the Pail and Shovel party, and being the president of the student government and having done these amazingly anarchistic little feats of public exhibition. He was like a public artist, and he and his pal Leon Varjian were always surprising and always delightful. So, I had respect for him as a guy who did these mad quirks of, I guess you’d call them anarchistic comedy. But he was in a student government to do it. And he knew nothing about me, but I found him to be very unassuming and jovial and always great fun to hang around with. We really got to know each other… I went to work as a crew member on the film Muskie Madness, and we got to spend six or seven weeks up in the north woods of Wisconsin just being goofy and shooting a horror movie.

KP: This is what was eventually retitled Blood Hook, right?

MURPHY: Blood Hook, yes. The Troma people got a hold of it and said, “Muskie Madness, what’s that? What’s a Muskie? What are you talking about here? Listen I got a good title for you, it’s gonna be Blood Hook. Who knows for Muskie?” What they didn’t know is that muskie is the number one game fish in the United States, young man. It is tougher to land than the mighty tarpon. It will bite through piano wire. I have a friend who had his hand swallowed by a muskie. He had to pull it back out and it was filled with bite marks.

KP: As if I wasn’t afraid enough of the ocean, inland waterways are now off limits…

MURPHY: (laughs) Don’t go in the northern lakes during October, my friend, because the muskies are hungry then. That’s how we keep the ruffians out. It’s actually gorgeous here all year round.

KP: How long was the shoot?

MURPHY: It was about six weeks. It was Martin Mull who said that making movies was like college with money, or high school with money. I think that’s what it was. And that’s what it felt like. It was like summer camp. Although we really didn’t have any money, because it was an incredibly low budget thing, but we camped out at a local old-fashioned hotel and would shoot day and night and just… I learned so much about the filmmaking process in one shoot, because we had to do everything with nothing.

KP: So, really, titles meant nothing on that production…

MURPHY: Well, they really did. We had a professional crew and everything broke down the way it ought to. And everybody really counted on people to do their jobs and to know their jobs – and if they didn’t, then to learn their jobs damn quick. That’s one of the beauties of independent filmmaking. You can learn really fast, because for some positions… I mean, I’d never been a key grip on a film before. I’d run a dolly and rigged lights and things like that, but I’d always been… I’d done a few jobs as a PA on this film, or that or this commercial or that. I came to Wisconsin and this came along and it just seemed like, “Well, why the hell not? What a wonderful experience.” And it was. It’s the best fun I’ve ever had on a film set.

KP: What was the biggest learning curve for you on the set?

MURPHY: Well, probably, I learned later that some of the things we were doing were really dangerous. Like running wires from the shore out to a floating raft in the middle of this lake, in the rain.

KP: Who’s idea was that?

MURPHY: Well, we had a lighting director, and they needed light from a certain source, and it made sense. It worked. We did it and we didn’t kill ourselves, and we didn’t put ourselves in imminent danger. And we were never crazy stupid dumb about it, we were just… occasionally unsafe, is what I’d say. We had this one set for about a week on a boathouse on this beautiful lake in northern Wisconsin. There was something that wasn’t properly grounded, and so you could actually feel the current through your shoes as you were walking along the dock. It was a little unsettling.

KP: But no one thought to do anything about it.

MURPHY: Well, eventually. I felt the tingle, and I said to Rob, who was the gaffer, “Rob, do you feel a tingle through your shoes?” And he said, “Oh, that’s not good.” So he had somebody run and check the ground and we were fine. We were lacking some of the safety features that union shoots provide, let’s put it that way.

KP: Like death prevention.

MURPHY: But it was an adventure. We built all our sets with Makita screw guns and a chainsaw, pretty much. Truly, it was chainsaw carpentry. Everyone was issued a Makita screw gun, and so when I wasn’t actually on set, I was part of the swing gang putting the new sets up for the next day.

KP: So really it was that flexibility that was the biggest means of learning on that shoot…

MURPHY: Yeah. And also how to work 16 hours a day and still have the energy to drink like a fool at night.

KP: Well, that’s just Midwestern filmmaking, isn’t it?

MURPHY: (laughs) Yes, there were a couple of fine bars there and, at the time, the microbrewery Eau Claire had an all-malt lager, and it was quite a wonderful thing.

KP: That was the real muskie madness.

MURPHY: That truly was the muskie madness. It was a blast. It was the best summer camp I ever had.

KP: When you’re filming a low budget film like that, what are the expectations? Is it just, “We’re doing this because we can…”?

MURPHY: I think the number one reason to do it is because it’s going to be fun. People who make a low budget film thinking that they’re going to get rich are usually naïve and stupid and they’re never going to get rich. If you don’t do it for the fun of it or for the enjoyment of it or for the pleasure of it, then I think it’s kinda stupid otherwise.

KP: Do you think that difference in reasons for doing it shows in the final product? You’ve seen enough low budget films that were made by fertilizer salesmen who are hoping for Hollywood…

MURPHY: (laughs) Well, that’s the thing. That’s what I mean – if you’re looking beyond the movie to what this movie’s going to get you, then you’re probably looking at the wrong thing. That’s shown up over and over again. But that doesn’t mean… one of the things you learn is that, with a few exceptions, when the thing’s low budget, you get what you pay for. So if you don’t have a whole lot of money to dedicate to the script writing and you don’t have a lot of money to dedicate to hiring actors, and so you get a lot of community theater rejects, you have to work with that. If whoever’s in charge has enough talent to hold it together – and, I would say, poise – then yeah, maybe you’ll come out with something that’s fun and interesting.

KP: So what was that first screening of Muskie Madness like?

MURPHY: Oh, it was great fun. It was great fun. We actually had a premier here in Minneapolis. We built a boat dock and people would drive up in their cars and get on the boat dock in their tuxedoes and go into the theater. It was pure showmanship there.

KP: And they were all rented tuxedoes at that point?

MURPHY: Of course! And, you know, the movie was goofy. It was meant to be goofy, and it was meant to look like a goofy low-budget film, and it certainly succeeded in that way.

KP: Is the fact that it’s still out there and available surprising to you?

MURPHY: No, actually, it’s not. Part of it’s probably because of the success that Mystery Science Theater had, that it’s still out there. And another one is that Troma never drops anything from their schedule once they put it on there. So you can always find those things. For me, I honestly don’t know what other people thought of the film, and frankly I don’t care, because for me it was sort of like, we went to camp and we made this movie, and so every time I watch it, I find something in there that I just love because I remember how it happened.

KP: If someone were to do an MST treatment to that, how would you feel?

MURPHY: If there was someone to do it, I’d possibly be involved, but I wouldn’t be involved in that. That’s a little too close to the bone. I mean, I wouldn’t care. The movie’s as ripe for it as a lot of movies have been.

KP: So, if Mike called you up and said, “Kevin, I’m thinking a RiffTrax…”

MURPHY: It would feel a little bit like incest. So it would probably not be good, because I’m not a fan of incest.

KP: Well, it’s good that no one has attempted it yet.

MURPHY: Well, I’m sure they have, in their own private little domains.

KP: Which is where that sort of thing originated anyway.

MURPHY: That’s right, (laughs)

KP: Having finished the film, at what point did the KTMA job enter the picture?

MURPHY: It wasn’t long after. Actually, Jim finished the film and he moved to Minneapolis and was editing it, and that’s where he met Joel (Hodgson). He was in an office space in the warehouse district of downtown Minneapolis, and Joel had a studio in the same building. And so they ran into each other and got to know each other a little bit. It wasn’t long after that Jim got the job at KTMA. And it was all subterfuge. I mean, he brought me out there pretty much telling that the reason to have this job – and we have to shoot the commercials and we have to do the local hosted matinee movies and we have to do the public relations programming – but we have access to tools and we can do anything we want with them. That was the appeal to me – we could make a TV show and we could actually get it on the air. It was truly the month after I got there that Jim and I started putting together these news parodies that we did.

KP: This was the introduction of the Bob Baggadonuts character, right?

MURPHY: Right. Yes, and that was always great fun.

KP: I wonder, having seen those pieces, if things had gone differently and Josh (Weinstein) had not left MST, I really cannot see you as being content behind the camera. Because it seemed like you had a certain joy in performance.

MURPHY: I’m a ham. I’ve always been a ham. I had trouble in grade school for being a ham. I’m made of ham. I’m a walking ham.

KP: What kind of trouble would it cause in grade school?

MURPHY: Well, what kind of trouble does a ham get in? Calling attention to yourself, it’s in the report card, get sent to the principal’s office all the time. Making a nuisance in the class. Cutting up in the back of the room.

KP: So the teachers were not appreciative of your outgoing personality.

MURPHY: Teachers don’t like too many people who actually bust up the class. It doesn’t keep things moving the way it’s supposed to. I remember someone saying to me, “Do you think you’re going to be able to make a living making fun of things?”

KP: And you were only five at the time.

MURPHY: No, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. I was probably nine.

KP: Do you remember how you reacted to that statement?

MURPHY: I’m guessing that it was just pure fear, because at that time I was very frightened of authority figures. So I’d only do things behind their backs.

KP: You’re one of how many brothers?

MURPHY: I’ve got four brothers.

KP: So there was a lot of competition in the house.

MURPHY: Well, I suppose. I was smaller, so the competition was decided pretty quickly.

KP: Are they hams, as well, or was that your domain?

MURPHY: My brother Brian has a band called Arranmore, and they do Irish and folk and Americana sort of music. He’s been the front man for that band for many years, so he enjoys it in that way, but he’s not a clown. He’s just an entertaining musician. We all did time on some kind of stage in one fashion or another. But collectively they’re still the funniest people I know, I think. We get together and bust each other up so quickly, it’s wonderful.

KP: Did you pursue that inclination towards performance in high school, at all?

MURPHY: I was in the high school musicals, of course. I played Emile de Beckque in South Pacific… pissed me off because I wanted to play Luther Billis. They said, “No, Luther Billis doesn’t have to sing. You can sing. As a matter of fact, you’re the only one who can sing these songs.” It was a very small high school.

KP: Of six.

MURPHY: No, there were 98 people in my graduating class, I believe.

KP: When you have that small a pool…

MURPHY: I could hit the notes, and I didn’t have acne. So.

KP: Was singing also something that you were immediately drawn to?

MURPHY: That was both my parents’ influence. My dad loved swing music and barbershop quartet, and my mother loved musicals. They always had us singing when we were kids.

KP: How would you describe your pre-teen musical tastes?

MURPHY: Well, that’s odd, because again I had these older brothers and my older sister. So instead of listening to the 1910 Fruitgum Company, my brother Chris brought home Frank Zappa’s first album Freak Out, and this was… what was it, 1966? And here’s this bizarre album, and the first song is “Hungry Freaks, Daddy,” and it’s a double album, and it has bassoons and glockenspiels and just was delightful. It was just weird. One of my first albums when I had the money to buy it was Uncle Meat.

KP: What’s odd is, through the influence of your brothers, you gravitated toward something that actually incorporated at least a knowledge of the kind of music that your parents were fond of… You just don’t go into rock music using a glockenspiel…

MURPHY: True. Conversely, Zappa based a lot of what he did on the work of Edgar Varese, and folks like that, which is very atonal and difficult to listen to. And I think he liked to do that because it put people on edge. I remember him saying in his autobiography that he liked to play the low notes really loud because it always unsettled people more. The high notes would make them irritated and angry but the low notes would make them feel bad and they didn’t know why.

KP: So it was all about forcing people to question what they were listening to…

MURPHY: I guess you could say that. I don’t know. I was never that conscious of it. I just thought it was fun and weird. And I had my pathetically indulgent taste, too. I had Yes albums and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and that sort of art rock stuff. I did get over that.

KP: Big ELO fan for a time?

MURPHY: No, not ELO. Too poppy for me.

KP: So it was never the pop direction you would go in.

MURPHY: No, I liked Steve Howe because he was a rocket on the guitar. I think Eddie Van Halen learned a lot from Steve Howe.

KP: Rick Wakeman?

MURPHY: Oh jeez, yes, I’m embarrassed to say I passed through my Rick Wakeman phase. It was like having malaria. I got over it. It took a while, but I got over it.

KP: But you never owned a cape…

MURPHY: Never owned a cape. I did own a leather hat.

KP: Which you’ve, through your book, made iconic as the ultimate symbol of a certain sad fellowship…

MURPHY: For me it is, yes. And it is true. That’s the other thread – I wrote about that in the book – is that punk rock saved my ass. It truly did.

KP: Did you know that at the time? Was it a conscious revelation?

MURPHY: It was just so much different than anything that I had experienced. In some ways it was new and scary and wonderful.

KP: What was the album that scared you the most?

MURPHY: Oh, jeez. Well, I’m working at this club, and this was… you know, it was the Midwest, so again – everything was behind everything else to a certain extent, but there’s kids who are launching themselves off the stage and they’re spitting at each other and they’re beating the shit out of each other on the dance floor.

KP: And you’re just timid with a leather hat in the corner?

MURPHY: No, at that time, I had discarded my leather hat. It was really the music more than anything else. You hear a band like The Stranglers, and it’s just so strong. It’s as if they’d say, “Let’s just take the biggest, loudest, creepiest, scariest elements of rock ‘n’ roll and push them to the extreme.” That’s how the New York Dolls struck me when I first heard them. They sounded a little bit… more than you want. Same thing with Iggy Pop. It’s like, “Okay, this is great. I’m really having a blast doing this.” And then suddenly the guy’s shaking his bony ass at you. That’s more than I want. We can ramp it down a little bit. The early punk scene always really pushed that edge, and it wasn’t necessarily about talent, it was just about anger.

KP: So was it the attitude or the music that struck you the hardest?

MURPHY: Ultimately it was the music, always the music. The Sex Pistols were really unpleasant to see on the stage, and they weren’t very good at all. But The Clash, dear god they were good. They were always good. They were wonderful.

KP: You mentioned a period where you saw just about everyone who went through the Midwest…

MURPHY: Yeah, and everybody did. Anybody who went across country would stop in Chicago, and quite often in Madison because it was a college town – and the school’s damn near 50,000 people, so they all came up.

KP: Did you feel – not to make a horrible pun – a sort of clash of cultures? This was a period when this was new to everybody…

MURPHY: Yeah. I guess so…

KP: Or was it just the people that knew and liked it were the ones who were there to see it…

MURPHY: Well, that’s what it was. You could tell. When Black Flag came to town and we were turning people away at the door and they were climbing through the windows, we knew something was going on. When U2 came it was the same thing. We wanted them to do another show, and they couldn’t. They actually played the 18 songs they knew and then played them again, because that’s all they had, but people were so hungry for it. It was wonderful.

KP: What was it like working at the club at that point?

MURPHY: It was a blast.

KP: I would assume it’s a unique experience in crowd control.

MURPHY: (laughs) Well, containment as much as anything else.

KP: Was there any time that you were afraid?

MURPHY: Well, I got lunged at a few times, and people trying to beat me up. They were generally drunk. The kids who were fighting on the dance floor, it was contained and limited to the dance floor. It was really sort of a ritualized sort of contained bit of adolescent boy’s island that stayed on the dance floor, and usually the worst that you get is a bloody lip or somebody’d get their hand stepped on or something like that. Or they’d miss him when he jumped off the stage, or that sort of thing. A couple of drunks lunged at me and tried to beat the hell out of me once or twice. We wrestled one guy out the door and he fell down the stairs. And this was a long flight of stairs. We thought he would have been dead by the time he got to the bottom. The nice thing about drunk people is they’re very flexible.

KP: Was he sober by the time he hit the bottom?

MURPHY: Oh, no, he was still quite drunk. But he had gotten the message and he said something like, “You don’t have to force me to leave, I’m going.” This is after he’d been hurled down the stairs.

KP: What would the cleanup process be like after an event?

MURPHY: Oh, thank god I wasn’t involved in that. No, no. It was quite the… they had sort of this indoor/outdoor carpet, the kind they put on boats. And then the massive dance floor. And you could pretty much hose the club down, and that’s pretty much what you needed to do.

KP: Just a big drain in the center.

MURPHY: Well, the bathrooms were definitely that way. Honestly, they’d take out the disinfectant and sponge everything and then hose it down with hot water and it was ready for the next night.

KP: Did you feel at the time that you were in a scene that was quickly to be co-opted and disappear?

MURPHY: Well, that’s what all the punks told me. They said everything that we do now is going to be commercial tomorrow. If it’s any good, somebody’s going to try to exploit it. That was simply the attitude. And even among the punks, it was…

KP: How many of them hoped for that?

MURPHY: Well you remember the thing about the hippies in San Francisco. Once the word “hippy” got out and used in the common nomenclature, they had a funeral to announce the death of the hippy – and that was in 1967, for crying out loud. So as soon as the word “punk” made it to Wisconsin it was already considered, by the people who consider themselves punk, to be passé.

KP: As soon as something hits the Midwest, it’s culturally dead.

MURPHY: Peoria. If it plays in Peoria, it’s not for me.

KP: What future did you perceive for yourself at that point?

MURPHY: Absolutely no clue.

KP: You were still going to school at this time, right?

MURPHY: Yeah, I was in grad school. I wanted to work in movies. I got myself as many different odd jobs as I could on little things, and I went to every film I could get my hands on, and I was in school to learn directing for film and television, as well as for the stage. That’s when I had a loose idea of what I might want to do. I had a great time. Francis Ford Coppola came to town. He was directing the rally before the Wisconsin Primary for Jerry Brown. And he decided to do it on live, nationwide television. He actually bought and donated the time to the Brown campaign and tried to do this live thing with all kinds of video effects. It was the most disastrous thing I’ve ever seen on live TV. Francis Ford Coppola was not a TV director.

KP: So it’s like SNL at Mardi Gras.

MURPHY: Right! (laughs) It was just a disaster. But I got to meet Barrie Osborne, the guy who eventually produced Lord of the Rings. I can understand how he could do those films. When I heard that it was Barrie Osborne, I said, “Oh, this’ll be no problem, because this guy could sleep through a hurricane.” He was just that calm and that poised. That was very admirable. Coppola was screaming like a lunatic and Barrie was just there trying to hold the whole thing together, very calm and very quiet.

KP: What was your opinion of the “Hollywood director”?

MURPHY: He was an asshole.

KP: Did you get any sense of the odd cheer about him, or just pure asshole?

MURPHY: No, just asshole, pretty much. I mean, I’m sure he is, but it sure wasn’t showing on the days that he was there.

KP: That was also during his incredibly self-destructive period.

MURPHY: I suppose you could call it that. He’d done One From the Heart, I believe. But it was so strange… he wanted to have a soup line set up so he could show pictures of the soup line. He didn’t really think that he needed to feed hungry people, he just wanted to have a soup line. There wasn’t any snow, and he wanted there to be snow. It was actually a beautiful day, but he wanted to bring snow machines in to make snow, since there wasn’t any. So he was sort of a parody of himself. It was Jerry giving his speech, and he’s trying… he put a green screen behind him. A huge green screen, and they put on the Capitol dome. He was projecting pictures of waving fields of wheat and folks in the crowd and farmers, and shit like that. And they didn’t get the key right, so people’s faces were popping through Jerry Brown’s forehead. I wish there was a tape of this. In fact, I should look on You Tube.

KP: This would have been at what time period?

MURPHY: That was the 1980 campaign.

KP: And you’re in college doing your master’s degree…

MURPHY: I was in Madison doing my master’s degree, yeah.

KP: Was school important to you?

MURPHY: Well, I went to the University of Utah for my undergraduate, which means that I spent all my time skiing. So, I really went to graduate school in order to complete my undergraduate education. Because I realized I finished college and I knew nothing about the media or about working in television or in films. So I really had to learn something.

KP: Your undergraduate was in journalism?

MURPHY: Yeah, ostensibly.

KP: Was that the only way you could get media classes, at that point?

MURPHY: Yeah. It was an incredibly easy degree, too. And it allowed me a lot of time to ski. I could take a lot of night classes, so it was great. I could get a season pass to Alta and ski all day long.

KP: Did you think, at the time, that you were sort of coasting through your college period?

MURPHY: (laughs) No, certainly not! I resent the implication, as a matter of fact.

KP: I apologize for any insinuation…

MURPHY: They say there are more important things than college, and when you go to the University of Utah and you go up into the Wasatch range, you realize that’s true.

KP: So when you got that piece of paper, did you think you’d earned it?

MURPHY: From the University of Utah?

KP: Yeah.

MURPHY: Hell no. Paid for it, but I didn’t earn it.

KP: Was the idea of getting an education to go get the master’s?

MURPHY: It’s funny… people say this all the time, and I realize it’s true – You want to be in the media, but you have no idea how to get there. It doesn’t make any sense. There’s the old work-in-the-mailroom thing, but what does that work for, one out of 10,000 people?

KP: And it depends on what part of the media you want to get into…

MURPHY: Yeah. I actually registered in proxy for a friend of mine at the University of Wisconsin and saw that campus and thought, “Wow, this is the real deal here.” It’s wonderful, and they had a public TV station right there on campus. And so it seemed like the perfect place, and as it turns out it was a great place to finish my undergraduate education, and get a master’s degree in the process.

KP: Knowing you could get some practical experience.

MURPHY: Right.

KP: But no skiing.

MURPHY: Let’s say the skiing in Wisconsin’s a few pegs down the ladder from skiing in Utah, and we’ll leave it at that. Much more horizontal.

KP: Was there a lot of student produced material, or was it all structured within the coursework, getting hold of that studio time? Were you guys able to futz around in the studio?

MURPHY: Yeah. At that time it was disappointing to find… well let’s put it this way – the hand held world was still brand new and very expensive. And so it was difficult to do field pieces in video. If you wanted to do that, there was still the film department, and they had wonderful film equipment. A nice equipment catalogue there, so you could get a Bolex camera, and a crystal-sync with a Nagra tape recorder, and go out in the field and make movies. You just had to take the right classes, and then it all depended on how much money you had to buy film stock. So you go without pizza and beer for a week, and you had enough to buy film stock to make movies… and a lot of people did it that way.

KP: Is there anything you made at that point that was purely your own project?

MURPHY: Sure. Nothing that I would ever share with anybody else in the universe ever again, and you can’t see it on You Tube because it’s in my closet somewhere. These are student pieces. I’m not Mozart. Nobody gives a shit about what I did in college.

KP: Someone will put out a DVD called The Lost Works of Kevin Murphy…

MURPHY: And the reason they’re lost is that they ought to be lost.

KP: You wouldn’t have a little Murphy Film Festival at some point?

MURPHY: I appreciate what Franz Kafka said – “Burn all of my letters, burn all of my notes, burn everything.”

KP: You realize no one listens to that.

MURPHY: (laughs) I guess by saying it it’s actually a pathetic invitation to burn everything.

KP: Just for that, we’re going to do a Kevin Murphy retrospective at Dragon Con…

MURPHY: Well, most of my student stuff is still in uncut 16 negative cut. One light reversal work print, and magnetic perforated film. So if you can put that together, I’d be impressed.

KP: Have you ever had the urge to go back and look?

MURPHY: No.

KP: Why keep it, then?

MURPHY: I haven’t thrown it away. I actually don’t know exactly where it is. It’s out in the garage somewhere. I actually have not seen it since I was in school, and that’s enough.

KP: There must be some curiosity.

MURPHY: No. I made it… I did it… I’m done.

KP: Where would your creative impulses lie? What would you go out and shoot? Story pieces, sketches?

MURPHY: When I was in school?

KP: Yeah.

MURPHY: They were mainly for classes, and so there was usually at least a genre or a style that we were trying to learn. We had a wonderfully bizarre – he’s still there – experimental filmmaker who was in the film department named JJ Murphy. No relation. And he’d give us a tremendous amount of freedom to go out and shoot, and also learn a lot of what you’d call less conventional film techniques. So I got a lot of exposure to that. And I always tried to have fun with it and, of course, subvert it as much as I could. The one that I enjoyed the most was when we had to do a sync sound piece and actually put together a whole complete short film. That was great fun. It was fictional. It was humorous. At least I intended it to be humorous.

KP: Would you say your creative slant has always been towards comedy?

MURPHY: Yes, definitely. Don’t have a serious bone in my body.

KP: Going through that program, did you feel, “Well, now I have a master’s degree in hand. What now?”…

MURPHY: Oh yeah.

KP: Were there any thoughts of leaving the Midwest?

MURPHY: Well, I did a stint in San Diego that didn’t go too well. I thought about working on… they were shooting Simon and Simon, and I just couldn’t bring myself to go down there and try to be a grunt on Simon and Simon. It didn’t thrill me enough, so I came back to the Midwest and ended up back in Madison, and that’s where the whole thing with WHA started.

KP: Did that seem like a logical place to ply some kind of trade?

MURPHY: Madison is a great town. It’s a very creative place. You look at one of those Chad Vader guys, who came from there, and it’s the kind of ode to the unconventional entertainment that seems to constantly come out of Madison.

KP: This would lead into the various people that would assemble a hotbed of comedy, in many regards.

MURPHY: It’s kind of like Austin, Texas – only with bad weather. All kinds of shit’s going on there at all times, and a lot of creative stuff, and a lot of very smart people, and they found a place to congregate where other people won’t hassle them and they could be weird in their own right and they don’t have to worry about being weird.

KP: Were you aware of the comedy scene at that point?

MURPHY: You mean, like, standup?

KP: Yeah…

MURPHY: I didn’t have much interest in standup. I didn’t want to do standup. I never had the inclination to do standup. I thought you were crazy to do standup. And I’ve met so few people who are good at it. Now, when I came to Minneapolis, then I started meeting people who were really good at it. And, as you said, made a difference because they were really entertaining. I mean, in a small town like Madison, you either get the huge guys who play the theaters downtown, or you get the local people. And they just weren’t that funny. But Minneapolis actually was a place where a lot of people gravitated to work. There were, at the time, several worthy comedy clubs. That’s where I ended up meeting all these clowns on Mystery Science Theater.

KP: What was the initial pitch for doing the mock news pieces for KTMA?

MURPHY: Well, Jim and I put our heads together and said, “What would be fun? What would we both enjoy doing?” The genesis of that is simply that we had both spent many years working in news, in television journalism. A lot of what we did at WHA was go out with these news crews and shoot field pieces for their news magazine shows. And that was the whole genesis. And there was one fellow, whose name I’m not going to mention because he’s a sweet man and I don’t know if he knows that we were making fun of him… That was sort of the personality basis for Bob Bagadonuts.

KP: So there actually is a real world counterpart.

MURPHY: (laughs) Well, he’s an amalgam, but there’s one in particular.

KP: You say that as a way to cover…

MURPHY: Well, I don’t want to hurt his feelings. I really like the guy and I don’t think he ever knew that we were making fun of him. So I’ll leave it at that.

KP: I’m sure there are some redeeming qualities to Bob…

MURPHY: Well yeah, of course. He was clueless but likeable. He was never an asshole, that’s the thing.

KP: He’s very much an SCTV-ish character.

MURPHY: Yes, I guess you’d say that. And that’s a compliment, I’d say.

KP: Was that automatically the go-to, “We’re creating this and I want to perform in it…”?

MURPHY: No, it was because we couldn’t afford to hire anybody. And Jim didn’t shoot. He was a sound guy when he was at WHA. So we’d figure it out. We learned the camera together. I’d done more video when I was there, so we sort of taught each other. And when I wasn’t shooting, he was.

KP: How did it feel to perform in those pieces?

MURPHY: It wasn’t the first time I’d done anything like that. It was just a lot of fun.

KP: And to know this was going out to an audience of 10s of 10s….

MURPHY: Well, that actually made it sort of comforting and safe.

KP: I’m assuming you have copies of all the stuff you did for KTMA…

MURPHY: Probably.

KP: Including that travel agency commercial?

MURPHY: Oh god. Again, they’re somewhere either in the closet or in the garage. I’m not nostalgic. I really hate nostalgia.

KP: Why?

MURPHY: I think it’s stupid and pointless. It’s worse than prognosticating, which is another thing I think is simply mental masturbation.

KP: Do you have a problem with nostalgia on your own work? Because you’re the one who just looked up Diver Dan on You Tube…

MURPHY: (laughs) I think that’s a unique form of nostalgia, because it was so dumb.

KP: Now you’re trying to parse this…

MURPHY: (laughs) Of course I am, are you kidding? I’ll parse and rationalize all day, bitch!

KP: (laughs) Do you think it’s just the difference about being precious about your own work as opposed to that of others?

MURPHY: Yeah, I think that’s definitely it. I’m not self-nostalgic. I don’t keep things. I have too many things. If I had everything I accumulated over my life, I’d have to buy another house.

KP: At what point for you did Joel and MST enter the picture?

MURPHY: Well, we were doing these Bob Bagadonuts pieces, and they were really fun, but they were really, really hard. I mean, single camera work and there were two of us doing everything. I mean everything.

KP: Was that the same method even for something as big as those New Year’s Eve pieces?

MURPHY: Well, you know, we got the whole station involved because that was live TV, and live TV’s like heroin. You can’t get enough of it once you try it. It’s so much fun.

KP: What was the worst disaster that happened to you on live TV?

MURPHY: I forgot what I was doing next while I was on camera. I had a little IFB and I said, “For the love of god, what am I doing next?” And then Jim told me. So it worked out really well. So we’d get the whole station involved and we’d get all our friends involved in the New Year’s Eve thing, so those were a lot easier and a lot more fun. But the grind of doing single camera comedy, it’s a lot of work. I think that was part of it, is that we wanted to branch out from there. Both Jim and I. And we started talking to the folks in the standup community, Joel being one of them, and he came in with the idea, and the rest is already written down somewhere else.

KP: What was the station’s view of these projects?

MURPHY: We got press, so it wasn’t bad. And we didn’t cost them a whole lot of money, so we were able to sneak things in with very meager budgets because we didn’t pay ourselves more than our salaries and we didn’t pay anybody outside very much at all.

KP: Was there any oversight that would come in and go, “What are you guys doing?”

MURPHY: Yeah. The station manager liked us. He was a sweet fellow, and he liked us both, and I think he liked the idea of… when we did the first Melon Drop, it was probably the first time the station got any press outside of just the local business columns, the business pages. It was in the entertainment pages and the guy loved the show, so he wrote something really nice about it. That’s currency for a TV station, I think.

KP: Did you see a shelf life for the way KTMA was being run?

MURPHY: God no. They had reruns and bad movies. They think it’s cool to get Andy of Mayberry. They thought that was really exciting.

KP: What were the promos like that you would produce for things like that?

MURPHY: Oh, it was dreadful. They called them donuts, because it’d be the same on the beginning and the end and then you put in something about the episode in between, and that was the hole that you’d fill. That stuff was a grind. The commercials were a grind. Doing the Ax-Man Surplus Store or the Blaine Flea Market, or the endless used cars and discount furniture places…

KP: How much leeway would you take with those pieces?

MURPHY: As much as we could, which still meant very little. Sometimes you just had to get them done. The salesmen, the ad force, decided that a cool thing to do was if you bought a certain amount of ad space, you’d get a free commercial. Yeah, so we were run ragged. (laughs) It was awful.

KP: How would you describe your average day?

MURPHY: Half in the field, half in the studio or the control room putting together ads. And then doing promos. They were long days. And then we’d have to wedge in any of the extracurricular stuff on top of that. Mystery Science Theater was pretty much extracurricular.

KP: How much were you paid for that?

MURPHY: I wasn’t paid any more than my salary – which was the most I’d ever made, but it still wasn’t a whole hell of a lot.

KP: So, basically, it was considered part of your job to do these things…

MURPHY: Yeah.

KP: It wasn’t an extra thing that you were doing…

MURPHY: Well, it was an extra thing, but it was a labor of love.

KP: It fell within the purview of your paid duties.

MURPHY: Right.

KP: If you chose to waste some more of your time, that was your choice…

MURPHY: Right. The station manager would come back and see the mess we’d made out of Styrofoam and junk and jingle his keys in his pockets and shake his head and chuckle and say, “You crazy guys, what are you up to now?” Then he’d walk away. I don’t think he ever saw the show. But the station was going bankrupt while all this was going on.

KP: Was it known that the days were numbered?

MURPHY: No. It was actually after we finished the show that we started hearing the rumblings, and that was when Jim and Joel shopped it up to New York and tried to get it going, because Jim was saying we’d better get this going because we’re not going to have jobs in another six months, and that’s what it turned out to be. Weeks after we started at Best Brains, the station went bankrupt.

KP: What was the genesis and formation of, “We’re actually going to incorporate as Best Brains…” like?

MURPHY: Well, that was Jim’s and Joel’s when it started, so I wasn’t privy to that. They just decided to make a company. It was Joel’s idea to begin with and Jim was the one who’d produced it, so they were essentially the owners of the thing and declared it as such. Joel had the New York agent, and he had the connections. He was already doing some stuff at the Comedy Channel. You remember, at this time, Joel had already had and come back from a pretty successful standup career on both coasts. He did Saturday Night Live and David Letterman and all those things you’re supposed to do when you’re in the pipeline to become the next cool standup. Then I think it sort of sickened him, so he quit and came back home and started small again, which was probably pretty smart for him.

KP: What other options were you exploring at that point, if things were not going to happen?

MURPHY: I don’t know.

KP: Were you aware that things might be coming to a close?

MURPHY: Yeah, absolutely. It seemed to be sort of natural. It seemed like we were going to get something going with Mystery Science Theater. It was just a matter of negotiation. And so, as the station started to look a little scary, we just pressed a little harder to get Mystery Science Theater up and running. And we did that. In a matter of about eight weeks, I got married, went to Central America for a honeymoon, came back, we built the sets, and had the first show delivered to HBO. So it was a pretty quick transition once it actually happened.

KP: So that was an intense period of time…

MURPHY: Oh yeah. Again, it was like summer camp.

KP: During the KTMA shoots, what would be your responsibilities?

MURPHY: I’d shoot it and sort of supervise the set and supervise the post. Along with Jim.

KP: What were the challenges of doing a single camera shoot like that?

MURPHY: Well, that was easy. You didn’t move the camera. Mystery Science Theater was always a very, very easy show to shoot and produce. The oddest technical thing was getting the silhouette going and getting the little doors going, and that was just a matter of video math, knowing which screen to key through which hole at which time. Something an editor can figure out in five minutes.

KP: And the films were directly out of the library, so there was no real selection process.

MURPHY: Well, there was. I mean, we’d screen them, and say, “This looks dumb.”

KP: But there was no writing process that went into it.

MURPHY: Only the sketches.

KP: How quickly would an episode be put together?

MURPHY: Well, let’s see, Trace and Josh and Joel would come in and we’d sit down, and at that time I wasn’t doing a lot of writing because I’d be doing other things during the day or setting up for the show. They’re write the sketches in the morning, and then they’d go to lunch and then come back and shoot the show in the afternoon. So it was done in one day. And, as a matter of fact, for a while there we were almost doing it in real time, because the editing process – we just didn’t have the time to do it, and at 5:00 we had to turn the cameras around to shoot Saturday Night at Ringside, the wrestling show.

KP: This was a very tiny studio space?

MURPHY: It was pretty small.

KP: How would you compare it to what you eventually had at Best Brains?

MURPHY: Best Brains was roughly twice as big, which was still pretty small.

KP: What was your initial impression of Trace and Josh, when they came in?

MURPHY: I thought they were incredibly funny, and the three of those guys – Josh, Trace, and Joel – meshed very well together. It was just great fun to see how they worked together. They were always a great team, the three of them.

KP: But you felt firmly ensconced as a behind the scenes person?

MURPHY: Well, I loved doing it, and I knew how to do it. None of those guys knew how to do it, so somebody had to do it. It was a contribution I could make at that time.

KP: Then the transition to Best Brain happened…

MURPHY: Mm-hmm.

KP: At what point did you start writing?

MURPHY: Right away. That was one of the things I really wanted to do and asked to be on that crew, so I started writing right away. I couldn’t write all the time, again because there were so many dang things going on, and I was editing the show, as well as shooting it.

KP: You were editing during the first season, as well?

MURPHY: Yeah. That changed quickly as it could…

KP: When was an editor brought in?

MURPHY: I really don’t remember. I think it was for the second season… Well, we brought in a camera guy, is what we did, and that was really great. We had to because I was now running a puppet, and I couldn’t do both. Now that I think of it, I think we did bring that guy in during the first season – but again, it’s a fog. A long time ago. That was 20 years ago.

KP: Does it feel like 20 years ago?

MURPHY: Some days. When the humidty’s up (laughs)

KP: It’s literally, what… Next year it will be 20 years since the first rumblings of putting it all together…

MURPHY: It’s true.

KP: I’m sure you’ll fire a gun into the air, or light off a firecracker to commemorate the moment… Maybe some tequila…

MURPHY: Blow up the puppet…

KP: Now, I’m curious about that… No one I’ve talked to has kept a puppet… Even though you’re not a sentimental person, I’d think you would have kept the puppet…

MURPHY: I’m telling you man, did you ever see Magic?

KP: Yes…

MURPHY: Okay, I don’t have to say anything more.

KP: Trace was pretty intense about not having some puppet in the room, with its eyes following him…

MURPHY: Well, exactly.

KP: Bill seemed to want one, though…

MURPHY: (laughs) Well, you know, Trace is Crow, pretty much. Joel sort of hobbled together this odd thing with fixed eyes, but Trace truly breathed life into that thing from the outset. I think it was probably a lot more intimate and creepy for Trace than it would have been for Bill. Not taking anything away from Bill.

KP: I think Trace likened it to being like him watching himself…

MURPHY: (laughs) Like a Magritte painting, then…

KP: Or just a velvet painting of Crow, where the eyes follow him. Obviously you get presented with all these fan-made Toms to hold at conventions…

MURPHY: I do, and I hold them and have my picture taken, and I’m always amazed at the ingenuity that people have when they put these things together.

KP: Did it surprise you when these things started appearing?

MURPHY: Everything about the show surprised me. Everything. Its success, its continued success, the cult following, the conventions, the fact that people would build puppets that not only looked like them but were exact down to every last part – a complete replica of the puppet…

KP: Am I correct in understanding that the puppets couldn’t be copyrighted?

MURPHY: Well, the characters can.

KP: Right, but as far as the design…

MURPHY: I’m a little light in my puppet law.

KP: Has anyone tried to give you a puppet at one of the conventions?

MURPHY: No, they want me to hold it and have my picture taken with it, and then they want it right back. And they want me to work the mouth, too, and do the voice.

KP: Do you?

MURPHY: If they pay me a thousand dollars. (laughs) I’d consider it…

KP: Done and done.

MURPHY: Wouldn’t you??

KP: For an envelope full of cash, I certainly would. I’d sound like shit, but I’d do it. You know what? For $100, I’d operate a Tom Servo…

MURPHY: (laughs) Why not?

KP: I could be the cut-rate Tom Servo. When you can’t afford the right guy, you get me.

MURPHY: Servo Whore!

KP: Exactly! I’m just fulfiliing a need Does that mean I have your blessing?

MURPHY: There you go…

KP: Now I’m the officially endorsed Servo Whore. Do you miss the process?

MURPHY: I miss the company. It was really a great group. Continues to be great people. And we came together and it was one of those things.

KP: Did it feel like a bubble?

MURPHY: Everybody’s sort of painfully aware that nothing lasts forever. But you never think of that while it’s going on, just when it’s over. And those change all the way through. But in general it was always a good group to work with, and there were always fun people. I don’t regret a minute of it.

KP: Was the decision quick and painless as far as a transition when Josh left, and you took up Tom Servo? Bill mentioned there was an audition process for Crow…

MURPHY: There was. There wasn’t one for Servo. I just went in and talked to Jim and Joel and said, “Hey, I think I could do this and I’d like to have a shot.” And they said, “Okay.” It was pretty easy.

KP: Was anything difficult about that transition?

MURPHY: Well, I was nervous about it. I was about to perform in this show that was starting to get some press attention, and I was replacing a character that had already been established.

KP: Did you feel the momentum building on the show?

MURPHY: It was really like the second or third season…I forget when it happened, but Tom Shales wrote a glowing review in The Washington Post, and then the press started getting wind of the whole thing, and that really sort of propelled it. The thing that always got me from the very beginning is when we put the phone number on the screen and then the next day the answering machine would be jammed.

KP: Well, everyone’s seen the introduction of that on the KTMA episodes that have been preserved… Except for the mythical first three episodes, which nobody has… you probably do.

MURPHY: I don’t.

KP: It’s in a box in the garage. There’s probably a ‘bot in the corner.

MURPHY: I know that I didn’t bring a puppet home. I did that intentionally. Jim actually asked me, “Would you like to keep a puppet?” And I said, “Thank you, no.”

KP: What was your rationale?

MURPHY: Like I said, Anthony Hopkins in Magic.

KP: What’s it going to do to you?

MURPHY: It’s just weird. I wouldn’t call a puppet a transitional object, but at that point it would seem like that.

KP: Did the character become a solid entity to you over the years, as far as that characterization you developed?

MURPHY: Meaning…

KP: Did you feel it develop into, “This has become a whole character to me…”?

MURPHY: I think so, definitely. And that I attribute to the writers as a whole.

KP: You being one of them.

MURPHY: Yes, definitely. I got to sort of put the actual performance spin on it, but it’s amazing when you have that many people give their perspective of what Servo’s personality is, or any of the characters – what you end up with is fuller. A little bit more schizophrenic, perhaps, but fuller.

KP: How would you describe the atmosphere at Best Brains?

MURPHY: High school with money, man. Once again. We’re playing Doom on our network when we’re supposed to be working. Microsoft had just come out with the text-to-voice thing where you could type something down and have a robot voice say it. So we’d type up these things and then broadcast it, some foul thing about somebody else in the building, over the PA system. We had odd celebrities coming through and taking tours.

KP: Who were the odd celebrities who would come through?

MURPHY: I shouldn’t say odd. I guess you’d call them particular types of celebrities. Like, Roger McGuinn was a big fan of the show. I just love that, because he was a hero of mine. He’s another guy I listened to.

KP: Did he take a tour?

MURPHY: He did take a tour. And I got to sit in and watch him record a song, which was pretty thrilling. He recorded a song with the Jay Hawks, and it was fucking great, it was wonderful.

KP: So, you’re saying there were perks.

MURPHY: Are you kidding? I got to piss next to Leonard Nimoy. Things like this. I got kissed on the mouth by Kim Cattrall. I also met Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut.

KP: Did you ever have an encounter with Vonnegut outside of the rather awkward one you described in the MST book?

MURPHY: No.

KP: Did you entertain any thought of walking over to his table?

MURPHY: No. I knew then that he might call security.

KP: Or he might say, “You passed the test. Sit down.”

MURPHY: I’ll never know, will I?

KP: Are there any people that just completely shocked you to find out that they enjoyed the show?

MURPHY: I was stunned and floored and flattered… Dan Fogelberg, remember him?

KP: Oh yeah…

MURPHY: He was a fan of the show. He was, like, a real fan. And he invited us all to go to a show, and none of us could make it. It was just so embarrassing.

KP: I’m sure you were all, “Oh, I’ve got a dentist appointment…”

MURPHY: I would have gone. He’d gone from his fun folk rocky phase to his sort of gassy music phase, so I think I wasn’t as impressed anymore. Nobody went, and I think he left a little bit dispirited.

KP: That he had somehow sunk to a level of celebirty below a cow town puppet show that didn’t have time for him…

MURPHY: (laughs) Yeah…

KP: I’m sure he harbors that horrible, horrible hurt to this day…

MURPHY: (laughs). The other big thrill was talking to Frank Zappa on the phone.

KP: How did that call come about?

MURPHY: We got a call from Wally Nicita at Warner Brothers. Wally went on to have, and continues to have, a terrific career as a producer and exec. She was putting this together for Frank. She was a friend of Franks. I think that was part of it, was he had a script. A very, very weird script. You’d expect nothing less. He was dying. He was not even a year away. And he knew he was dying, and he just wanted to have as much fun as he could in his last few months. Then Wally called us up and said, “Frank Zappa has this script and he has watched you guys and he thinks you’re out of your gourds, and he’d like you to consider developing it into a movie.” And I said, “Yeah, uh-huh, that’s neat, that sounds really cool. Who are you again?” She said, “Wally Nicita from Warner Brothers.” And I said, “Okay, tell you what. Why don’t you have Frank call us.” She sounded a little put out, and she said, “Well, I’ll see what I can do.” She hung up, and a half an hour later, over the PA I hear, “Kevin, Frank Zappa’s on the phone for you.”

KP: At what point did your stomach completely go in a knot?

MURPHY: Right then. Absolutely. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to say, “I started listening to you… it was in summer in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and my brother brought home Freak Out and I’d never heard anything so fucking weird in my life.”

KP: Did you say that?

MURPHY: In so many words, but the first thing he said is, “You know, when I knew that you guys were cool was when I turned on the show, and there’s Joel, and he’s wearing a clown outfit and he’s roasting a puppet over an open fire.” And he said, “I knew you guys were too fucking weird for words.” So we had a little mutual compliment for each other.

KP: That’s an incredible compliment, coming from him.

MURPHY: It was! It truly blew me away. And he said, “I’ve got this script, and it’s political and weird and I’d like you guys to consider doing it.” Then he sent the script and he sent some cassettes of some music that he had in mind to do the score for the thing. The essential idea was wonderful. He wanted to completely do the soundtrack and the score first, and then lip synch the entire movie. It was going to sort of be The Queen of Outer Space – you know, the spider lives in a cave on the moon?

KP: Right…

MURPHY: Except told from the spider’s point of view.

KP: How much of the music had he demoed at that point?

MURPHY: Well, it was a lot of songs that he’d either released or was just doing on his beautiful synthesizer machine. At the time he was pretty sophisticated into sampling and sequencing before a lot of people were, so he had stacks and stacks and volumes with music and scores already written. And they were released because he had these contractual obligations. and albums came out like Sleep Dirt and Studio Tan. Then they had some of these orchestral things that he’d done, and they were just wonderful. Sort of splendid weird pageantry. This is what he had in mind. He had already written “Spider of Destiny,” which was one of the songs on there. The spider becomes a sex slave of the queen of outer space, and that’s part of the story. And it just got weirder and weirder and weirder from there. It would have been wonderful. He had actually talked to Terry Gilliam about doing it, too. That would have been quite a combination.

KP: So, already you’re in this rarified air…

MURPHY: Yeah.

KP: What happened after your phone call at BBI?

MURPHY: It was a weird time, and the timing couldn’t have been worse, because this is when Joel was sort of going through the period of determining to leave the show.

KP: Was it known that he was making that decision?

MURPHY: It was being discerned by him, and what that would mean. He had said he didn’t want to be the star of the show for very long, and he was true to his world.

KP: What was the return call back to Frank?

MURPHY: Well, I talked to Frank and asked him to give us a little time, here. We’d like to consider it, but it’s nothing that we can move on right away. And he said, “Well, think about it, because I’d love you to do it,” and that’s when he sent the script and the tapes. We talked to Wally again, and she said, “If you can do it, this is the time to go, because Frank is not a healthy man.” We really, sadly, had to sort of walk away from it because, at that time, we didn’t know where we were going, much less trying to develop a script for Frank Zappa.

KP: Would you say that’s a regret?

MURPHY: It would have been fun. I don’t regret it. There’s very few things I regret. But it would have been fun.

KP: At least you know that you were part of something that impressed one of the people that was quite a formative influence in your youth.

MURPHY: Absolutely, yeah. That was quite fun.

KP: Do you still have the tapes?

MURPHY: Of the music?

KP: Yeah.

MURPHY: Those I have. And I think I know where they are.

KP: When was the last time you listened to those?

MURPHY: (laughs) About 10 years ago.

KP: How do you treat going back and listening to music?

MURPHY: That’s different.

KP: So that’s not nostalgia to you.

MURPHY: I don’t know. Well, there is music that is nostalgic. For me, even in pop music, there are songs that are timeless. When I listen to certain Beatles songs, they don’t remind me of a period – I just like the music. I listen to Bob & Ray not because they remind me of the good old golden days of radio. I could give a shit about the good old golden days of radio. Bob and Ray are funny. I think there’s a difference there. I don’t sit there and say, “Boy, I remember when I was in my pajamas as a child sitting on the couch with a cup of Nestlé’s Quik…” I don’t give a shit about that. It’s funny and it’s enjoyable of its own right. There’s a certain sort of cheese factor built into that.

KP: How do you listen to music? Do you have an iPod?

MURPHY: I still have LPs. I still have a lot of CDs. I actually have a lot of cassette tapes, and I have converted most of them onto my iPod.

KP: I’m sure, because of the amount of traveling you do, its nice to have an iPod.

MURPHY: I love the iPod. For me, it’s like the coolest thing built in the last century. It’s like the mechanical pencil. It’s just one of these things that it seems like life is possibly at least more fun with it in existence.

KP: Are you a shuffle person or a playlist person?

MURPHY: I’m a playlist person. Although I shuffle my playlists. Does that make any sense?

KP: Yes. So you have set lists, but they could come up in random order.

MURPHY: Yes, I do.

KP: How do you normally program a list? By artists or moods?

MURPHY: Has to be sort of moods. I’ve got a mix for baking bread, I’ve got a mix for putting the fishing boat behind the truck and taking it to the lake.

KP: Is it one you will always play for that action?

MURPHY: No. Sometimes I’ll play the bread making list while driving the boat to the lake.

KP: Makes a great loaf.

MURPHY: (laughs)

KP: Are these eclectic, or would you say that they fit within the context of what you were intending for the playlist?

MURPHY: Well, playlists are generally eclectic, aren’t they? Because they reflect the personality of the person that put it together.

KP: Yes, but you can still have a theme that runs through a playlist.

MURPHY: I suppose. I guess you could say that. Let me take a look at this thing here. I have a bunch of different playlists that I take with me when I go to Mexico, and certain ones that I like to play at certain times of day. It’s that sort of weirdness. But right next to… let’s see. Right next to Marc Ribot is Thievery Corporation. Right next to Buckwheat Zydeco is Senor Coconut. Make sense out of that.

KP: There’s a sense to it.

MURPHY: I’ve got Cannonball Adderley and Sergio Mendes. That’s quite a combination.

KP: Now that’s a one-two punch.

MURPHY: They’re playing together.

KP: Are you a one iPod family?

MURPHY: This is going to sound so fucking pretentious I could die. I have two. I don’t have more than two, though. I have one that I keep at home, and one that I travel with and take into potentially harmful situations.

KP: That’s the expendable one…

MURPHY: Yes, it’s the one in the dirty, beat-up case. That’s the one that goes to Mexico with me.

KP: Are these video, or music iPods?

MURPHY: I got the big guns for the one I take and watch movies with, and travel with, and back up files.

KP: How different would writing the book have been if the video iPod was in existence at that time?

MURPHY: Not much. For me, the video iPod’s kind of like having a DVD player. For me, the book was all about the public exhibition of a motion picture. That’s sort of my definition of cinema, there.

KP: But as one of your fallback positions, is what I mean…

MURPHY: Yeah, it would have been an odd decision to make. If I could find a way to project the iPod, it would have been fine. I might have taken that. There was something more tactile and more cinematic at the time about bringing a projector with me.

KP: I remember how heartbreaking it was to read that the Italian portion of the book, when your fallback options broke down…

MURPHY: Yeah, it was a pretty low point.

KP: And you conveyed it effectively through the writing.

MURPHY: Thank you.

KP: I remember writing you an email at the time, that the book had rekindled my interest in going to the theaters.

MURPHY: I love that.

KP: Which I’m sorry to say has died…

MURPHY: (laughs) I guess I’d better get back out there.

KP: All we have are the multiplexes in this area. Although I’ve always thought that if someone were to open a single screen theater in this area with classic programming, it would take off. Sadly, it’s not cheap to open a theater.

MURPHY: Nope.

KP: Maybe that would be something to tackle – what people can do in their home towns to start that sort of thing…

MURPHY: It certainly is possible. There are a lot of small towns around that have defunct theaters that have either become community centers or just sitting empty. There’s one not far from here where my partner Janes’s family is from. The Cameo theater. It used to be one, they split it into three, and now it’s just sitting empty.

KP: They did that here. They closed two of the old style multiplexes, the three screen theaters, to open a 16-plex. But the theaters are sitting empty.

MURPHY: Right.

KP: You’re not going to get a projector back in there cheap. But I guess if there were cheap digital presentations…

MURPHY: That’s true, but the bottom line is you’ve got to love it. You’ve got to really, really love it because it’s… you turn a hobby into a career and suddenly you realize you didn’t really much like your hobby, and that can be a nightmare.

KP: Has anyone presented that to you?

MURPHY: Actually, yeah. One of my brothers-in-law said, “Why don’t you think about getting a loan and opening this theater down in Owatonna?”

KP: What was your initial gut reaction to that?

MURPHY: I think it’s an excellent idea. I don’t know if I’m the guy to do it. I’m not a businessman. It would take a businessman, even if it is a film lover or a lover of independent film, or whatever. I think it would take a businessman to make it run. It’s just the way this country works.

KP: Spending that year traveling the world and going to theaters, what was the biggest revelation you had about the theater experience?

MURPHY: I think it’s still very cool. The movie depends on the theater and the theater depends on the movie, and the experience depends on both being something good or interesting. And it’s not always going to be that way. Sometimes you simply just go into the movies. And I still know a lot of people who just like to go out quote-unquote “to the movies” because it’s a past time. My own brother Brian and his wife go out to the movies about once a week. They just enjoy it. It’s their way of getting away and doing something. And he’s a lot less picky. I’m a snob, I’m a big-ass snob, and he’s a lot less picky about the movies he watches because he likes going to the movies instead of sitting at home and watching a movie.

KP: What are movies that you absolutely, positively, of your own accord will not go near?

MURPHY: Oh, hang on, what’s opening this week? (laughs)

KP: Last week was Shrek 3.

MURPHY: Yeah, I haven’t gone. It’s funny – I haven’t had any interest in seeing that or any of the big films.

KP: You were incredibly critical of the first Harry Potter film and Columbus’s treatment of that. How do you view the films after they shuffled off Columbus and brought actual filmmakers in?

MURPHY: I love Cuaron. I’ve always liked Cuaron. I like what he does with movies. That one I enjoy, I think, more than any of the others. I think it’s because of Cuaron.

KP: Did that set the reset button on your view of the franchise?

MURPHY: No. On that particular film, I’d say. I tried to get involved in the Harry Potter books, but they’re not written for me. They don’t engage me like they do other people, and that’s fine. I appreciate the craft and the whole charming English boarding school world, but I’d rather read Dickens, or Neal Stephenson, for god’s sake.

KP: Was there any franchise that….

MURPHY: No. (laughs) I can’t think of one. If we had The Thin Man, it would be a whole different thing. But we don’t have The Thin Man – we get Ocean’s 11.

KP: I’m sure we’ll have some kind of remake of The Thin Man.

MURPHY: I’m sure we will, but it won’t be The Thin Man. When I say that, I mean here was a series that had some fun to it, some charm, and it seemed like they weren’t just making them to make them. Maybe that’s just my own cynical attitude, but there are TV series that end up being more interesting.

KP: You enjoyed the first Lord of the Rings film…

MURPHY: Oh, I loved them all!

KP: That was a franchise.

MURPHY: No it wasn’t a franchise, it was a series of three films.

KP: In Hollywood, that’s called a franchise…

MURPHY: I think of a franchise as something that’s open ended. They could make Spider-Man 12. That’s a franchise. They could make Ocean’s 25. The notion of that becoming a franchise is absurd. I don’t know if you’d call it a closed world, but it’s a work in and of itself, The Lord of the Rings. Anything else would be derivative, I suppose.

KP: What is it like doing a RiffTrax with Mike on a film that you actually enjoyed?

MURPHY: It’s a blast. It’s just a blast. It’s easier. I said Mystery Science Theater was easy – it was easy, and it was also very difficult in some ways, because it was making television, and television’s always complicated. But RiffTrax is incredibly easy. The writing is always the hardest part. And long movies are difficult to write. Like, the Star Wars movies nearly killed us both. When Bill joins us, it’s always a lot easier. When three of us are working on it, it’s much easier. But the writing is the hardest part of it all, and trying to make these things fun for an audience is the hardest part. But once you go into the studio, it’s just a blast.

KP: Is it a different feeling knowing it’s not characters critiquing these films, it’s Kevin Murphy saying these things?

MURPHY: I suppose there’s a certain liability in there, because there’s a safety with hiding behind a character. Because you truly can hide behind it. You’ve got a puppet in your hand – not only are you portraying a character, you’re portraying a puppet character. So nobody even sees you.

KP: Even Mike was portraying a puppet character…

MURPHY: In a way, I suppose he was. But then when you consider the silhouette, then you remove it at another level.

KP: So you have these layers of distance that you can hide behind…

MURPHY: Yeah. There are several sets of filters between you and what’s going on. I think that’s at the heart of the success of Mystery Science Theater, is that we had these wonderful characters, and people gave them license to make fun of the movies. So yeah, we’re setting ourselves up to be knocked down hard. I think for me, what we found over the course of doing Mystery Science Theater is that the characters and the idea were what really got it going. And I think what kept it going was the fact that these great characters were having so much fun with the films, so in turn the audience was too. The writing is a huge part of what kept that show going for as long as it did. Otherwise it might have been a passing novelty, and once the novelty wore off, what is there for it besides good writing?

KP: Right. Which you’ve seen with the many imitators that have tried to snatch away that idea over the years.

MURPHY: Yeah, I suppose, but I do enjoy the Sklar Brothers, I’ve got to say. They do the show on ESPN…

KP: Oh yes, Cheap Seats…

MURPHY: Yes. I enjoy the way that they’re the most idiosyncratic pair of comics I’ve ever seen. And when you see them on stage… (laughs)

KP: But obviously they know what their influences are, since you guys did the appearance with them.

MURPHY: Yeah.

KP: Which must have been odd, after that many years, to go back into it.

MURPHY: It was fun.

KP: Did it feel weird to know that you were Tom Servo again?

MURPHY: When we did the thing on Cheap Seats?

KP: Yeah.

MURPHY: Yes, that was a little weird. But we didn’t actually have to pick up the puppets. I think Jim just borrowed silhouettes from old projects.

KP: Yeah, I noticed things weren’t in sync…

MURPHY: Yeah. Just had to do the voice.

KP: But it shows that people don’t pay attention unless you actually see the difference that you guys did bring to the characters, even in the silhouette sequence.

MURPHY: Yeah. The characters were, like I said… it separates you just from being a smart ass watching a movie. The only way that I think we can do RiffTrax now is the fact that we have this history of having done it on Mystery Science Theater.

KP: It’s clear that the camaraderie is still there.

MURPHY: Yeah. That’s what makes it fun, is that we always had fun playing off each other and working off each other, so it works out well. We’ve got a good sort of jazz shorthand.

KP: It also sounds like it’s pretty open ended, and open to people coming in. Mike was going to ask Trace about doing one.

MURPHY: That would be fun…

KP: Some of the rough cuts of MST3K have leaked out – particularly of the theater segments – so it has your banter in between the breaks during the recording…

MURPHY: Where the hell do you find this, You Tube?

KP: They might be on You Tube. Some of the bit torrent sites have the full rough cuts.

MURPHY: Oh wow.

KP: Apparently, when they had a garage sale when BBI closed, they sold a box of what they thought were blank video tapes, but they were the rough cuts. I think there’s two Joel episodes, the complete theater rough cuts. There’s three from season 10 – including the final episode, which has a lot of nice quips about how you feel about Sci-Fi.

MURPHY: That stuff doesn’t belong out there!

KP: It’s not their fault that they bought a box of tapes…

MURPHY: (laughs) No it ain’t.

KP: And I guess there’s an entire tape of host segment rehearsals, including 35 minutes of season one host segment rehearsals, which are unique…

MURPHY: (laughs) Yeah, I’ll bet they are!

KP: Full of a lot of Josh f-bombs.

MURPHY: Oh yeah, he liked to toss the effenheimer around the room.

KP: But as far as the camaraderie goes, there’s one segment where there’s an extended break halfway through the film, where you three start riffing on “Owner of a Lonely Heart”…

MURPHY: (laughs) Which became a sketch.

KP: Which became a sketch, but you can see the entire development process.

MURPHY: I may be bold, but I think you’ll find that we were never pissing at each other.

KP: No, which was consistent through all of it. The Joel segment recordings you can see you guys were building on each other in an improv fashion.

MURPHY: We really liked working with each other. I think we were better for it and I think that we were always able to jam something out and work well together.

KP: The Coiley stuff is in there, too…

MURPHY: (laughs)

KP: With you guys coming up with euphemisms for… well… for a trip to the bathroom…

MURPHY: Yes, indeed.

KP: And Mike stunning you both with “blowing mud.”

MURPHY: First time I’ve heard that. “Pushing a crayon” and “blowing mud,” I think, both came out of Mike.

KP: At which point you can hear this awed silence, but you can also hear this sort of quiet shift as you try to move away from him.

MURPHY: (laughs) Oh my.

KP: But you can see the camaraderie that’s carried through to RiffTrax. At what point did Mike approach you about doing a RiffTrax?

MURPHY: Almost immediately after he got it up and going, he said one of the reasons he was doing it was he wanted to be able to have his old pals come and join him for these things. And I offered my services right away. It’s just come up in various ways, several times. Mike, not long after the death knell sounded for Mystery Science Theater, was talking about issuing CDs which would go along with a movie, but the CD publishing industry is also pretty rugged. And MP3 comes along and suddenly everything gets a lot easier.

KP: It was a go-to question for the past 20 years when anybody would interview you, is first, “What was the worst movie you guys have done…”, and second, “Why don’t you do Star Trek V?”…

MURPHY: Yeah. And now that’s not a problem anymore. I think that’s one of the great, fun features of it, is that we can do anything. It’s a little odd for some people, because there’s not an actual product that you can hold in your hand. You’d have to be more than mildly technologically impaired not to be able to do RiffTrax. It’s pretty damn easy, and it works pretty damn well.

KP: Is there any film that’s untouchable for you?

MURPHY: There’s films that, out of discretion, we won’t do. The Passion of the Christ is not high on the list.

KP: Not so much content wise, but films that you hold dear enough that you would pass should it ever come up?

MURPHY: I’m sure there are. I haven’t thought of them because I just haven’t considered doing them – because one of the things we’re doing now is taking more current things and things we always wanted to do, first. And there are so many of them.

KP: So where’s Corky Romano?

MURPHY: See, here’s the problem with comedies. It’s difficult to make a comedy out of a comedy, especially when it’s a failed comedy.

KP: Which I believe is why you guys thought of Catalina Caper as one of the hardest ones you’ve ever done.

MURPHY: It was hard because it was supposed to be a comedy, and comedies are…it doesn’t make sense. There’s something about making a joke on a joke that just doesn’t work. Because bad jokes hurt. You can shoot a puppy and it doesn’t hurt as much as a bad joke.

KP: If you were to pick one of the films that you suffered through multiple times… would you say Serendipity would be an acceptable choice?

MURPHY: Definitely. I would tear that to pieces. As a comedy? I don’t know if it was a comedy. It was a romance. It was a chick film. We could have fun with that. It was just dumb.

KP: One thing about A Year At The Movies is that you watch them again and again and again…

MURPHY: Well, I saw Forrest Gump again. That may be the movie that I hate the most on the whole planet, ever.

KP: Just because of how manipulative it is?

MURPHY: Yeah. So cravenly manipulative. It’s a cowardly film in every way. It’s simply out there to milk tears out of the audience like a cow.

KP: So Forrest Gump is a prime candidate, is what you’re saying…

MURPHY: Oh yeah, I think so.

KP: In everything I’ve seen for Film Crew, it seems like the closest thing to being MST as you could get.

MURPHY: I guess it is, because it’s the three of us. There’s no puppets involved, that’s the difference.

KP: But there are framing sequences.

MURPHY: There are. Well, we wanted to have some sort of frame around it.

KP: And you’re playing, essentially, fictionalized versions of yourselves.

MURPHY: I guess you could say that, yes. I would never compare us to the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges, but I think that’s probably the sort of thing that it’s generated from. It’s just a way for us to stage ourselves and say, “Here we are, here’s how we’re doing it, and here’s why.”

KP: What was the desire to go back and do a thing where you’re on camera?

MURPHY: I never had the desire to do something on camera. It was just we needed to have it. (laughs) When I look at my big, ugly, middle-aged gob on camera, I sort of cringe a little bit, so I have to act as loony as possible.

KP: So you’d be fine if it was covered with, say, a monkey mask…

MURPHY: Well, I’m always less self-conscious when properly masked or bepuppeted.

KP: Everyone I talked to, who talked about the Bobo phase, talked about how uninhibited you were as a performer during that period, in that make-up…

MURPHY: (laughs) Even the Greeks knew they could always be a little bit freer behind the mask.

KP: So that’s an assessment that you wholly agree with?

MURPHY: Oh, absolutely.

KP: Seems like there was nothing that you wouldn’t do as Bobo.

MURPHY: Well, I’ve never actually flung my own crap, if that’s what you mean.

KP: At least not on camera.

MURPHY: Not even off camera.

KP: Mike said different.

MURPHY: No crap, no. I’m not saying that I didn’t fling other people’s crap, but we’ll leave it at that. The fun of the Film Crew is, I think – first of all, it’s a self-contained DVD. And I think people who like Mystery Science Theater for the choices of movies we made will like the Film Crew for that same reason. We combed the world and found the four most perfectly suited films… and let me tell you, it’s difficult to do it. The PD world is difficult to get through.

KP: How did you miss these films during the MST days?

MURPHY: Some of them I think we missed just because there were so many out there. I know we looked at the Peter Graves movie. I’m forgetting the name of it now. I’ll have to look it up on our website. Killers from Space. I know we looked at Killers from Space when we were doing Mystery Science Theater, and for some reason or another we couldn’t get it. So that’s one that we ended up doing. But The Wild Women of Wongo, I don’t think I’d ever seen before, and I sure as hell had not seen Hollywood After Dark. And that’s the one, boy, I don’t know why – it’s in its own way so much cheesy Hollywood. I mean, it actually captured something of cheesy Hollywood in a way it didn’t intend to.

KP: So, in some ways, it’s a very beautiful document of a bygone era.

MURPHY: (laughs) Well, in the way that I guess if you didn’t have your glasses on you could say that toilet paper is a beautiful document.

KP: It certainly is a moment in time, is what you’re saying.

MURPHY: Well, the Rue MacClanahan stripping thing, and the extended scenes of stripping in it, and they just go on…

KP: How does Rue compare to Nichelle Nichols?

MURPHY: (laughs) Nichelle looks graceful compared to Rue. And Rue has the body of a woman from the 50s. Sort of like a Dodge Dart.

KP: So she looks like your aunt getting changed.

MURPHY: Yeah, that’s the thing. Nichelle kind of looked like your grandma. She was too old for that, by the way. Poor woman, god bless her. Great legs – way too old for it. The thing I love about Hollywood After Dark is it had that lurid girlie magazine quality to it, in that you never actually see any of the naughty bits. Just there are pasties, for those who are looking forward to it. Yes, there are feathered pasties.

KP: You’re really building this up for me

MURPHY: I know! (laughs) It could be a big let down, but I don’t think so.

KP: How different is the writing process now that it’s obviously a much smaller group putting these together?

MURPHY: We used to sit and write as a group. And more recently we’ve been writing chunks of the movie separately.

KP: Obviously location plays a role.

MURPHY: That’s the main reason why it became out of necessity. But the thing about having written together for as long as we have – Bill, Mike and I – is that we kind of know each other’s beats and we can at least anticipate each other’s sort of perspective. I don’t try to write like Bill or Mike, nor do they try to write like me. But it ends up… I would dare people to figure out which part I wrote or which part Bill wrote or which part Mike wrote.

KP: If it has a fart joke, it was Bill.

MURPHY: I’m big on the fart jokes. They always accuse me of being the one who goes over the line. Mr. Blow Mud accuses me of going over the line.

KP: When I talked to Mike a few months back he mentioned if there’s anybody who needs to be pulled back, it’s you…

MURPHY: (laughs) Well, part of it is I do that because it seems to horrify Mike so much. There’s not a lot that can horrify Mike, but I can horrify Mike.

KP: Which is odd, considering he’s the king of scat.

MURPHY: (laughs) Well, poop is one thing, but when you start getting into, I guess, the sort of territory I tread in some times, it…

KP: He also mentioned he tends to avoid things of a political nature…

MURPHY: Yeah. He stays out of the political spectrum, and that’s just fine. I think I only go in there when it’s an obvious hand grenade I can drop into the room. Otherwise it’s not worth it, because nobody wants to hear my politics. I’m not a political comic. I can make fun of anybody on any side of the aisle. I can probably whip up a quick François Mitterrand joke if I needed to.

KP: That’s a challenge.

MURPHY: It is a challenge, and I’m not going to do it. I will, but send me a thousand dollars first.

KP: Now I’m torn. Do I want to hear you play with a puppet…

MURPHY: Or do a joke on François Mitterrand.

KP: There must be some thought of an MST reunion, approaching the anniversary…

MURPHY: Not in my mind.

KP: At all?

MURPHY: I don’t see how it would happen.

KP: Some convention, somewhere, must have tried to engineer it.

MURPHY: Not that I have heard, myself.

KP: If you were presented with someone saying, “We’d like to do an MST celebration and get all you guys together to do an event…”

MURPHY: I’d probably have to up my price to a million dollars.

KP: That’s a hell of a jump.

MURPHY: I’d always consider it – again, because of the people involved, whom I’ve had great fun working with over the years.

KP: But obviously, that is a looming specter with the anniversary coming up, that somebody’s going to try to do something, somewhere.

MURPHY: I would need to be invited. I certainly wouldn’t instigate.

KP: But you would not be adverse to that occurring.

MURPHY: Certainly not. I couldn’t stop it from occurring, and I wouldn’t have any reason to stop it from occurring. But this falls, for me, into the realm of nostalgia.

KP: And also the deadly realm of personal nostalgia.

MURPHY: Yeah, that’s the thing. You saw The Return to Gilligan’s Island. I mean, what the fuck? (laughs) It was horrible.

KP: Well, I can’t see you guys welcoming the Harlem Globetrotters…

MURPHY: Number one, we’re older….

KP: Yeah, but you were puppets…

MURPHY: That’s true. The puppets didn’t age. But it does. Nostalgia… even the word sounds like a disease. Suffice it to say, I would be surprised if it happened, let’s put it that way.

KP: But now it’s going to be in print.

MURPHY: I’ll have to eat my words.

KP: Are you still doing pieces for NPR?

MURPHY: I’m not. The three of us, when we first formed the Film Crew, we intended to do a radio show for NPR. We did the pilot, and we had great fun doing it, but it never made it to series. That sort of ended the… we were working on other things, and it seemed like the time for us to move away from each other there.

KP: So who controls the pilot?

MURPHY: Probably NPR, I would imagine. They own the thing. I don’t know. I have to talk to somebody about that.

KP: It might be a fun thing to throw up on the website.

MURPHY: Yeah, you never know. We actually had it for a while, or we had a segment on the Film Crew website, for a while.

KP: If they’re not doing anything with it, you might as well.

MURPHY: Yeah. I don’t know if it’s still up there.

KP: What would you say, then, is your primary focus at this point?

MURPHY: I’m also trying to get another book going, maybe two. Particularly with the subject matter, I’m having a devil of a time finding someone to rep the book, just because most of the agents I have met… the working title of the book is Why Hollywood Sucks.

KP: That’s not incendiary at all.

MURPHY: (laughs) No. It’s a bit of a petition. I have actually come up with 95 theses, in the tradition of Martin Luther, as to why Hollywood sucks, and when the book is sold and released, I plan on nailing a copy of it to the front door of the Chinese Theater.

KP: Could you name one or two of the theses that you are developing?

MURPHY: Oh, absolutely. The first one, not surprisingly, is Thomas Edison. Because I have to go through history. Thomas Edison is one of the large reasons why Hollywood sucks to this day, because he sort of set the trend for the crass, completely commercially driven product that we have today. And trying to milk as much out of the audience as possible, and give them as little as they absolutely need. I believe I discovered the first bad movie, too, which is Thomas Edison’s own electrocution of an elephant.

KP: I believe that was the precedent for the summer blockbuster.

MURPHY: Exactly. (laughs) You’ve got it.

KP: His animal snuff film, which I believe was meant as a swipe at Tesla.

MURPHY: Well, it was a swipe at Westinghouse, really.

KP: But was really an attempt to destroy Tesla’s theories on the safest means of delivering electical current…

MURPHY: As I read it, at that time he was really more pissed off at Westinghouse than he was Tesla, and he came to exact his personal vendetta and character assassination of Tesla along the line.

KP: Because it’s easier to attack a person than an entity, anyway.

MURPHY: Well, it’s kind of difficult when you’ve invested everything in a technology that’s not going to work.

KP: That’s quite deadly, actually.

MURPHY: That’s right.

KP: It’s a fascinating film on so many horrible levels.

MURPHY: Yes it is. And it’s a bad film.

KP: I’ll bet it’s on You Tube.

MURPHY: Of course it is.

KP: What is the resistance you’ve been hitting? What have they told you when you approached them with the book?

MURPHY: I get the same kind of cold reception I think anybody who’s baldly indicting the system that makes so many people so much money would fall upon. I think if I sold it to a small press I could probably get the thing going, but I also have to make a living at the same time, so I don’t know how interested I am in doing that. So, like a lot of books, it just may take some time to find the audience. The thing is I’m trying to keep it as current as possible, so I keep writing new chapters and updating old ones. It’s folly to point out M. Night Shyamalan as one of the reasons why Hollywood sucks now because everybody knows it and it’s no surprise.

KP: Right. So how complete is the book at this point?

MURPHY: I’ve actually written about 135 reasons, and I had to pare it down to 95. It’s pretty complete.

KP: So, other than revisions…

MURPHY: Revisions and updates is what I’d have to continue to do.

KP: But it’s pretty much ready to go.

MURPHY: It’s close. I did the cowardly thing and lumped some things together. Took five directors who you should not watch, and five actors who oughtn’t sing, and five singers who oughtn’t act…

KP: What’s one of the directors on your list?

MURPHY: Oh, let’s see, what would I have here… Pitof. You know Pitof?

KP: Oh yes.

MURPHY: And Mick G, of course. Dennis Dugan. This was a hard list to pare down.

KP: I really hope Brett Ratner’s on that list.

MURPHY: Brett is not. I chose Tom Shadyac, instead. The guy who did Patch Adams.

KP: In a fight, I’d have to go with Ratner. Just as far as pure, unadulterated crassness of filmmaking.

MURPHY: Well, Michael Bay still breaks the mold, as far as I’m concerned. Have you visited his website, “Shoot for the Edit”?

KP: Oh yes. And his musings on the audience are always…

MURPHY: (laughs)

KP: … fascinating.

MURPHY: Yeah.

KP: I’d still vote for Ratner, though.

MURPHY: And there are some easy targets that I threw out, like Uwe Boll. That’s just…

KP: Yeah, but what other filmmaker would challenge his critics to a fistfight?

MURPHY: That’s true. I think he did that out of desperation, because he lost his moneymaking machine. The German public funding moneymaking machine went away.

KP: That made it so he could crank out dozens of films a year.

MURPHY: Yeah. But since that loophole went away, he doesn’t have the investors he used to have. That’s one of the problems. Breasts is one of the reasons I have, too. It’s reason #34 right now.

KP: Yes, but what point are you dating the creation of breasts to?

MURPHY: I don’t think that breasts are a bad thing, but they’re a reason why Hollywood sucks.

KP: As far as the cinematic treatment of breasts?

MURPHY: Well, I invite you to imagine a world without breast obsession. Think about what the culture would be like if we looked at women’s bodies differently than we do right now. Jessica Simpson would have to get a job. Meryl Streep could probably get $50 million a picture.

KP: You saw the reality shows. We don’t want people like Paris Hilton in the workplace.

MURPHY: Oh, God is one of the reasons, of course, why Hollywood sucks.

KP: Go on, I’ve gotta hear this…

MURPHY: Well, because Hollywood’s scared to death of God. Hollywood doesn’t know how to treat God. It sort of goes hand-in-hand with sex, which sounds like an odd combination, but Hollywood’s also scared to death of sex. They don’t mind lurid things, but they really can’t deal directly with sex. And God, it’s almost impossible for Hollywood to do any sort of movie that directly reflects divine experience. What do we get? The Passion of the Christ, which… you know, you can take it for what it is. The DaVinci Code – is this as close as we get to God? Or Constantine? Those are odd examples. God reflected in an action film doesn’t work for me. For me, the best film about God – probably in the last 10 or 12 years – is probably Dogma. It does have action sequences, too, a couple of juicy ones.

KP: So you’re a fan of Dogma…

MURPHY: Oh, I love Dogma. It’s my favorite Kevin Smith film.

KP: I’ll have to tell Kevin.

MURPHY: Oh, that’s right, this is on View Askew, right?

KP: Yes, this is his entertainment site…

MURPHY: I’m not just pimpin’ here. That and Jay’s depiction of Jamie Gumm in the last Clerks movie. That’s wonderful. That’s the best two scenes in the movie.

KP: I’m sure Kevin will be happy to hear that. I don’t know how he’s going to feel about the Daredevil RiffTrax…

MURPHY: (laughs) Oh, it’s all in good fun, for crying out loud. Good natured ribbing.

KP: Oh, of course it is…

MURPHY: Every once in a while you’ve got to throw a snowball.

KP: I think Jersey Girl still hurts. That was a film that was close to his heart.

MURPHY: I’m sure it was. You could tell it was heartfelt.

KP: I admit, I did like your riff on Daredevil. That was one of my favorite RiffTrax.

MURPHY: Actually, we performed that live in San Francisco.

KP: Oh, that was part of the Sketch Fest performance…

MURPHY: Yes it was.

KP: So, how do you feel about performing live like that?

MURPHY: It’s a blast.

KP: You did it what, three times in the past, with MST?

MURPHY: Yeah.

KP: What is the setup when you guys are performing live doing the RiffTrax? Are you still facing the screen?

MURPHY: We’ve done it in two venues in two different ways. We’ve done it at the Rafael Film Center, in San Rafael. They’ve got a gorgeous theater out there. We sit looking at a monitor with the screen to our backs and with our faces to the audience. And that was fun to do. The house is dark so we don’t really see the audience, so it’s just like any sort of stage show. When we went to Cobb’s, which is also part of the sketch fest… they do a lot… almost like one of the regular houses for the sketch fest. We were sort of facing the screen. The screen was off to one side of the stage and we were on the other, so sort of facing the audience, but enough so we could see the screen. And we have music stands and our little lights there, so we looked like we’re the three cellists in a chamber ensemble. And we’d perform the film. We’d have a little give and take, a little improvisation. We have to listen to the audience. We have to drop a few things sometimes when the audience is laughing too hard, which is a good thing, when the audience is laughing too hard. But different nights, different performances, different things strike the audience as funny. And that part, you have to be a lot more on your toes than when you’re doing it in a recording studio. But it’s great fun.

KP: Do you feel more comfortable doing it now than you did the first time you did it?

MURPHY: Oh god, the first time, we thought the audience might turn on us, that they all might start throwing comments at the screen, and we’d lose control. But what we learned is – like anybody who’s done standup – if you don’t take control, then you lose control. We performed our material and had fun, and just made the audience have fun.

KP: Was there any point where things might have gotten a bit dicey or someone was in the theater who just thought it was all participatory and, “I’m just going to add a little something…”

MURPHY: Never. From the time we got going… the first time we did Mystery Science Theater live we did a movie called World Without End. Which I always wanted to be a Mystery Science Theater movie, but it never worked out. The first joke, there’s a big nuclear explosion. You see the mushroom cloud. And Crow says, “Ah, Dan Quayle’s first day as president.” And that’s all it took, and then the audience was with us the rest of the time and it was a love fest.

KP: That’s a clip that’s on the Scrapbook tape, I believe.

MURPHY: Ah…

KP: I believe it’s now discontinued, since you guys never got any rights to put all that stuff out.

MURPHY: Probably not.

KP: Does the footage still exist for the sequences cut from This Island Earth, from the MST motion picture?

MURPHY: I’m sure it does. I don’t know if that’s on any of the outtakes.

KP: Because you guys did the entire film, didn’t you? You wrote for the entirety of This Island Earth…

MURPHY: You mean did we write the entire script?

KP: Meaning the film, as it runs, was cut by what, about 30 minutes?

MURPHY: Oh yeah, it was chopped to hell. Actually, we did a trimmed version when we first started, because we knew that there were a few things that… in order to keep the thing to feature length, we wanted to chop it down – but then the studio insisted as we went along that we keep chopping and chopping and chopping, until it became shorter than a regular episode of Mystery Science Theater, which I thought was stupid.

KP: So, then, obviously if someone at the studio wanted to do a special edition, theoretically they could do an extended version… That footage still exists…

MURPHY: Theoretically they could, but I think if they wanted to they might have done it already.

KP: I don’t know. Have you seen how much that DVD goes for?

MURPHY: No.

KP: Two or three hundred dollars on eBay, for that original DVD release.

MURPHY: God almighty. I had one for a while. I think I gave it to Jeff Stonehouse, our photographer, because he didn’t have one.

KP: And he put it up on eBay!

MURPHY: (laughs) No, he’s very proud of the work he did, and I’m very proud of the work he did on that. That’s one of the things we gained along the way, was an incredible set of production people – craft people like Jeff and Brad Keeley, our editor… Tom Naunas, a sound man and musician who helped us out along the way all the time… and our staff photographer, Mickey Keinitz. These were really, really talented guys and they just loved to hang out with us, so we were really quite fortunate to have them around.

KP: The film is still spectacular…

MURPHY: Yeah, it’s pretty, isn’t it?

KP: It’s across the board a very nice looking film.

MURPHY: Yeah, thanks.

KP: You’re not the first to praise Jeff.

MURPHY: In his own way, he elevated us at the same time and made us look better. Everybody talked about bringing Mystery Science Theater to quote-unquote “the next level” from our sort of very cheesy beginnings, but he did it in a way, visually, that was very subtle, and that we didn’t ever get too polished. It always still had the handmade quality, and almost all the effects we’d do were in the camera. He’d use all the different photographic tricks, and we’d very rarely do anything in post, except for green screen effects every now and again. Still, when we’d shoot a spaceship, we’d bring out the old star background – a cloth with little flecks of foil on it. And we had a star wall, too.

KP: Just what was accomplished through the years with just that single camera is impressive…

MURPHY: (laughs) It’s true!

KP: It certainly gives a definition to the word innovation.

MURPHY: Yeah. He brought a jib. We always wanted to be able to do some sort of fluid moving crane-like camera shots, and he had this jib that sat on a tripod, and it was just revelatory.

KP: Was that ever proposed? How adamant was Joel about not having things like that early on?

MURPHY: I think we just sort of broadened it and grew up, because it started out there was a rigid set of rules that were sort of the rules of the show, and that was just fine because it was fun to operate within those limitations. And Cambot was actually supposed to be running the camera, and that was Cambot, and Cambot couldn’t move very much. The single camera thing was a very strong intention, and we kept pretty faithful to that. We’d play with our own conventions. After a while we found it enjoyable to break our own rules, and I think that’s just sort of our deviant nature.

KP: Right. But it was never something where there were arguments about it or…

MURPHY: I don’t think so.

KP: Because you were behind the camera during the first season.

MURPHY: Yeah. That’s one of the reasons why I’m happy the camera didn’t have to move.

KP: You mean it’s somewhat easy to get that director credit?

MURPHY: Oh yeah.

KP: You were the main director throughout the years. What was it like directing them as actors?

MURPHY: Very little was needed. Just maybe sometimes some suggestions on tone, but I think we were all… as we took turns being directors, were pretty open minded about what would happen. And a lot of it was worked out before we even got into rehearsal by reading through the scripts and understanding what they meant. One would immediately know what the character was supposed to do and how they were supposed to do it. And since it was a series, occasionally we’d have to, when we had a guest character or something, I’d sort of have to direct somebody into what I thought that should be. We’d have earnest discussions, but I don’t think there was ever a fight on set that I can remember. Nobody ever walked off.

KP: Budget or time-wise, was there ever a drop dead point as far as takes?

MURPHY: Oh absolutely. Well, just fatigue wise. We had to finish it in the time allotted. I think there might have been one time when we actually had to… maybe one time, over the whole course of the thing, where we actually had to have an extra day to do something. It was not that difficult, because we were always in the same set – you know, the same two or three sets. When it became difficult is when we’d write too much for ourselves and put in an incredibly complicated special effects scene that took forever. Every time you’d blow somebody up and they’d disappear, you know? (laughs) That kind of thing took more time than we wanted it to, but you put it down in the writing room, and it’s easy to do when you’re writing it – and then suddenly you realize, “Oh, we gotta direct this shit.”

KP: So would you say the Sci-Fi years were more challenging?

MURPHY: They all had their challenges. I think it was – and I’ll never blame anybody at Sci-Fi for this – it was the creepy people who we had at USA Network, who were sort of the overlords… because Sci-Fi at that time was really not… it was getting its legs. Right now, the thing is a monster. It’s just incredibly successful and it’s got a huge audience. And the folks I worked with at Sci-Fi, some of whom are still there, Tom Vitali in particular, were terrific advocates of our show. As a matter of fact, I think they’re one of the reasons why the show went on longer than it did. I think the folks at USA were ready to cut it after the first season, but Tom kept on going to bat for the show. So we had these overlords at USA who said, “The season has to have an arc. You have to have a story arc.” That’s why suddenly we had to have all these fucking set changes and traveling all over the universe, is that they wanted a seasonal arc for a show that they never ran in sequence. Now tell me that isn’t stupid.

KP: Well, it was USA…

MURPHY: Well, yeah! What was their other big thing at the time? Wrestling. That should tell you everything. The only prestige piece they had at the time, which I loved, was tennis. They had the US open.

KP: You can’t get more of an arc than wrestling.

MURPHY: (laughs) Well, at least they show wrestling in sequence.

KP: I’m surprised they didn’t say, “If you could just get one of our wrestlers in there…”

MURPHY: I’m really glad they didn’t call for that, but it was the one time I even hung up on a network executive, was when they told me to shoot something that I simply refused to do.

KP: Which was…?

MURPHY: Honestly, I don’t remember exactly what it was that I was supposed to do, but it was so stupid. We had an executive, and she was assigned to us, and her job apparently was to piss into the tea and tell us that it tastes like lemon. And do her best to drive the show into the ground before it actually got started at Sci-Fi. She had a toady, this little guy named *****. And I imagine that ***** had bad skin and was sort of paunchy. I don’t think I ever met him, because if I did I would have kicked him in the nuts. ***** was the guy who had to call us up, and *****, at first, had these delusions of grandeur that he could tell us what to do. So one time I said to *****, “Get your mother on the phone.” And he didn’t like that. Then he went and told her essentially that I had made fun of him, and she called me back and said, “Don’t make fun of *****.” Things like that. It was unpleasant. The folks at Sci-Fi – wonderful people. Salt of the earth. Loved the show. The folks at USA – they really just dropped their pants and emptied their bowels on us as much as possible.

KP: Did it make the Comedy Central years seem golden?

MURPHY: It’s a business, and it’s a big business, and it’s a big business run by these companies that are owned by companies that are owned by companies. So you’re always going to run into assholes, because there’s just assholes all over the place in that business. So I don’t blame USA, I blame these particular individuals. And I don’t name them because that wouldn’t be nice.

KP: Except for poor *****.

MURPHY: Well, I didn’t say his last name, and I won’t.

KP: Yeah, but someone who works with him will look at this and go, that’s *****. He is a toady.

MURPHY: He was a toady. And I think he probably knows that he was a toady at the time. We had a wonderful guy – who again, went to bat for us at Comedy Central… John Newton, who ran the network for a while, and he just loved us and we loved him. He did everything he could for us, and so in return we’d do everything we could for them. When it came to the stuff with USA, we didn’t want to do things for them because they were unpleasant. And so we did and we got as creative as we could with that, and that’s why we ended up with Rome and the camping planet and the odd little children, and we had and the ape planet and all of those things. Which were fun, but god it was a lot of work.

KP: Which of the children was based on *****?

MURPHY: (laughs) We never did a character based on *****, which was probably wise. We did do characters based on our execs at Universal when we did the movie. There’s one episode where Pearl and Clayton are the execs in charge of Earth Versus Soup.

KP: Oh, is this the focus group?

MURPHY: Yes. And you’ll see in that, that Trace keeps drinking larger and larger bottles of water, because we’d have this one guy who’d come into screenings with like two three liter bottles of water. And every time we’d see him it seemed like the bottle was getting larger. So by the end Trace is drinking out of one of those 10 gallon jugs that you put in the water cooler.

KP: What was the most ludicrous note that you remember having to deal with on the movie?

MURPHY: Oh, I wish I had kept those things, because there were so many. I think we ended up writing things just so we’d see if we’d get a note on them. That’s one thing I do wish I’d kept, because they were so damn funny. I remember we made the comment that… this was back in the Joel days. We almost never got notes from Comedy Central. We got tons of notes from USA. It was something about we had said Joel was hammered off his scrawny ass. It said, “He’s not really going to be hammered off his scrawny ass, is he?” “No, he’s not really going to be hammered off his scrawny ass.”

KP: How many notes did you get from – what was it, Gramercy that you were dealing with?

MURPHY: Oh god, pages and pages and pages from those people.

KP: Was it mainly to “tone this down,” “who’s Kurt Vonnegut”…

MURPHY: The one that killed me… the one that said to me, “That’s it, whatever happens is fine, I’ve done all I can here, I’m just going to do it and get it done…” At the very end where the monster we called Scrotor appears, with the big lobes and the eyes and the shimmery suit, Crow was supposed to yell out, “It’s Bootsy Collins.” It was perfect for the moment, and it would have busted the house down. And they said, “We don’t know who Bootsy Collins is, so you can’t use the joke.” And I said, “How white do you have to be not to know who Bootsy Collins is?” One was from Canada and the other was from, like, Van Nuys, I think.

KP: Just the self-importance of, “We don’t know the reference, so cut it…”

MURPHY: Yeah, “We don’t know, so I can’t be funny.” And so we had to change it. Small things are sometimes the hardest to accept, and that was one of those small things.

KP: How different was the initial draft of the script?

MURPHY: Oh god, when we first put the movie out there, when we pitched it to Universal, it was sort of an all-singing, all-dancing Mystery Science Theater. We had musical numbers, we had a fantasy scene in which Crow imagines himself to be Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, and he’s trying to rescue Kim Cattrall, who’s sitting on the other side of the barbed wire in a Heidi costume beckoning him. And we were actually going to shoot, shot for shot, the last parts of the chase scene with Steve McQueen, only with Crow on the motorcycle. It would have been sublime. We had a musical number for Gypsy, we had one for Tom. Here’s an irony – the one scene hat we wrote in the first draft that actually made it to film was this scene in which there’s a meteor shower that hits the ship and imperils everybody. And it’s the one scene that they cut from the movie. (laughs) You see, everybody who’s made a movie with a big studio has stories like this. It’s nothing new.

KP: But largely these stories are untold. Maybe that’s a special RiffTrax you can do, for MST: The Movie.

MURPHY: (laughs) I’ve mentioned these things before, and that’s why I’m being candid about them, is that I’ve mentioned them at conventions and things like that.

KP: But to document it, get the guys together, through RiffTrax, but for MST: The Movie, since Universal will never let you do it with any candor.

MURPHY: (laughs)

KP: You did This Island Earth when you were trying to sell the film during the first MST convention, didn’t you?

MURPHY: It was the second convention.

KP: I thought you did a live…

MURPHY: At the first one we did World Without End.

KP: Was that the original script that you used when you did the live This Island Earth?

MURPHY: When we did the live This Island Earth, that’s the script we started with in order to make the movie. And that’s the script that they immediately launched into. And that’s the script that brought the house down, which they never seemed to remember.

KP: Even though they were there.

MURPHY: I don’t know if the execs were there. Our agent was there, and one of the guys who bought the movie. But we were assigned these two people. Sort of like being assigned a locker. You just had to have them. They were there to come along and fuck up your film as much as they possibly could. Oh, this is lovely – and I have talked about this before – one of these guys had worked on Billy Madison. Does that tell you something? So we had the idea of the puppets talking over the credits. Mike and the bots talking over the credits, which seemed like a fun thing to do and an easy way to do the credits. He said, “I don’t think that’s going to scan with our audience. What you ought to think about doing is having a shot of each one of the characters and then freezing and having something underneath that tells what happened to them.”

KP: Did they just watch Animal House?

MURPHY: Well, American Graffiti. That’s what we always called the “Killed in Vietnam” thing. This is what I love – we said, “No, we don’t want to do that, we want to do the thing with the credits.” So they chewed on that for a couple of days and called me late at night one night and said to me, “Well, we talked this over with Casey Silver, who’s the head of production, and he said no, the talking over the credits isn’t going to work. You’re going to have to go with the died in Vietnam thing, the Billy Madison style credits.” And so I called our agent out of frustration and our agent called Casey Silver. And Casey Silver said, “What the fuck are you talking about?” So I caught these two execs in a lie. And after that, they treated us a lot lighter than they had before, which was nice.

KP: Because they knew there were checks & balances beyond just their personal playground?

MURPHY: Well, the one thing I think you don’t want to do if you’re a production exec is get caught lying about your boss. It’s a bad idea.

KP: I hope one day to see more of that footage. Tell Mike, RiffTrax, so you all can vent. Now, did Frank do any writing at all on the film?

MURPHY: On Mystery Science Theater?

KP: Yeah, on the motion picture.

MURPHY: I really don’t believe Frank wrote on the movie beyond the script for the live performance of This Island Earth.

KP: So he was there for the writing process, at least, on that.

MURPHY: Yeah.

KP: When did the decision come down that he wouldn’t be part of the on-camera stuff? Was that his decision?

MURPHY: No, Frank wanted to be out there. He wanted to be on the coast and he wanted to be working in TV out there. He’d always wanted to, and he had a lot of friends who were doing it, so it was just time. And no, he wasn’t part of the scripting of… he was part of the scripting of the live show, so his stamp was on the movie, This Island Earth, when we took that script and made it into the movie script. But no, it was really amicable, and I was sad to see him go. He was ready to move on, and so he did.

KP: He’s made quite a career for himself.

MURPHY: I love the guy. Whenever I see him, it’s always fun to see him.

Photo by Julian Weiss

KP: Have you ever entertained the idea of moving west?

MURPHY: Not seriously.

KP: I remember having this conversation six years ago with Mike, and Mike said, “Oh, I’ll never move out to the West Coast.”

MURPHY: Well, San Diego is a far, far cry from Los Angeles. It’s more than 100 miles away.

KP: And worlds away.

MURPHY: It’s ten million miles away. Everyone I know who gets stuck in Los Angeles tries to rationalize how much they like it. And they almost all bring up the Farmer’s Market. What the hell is that? “Oh, you gotta come down and have breakfast at the Farmer’s Market.” I’ve had breakfast at the Farmer’s Market. It’s like a county fair without the rides.

KP: Yeah, and you get to watch people lining up for Price is Right.

MURPHY: (laughs) So I don’t know what the big thrill is. It’s a company town. If you want to make breakthroughs in the automobile industry, do you move to Detroit?

KP: Even the ones who go out there… even Trace bought a place back in Minnesota again.

MURPHY: Yeah. It’s just a much more human environment. I don’t know how to say it. Los Angeles is a very difficult place to live unless you have a lot of money. And even then it can be a difficult place to live. You can set yourself up in a comfortable situation, and I know many people have, but I don’t know a lot of people who are truly happy living out there and having to do that commute, and they’d rather live someplace else. And when they’re done with whatever they’re doing out there, they move elsewhere. I know two or three people who love it there and would never move anyplace else. And actually two of those people aren’t even in the entertainment industry. If you’re an accountant, it’s a great place to live, let me tell ya. There’s this town that they profiled on All Things Considered yesterday, in China, which is one of the most polluted towns in the known world. I think I might take that over Los Angeles. Chernobyl actually has charm and appeal that Los Angeles lacks.

KP: It’s far less radioactive.

MURPHY: Bangladesh during the monsoon season.

KP: And the people are nicer.

MURPHY: They are. More real.

KP: How much traveling would you say you do at this point?

MURPHY: I do a lot less than I’d like to, but I do enough. I get out of the country. It’s a wonderful way to keep your perspective on the world. I do that whenever I can, which is not often enough.

KP: Are you the type of traveler that goes out and sightsees, or just relaxes? What is recreational travel for you?

MURPHY: Well, it depends. I like it both ways. Sometimes I like to go someplace and simply relax, sometimes I like to go someplace and immerse myself in the culture.

KP: Are you the type of person who doesn’t bring a camera?

MURPHY: Jane, my spouse, is a brilliant photographer, so I don’t have to bring a camera. It’s very freeing and liberating.

KP: But as far as you personally, could you ever envision yourself carrying a camera when you go on these vacations?

MURPHY: Sometimes when I travel alone, I bring a camera just to send pictures back home. Jane actually takes pictures – I take snapshots. There’s a world of different between them.

KP: I’m assuming you often partake of the local culture.

MURPHY: Especially music and food.

KP: Do you tend to avoid doing something that you could just as easily do at home?

MURPHY: Oh yeah. The only thing that interests me is how different we are from each other. I’m planning on going to Italy again this fall, but I think we’re going to take a train into Slovenia.

KP: What sort of planning is needed for that?

MURPHY: Two things that attract me is that they have drinkable water and I know nothing about it.

KP: I noticed which one you put first.

MURPHY: (laughs) Well, it’s not going to be a long trip. If we’re going to do something like India, you really have to plan for like a month. Or Africa. I’d love to go to Africa with Jane, because she’s been there before. But you have to plan at least a month so you can let the dysentery course through you, or maybe let the first wave of malaria get over you and then you can…

KP: So you can fly back fine, is what you’re saying.

MURPHY: Right. And alive.

KP: That’s always a plus, to know you’re going to come back alive. Is there any place that’s on your “always wanted to, but nothing ever aligns to get there” list of locations?

MURPHY: Well, when I was writing the book, there were two places that killed me I couldn’t go. One was Hong Kong, and the other was Mumbai, which are two of the world’s largest centers for film. And actually, the third was Rio De Janeiro. Three of the largest centers for film production in the world. Besides the little houses and very large cities, there are very few places to see these movies. And thousands of films out of these places that you never get to see.

KP: What prevented Hong Kong?

MURPHY: Time and money is what it came down to. I wanted to do Hong Kong on the way back from Australia, and I probably could have added it onto my ticket, but that of course is when 9/11 happened, and I wanted to get home. So it was just not to be.

KP: So it was largely circumstantial.

MURPHY: Yeah. But India, it just… again, there were only so many places I could go and so much time to do it, and I had already filled my hit list with more than I could possibly do.

KP: Could you envision doing something as jam packed as that again? That project wore you down in many different ways…

MURPHY: Oh god, yeah, but I’m richer for the experience. Always. As long as I’m upright and regular, I’ll be happy to do something like that.

KP: And no kidney stones since?

MURPHY: And no kidney stones, yeah.

KP: I wince just thinking about that chapter. And what was the other… you mentioned two book ideas…

MURPHY: Well, I’ve been sort of writing a novel on and off for a long time here. It’s the story of an American family, a dynasty that starts during the pilgrim years, and it comes all the way up to the present day. Actually, we had, at one time…

KP: Sort of a Michener type of novel?

MURPHY: Well, except they’re really unpleasant people. They’re cowardly and they’re crass and they represent all the things we don’t like about Americans.

KP: So the not terribly magnificent Ambersons…

MURPHY: Exactly. The reprehensible Ambersons. And the family structure stays pretty much the same throughout history. So it’s almost like the same cast of characters moving through history. And I was probably inspired by Black Adder to do something. I said, “Well, there should be an American family that’s just as despicable in their own way.” Delightfully despicable.

KP: Unrepentantly loathsome.

MURPHY: Yes.

KP: See, this is why you’re watching The Fountain…

MURPHY: (laughs) Yeah, just that shaved head Hugh Jackman has, has really got me intrigued now.

KP: Just wait. You don’t even know what you’re in store for. And since you’re one of the people who can answer this, what exactly is Jim up to now?

MURPHY: I’m not one of the people who can answer this. I sort of lost touch with Jim.

KP: Really?

MURPHY: Yeah.

KP: Has anyone kept in touch with Jim?

MURPHY: Recently? Well, functionally speaking, I think people have, but I don’t socialize with them, and I haven’t for a while there, and that’s just… our lives are different. He’s got a different family than I do, and Jane and I have been traveling a lot, and the last I heard is that he’s involved with Second Life. And that’s all I know about it. They said he was doing a lot of time on Second Life.

KP: Were there any issues that arose over you all doing Film Crew?

MURPHY: Well, you know, it’s different enough so that it doesn’t really compete with Mystery Science Theater, but part of the fact is we started out… Rhino was actually going to distribute it, but the powers that be at Rhino didn’t think it would be as complimentary as we did. But Shout Factory is very happy to do it, and I think in the long run, if Film Crew does anything, it’s going to re-pique some people’s interest in Mystery Science Theater again, and vice versa. So I think the two are actually going to be mutually beneficial as we go ahead in the future. So I don’t think there’s an issue there.

KP: There’s certainly no shortage of episodes that Rhino still hasn’t released.

MURPHY: Oh yeah. They’ll keep that franchise going for… now there’s a franchise. It’s a series, it’s supposed to be a franchise. A television series.

KP: When was the last time you actually saw an episode?

MURPHY: Of Mystery Science Theater?

KP: Yeah…

MURPHY: A whole episode?

KP: A whole episode.

MURPHY: That’s a really good question. I have no idea. It’s been a few years, I’d say.

KP: And it was because you ran across it, or you were at an event where it was shown, where you had to see it?

MURPHY: No, I’m trying to think of the context. I actually watched it here at home. There was something I was looking for in a particular episode and I ended up watching the whole thing.

KP: Do you remember what your thoughts were while watching it?

MURPHY: Oh, how much fun it was to make. It’s like Jiffy Pop – it’s as much fun to make as it is to eat. It’s the magic treat.

KP: So nothing but good memories about it.

MURPHY: I believe in releasing bad karma and embracing good karma, so I don’t have any bad memories at all. I’m not even thinking of that as brainwashing – it’s just what you choose to hold onto and what you choose to let go.

KP: Is there any residual interest? Were you ever made a partner in Best Brains?

MURPHY: I’ve got a very small stake in there, so I occasionally get a check, and that’s a very nice thing.

KP: So there is something of a legacy beyond it.

MURPHY: Yeah.

KP: So would you say, at this point in time, you’re doing exactly what you want to be doing?

MURPHY: Do you know anybody who is? (laughs) I’m never doing exactly what I want to be doing, but what I’m doing is certainly enough. Life plans, you see, that’s like gazing into the future. Again, it’s like being nostalgic.

KP: We can’t go either way with you!

MURPHY: No, I live for the moment, my man.

KP: So are you enjoying the moment?

MURPHY: I’m enjoying the moment.

KP: Well, I hope that you finish the novel.

MURPHY: Well, thank you.

KP: I desperately want to read it, and I want to know the other directors on that list…

MURPHY: One way or the other.

KP: Well, hopefully this will put the bug in somebody’s ear when they read this, that they should pick it up.

MURPHY: You never know…

##

-by Ken Plume

When not plying his skills as an acclaimed playwright, Bill Corbett has been known to manipulate a gold robot and walk around, pasty-faced, with his brain in a glass dish.

Okay, so the pasty-facedness of the previous statement actually applies to the character of The Observer that Bill played for 3 seasons during Mystery Science Theater 3000‘s run on the Sci-Fi Channel. As if that weren’t enough, in addition to his writing duties for the series (and his roll as the pasty-faced Observer – BOY was he pasty!), he also took over from Trace Beaulieu as the voice and puppeteer of Crow T. Robot.

His post-MST life has seen him continue to write plays, but he’s also re-teamed with fellow Satellite of Love refugees Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy as the B-movie quipping Film Crew, plus he’s been a frequent guest-riffer on Mike Nelson & Legend Films’ RiffTrax commentaries (you can check out their full catalog here).

Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, I was able to communicate via telephone with Bill, who was firmly entrenched in his Midwestern stronghold.

KEN PLUME: So, did you get a chance to look at some of our other interview disasters?

BILL CORBETT: I did, yeah. Wow. What were you thinking? They’re very nice and they’re very thorough.

KP: Hopefully nothing was enough to scare you off of this…

CORBETT: No, it’s just more… you know, I get worried that my life is just not as interesting as these dudes.

KP: Yeah, but the good thing is that most of what you tell me could be lies and I’d never know the difference.

CORBETT: Beauty.

KP: So, about your time in the RAF…

CORBETT: Damn Gerries! We have them on the run!

KP: We go back as far as we can… It’s either we start with that, or I can just ask you – Pinter, Miller, Simon and you, cage match, who wins?

CORBETT: (laughs) I think Pinter does. He’s an angry old limey at this point. He’s loaded for bear.

KP: Is that who you pick as your tag team partner?

CORBETT: Who are the other choices?

KP: Miller and Simon.

CORBETT: Miller and Simon. Well, Miller’s dead, so he might be a little tough, but I guess I could throw Miller at somebody. Simon, I don’t know. He married Marsha Mason at one point, so he might be pretty used to rumbling.

KP: The calluses alone should mean that he’d be able to stay in the fight for much longer than you expect.

CORBETT: Swinging Arthur Miller at us, yeah.

KP: You never really thought about this. This could happen.

CORBETT: Thank God I do interviews so I can think of the right hypotheticals for my life! (laughing)

KP: If there really were literary cage matches, imagine who it might bring to literature? You might finally capture the youth that have been disenchanted by reading.

CORBETT: I do think that WWE wrestler Mankind…

KP: Mick Foley…

CORBETT: Mick Foley is now a respected New York Times’ bestseller. He’s writing tender paeans to childhood.

KP: Having read both of his books, they’re actually remarkably well written – to give the man some kind of props…

CORBETT: Well, I live in a state where the governor was one of those guys, so I believe anything at this point.

KP: In Minnesota, anything could happen. You could have an ex-SNL pundit as your senator…

CORBETT: It’s quite amazing.

KP: And don’t forget that’ll make the state film Stuart Saves his Family.

CORBETT: I tell you, we’re the new California here. It’s where crackpot ideas get a dry run.

KP: Well, you have to have some kind of California in the middle, don’t you?

CORBETT: It’s true.

KP: I think there’s a per state rule, you can only have a buffer of three or four states before you have to hit an oddball.

CORBETT: Yeah, that’s true, and the Dakotas aren’t going to pick up the challenge anytime soon.

KP: Really, it’s for eccentrics who don’t like the coasts.

CORBETT: Well, this state will tell you that we have more coastline than California. It’s an actual bragging point, I think, of the tourist board. If you actually just took all the lakes and stretched them out like a big rubber band into a line…

KP: Yeah, but for a landlocked area of the country, that strikes me as the equivalent of a fat man saying he’s big boned.

CORBETT: Yeah, I think that’s dead on. The lakes are wonderful, but…

KP: It’s not the coast.

CORBETT: No, come now.

KP: It’s not the Riviera of the Midwest.

CORBETT: Where are you?

KP: I’m in North Carolina, on the coast.

CORBETT: An actual coast.

KP: One with an ocean. Not just something where they say, “Well, it has the same systems and waves as an ocean…”

CORBETT: Well, water meets land at some point.

KP: Yeah, “We have the world’s largest miniature ocean.”

CORBETT: Parceled out in ten thousand little droplets.

KP: Isn’t the Midwest where the euphemism was born?

CORBETT: What euphemism?

KP: Just euphemisms in general.

CORBETT: Yeah, probably. Wow, that’s heavy.

KP: What brought a native of New York, Brooklyn if I remember correctly…

CORBETT: Yeah.

KP: … to the Midwest?

CORBETT: Well, in 1990 I came out here after grad school. I was invited to do a playwriting fellowship out here through a place called the Playwright Center – which makes sense for a playwriting fellowship. It’s a place that kind of gave out money and grants to writers if they would basically hang around for a year and teach a few classes. I had no better offer since. And I was sort of aware of it as a place that had kind of launched August Wilson, the playwright. But I’d never been to the Midwest before. I really only planned on staying a year.

KP: At that time, how did you view the idea of the Midwest, as a New Yorker?

CORBETT: My idea of the Midwest was Ohio. And I thought, “Well, it’s all kind of…” it was a bit of New York snobbery – or idiocy, depending on your point of view – where I really thought, “Oh, you can get anywhere in the Midwest from a couple of miles away.” And Ohio, because my parents had moved out there to Columbus some years before, even though I didn’t go with them, so that to me was the Midwest. There was a vast, vast expanse beyond that and below that and above that.

KP: So it’s not just WKRP.

CORBETT: No. (laughs) I was curious. I was aware of Minneapolis as a great cultural scene… a music scene, like The Replacements and Prince, of course, and all that. And I knew that it had some great theater here. The Guthrie theater, famously one of the best and biggest theaters in the country. And a bunch of other stuff. So I was anxious to spend a year out here, but we’re a little over a year now.

KP: It’s stretched a bit longer than you thought…

CORBETT: Quite a bit. For the first couple of years I was sort of doing double citizenship between New York and here. But I just kept getting work here and I kept enjoying it. The winters are the classic thing that people complain about here, but I don’t even mind that. Until February. I like a little bit of bracing cold and some seasons, but it just goes on too darn long.

KP: You would think that you would miss some of the cultural aspects of New York.

CORBETT: Yeah, I do, but I have to say I lived there until I was 26 years old. I get back there enough and I usually tend to cram a lot of my little cultural joneses in one trip. These days I’m missing it because my wife and I have a young kid and another on the way, so I’m anticipating that the traveling isn’t going to be as frequent.

KP: Not unless they start wondering who their dad is.

CORBETT: Right, right.

KP: “Who is that guy?” As your wife puts them to bed with RiffTrax playing in their ears.

CORBETT: Oh, that would make them so twisted.

KP: It’s better than seeing half the work you did on MST…

CORBETT: That’s true. “That guy with the white, hideous…”

KP: “That ghostly demon is my dad.”

CORBETT: “God help you.”

KP: You’ve left them quite a legacy.

CORBETT: I know.

KP: At least with the new project, with the Film Crew, they’ll be able to at least know your face…

CORBETT: Yes.

KP: Unadorned by makeup…

CORBETT: Hopefully they’ll concentrate more on RiffTrax…

KP: Oh no, they’ll get exposed to the rest. That’s what classmates are for. How early did you begin to get a sense that writing was a creative expression that you gravitated towards?

CORBETT: Pretty early, I guess. I had a couple of good teachers along the way in grade school. I remember one who had us writing little skits and things, and they were really a blast to do. I would actually do the homework, which was kind of a minor miracle. I remember one thing he had us do was write a skit involving dialects. He was teaching us regional dialects. All these little kids in Brooklyn trying to put on Southern accents. He would give us creative writing topics. I realized I liked it then, and I never stopped liking it.

KP: What would be the first piece of writing that you can actively remember?

CORBETT: Gosh, let me think. It was probably a total rip off of something else, because I think it’s only last year that I finally started writing anything remotely original that wasn’t influenced heavily…

KP: Usually writers don’t admit that until they’re in their 60s or 70s.

CORBETT: Yeah. The first piece of writing was probably a skit in Mr. Scotto’s class where I think I had Archie Bunker meeting some southern guy, little TV brained kid that I was, and that was the extent of it. And they could barely understand each other because of their dialects.

KP: That’s exactly the kind of character that you’d hope a grade school kid would latch onto.

CORBETT: Yes, exactly. A bigoted New Yorker. That was pretty much everybody who lived on my block. The Irish Catholic version of Archie Bunker.

KP: So you were essentially a pint-sized Norman Lear.

CORBETT: Yeah.

KP: But it’s good that you were already thinking of social issues at such a young age.

CORBETT: I don’t know that I was. I just thought he was funny because he called people “meathead” and “dingbat”. That’s all I knew.

KP: Words you use to this day.

CORBETT: Oh yeah.

KP: What kind of writing style developed during that period?

CORBETT: I think all through my young ‘un days, for some reason I gravitated towards dialogue – plays, for lack of a better word. Anything that can be acted out. So I was getting interested in theater and theatricality at the same time. I had written a few plays, and whatever was available.

KP: Did the acting appeal to you as much as the writing?

CORBETT: It did, actually. I was a… I hesitate to call it a serious actor, but for a while I did a fair amount of it. I just think that when it comes down to it I don’t really have the stomach for an actor’s life, for a performer’s life. I love doing things that are handed to me. I deeply detest having to audition and prepare monologues and things like that. Maybe some combination of laziness and who knows what… inferiority complex. Probably laziness, when it comes right down to it. That can explain a lot about me.

KP: How have you reacted to rejection over the years?

CORBETT: I don’t really bristle at it and stamp my feet. It’s more that I shrug and get kind of an Eyeore, “Oh, what’s the point.” And when it comes to acting it’s a real tough road, psychologically. It’s great if you’re doing well for a while. It just feels like you’re on top of the world… So I hear… But boy, even people who’ve had a measure of success… and I know a lot of actors, and some of them are really smart people… and it’s tough. I did a lot of stage acting at school. I acted in the Guthrie Theater Company for a while as just a plain old member of the company doing Shakespeare and everything. It’s a lot of fun if you can get into a company and have a season of four or five plays. I have to say that, beyond just the feeling of powerlessness of getting the jobs, I’m also like a lot of actors – I don’t want to do what I don’t want to do. That’s not an option sometimes. If I don’t like the part or I don’t think it’s fun enough, I just want to walk away – and that’s not the old team spirit.

KP: Not really… Where everyone’s going, “Where’s Bill?”

CORBETT: Yeah… “He’s supposed to come in with a spear, and he’s not here.” No, you’ve got to be a good soldier.

KP: But it’s got to be the best thing in the world to be cast as your understudy.

CORBETT: I actually did some understudy work at the Guthrie when I first got there. I had, at some point, 20 smallish Shakespeare parts that I was supposed to have ready to go. I went up a few times onstage when somebody got sick, and it’s terrifying. It’s the most terrifying thing in the world. And if you can get through it without killing somebody and actually blurting out a line or two, you get such credit from the stage manager. I managed to.

KP: It’s good to know that, with you, death is always an option.

CORBETT: They should know that.

KP: “You never know when Bill’s just gonna lose it…”

CORBETT: The funny part is, at one point I was in Henry IV. I was understudying this very minor character, but he’s a crazy Scotsman who helps attack Henry IV‘s army. The fight choreographer gave him an axe and a broad sword, and I had to do this part, because the guy was sick. They run you through the fight choreography at the beginning and they say, “We’ll go at half speed or go at quarter speed.” I was just terrified I was going to take off the choregorapher’s head. And it just looked like I was doing it through Elmer’s glue or something.

KP: You were exaggeratedly cautious…

CORBETT: Yeah. What a warrior!

KP: “Slowly he strikes.”

CORBETT: That’s deliberation!

KP: What would you say has been the acting part that you’ve been most comfortable in, or had the most enjoyment from?

CORBETT: I don’t know. I did a lot of crazy experimental stuff in grad school. I was there for playwriting and screenwriting, but I wound up acting a lot. It was fun to act in them. Whether it was fun to see them or not is a whole other matter.

KP: That’s not your concern.

CORBETT: Right, it’s not my problem, it’s the director’s. Like those old German expressionists. Back in the late 80s or early 90s I just liked being in stuff that was kind of crazy and extreme.

KP: Was it just your experimental nature, or the fact that you’re presenting something that audiences had no idea how to deal with it?

CORBETT: Probably the latter. And I like to try to make it somewhat emotionally coherent for them. But I don’t know, once you’ve done that for a while it loses its sting a little bit. It loses its appeal, to me at least. Then I was more into wanting to make people laugh. It’s really the most satisfying reaction you can get, and actually it’s the most palpable outside of getting a tomato thrown at you. I did some cabaret type stand-up and characters. It’s been done a lot now. Doing lots of character and solo shows. But I had my little flirtation with it.

KP: What was the material that you would present?

CORBETT: One of them was, I worked two summers as a door man on the Upper East Side, and then was promoted to concierge at one point. I did a bunch of characters in the lobby, for example. Because some of the doormen I worked with were really quite fascinating characters. One guy was a soldier of fortune who was just as polite as could be.

KP: Just fell on hard times?

CORBETT: Yeah, (laughs) I guess. Yeah, soldier of not so much fortune. Soldier of minimum wage.

KP: But I guess every mission must be a spectacular adventure for him.

CORBETT: I think he just went on them so he could bend people’s ear in the lobby. He was very polite to the people in the building. And this was a pretty snooty building. Keith Richards lived there, and a bunch of people from the UN, ambassadors, lived there. So he would be very deferential, because you could get pretty good tips at Christmas. Then afterwards he would just say the foulest things about people.

KP: Is he thinking, “Oh, I could snap his neck like a twig…”?

CORBETT: Oh, he wasn’t even thinking it, he was saying it! “I could rig a light bulb so that when he turned it on…”

KP: Did you ever dare him to show you this light bulb?

CORBETT: I should have. He’s probably rotting in a jail right now.

KP: Call him on it. “You’re not a soldier of fortune, you’re a doorman.”

CORBETT: “You’re not even a very good doorman. Your technique is lousy!”

KP: What would be the oddest request you got during this period as a doorman?

CORBETT: I think, as expensive New York apartments went, it was pretty tame.

KP: You never had to dispose of a body.

CORBETT: Oh god no! (laughs) To my great disappointment, no.

KP: Keith never asked you to take delivery of a package…

CORBETT: I never worked there long enough to get anything that smelled like Peruvian marching powder. I would have known, believe me.

KP: Or his father…

CORBETT: I tell you, Keith was a very incoherent man. That may surprise you. I wouldn’t have known what he was saying to me.

KP: Was he at least polite in his incoherence?

CORBETT: Yeah. His wife was very nice. I forget her name…

KP: So does he.

CORBETT: A model… yeah, right! (laughs) Good one, good one. (does Keith) “Yeah that… err… lady over there…” He seemed like he just had his blood transfused every day.

KP: Just sort of gliding through life…

CORBETT: Well, he’s about to hit the big screen in Pirates of the Caribbean.

KP: Yes, his big screen debut as himself…

CORBETT: Keithmania is about it reignite itself.

KP: That’s not the only thing that’s ignited itself.

CORBETT: (laughs)

KP: What period were you working this job? In your early 20s?

CORBETT: The doorman’s job was right before I went to go back to school, which was in the late 80s.

KP: So you were what, 21, 22?

CORBETT: No, mid 20s. I’m 46 now. I’m an old codger.

KP: No, there are people who are far older than you.

CORBETT: (laughs) So I hear. I don’t believe them.

KP: Look at that old man, Kevin.

CORBETT: That’s true. But he’s got a timeless quality. I don’t.

KP: Yes, he does have a timeless quality And the beard.

CORBETT: He has a great beard, that man.

KP: A true midwestern beard. You should envy his beard.

CORBETT: I’ve tried a beard. I had a beard for a while. I usually get a little fringe around the chin.

KP: So nowhere near the lumberjack quality that Kevin has…

CORBETT: No, not lumberjack, it’s more like weak Amish quality. They probably wouldn’t even let me into their club…

KP: So very much an Irish beard…

CORBETT: I guess so. I never thought of it that way.

KP: A nice, wispy, elfin quality to it.

CORBETT: (laughs) Leprechaunian.

KP: Is that a word? It is now.

CORBETT: It is now. It’s yours.

KP: Had you ever acted in one of your own plays?

CORBETT: Yeah, I did quite a bit of that in grad school. I did some kind of off-off-off-Broadway in New York, basically in the Hudson River. I’ve done a little bit here, like the Minnesota Fringe, and a couple of other theaters here in Minneapolis.

KP: Have you ever put something up that you’ve written and thought, just from an actor’s perspective, “I really need to change this…”?

CORBETT: Oh yeah. It’s tough to do both things well at once, and I’m not sure that I have. But that didn’t stop the raging ego! More seriously, I would say that since I’ve gotten a little older and wiser I make sure that if I do that – and I really haven’t done that in a while, and I don’t plan to do that again probably anytime soon – I have to have a director or somebody who can call me on the bullshit. I’ve never really gone out there with a three hour BILL! BILL! BILL!: The Show.

KP: It’d be a great marquee.

CORBETT: Yeah, “Bill Bill Bill what?” I like to work with other actors. It’s just too lonely up there. I did a little bit of standup, the tiniest little bit in New York, and it never really appealed to me. Probably because I wasn’t very good.

KP: When you say a little bit…

CORBETT: I’m talking about a handful of times. I got this bee in my bonnet that I wanted to give it a try when I was really young, like 20 years old, and I tried a few…

KP: So this would be during the early part of the comedy boom.

CORBETT: I guess so. That’s probably why I was suckered into it. Everyone was doing it. And I think more to the point there were a whole bunch of comedy clubs popping up all over the place and they were just rallying people in for open mic nights. I think I had an alright act. I have zero technique, though, and I didn’t know my way around a microphone. The guy who was hosting the first open mic I went to was a tall, stretchy guy, probably like six four or five, and my main first act was battling with the microphone and trying to get it down to my level. I gave up at some point and just sort of stepped on my tippy toes and did my act into it. My friend who was in the audience said the effect was, like, you would hear every fourth or fifth word really loudly and then it would go pretty much silent.

KP: You could have made it your own prop comedy moment.

CORBETT: Yeah, or I could have made it sort of anti-comedy.

KP: Is it something that you felt, if circumstances had been slightly different, you could have made a stronger go at?

CORBETT: I’m guessing if I was interested enough, I’m egotistical enough to believe that if I really went for it I would have gotten better at it. Because I have an okay sense of humor. It’s really more about the nerves and standing up there. I don’t really suffer from stage fright. I don’t have the good sense to. I don’t know whether I would have been a good comedian, but I probably could have chugged along for a while until somebody noticed and told me to go away. I just really didn’t have the interest after those first couple of experiences, I guess. I also tended to write a little too thick. I didn’t really know how to get to the joke, and that’s a very bad thing.

KP: So, essentially, you were presenting plays to them.

CORBETT: Yeah, that’s one way of looking at it. It was all set up and very little punch line. (laughs) Premise, premise, premise, premise, premise, premise, bit!

KP: You could have been the premise guy.

CORBETT: The premise guy!

KP: What has been the worst reaction to criticism you’ve had over the years? What stung you the most?

CORBETT: Let me think… When I first started writing plays and having them produced, it takes a while to get the thick skin you really need if your work is going to be reviewed regularly. I think the first time I got a not-so-good review it just felt like a punch in the solar plexus.

KP: Do you remember that review?

CORBETT: I remember sending it to friends of mine saying basically, “Is this true?” And them basically saying, “Deal with it.” (laughs) “Get over it!”

KP: In retrospect, do you feel the assessment was true of the material at that time?

CORBETT: Yes, it was. And it wasn’t even that unkind. I’ve had much more brutal reviews since then. That’s the way it is with criticism. If you’re going to invest in the good you have to allow for the bad, as well. And it’s probably best to ignore most of any of it and just go along with your work. I’ve gotten a good education from critics over the years, because even though it stings for a second, if you can string it together with past reviews you do sort of sense a pattern. You can write off anybody you want, and if someone is just grinding an axe you think is unfair it’s your right to dismiss it. But I do think that it’s made me a little sharper about storytelling. Because a lot of the times I got the reaction of, “Seems to be wandering as a story. It’s got some good lines and characters but the story goes nowhere.” Eventually that hopefully sinks in.

KP: What would you say is your Achilles heel as a writer?

CORBETT: My Achilles heel as I writer… I think it’s changed over the years. I think at present it’s… hmm. Damn you, sir! Damn you and you making me reflect on myself!

KP: That’s what these things are for…

CORBETT: Yeah, truly. I’d say right now my Achilles heel – which I share with, I think, a lot of writers – is telling a good story… still the toughest thing, without it becoming too much of a cliché. Finding a good spin on something. Because I do feel like there’s a lot of great dialogue writers out there. There’s a lot of funny people. But telling a story with it seeming just a little bit original is a difficult one.

KP: Do you think in this pop culture saturated age it’s harder to avoid clichés?

CORBETT: Yeah, I do. I think it’s hard to avoid clichés. It also depends on the medium. It’s really, really hard to avoid – for stage and film, especially when you’re working with producers or… and I’m not talking about anybody in particular, but the culture of Hollywood is that they are screaming for you to give them clichés. But then they’ll be the first people to say, “That’s a cliché.” “I know! You asked for it!” In theater the problem, to my mind right now, is more that… the way theater is now it’s always on the cusp of irrelevance because it’s hard to produce. Just the economics of it don’t work in this country for reasons that are… smarter people than me are trying to figure out. It seems that theater now leads with theme and topic and usually it’s a political or social something or other. Which I like writing about, but I lead more with humor and a humorous treatment of something that seems kind of sensitive or political or social is not always appreciated.

KP: It seems to be a rarity in theater, comparatively, people writing humorous or just out-and-out comedies for presentation.

CORBETT: You sort of leap across this great chasm and then you have the world of Neil Simon. He’s got real talents, and he was apparently a great wrestler, too. Then you leap into this whole world of lite, L-I-T-E – of Broadway musicals and all that. I don’t cotton much to that, either, although who knows, I might if I gave it a try. So I don’t know, theater’s a tough thing to do in this day and age and it’s why it’s not all I do. Probably if things had been a little more satisfying only with that, say 15 years ago, I’d be doing only that.

KP: It seems it has a similarity to the world of independent film, where it’s very rare that you see an independent comedy. You’ll see a coming of age story or a deadly serious drama, but to have a small, intimate comedy is a rarity.

CORBETT: I think you’re right there. Yeah. Comedy tends to be bigger and splashier and dumber. I am all for that on some level, but I do like to keep myself interested and I like to miniaturize and be a little bit more out on the edge here and there. That’s not where I want to live all the time, necessarily.

KP: Do you think it’s more difficult to write comedy than to be serious?

CORBETT: To me no, it isn’t. But I do think that failing in comedy is just such a more obvious failure. (laughs) It’s a subjective reaction, of course, what’s funny and what isn’t. But boy, in that live experience, if something isn’t getting laughs, that just means it’s not funny and it means you failed, whereas an awed silence sounds a lot like an awed boredom.

KP: Do you think it’s easy to fake drama? Like the fake orgasm of theater?

CORBETT: (laughs) Oh, King Lear! I think it shouldn’t be easy to fake drama, but this is maybe where I’m doing the airing of the grievances here, theatrical grievances. I do think it’s too easy to fake it, in theater, at least in this day and age, if you have an important theme that you kind of corral into your play, or if you have an important scene that you treat. And that’s pretty much my problem with theater right now, at least as it exists in the US. It’s not that interesting to me to see a play about something that I could read an essay about, and probably be better informed.

KP: If you’re sitting in another person’s production, and are bored to tears, do you feel that the uninteresting writing is often passed off as a serious literary exercise that should be taken seriously, and not critiqued as an incomprehensible maudlin mess because of how much leeway is given to dramatic presentations?

CORBETT: If I follow what your saying… that was a long sentence, my friend…

KP: I’ve got a flow chart I can send over to you.

CORBETT: (laughs) But I think I get what you’re saying. Yeah, I have felt that way at times, but lest I just sound like a bitter old pill, I’d say that there’s stuff that knocks me off my feet at times, and there are writers that are so very good that I just know that I’m not capable of doing what they do. Especially when there’s a poetic or lyrical dimension. That’s not my strong suit. That may well be my Achilles heel.

KP: How would you describe a poetical or lyrical dimension to something?

CORBETT: Elevated language, language that takes you… there’s a lot of ways of looking at that. There’s Shakespeare, of course, but there’s also George Bernard Shaw and his elevated, very incredibly clever dialectical style. But even David Mamet and his kind of tough guy, fuck you dialogue actually achieves a kind of poetry there.

KP: Would you say it’s a transcendent point that’s difficult to achieve?

CORBETT: Yeah. I think that’s a real skill, and probably not my strong suit.

KP: What do you feel has come close to that, that you’ve written?

CORBETT: Probably nothing… well, I’m sure nothing most people have ever heard of. I wrote a play called Motorcade that I actually performed in myself a bunch of times. For me and another actor, whoever that other actor happened to be. I just didn’t want to be up there alone. I get lonely! It was about a small town in Ohio that was a steel town that was kind of dying out, and set in the 70s and Gerald Ford was coming through the town. It was kind of a cracked comedy on one level, but I do think as close as I’ve come to a poetic sense here. Even in the story structure being a little more freeform and jazz like. Usually I’m a little more conventional. It was fun. I may do it again.

KP: Would you say that was a more or less difficult piece to write than your average piece?

CORBETT: It was… good question. It felt like it was a challenge at the time, but it was one I really enjoyed. Sometimes you just have to do what you think you’re going to enjoy, and if you stop engaging in it, it starts to feel like you’re grinding a gear. Just stop, because it’s probably not going to be very good.

KP: How often would you say that you’ve abandoned a piece?

CORBETT: Oh, I do it all the time. As I’ve gotten a little more experienced I abandon them earlier because I have a better gut check, I think, about whether this is going anywhere, whether I feel any excitement about it. Especially if something is a play or something that’s just on spec – like, no one is paying me to do it or asking me to do it. You might as well do what excites you and gives you a little bit of joy and is challenging in the right way. Because if not, it’s just drudgery.

KP: Are there any pieces that you’ve abandoned but keep coming back to?

CORBETT: Probably not at this point. There was a pretty conscious clearing out, like, two years ago – I just decided to list all my projects and either consign them to the drawer and give up the ghost on them, or see what else is there. The one or two that I decided to pursue, I’m pursuing.

KP: How big would you say your ghost pile is?

CORBETT: Oh, vast. Most of them are ones that I knew were kind of over a while back. I think they were just kind of journeyman efforts in writing… Learning how to write and just a necessary apprenticeship, even if nobody ever sees it.

KP: What do you think has been the easiest piece for you to write?

CORBETT: I’ve written in a whole bunch of different worlds and genres now. I guess I could say that it’s easy, on some level, to work with Kevin and Mike and write a script with them. Because we just kind of know the feeling that we’re going for, we know the type of humor that we all enjoy. It’s exciting to write thinking that we’re all going to get together and top each other and all that. So there’s a real enjoyment to that. But as far as an individual piece, probably the play that has been most successful is called The Big Slam, which has gotten around the U.S. a lot. It came pretty easy. I was working with a really great director when I did it. She was excellent at guiding me to the best instincts of it.

KP: How do you feel – as a writer and as someone who would perform these widely distributed plays when you were in high school – that your productions are now becoming some of those go-to productions for high schools and students?

CORBETT: I don’t think that’s true of me. I think I have one piece that I wrote with a writing partner called Hate Mail which was a pretty silly piece that I wrote in correspondence with a writer named Kira Obolensky. Mike Nelson actually did the premier of it as an actor. He and Mo Collins, who was a Mad TV person eventually. That has a surprising sort of subsequent life in high schools and colleges and all that. Sometimes I cringe a little, because it’s a little naughty in places and I think, “Hmm, do I want a 16 year old saying that?” Not really! Not if it’s my 16 year old!

KP: It’s your own Vagina Monologues.

CORBETT: (laughs) Bill Corbett’s Vagina Monologues.

KP: That could be lucrative for ya!

CORBETT: I tell ya…”Who even knew that Bill Corbett had a…”

KP: I’m not even gonna touch that…

CORBETT: Please don’t…

KP: But Mike did play the female part…

CORBETT: (laughs) Yes, I’m very big into the world of cross-gender casting…

KP: Looking back, what do you think has been the most difficult thing for you to write that you never felt would work but in the end it turned itself around?

CORBETT: I wrote – and it’s only been produced a few times – a play called The Book of Time. It was a really weird meditative piece that slipped in and out of time, oddly enough, and it was about this old woman who used to be kind of a political lefty in the 30s, and her daughter’s coming to visit her. It was stuff I had no business knowing anything about, and really didn’t. It was kind of a researched piece and it took a while to make the people real and have them be real personalities, and make the slipping out of time structure work a little bit. But in the end I thought it did pretty well. It was sort of a little jewel box piece and just was done in a few theaters here and there. Not the kind of thing that you make a ton of dough on. (laughs) Actors like doing it. That’s sometimes the greatest compliment or feeling is when actors really enjoy doing something.

KP: Are you someone who enjoys working outside their comfort zone?

CORBETT: I don’t know where my comfort zone is at this point. I’d say the answer to that is probably that it’s easy to get bored. I think boredom is just the enemy of creativity. I always like to be stretching myself in one way or another. It’s not always going to a further edge of aesthetic craziness. My most recent… (laughs) experience of the last couple of years have been writing a commercial screenplay, and trying to work within that world and see if I can live with myself, and see if I can survive, keep getting the job back, without feeling like I’m doing something awful.

KP: Have you succeeded in that so far?

CORBETT: So far. I’m going at the end of the week to be on set for a while, to watch them film it. I’ll get back to you after that.

KP: Do you have the fear that, in a year’s time, Mike’s going to call you up and say, “I’m thinking of doing Starship Dave on the next RiffTrax.”

CORBETT: I think it would be great, actually. I really do. I think it would be a whole other level of… it would be like the Russian doll, finding new levels out of it. If I could rank out my own writing it would be just delightful.

KP: Yeah, some kind of meta nesting exercise. Maybe it’s time to do a RiffTrax of one of your plays.

CORBETT: Oh, man. A RiffTrax of one of my plays. I don’t know how that would be done.

KP: Just being you, Mike & Kevin sitting in a theater. Can you imagine such a thing?

CORBETT: That would be kind of fun, actually, except I would pity the poor actors who had to put up with us idiots in the front row. It’s kind of great not to feel precious about old stuff that I’ve written. I don’t know about RiffTrax, but if someone did it I wouldn’t hesitate for a second.

KP: Is there anything you’ve written that you wish would just disappear?

CORBETT: (laughs) Well yeah, a lot of stuff has disappeared, so it took care of itself. Nothing made such a great mark. Luckily it rose to its level of quality and went away.

KP: So that’s the stuff that you pawn off on that other Bill Corbett…

CORBETT: Yes. An impossible man.

KP: When exactly did the connections with the guys at Best Brains start to happen?

CORBETT: It started to happen probably in the mid to early 90s. I just started to become pals with a few of them. I’m trying to think exactly how it happened. I got to know Mike and Bridget (Jones) and Mary Jo (Pehl) first, and I think it was mostly through… there’s kind of a tight theater and comedy scene here in Minneapolis. I was writing comic plays. I was teaching some classes, and Mary Jo took a playwriting class of mine, and so did Paul Chaplin.

KP: What kind of students were they?

CORBETT: They totally brown-nosed me. No, they were great. Boy, but some of the other critters in the class.

KP: Now we have to spend a little time on this class…

CORBETT: It wasn’t at the same time. I didn’t have Mary Jo and Paul in the same class.

KP: The two of them would have been problem students.

CORBETT: They would have been fighting in the back, throwing erasers at each other.

KP: With a class like that, there’s really nowhere to send students like that.

CORBETT: No, (laughs) It’s basically adult ed, so you have to either hit them with a mallet or they have to stay.

KP: Knowing that they paid their money…

CORBETT: Yes, pretty much.

KP: Do you almost get the sense, in teaching a course like that, that you’re half dealing with students and half dealing with customers?

CORBETT: Yes. I’ve had some really great students, and then I’ve had students that really should have been in therapy, not in my class.

KP: Do you think that’s what they were treating the class as?

CORBETT: Yeah, kind of. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there were people who had some deep invested need to be a writer. They were finally doing it, and it was just so tremulous. Some of them had their one opus about their life that they’d been saving up, and I’m sad for them, but I was scared to criticize them. Genuinely scared on one level.

KP: Just for fear they would snap?

CORBETT: Yeah. “HOW DARE YOU CRITICIZE MY PAIN!” “I’m just saying that act was a little slow!” “MY FATHER IS YOU!!”

KP: So you didn’t leave anyone huddled in the fetal position in the corner is what you’re saying…

CORBETT: No, that was me huddled in the fetal position. That would have been me. “Make the bad go away!”

KP: For that sort of thing, did you ever feel a difficulty being as intensely critical as you felt you should have been as an instructor to make them better writers?

CORBETT: I don’t see that there’s any point, especially with beginning writers, to being intensely critical. A lot of people just need some gentle encouragement of what they’re doing right, and a very gentle approach to what they might do to improve it. I don’t see the point in the boot camp approach. It usually doesn’t keep people writing. There’s no need for it.

KP: Did you enjoy teaching?

CORBETT: Yeah, I enjoyed teaching, and I still do enjoy it. I haven’t done much in a while. This last fall I did kind of a thing for the Minneapolis children’s theater company here because I like to teach kids. It was semi-volunteer. I got paid a little bit. It mostly gets me out of the room, out of the writing room. I like teaching high school aged kids and college kids a lot. Adults maybe not as much at times, because like I said…

KP: Do you think they have too much baggage?

CORBETT: Too much baggage, yeah. But I do like teaching. I’ve taught college. It’s a little bit of a trap for a writer. I know that’s a cliché, too, because there are plenty of people who do and teach. But I’m a lazy person, so doing and teaching well is sort of out of the question.

KP: At that point, having Mary Jo and Paul in the classes and knowing Mike and Bridget, what was the initial entre into, “Hey, would you like to do some writing for us?”

CORBETT: I think I’m sort of social friends with Bridget and Mike and Mary Jo. My ex-wife, who was a stand-up comedian with some of those guys, was already friends with Bridget and Mike to some degree. So at one point I went with her to a Best Brains party before I even really knew of Mystery Science Theater. It was a couple of years before I worked there, and I was just this guy wandering the hall and wondering what this crazy thing was. I didn’t have cable, I didn’t know about the show. I really didn’t have a clue. But as I got to know those guys a little bit, there was just one point where I watched a Turkey Day marathon with some other friends and I just loved it so much that at one point I worked up the nerve to ask Mike if he needed any help with writing. At that point they actually did. The process was that you were sort of informally auditioning. You would just sort of hang around the writing room and blurt out with them for a while with more established writers.

KP: Do you remember what your first blurt was?

CORBETT: It was probably a fart joke. Comprised about 90% of my work since then, so it stands to reason.

KP: It’s good that you had a hook.

CORBETT: (laughs) Yeah, really! Because no one was taking care of that whole brand of humor.

KP: Until you came along, it was this verboten territory that they feared to tread…

CORBETT: I know… It was all literary references…

KP: And you brought the power of lowbrow…

CORBETT: (laughing) The power of lowbrow! Don’t underestimate me! I really don’t really remember my first comment. I remember the first movie I wrote on was Angel’s Revenge in season six. It was basically about this bunch of hicks who… it was kind of a Charlie’s Angels. Trace was still around and Frank was still around, and I just was kind of writing. I wrote on a few shows at the end of season six, and then season seven was this really stripped down version of MST where… I don’t know the business of it totally, but I think they were just getting through and seeing if they could squeeze out a few more shows with Comedy Central.

KP: Did you feel that change was in the air?

CORBETT: Well, I was never there long enough to know the changes. I was aware that Frank was leaving in the last show, which was disappointing. Frank is just a hilarious character to write for, I mean a hilarious guy. In season seven they just went with a stripped down staff, so I didn’t write for them at all. And I moved to LA at that time and decided to start trying my best in the biz, and then I got a call from Mike at some point asking if I wanted to come and write on season eight. “Well, I’m out in LA and trying to write for TV, but hey – you’re TV, and you’re back in Minneapolis.” So I went back there and then started season eight on Sci-Fi.

KP: What was your initial take on Mike, when you first met him?

CORBETT: Just a very nice, sweet guy. Very funny. Kind of low key. That’s pretty much how he still is… (laughs)

KP: So your first impression of Mike was the impression that you’ve kept to this day.

CORBETT: Yeah. I’ve learned, of course, that he’s incredibly funny, and that his humor has a real dark side to it. For this big all-American looking guy he’s got a real dark side to his humor. But god, he’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.

KP: Yeah, he tends to pass off his dark side onto other people.

CORBETT: Yeah, (laughs) like me.

KP: Assigning those dark side quips to anyone else but him so he can maintain his squeaky-clean reputation.

CORBETT: Hey, I’ll take a bullet for him.

KP: The sixth season was them at the end of a very long, solid, comfortable run…

CORBETT: Yeah.

KP: At least toward the beginning of that, that they were loved and respected by the network.

CORBETT: Oh yeah. Those were, in some ways, the end of the real fat days where I think they had just this incredibly generous contract, if I remember it. I came with the lean years.

KP: Within the room setting, the writing session, what was your impression of… let’s start with Frank. What was your impression of the kinds of things that he would say in the room?

CORBETT: Well, it needs to be said that really… I’m talking like literally three shows toward the end of six that I got to overlap with some of those guys. I never overlapped with Joel until he came back to do his…

KP: His guest appearance…

CORBETT: Yeah. Well, I was pretty star struck, really, because I had seen the show, and to me Trace and Frank were like a classic comedy duo. I was pretty star struck. And they were all such nice guys that eventually I would have gotten over it, I think, if I had worked there a bit longer. But I’m not sure that I ever got over that for Frank and Trace, at least. They were gone by the time I got back.

KP: So your initial impression…

CORBETT: My initial impression was that everybody was pretty goddamn funny. And with Frank, he had… there was something… as I recall, I was aware that he was a fellow New Yorker, even though he was a Manhattan boy, and I was more bridge and tunnel trash. He had kind of a snideness and a sarcasm that I liked. And he was also really game. I remember that somebody wrote a skit for one of those shows at the end of six where he’s playing Auntie McFrank or something, and he was the owner of a bed & breakfast. I hope I’m not making this up.

KP: No, no. He looked very similar to Jonathan Winters.

CORBETT: (laughs) Yes, yes, very much so. And as I recall – and if I’m making this up, I’m sorry Frank, if you ever read this – but I think he just accepted it without batting an eye. It’s like, “Oh sure, I’ll be Auntie McFrank. Sure, that’s what I do.” Whereas someone like me might have gone, “Oh, do I really want to be in a dress?”

KP: This from a guy who wore a nurse’s uniform for half a season.

CORBETT: Yeah, I got over that pretty quick. After you worked at Best Brains for awhile, you realized you had to abandon your vanity. You’re going to have funny stuff put on you…

KP: Whereas Kevin seemed to revel in it.

CORBETT: Well, you didn’t know his private life. Mike and I realized at one point that we actually worked actively to get Kevin in a dress whenever we can in our skits. I think he finally caught on. He’s just a big, burly, barrel-chested guy with a beard. Put him in a cocktail dress.

KP: Though I have to admit, in seeing Mike’s various turns, particularly his turn as Janeway in the final season seven episode, that Mike seemed to enjoy it a little too much…

CORBETT: Boy, I don’t know. That was scary. He had her down pat. A slight Katherine Hepburn quality there. He had it!

KP: That stern intensity.

CORBETT: Exactly.

KP: I think he probably would have wanted to live that life a little bit longer. So what was your impression of… I’ve often heard – and in talking to Trace I’ve also found it to be true – that he seems to be quite soft-spoken, but when he does say something, it tends to be quite a cutting remark.

CORBETT: Well, I begin with the caveat that we’re talking like two or three shows. I want to say that those guys were in production or post-production on the movie, which I’m pretty sure is one of the reasons I was hired. They had a television show to take care of. It was all the same guys making the movie and the television show, and I think they were just a little bit burned out. They needed a couple more people collaborating with them. Yeah, Trace – very sweet, very soft-spoken guy, but I remember laughing out loud at a few things he said. He’s a precision guy. Unlike me, in the law of averages I blurt out ten things and one of them just seems to be ready. Mike’s kind of like that, too. Probably in pure tonnage of jokes he wouldn’t be up there with some of the rest of us, but it was always pretty spot on. Wait and pounce! (laughs)

KP: Belying that nice Midwestern aura that you would think he would have…

CORBETT: I know. It’s like… well, I was like the sunny Brooklyn guy. I really don’t think anyone would describe me that way.

KP: Who would be the most verbose in the room?

CORBETT: Oh, I’m right up there.

KP: Second to you.

CORBETT: Second to me… well, I think probably myself, Paul and Kevin. This is just from recall of six or seven years ago. Maybe Mary Jo, too, tended to just dump a lot out there and be willing to kind of use it as… the way the writing worked in the room a lot, as I’m sure other people have told you, is sometimes you just kind of… you went with a bad joke just to get it out there, and then you’re kind of serving it up, and then someone like Mike or Trace or whoever – even, god forbid, me – would come along and just make it a better joke. You’re kind of like suggesting an area for the joke and then someone improves on it. So that was a real function, too.

KP: So you blurt out the first draft and it’s quickly revised…

CORBETT: Yeah, there were all levels… the first draft or second draft of any Mystery Science Theater script was all blurty anyway. And in the end it would just be a big bunch of lines and time codes, and then Mary Jo and Paul and I would winnow it down and do what we called “line assigning”, which was just making sure that each character got a line here and there and choosing the jokes and making them better. But even after that there’d be a couple of other levels of work.

KP: In that process I’m assuming that some consideration will be taken into, “Well, this seems more like a Mike line or a Tom line…”

CORBETT: Surprisingly little, I have to say. I say that even as I was the only one writing at that point who was assigning to myself. It was really more just like a round robin, with a few exceptions. If I knew that there was a song, I would usually give it to Kevin because he’s got a great voice. If it was an imitation that Mike did particularly well, you give it to him, of course.

KP: So how did you get all the angry rants?

CORBETT: (laughs) I don’t know! I really don’t! They were regular lines and they just sounded like an angry rant!

KP: One of the people pointed out that the major difference between your Crow and Trace’s Crow was that yours was very angry.

CORBETT: Well… it could very well be.

KP: Do you think you worked out any demons with the puppet?

CORBETT: I was advised by my hypnotist to work through my demons with my puppet. I think that’s very helpful.

KP: Do you still do that?

CORBETT: I don’t. I don’t have a Crow, I just have a tiny little mockup Crow that Patrick Bransteg did for… I think it was when we did the Gumby short, and he had to make a little miniature Crow and a little miniature Tom. I have him, so I make him talk and rant and yell about taxes and stuff.

KP: Do you ever miss the character?

CORBETT: Oh sure. The bots were so much fun because they were just these tabula rasas, you know? They could be as smart and funny as you want, and they could unlearn it all the next episode, and no one ever questioned it. It’s kinda a rule of comedy, and it’s true of The Simpsons, too, but the more cartoony the characters are, the less real logic there has to be to them. Maybe that’s… it could just be a quality of my voice. I do think that there was a little more collective anger in the Sci-Fi scripts if I compare to some of the early Comedy Centrals. Which was funny because we were all getting along just dandy in the room at that time. I don’t know why that is.

KP: Do you think there was a level of hatred after so many years of viewing these horrible films that you took the gloves off…

CORBETT: I don’t know. I can’t claim I had that excuse. (laughs)

KP: You could say, if you watch the early seasons, that a lot of it was informed by Joel’s sensibility, which was much more easygoing and, I would say, almost an affectionate approach to these corny films.

CORBETT: Mm-hmm.

KP: And that period with Mike towards the latter part of the Comedy Central-era seemed to be informed largely by that, but it tended to get a little bit sharper in its humor.

CORBETT: That would make a lot of sense to me. Not having been there for the Joel years. People have asked me about the angry Crow before, and I kinda shrug. I was mostly just trying not to mess up. Trying not to destroy the character. It started probably with a little bit too much of an imitation of Trace, and then Kevin and Mike just said, “Don’t worry about that. Relax a little bit and make it your own.” It could just be a quality of my voice combined with the writing that it changed a little bit, collectively, in the Sci-Fi era. Who knows.

KP: Do you ever feel weird to be in the situation that you’re suddenly living “The Two Darrens, The Two Fred Flintstones”?

CORBETT: (laughs) I’ve gotten over that. I think, really, classic Mystery Science Theater Crow is Trace. He was there before me, he invented the character, he was great. If I could keep the show going a couple more years and not totally sabotage it, that’s enough for me.

KP: Well, you certainly didn’t sabotage it.

CORBETT: Well shucks, thanks.

KP: So your initial call from Mike was to come back out and write for season eight, right?

CORBETT: Yeah.

KP: So you had no idea at that point that Trace was leaving.

CORBETT: I think they did know that, but as I recall it was all happening pretty quickly because they were getting used to the new network.

KP: You were at the convention when the official announcement came.

CORBETT: Right. And I think at that point I do remember that I didn’t know… I mean, I was just going to be the new writer at that point. I think what was going on – and I wasn’t privy to much of this – but I think Mike and Kevin and Jim and everyone were just getting used to what Sci-Fi expected to be different and not, and all that. I think they had a real question to deal with, like, “What are we going to do now that Trace is going?” At that convention, Trace did get a send-off, as I recall.

KP: I saw video of what seemed like a rather awkward panel with you all on it, and you’re seated down at the very end, kind of a silent with that “What am I doing here?” kind of look on your face…

CORBETT: Glowering. Disturbing presence. Well, I didn’t have much to say at that point! I’d worked on a couple of shows in season six as a writer, and it was nice of them to ask me up there as a writer, but on some level, really, yeah, it wasn’t my show at that point.

KP: But, of course, all the conjecture started happening at that point that you were the replacement, but you at that point didn’t know that you were the replacement?

CORBETT: No, I really didn’t. Because I think that still under consideration was the question, “Do you keep the character of Crow at all? Is it too awkward and is it kind of disrespectful, and frankly would it be unpopular to keep Crow going without Trace?” I think that was a good question.

KP: At what point was it presented to you as, “This is what we’re thinking…”?

CORBETT: When they started auditioning people. Because they did audition people, including me. Local actors, mostly.

KP: Were you privy to any of the other people that came in and auditioned?

CORBETT: I knew some of them. I didn’t get to see their auditions. That would have been interesting. I can only conjecture that being on the inside didn’t hurt, because they kind of knew my sense of humor by then, and frankly they didn’t have to cut another paycheck to anybody. (laughs) I do remember that I was just pathetic with the puppet in the audition. And for the first couple of shows. So they weren’t going by puppetry skills, god knows.

KP: Did they give you some material from an old show, or did they give you some newly written piece to try?

CORBETT: I think it was from an old show. Maybe even part of the movie. I forget.

KP: What was the difficulty when you first held the puppet?

CORBETT: It’s an awkward little bugger. I don’t think in those terms now because I got so used to it, but kind of top heavy. Heavier than I thought.

KP: Comparatively, it seems, Kevin had it easy.

CORBETT: Yeah, Servo’s a little bit of an easier puppet. Smaller, a little more usable. It doesn’t have quite as many moving parts. Less prone to breaking. Crow was sort of a Rube Goldberg-like construction. When he broke, he could really break. If you’ve ever seen a Poopie Tape, he was alawyas waiting to exploe! (laughs)

KP: I can just imagine you down in the hole waiting for what piece would come raining down on you.

CORBETT: Oh, boy. There was those eyes. Those dreaded eyes! Yeah, but, you know, it was strange to audition. I thought they were going to hire an actor – and I would have been fine if I hadn’t gotten it, but boy, it really was great fun eventually.

KP: Did you feel good coming out of the audition?

CORBETT: No, I didn’t, because I just thought my puppetry was horrible, and I assumed that they would see better. I don’t know how they could see worse! (laughs)

KP: So how long after that audition did they give you the news? And who gave you the news?

CORBETT: Real soon, because they… as is so often the case with Best Brains, I think it was such a difficult decision that nobody wanted to make it. But then when they absolutely had to, they had to and then it went really quick. It was like, “Alright, you got the part. Here, take Crow home for the weekend, we’re going to start filming Monday.” It was almost that quick. So I was on my kitchen counter trying to make Crow work, scaring the crap out of my dog..

KP: Laying down on the floor?

CORBETT: Yeah. So I was really, really unprepared for the first couple of shows. And I say that not as an excuse – it’s just pretty obvious if you look at the first few shows.

KP: Did you get any words of encouragement from Kevin, who had to go through the same thing years before?

CORBETT: Oh, yeah. I mean, everyone was great and I got nothing but pats on the back. But still, looking back, it showed what it showed, and I was used to seeing Trace move the puppet around from my experience on the show, and I knew that was not what it looked like.

KP: Did it look like you gave Crow a stroke?

CORBETT: Yeah, that’s absolutely what it looked like. It looked like this thing that used to have such life and verve, suddenly it was this hunk of matter.

KP: I’m sure you’ve heard about Kevin’s “I Hate Tom Servo’s New Voice” banner…

CORBETT: Oh yes. He kept it up in his office all those years. I think it crossed the top of his wall.

KP: But you never got one of those.

CORBETT: I got a self-conscious parody of it from somebody who said, “Just to make you feel welcome…” You know, if I ever got… I’m sure there were people who were pissed and disappointed. I think Best Brains was very gentle on me in shielding me from that stuff, and I didn’t seek it out particularly, either.

KP: Did you ever talk to Trace at all?

CORBETT: Not much, really. Because when he left for California, he was gone, and he was busy.

KP: Have you talked to him since?

CORBETT: I haven’t. I really haven’t talked to him since the convention.

KP: So, in a bare-knuckle fight…

CORBETT: He’d take me. He’s got the reach.

KP: And the manipulation skills.

CORBETT: (laughs) Right. “My nose! You’re making it do very funny things!”

KP: You have a very similar vocal quality to Trace, so it wasn’t as jarring as if some basso profundo guy came in…

CORBETT: Right. I think that Mike and Kevin and Jim were aware of that even if I wasn’t. That helped me, no question about it.

KP: I can tell you, without a doubt, you did not destroy the show.

CORBETT: Oh, thank you. It haunts me to this day.

KP: (laughs) Yes, I’m sure it does…

CORBETT: No, it really doesn’t, because I think it’s… I still think the core of the show… Trace was incredibly missed, I think especially as Dr. F. Actually, both characters, but that’s one you couldn’t replace with just a voice. But the core of the show being the movie segment, really the writing was hopefully as sharp and that was not as hard for me as the host segments, because you’re just kind of sitting there with a guy doing the Shadowrama.

KP: You look at that Shadowrama setup and it looks profoundly uncomfortable to sit and shoot…

CORBETT: It wasn’t the coziest! (laughs) But it really wasn’t that horrible. Kevin and I were just in these….

KP: It looks like by that time you had nice ergonomic chairs to sit in. You look at the earlier stuff and it looks like they’re sitting in beach chairs.

CORBETT: (laughs) No, it was just like… they were plenty comfortable, actually. There were just some awkward moments trying to keep my head out of the shot and move Crow around a little bit just to give him some life. Trying not to be seen. “How not to be seen!”

KP: Some of the rough cuts of some of your episodes have leaked out.

CORBETT: Oh, really?

KP: Some of the rough cuts of the shadow segment, so the banter between you all is still intact.

CORBETT: Oh, really…

KP: Yes, there’s a lot of interesting moments.

CORBETT: Where does one find it?

KP: It’s on the internet.

CORBETT: Oh dear god.

KP: I guess there was a mistake, if I understand correctly, when they had the big sell-off, the auction at the offices – not the eBay auction – that they accidentally sold off what they thought was a box of blank tapes…

CORBETT: (laughs)

KP: … which happened to have all these rough cuts on them.

CORBETT: Wow. How incriminating.

KP: The wonderful thing is that the last episode’s on there. So it’s got you guys talking back and forth about the cancellation.

CORBETT: Oh boy…

KP: And being all, “Boy, yeah, I guess everything went to hell since they cancelled us. We really must have gone downhill.”

CORBETT: That’s hilarious!

KP: And there’s a couple of breakdowns. One episode had a 20 minute breakdown of the footage, so it’s you guys… I forget what song you all were ripping on. Oh, “Owner of a Lonely Heart.”

CORBETT: Oh Jesus.

KP: There’s an entire 10 minute segment of you guys doing that and riffing on it. Doing “Homer of the Odyssey, much better than Homer of the Iliad…”

CORBETT: We would get collective Tourette’s Syndrome frequently there. The poor people who worked with us. We could beat something into the ground. It really was odd at times, but we had a lot of fun.

KP: I love the glee that you, and particularly Kevin, showed when I guess whoever… who would be the one who was cueing up the film for you?

CORBETT: Peter (Rudrud).

KP: He threw on “Owner of a Lonely Heart”…

CORBETT: Oh yeah! (laughs)

KP: … and you guys just went giddy.

CORBETT: There was one point I think we realized… most of America probably doesn’t enjoy sort of obscure riffings on 80s music the way we do. We may want to watch it… As we wrote our seventh skit based on an 80s song! (laughs) The hyper-literal parsing of an 80s song… (laughs)

KP: The other thing that was quite disturbing is you guys riffing on… I guess you had just seen, but hadn’t recorded yet or written fully yet, the short about a world without springs, Spring Fever…

CORBETT: Yeah, we beat that into the ground. Coilie. (whistles)

KP: And you guys coming up with riffs that are increasingly more… let’s say “poo-related”…

CORBETT: Yes. That was the nature of all things.

KP: Mike came up with the phrase – and this was while you guys were messing around – “I’m going to go blow some mud.”

CORBETT: (laughs)

KP: Which, to your credit, both you and Kevin were disgusted by.

CORBETT: We were not! We must have been aware a camera was on.

KP: This is just you guys venting…

CORBETT: Hilarious.

KP: You going to Mike, “I’ve never heard that, and that’s just completely disgusting, sir.”

CORBETT: Bear in mind who’s talking there. If I’ve never heard of it, it’s really beyond the pale.

KP: Definitely one gets the sense of the camaraderie the three of you developed over the course of those seasons.

CORBETT: It was great fun. It really was. What’s not to like about it?

KP: And also, you got the chance to play another role within the series.

CORBETT: Yes.

KP: How different was it shooting the “mads” segments?

CORBETT: Well, we did them on different days, as you probably know. They each tended to be events in themselves. It was a little less claustrophobic. I wasn’t down in the hole there, in the trenches with Kevin.

KP: Did you ever feel, if there was ever an emergency, no one would help you out of the hole?

CORBETT: (laughs) It could happen a few times. No, it was all fun, it really was. Different challenges for different sequences. I actually had to memorize Brain Guy’s stuff, whereas with Crow I could kinda tape a script up on the bottom and just concentrate on not breaking the puppet.

KP: Was it a surprise that you were going to be featured in the other segments?

CORBETT: Yeah, it was. It seemed as random – and maybe it’s just my mind is random so I don’t remember these key events as sharply as I should – but it just seemed like it drifted into the idea, “Yeah, we should probably have one of the observers be another character. I don’t know. Bill you want to do it?”

KP: And your response was?

CORBETT: “Yeah, I guess so. I don’t know.”

KP: “Only if I get to wear a nurse’s uniform at some point.”

CORBETT: Well, it’s in my contract as a writer. “If I’m going to do this I must wear a hideous nurse’s costume at some point.”

KP: Nothing seemed to match the enthusiasm that Kevin seemed to have.

CORBETT: No, he’s without peer when it comes for his enthusiasm for dresses.

KP: I don’t know if you’ve ever seen his KTMA watermelon drop footage.

CORBETT: (laughs) No, I haven’t.

KP: You know what the watermelon drop is?

CORBETT: I know it’s like Letterman and all that.

KP: I guess KTMA, being a station with no money, and Jim and Kevin desperate to get their own stuff off the ground – this would have been ’87, ’88 – they both decided that their New Year’s ritual would be to drop a watermelon off the top of the building. Their version of the ball dropping. So they built up this mythology that it was 25 years old, an annual tradition. So he hosted it as a reporter named Bob Bagadonuts, who was straight out of the SCTV school.

CORBETT: Melonville.

KP: Exactly. It is pure SCTV Melonville, with fake commercials and news segments and build up to the melon drops. A couple of tapes exist of him as Bob Bagadonuts.

CORBETT: That’s hilarious. He’s an incredibly multi-talented guy, and I think if he had just decided to become a performer or just an actor or even just a singer he’d be very successful. But he’s got that level of talent in a whole bunch of different areas. Renaissance man.

KP: Going through that period, how would you describe those years on the show, if you were to describe the arc of it?

CORBETT: I’d say from nervousness and a bit of fear at first, to fun and joy. It really was a lot of show.

KP: What show or period did you feel you hit your groove?

CORBETT: I don’t know that I ever did.

KP: Well, there must have been a period when you stopped being a deer in the headlights.

CORBETT: Yeah. I think it was probably midway through season eight where I just start to feel like, “All right, Crow’s alive again. He’s recovered from his stroke. I’m having fun.” It was more gradual, just being in the writing room for a while and writing enough sketches and doing enough movies, just relaxed into it. It’s all about silliness. It was all about inspired, hopefully somewhat clever, intelligent silliness on that show. And to realize that it’s not curing world hunger or anything like that, it’s just puppets and laughs. I used to really look forward to going to work. Now I sit at home and write, and I like that too, once I’m coffeed up.

KP: Do you miss the camaraderie?

CORBETT: Yeah, I do. I get it now and again with Mike and Kevin, and I write with other people here and there. I’m busy being a dad these days, too, so it would be a little harder to do that now.

KP: If I understand it correctly, one of the unique things about the way they established the office is that you were on a daily schedule… You left at 6:00 like an office job, right?

CORBETT: Yeah, and I don’t think that ever was a matter of regimentation, it just that tended to be most people’s preference there.

KP: My understanding is that during the first season, it wasn’t like that. And it sort of got to a crisis point, and then Joel and Jim went off to sort of like a business therapy thing, and one of the things that came out of that was like, “You know what, we’re going to make this a regular work day and our lives are not about this.”

CORBETT: Well, you know what, that’s entirely possible. I’m surprisingly ignorant about a lot of that stuff. I got the benefit of it, though! I kind of walked into a very sane workplace.

KP: Did you get the feeling that it was a very sane way to do that sort of thing?

CORBETT: Yeah, I did. Because first of all, the system was a pretty well-oiled machine by the time I got there. They basically knew how much time they needed for each kind of stretch of work. And you know there were exceptions to the… (laughs) really, as much as we say it was a nine to five or nine to six job, I do recall that during the time I was there poor Patrick Bransteg and Beez McKeever often were working a lot more hours.

KP: You eventually drove her out of the country…

CORBETT: I know, the poor thing. They worked so hard. They really should have been like five or six people doing what they did. And they worked so hard and did such amazing work… so that was a little… they probably had the hardest job on some level, in terms of just man hours.

KP: While you, the egalitarian aristocratic artiste…

CORBETT: I know, it was a little awful…

KP: Leave the poor plebes behind to toil away…

CORBETT: (laughs) I know. “Build my set! I’m going.” I think it was particularly brutal in the first part of season eight. The strange negotiations with Sci-Fi channel were “Well, how do you make this more sci fi?” and they liked the idea of Mary Jo and company going to different planets. But it was really unsustainable. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the Best Brains set…

KP: No, but I understand it was one of the most economical uses of spaces one could ever see.

CORBETT: Yeah. I’ve since seen other television studios and I realize that’s a little more… I mean, everything looks bigger… that kind of compression is pretty typical. But it really was a small, all self-contained space. And these guys had to make a new world of it every couple of weeks, with new costumes and often new characters. So the first part of season eight was just brutal on everybody, but especially Patrick and Beez, I think.

KP: Did you ever say, “You can all have a free day. Go see the sun, little ones…”?

CORBETT: I said that, but my word didn’t mean anything. “You’re a big talk, Bill, but you have no authority here.”

KP: I’m curious regarding Joel’s guest appearance. I was wondering what that was like, and the sort of vibe that was around the office knowing that he was coming back.

CORBETT: It was pretty cool, because… I think it was something that a lot of us were, you know, thinking would be a neat thing someday. But had pretty much put to bed any possibility that would happen. I liked the fact that it sort of connected the later years of the show to the founding fathers a little more. I wish we could have had more time to write it and Frank and Joel could have been there a little longer. But again, they were pretty busy out in L.A., and we squeezed them into a pretty short session. The fun of having them there I hope translated to the screen, but with more time it probably would have been better.

KP: How did you feel interacting with them?

CORBETT: Fine. I didn’t have a lot… it was kind of fun to have both of the meat puppets, Joel and Mike, up there at once. It was a little crowded up there. It was cool. And Frank, I didn’t have much to do with. We were just in the one sketch together. But it was a lot of fun to have them hang around and hear about the old days a little bit.

KP: What did you hear about the old days?

CORBETT: That it was a meaningless nightmare of suffering. Woody Allen. I don’t know, I was just kind of listening to the other guys catch up. They all knew each other a little better.

KP: How would you feel if someone organized or funded a return to MST, but they said, “We want Trace back as Crow…”?

CORBETT: Like an eccentric millionaire, and he brings us to an island in the South Pacific for a martial arts tournament and then MST? If they had some guy I’d never heard of who I didn’t think was very talented, that might miff me. But if it’s Trace, he’s the original, so I could hardly take offense. I might feel personal disappointment to not be included if it seemed like a fun project.

KP: What if they said you could still be Brain Guy and write – would that be a consolation?

CORBETT: I don’t know. We’re into hyper-hypothetical now. If they paid me a million dollars a year I could get over it! (laughs)

KP: The way pop culture is now, anything’s possible… Someone could say, “We’re going to do a 20th anniversary thing…”

CORBETT: Well, I think Trace has first dibs on Crow at any time. But I don’t know. I certainly feel awkward being the pale, effeminate alien with his brain in a dish. (laughs) Lucky me!

KP: We know you saved that costume.

CORBETT: I’m sitting in it right now. A brain and everything. (laughs)

KP: There’s been talk of Trace doing a RiffTrax, which I’m assuming is a completely different kind of thing as far as how that vibe would be, since it’s just you guys sitting down and putting those together.

CORBETT: Yeah. And really, I’ve only been peripherally and sort of guest star involved here and there with RiffTrax. I’ve been busy with other stuff, and with a young kid and all that. I love doing the live shows. Thankfully we have a few of those coming up. And I hope to keep doing those. I think RiffTrax is trying to find its place right now, seeing if this model will work over the long haul.

KP: What is the writing process like for RiffTrax?

CORBETT: It’s been a little more segmented. In the movies I’ve done, I only did two movies with Mike solo, and I did a few with Mike and Kevin. And we usually just split the script up and write half of it or write a third of it, and then we mash it together during rehearsal and consider each line. So it’s essentially the same process, just a little bit more solo work and not as many levels of peer review. Just not enough time…

KP: So you’re saying that more fart jokes get in…

CORBETT: Well yeah, that’s the good part.

KP: Although I have to admit, it seems like there’s been a lot of anger from the Bill Corbett character in the RiffTrax…

CORBETT: Really? What’s wrong with that guy?

KP: I’m thinking in particular there’s a nice healthy rant in Battlefield Earth that they had to talk you down from. How much of that is you playing into the pre-established expectations? There’s got to be a point where you’re sitting down with a film that Mike’s chosen, going, “You know, I actually kinda like this movie.”

CORBETT: It hasn’t happened yet. (laughs)

KP: Kevin professed to liking the first Lord of the Rings film.

CORBETT: I think Mike and Kevin both really like the Lord of the Rings film. I think that was a challenge in riffing something that they like.

KP: Do you think it’s a difference, going from writing really positively dreadful movies for MST to movies that aren’t nearly the level of incompetence? Although I’ll admit there’s nothing but incompetence in something like Battlefield Earth. It just looks shinier.

CORBETT: Yeah.

KP: And has more Dutch angles.

CORBETT: Oh dear god, that was vertigo inducing. I think riffing is pretty malleable, so you can do stuff that is almost a good movie, that has good qualities to it, and you can do stuff that’s dreadful. And some people like watching the Plan 9 from Outer Space or the Manos stuff more, and I think some people like to tackle something that is maybe technically slick like Top Gun, which was just sort of ridiculous at the core. And I don’t know which one I like writing better. Mixing it up is fine by me. I don’t think that I’ve ever done a movie I genuinely liked a lot. If I had done the first Lord of the Rings with those guys it would have been a bit of a challenge, because I’m a fan of that movie.

KP: Are there any films that, for you, are untouchable?

CORBETT: No, not untouchable, just things that I wouldn’t bother trying because I don’t think I would be funny doing them.

KP: Would you tell Mike, “I’ve got to pass on this…” ?

CORBETT: No, I think we’re pretty simpatico in terms of what… the range of stuff we think is horrible… (laughs)

KP: What is a film that, if they were to present, you’d go, “Are you crazy?”

CORBETT: Hmm. Schindler’s List. Or Hotel Rwanda, or something like that. Trying to make something out of… a good movie about a harrowing and real situation would seem to go even beyond my skills…

KP: So, the Holocaust is off limits.

CORBETT: That’s big of me, isn’t it?

KP: It’s really not RiffTraxable.

CORBETT: That’s interesting. I’m sure there are others too. I’ve never seen Life Is Beautiful, so I don’t know. I mean, if it was like The Day the Clown Cried – Jerry Lewis… you know, that legendary movie that I think is in a vault somewhere, which is basically the same premise I think as Life Is Beautiful, then that might be worth looking into. I remember we actually had a little bit in X Men…

KP: The concentration camp scene at the beginning…

CORBETT: Yeah, it’s the concentration camp scene, and Mike wrote something for it that I thought worked pretty well, where I thought we were going to see this shiny superhero movie and suddenly we’re at Dachau, and I’m complaining. It sort of depends on where you focus your humor, and at that moment, you know I’m complaining to him for choosing the movie – then it’s a different sense of humor.

KP: Instead of critiquing the scene or riffing off the scene itself.

CORBETT: Precisely.

KP: (laughing) So it comes down to a skill in doing these things…

CORBETT: (laughing) Imagine that…

KP: I never would have thought.

CORBETT: I don’t know that it’s an infinitely flexible skill, you can just do anything. But I think we… there are times we wanted to try. A lot of people didn’t like this and I can understand why, but when we did Hamlet in season nine or ten, first of all it was a pretty dreadful, dreary version of Hamlet, but that was what we were trying. It’s just like, “Let’s do the best thing ever in terms of drama, Hamlet.” But it was undercut a lot by the fact that it was this dreary German television version.

KP: So some things are unriffable because they’re just so horrible in tone.

CORBETT: Yeah. It’s a whole bunch of different points of entry and I don’t know… you know, if we sat here and talked about them I might become conscious of our approaches. A little more conscious. I’m not sure that I am totally until we get there. It’s like, “How do you solve this problem?”

KP: Like Maria.

CORBETT: (laughs) That’s one I’d like to do.

KP: As MST was drawing to a close, when was the writing on the wall that Sci-Fi had lost interest in the show?

CORBETT: Ironically enough, it was when they seemed to gain a lot of interest in micromanaging our writing.

KP: When they started asking for scripts…

CORBETT: Yeah, it was a little weird. After years of not having much script problem at all – and even the first part of Sci-Fi, I think, some standards & practices person would look through and make sure we didn’t get too naughty, and then we even learned to preempt those and just not go there in the first place. But suddenly we were on the phone to, like, these two people at Sci-Fi who didn’t seem to have enough to do. They would keep us in these meetings discussing, “Guys, could you just maybe tweak that joke?” It’s like, “Are you kidding? These guys have been doing this for a decade and you’re 22 years old.” But I think it was more… I would confess to being spectacularly clueless about a lot of what was going on in terms of the business, even in Best Brains…

KP: Somewhat intentionally so?

CORBETT: Yeah, somewhat intentionally so, because it… you know, it didn’t do me any good to know some of that stuff, and I didn’t know what to make of it anyway. And certainly at Sci-Fi and USA channels. When a little corporate movement happens it just ripples down, and I think that’s ultimately what engulfed us. I think it wasn’t a bad time to leave anyway, frankly. It would have been nice to have a couple more seasons for me, because I felt like I had just gotten there a few years ago. But clearly there was a pretty healthy body of work.

KP: Did you feel a sense from the others that it felt like a good point to put it aside?

CORBETT: Yeah. Everyone was a little sad, but I also think there was a little feeling of, like, it was a good time to rest for some of the guys who’d been at it for the better part of a decade. So yeah, it wasn’t a happy occasion, but I think every season you’re kind of on borrowed time, anyway. So when we finally learned, we had gotten enough hints about it already.

KP: So what did you walk away with? Everyone took something…

CORBETT: A pencil.

KP: Just a pencil?

CORBETT: No, I walked away with… not much. I mean, because they were being earmarked for eBay. In fact, I went away from the office for a week and was going to come back, and… I can’t remember exactly why, but I came back just to get my final couple of boxes there. Because I think I was moving at the same time, in a masterpiece of great timing. Losing a job and moving at the same time. So I left a couple things in the office and when I came back this little couch that I had actually trucked in there had a tag on it for eBay. (laughs) “This is too much!”

KP: I have visions of Jim (Mallon) walking around with stickers and a marker.

CORBETT: Well yeah, if I’d been in the corner I would have had one on my forehead. I got a couple little things from Patrick, like some drawings that he did and some artwork. And it’s really nice. I wouldn’t mind having a Crow, but those are pretty precious.

KP: I’m sure you read my interview with Trace and saw his thoughts on having a Crow in the house…

CORBETT: Yeah, I thought that was funny. He does have big expressive eyes, Crow, and they do tend to follow you no matter where you are in the room.

KP: I’ll get you a velvet painting of Crow where the eyes follow you…

CORBETT: (laughs) That would be great.

KP: Now that I’ve said it and it’s going to be in print, I will bet you that some fan will do it for you.

CORBETT: Well, thank you in advance, fan.

KP: Was Timmy Big Hands the first post-cancellation project?

CORBETT: Yeah, during those heady days of the internet boom. Yeah, that was a funny time, because we rented this office, Kevin and Mike and I, and we were just kind of hanging around, thinking of stuff to do, and we just started amusing each other with little bits of writing and graphics and all that, and then it became a website.

KP: Whose idea was it to do the website?

CORBETT: I think Paul (Chaplain) was big in pushing it. He said he had the finances of the internets figured out. He didn’t, because nobody did! We had a lot of fun – it’s just the financial model of it was unsustainable. And we actually didn’t do bad, as it goes. We made a little bit of money, but we were spending as much just kind of keeping ourselves going.

KP: Was it just an intense desire to keep the group together doing something?

CORBETT: I think that’s what it was, more than anything.

KP: Sort of separation anxiety?

CORBETT: (laughs) Yeah. It’s like my dog when I leave for work.

KP: Who was suffering the most empty nest syndrome of you guys?

CORBETT: Oh, I don’t know if it was any one of us more than the other. And we took a lot of time off after the last show and we had a summer, and we hung around with our family. We didn’t want to seem to desperate…

KP: Someone must have cried.

CORBETT: Okay it was me! You bastard!

KP: I knew I’d break you!

CORBETT: I’m just a soft touch! (laughing)

KP: When Timmy Big Hands went away, at what point did the Film Crew come up as a seemingly more valid alternative to that?

CORBETT: I think it was… well, it’s been a while now, and we’ve kind of gone our merry ways at times and just kind of come back together again.

KP: You really can’t get away from each other is what it comes down to.

CORBETT: I know, it’s sad. I think the thing we did after Timmy Big Hands was pitched some shows out in California. And we got plenty of meetings but nothing ever really came of it. We all hate pitching shows. It’s a total…

KP: If you could describe the worst type of executive, the worst meeting that you had, what would you say was the most disastrous…

CORBETT: Well, here’s the thing – at least in our meetings, I don’t think we ever met anyone who wasn’t pleasant to us and wasn’t at least, on the outside, welcoming. But you just get… every now and then you’d just be like, “Oh, the life has gone from that person’s eyes and they’re no longer listening.” I’ve run into more people in Hollywood who are more the cliché – just these soulless automatons. But for the most part, if people wanted to hear something from the MST guys, they at least have heard of us and got us a little bit. But it was just watching an executive try to hammer it into something that he or she understood that was always distressing.

KP: Do you ever wish you had puppets with you at that point?

CORBETT: (laughs) Yeah, we could cast other people as ourselves to go in there. I think we always went in with a little bit of a… it wasn’t really a chip on our shoulders, but it was like, “Eh, we’ll try this only so far and so much, but…”

KP: Do you think you still latched on to that sort of Midwestern distance from Hollywood?

CORBETT: I suppose.

KP: It seemed like a point of pride amongst most of the guys that, “We didn’t have to do this in Hollywood or New York, we did it outside the system…”

CORBETT: We did it outside the system working for USA Network.

KP: Isn’t that always what happens with people who say they’re working in an anti-establishment art movement? Everyone needs a patron…

CORBETT: Well, yes. That’s the truth of the matter, is that it was always within the system, just on the fringes of the system. It wasn’t like… being really outside the system was the KTMA days.

KP: Yeah, but even that…

CORBETT: That was *a* system. *The* system, maybe not.

KP: You were still being paid by the man…

CORBETT: Yeah.

KP: Otherwise it would have been cable access.

CORBETT: Yeah. And eventually porn. Such is the way of all cable access. Porn or religion.

KP: I can see you doing Brain Guy porn.

CORBETT: Stop it! (laughing)

KP: The Shout Factory project seems almost borderline MST…

CORBETT: We just talked to the people at… it was originally at Rhino, which releases all the MST tapes, and we produced them through them. They just kind of signed up and went on board. But at some point the lawyers – or marketers, probably more accurately – just decided it wasn’t the direction they were comfortable going. But a bunch of former Rhino people started Shout Factory, and they took it over there.

KP: The concept seems closer to doing proxy MST…

CORBETT: Yeah, it’s closer.

KP: Even the Film Crew has a conceit whereby they’re forced to watch these films…

CORBETT: Yeah, it’s a pretty thin rule, though. We just wanted to… as low concept as MST was, this had to be even lower.

KP: Were there any worries of the specter of Jim Mallon descending on the project?

CORBETT: Well, there was more than a worry. And I can’t get into it too much, but that’s ultimately why it’s Shout Factory.

KP: So there was a concern that was dealt with.

CORBETT: There was a concern that was dealt with, as they say in the Jersey mob.

KP: There’s an on-camera host component to Film Crew…

CORBETT: Right.

KP: Someone made the comment that they had trouble getting into RiffTrax as opposed to MST because they felt like you could sort of distance the comments made when they were coming through characters like Crow, Tom and Mike, who were being forced to watch these movies by a mad scientist, as opposed to real people.

CORBETT: That’s an interesting point.

KP: That detachment, they felt, made it seem less mean-spirited… That it seemed more hurtful and sort of vindictive when it was actually coming from real people, even though you are playing slight characters of yourselves in RiffTrax…

CORBETT: Yeah, when we’re guys in our 40s jumping around like fools.

KP: But it’s still Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett and Mike Nelson making these comments and making them, particularly with RiffTrax, of their own accord. Whereas you could always say that no matter how hurtful MST would get, it’s characters being forced to watch these films…

CORBETT: Yeah. I think those are interesting observations. All I can do – and I like working on this stuff – is be aware of it and question what that means.

KP: Have you ever made a comment that you thought afterwards, “Gosh, I really went after them with knives sharpened… was I too brutal?”

CORBETT: You mean in RiffTrax?

KP: In RiffTrax or even MST.

CORBETT: There are a few in there. I do think it’s possible to just be purely mean without being particularly funny. And I think that’s really worth avoiding. The best MST really rode that pretty well. And never sunk into pure meanness for too long. And I think when we were at our weakest, we were just in that kind of too nasty a gear for too long.

KP: Do you feel that you normally would catch those kind of things on the rewrite process, and say, “Let’s change this to something that’s funny instead of hurtful?”

CORBETT: Well, it’s live and learn to some degree. Sometimes you don’t realize you’re being hurtful until two years later. And with RiffTrax that’s a whole new thing and I really don’t have a great body of experience with it yet. The process is faster so you do have to watch it, probably. There aren’t as many levels of review to catch stuff like that. You have to write it a little more carefully to begin with, I’d say.

KP: You’re obviously dealing with a far higher level of power as far as the creators and producers…

CORBETT: That too.

KP: Particularly since you’re dipping your toes more fully into Hollywood. With RiffTrax, it’s “Bill Corbett” saying these things…

CORBETT: I know, it could happen. I could have one side of my career fighting the other.

KP: All of a sudden you run into Ben Affleck at a party and…

CORBETT: I know… “Hey, dick! You think I’m going to do your next movie, dick?” You accept that. And I kind of feel like, look, if I’m going to work with people who are absolutely offended by that, then so be it. And it’s incumbent on me not just to be a jerk when doing these movie commentaries, either. But you watch Jon Stewart, and he jokes and rips on all kinds of people who come on his show later, and to some degree they have to pay him tribute just to hawk their books and all that, and no one’s ever going to have to pay me tribute. But I guess the feeling is I’ll work with the people who are a good fit with me, and that’ll take care of itself, to some degree.

KP: If you had your druthers as far as a film you’d like to choose, are there any in particular that you wish you could tackle?

CORBETT: Well, this goes back to my childhood. I was a fan of the Billy Jack series. It’s a funny little portrait of myself as a boy that I really liked that. So I would kind of like to go back to those and just see if those would be riffable. I know that they got really outlandish and absurd by the third in the series or so. The Trial of Billy Jack.

KP: That’s when they brought the monkey in.

CORBETT: (laughs) I remember thinking he was so cool when I was a kid. It’s like, “He’s a half breed Indian and he doesn’t want to fight anybody, but man they make him! And then he does it with karate! For peace!” There’s one that I’ve never seen called Billy Jack Goes to Washington which is a take on Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, which I understand is really bizarro.

KP: How could you miss that?

CORBETT: Because I think it was just released very limited, in very limited quantities.

KP: Yeah, but in this day and age, everything’s available.

CORBETT: That’s true, everything’s available. The great part of that whole premise is that you have to believe that a guy who has slaughtered with his bare hands dozens of characters by the time he gets to that movie, and shot as many more, is tapped to go to the Senate. (laughs)

KP: How implausible is that, really? I want to see the collection Billy Jack: A Look Back. If they could treat it that serious, then that’s something that needs to be seen.

CORBETT: Yeah. Anything that’s self-important is usually a pretty good start for our little treatment.

KP: How are you feeling so far about the progress of Starship Dave?

CORBETT: Pretty good. It was rough for a while there. It never started out as anything but kind of a silly commercial script, hopefully done with some modicum of dignity. And we’re sort of geared towards kids, although that’s just come and gone here and there. The challenge is working in Hollywood. I’m not going to say everybody we worked with there was venal and horrible, because mostly people were pleasant and kissed our asses up and down about the script, but it’s just such committee work. There’s so many people, especially when it’s a big budget movie like this. There’s so many people who want their input in there because there’s millions of dollars about to be spent, and some of it is good, some of it is awful. Writers are not that powerful in movies. They are more in TV. My partner is a guy who has worked mostly in TV and he was a little shocked just being the low guy on the totem pole. And yeah, you do reach absurdities and you reach the cliché stuff that you see in all the movies about Hollywood. All the satire. But that being said, we did get our shot at the last draft of it before it was filmed.

KP: That’s a rarity.

CORBETT: It is a rarity. We kind of survived the process. I may be deluded. I’d be the first to admit that I’ve lost the forest for the trees here.

KP: But you’re not Barton Fink yet.

CORBETT: No. (laughs) It doesn’t have that Barton Fink feeling.

KP: Do you ever see yourself making the move out to California?

CORBETT: I’ve lived there for chunks at a time, and I actually lived there last year for a while when I was working on Starship Dave.

KP: But on a more permanent basis…

CORBETT: On a more permanent basis, not right now. We moved back because my wife and I learned we were having another kid, and her parents live here and it’s just so easy. And we wanted to buy a house. So I spent a lot of time flying there and back again, and that’s the trade-off we made. I like it there. I like visiting. I didn’t love living there, but it’s mostly because life with young kids and really no family in the area. It’s just a lot easier.

KP: Mike was always adamant, Bridget more so, about never leaving Minnesota…

CORBETT: I know, how about that, huh?

KP: That was a shock…

CORBETT: The sick part is we, within like the same week or two, basically we left messages with each other, and mine was, “Coming back to Minnesota Mike,” and his was, “We’re about to move to San Diego.” So we were really ships that passed in the night, unfortunately.

KP: How do you view the San Diego area?

CORBETT: I knew it a little bit before doing some stuff with Mike out there. I’ve always kind of liked it. I knew the more downtown parts. Mike lives and works a little more in the suburbs, and it’s very nice. The Pacific Ocean is beautiful. It’s pleasant.

KP: So never say never?

CORBETT: Never say never. But do say probably not soon, since we just bought the house and my wife will strangle me if we move again any time within the next two years.

KP: I don’t know, stranger things have happened.

CORBETT: Oh yeah. Many strange things have happened.

KP: Although I never see Kevin leaving his cabin in the woods.

CORBETT: (lauhging) He doesn’t have a cabin in the woods!

KP: That nice idyllic location that he has…

CORBETT: Oh yeah. Have you ever been there?

KP: No, I’ve just heard stories about it through Kevin and Mike…

CORBETT: It’s a lovely house, yeah.

KP: That it’s the kind of place where you can tell he’s never leaving.

CORBETT: But he and his wife travel so much, and they don’t have children, and they are good and experienced travelers and they really know how to get a good deal. So they expatriate to Mexico for like two or three weeks at a time, and you can’t get in touch with them. So they really know how to balance it.

KP: You know who’s in Minnesota now? Now would be your time to meet him…

CORBETT: Trace.

KP: Meet up with him and discuss all the horrible time you’ve had with this interviewer named Ken Plume…

CORBETT: (laughs)

KP: I guess he bought a house on the river, next to Jeff Stonehouse…

CORBETT: That’s what I heard from Stoney. That’s great.

KP: Hey, there’s a fishing cabin with your name on it…

CORBETT: The walleyes are bitin’!

##

-by Ken Plume

If you were to make a list of the most influential – and popular – comic strip cartoonists of the last 50 years, Berkeley Breathed would surely hold a place on that list alongside names like Schulz, Kelly, Ketchum, Watterson, Walker, and Larson, just to name a very small number also gracing that particular scroll.

If any one strip defined the 80’s and its socio-political pop culture zeitgeist, I’d have to put my money on Breathed’s Bloom County, which introduced us to the most famous flightless waterfowl with serious mother issues, Opus the penguin. After folding Bloom County after an incredible run, Breathed returned to the comics section with the Sunday-only Outland – which, after another lengthy run, he also brought to a close.

During this period, he began producing lushly illustrated children’s books – A Wish For Wings That Work, The Last Basselope, Edward Fudwupper Fibbed Big, Goodnight Opus, Flawed Dogs, and Red Ranger Came Calling.

The new millennium brought Breathed back to comics with a new Sunday feature, Opus, bringing the loveably angsty little big-schnozzed penguin firmly into the present day without losing any of the sensibilities that made both Bloom County and Outland so memorable.

He’s also just released a brand new children’s book, Mars Needs Moms!, that tells a tale of parental love – one boy’s lack of appreciation for it, and a red planet’s desperate desire for it.

Still on the road promoting the book, Breathed kindly took the time to do a back-and-forth cyber-interview with me… So, without further ado, here’s our conversation with Berke Breathed…

KP: Where did the initial concept for Mars Needs Moms! come from?

BREATHED: I pulled my four year old boy away from some train tracks as the train emerged around the bend. It occurred to me – in that way that things that are obvious suddenly do at the opportune moment – that I would have reflexively dove, pushed him off the tracks, and gotten whacked by the engine if the situation had called for it. This was a revelation. And I immediately mused at the fact that my kids will never really appreciate this sacrificial component to parenting… at moments that it might be helpful. Hence, the book.

KP: It seems parenting is a very consistent throughline in much of your work, from Opus’s search for his mother to the story in Mars Needs Moms!. What does being a parent represent to you?

BREATHED: Deferring self-interest. And hearing the word “poop” more than before.

KP: What is the process like when you’re actually writing a book like Mars or Red Ranger? Do you see it as a visual process, or a verbal process?

BREATHED: The story gets laid out in my head in pictures. Only when I finish the last illustration do I actually write a single word. This, by the way, is exactly opposite as to how the entire industry does its thing. But then, no surprise, given my past.

KP: Does this process only apply to the books, or do you follow the same process in your strip work? Have you ever created a book in the opposite fashion, starting with the text?

BREATHED: Never. And I often do all the art for the strips first now… since I can compose the test digitally and change the art to fit it. This is new.

KP: What do you feel is the single strongest image you had in your mind for any of the books you’ve done so far – what is the one that struck you like a thunderbolt?

BREATHED: In Goodnight Opus, our heroes sail over the China Sea in the moonlight, the boats lifting into the air below them to try fishing for the moon. A rare time that the art turned out how it originally appeared in my head when I thought of it.

KP: How would you describe the method by which you create your art? If I understand correctly, you do it largely in PhotoShop now… When did you make this transition, and what was the appeal?

BREATHED: Speed. My digital paintings are virtually indistinguishable from my airbrushed ones. But I can create 3 books in the time that I painted them previously.

KP: You originally began the Opus strip with the same kind of art style as your children’s books, but have since transitioned it back to a style more reminiscent of Bloom County and Outland. What was the reason for this move back to that more “classic” style?

BREATHED: The newspapers started running them about 6 inches square, due to various market pressures. There’s hardly much reason to spend an entire day putting that much effort in the art when it’s that small. Also, its the rare gag that can benefit from highly finished artwork. It some ways, it can distract. And the humor is king.

KP: Do you still use pen & ink on Opus, or has that moved into the digital realm as well?

BREATHED: Yep. I still like drawing by hand.

KP: You’ve spoken before about the cynical nature of the humor in Bloom County and Outland as being one of the factors that led to your eventual decision to walk away and move onto lighter fare (such as the children’s books). With your return to the strip, how has your attitude to this “negative humor” changed in the intervening years? Are you better able to cope with it, or was the desire to have the daily forum again an overriding factor?

BREATHED: Oh, its not too negative to be unpleasant. But a creative respite to the positive is redemptive. Kids books are good for this.

KP: Is cynicism always destructive?

BREATHED: Dunno about cynicism. Satire is, by its nature.

KP: Has being a father changed your worldview?

BREATHED: No. But it’s changed the emotional landscape, and that changes the imagination and the art.

KP: What do you feel is the first project that reflected the change in your emotional landscape? Do you think the pre-fatherhood you would have been capable of creating some of the projects you’ve done since becoming a father?

BREATHED: Mars Needs Moms! is the only book I’ve done, post kid. Most people could tell.

KP: Compared to the other strips that dominated the comics pages in the 80’s, what do you feel Bloom County brought to the table?

BREATHED: An “up yours” attitude, frankly. Kids were waiting for it. Ubiquitous now.

KP: How does the ubiquitous nature of that attitude affect how you approach Opus?

BREATHED: No reason to try pushing the attitude stuff. We’re awash in edgy attitude now. I want to see humor and heart at this point.

KP: At the time, how big was the financial temptation to tone down the more controversial elements in Bloom County in order expand its appeal?

BREATHED: That presumes a self awareness that I didn’t enjoy at that time. Fortunes would have been reversed if we HAD toned things down, anyway.

KP: Considering your loathing for the ever-hovering deadline, how have you dealt with that pressure with Opus?

BREATHED: Middle age took care of that. Plus leaving extended adolescence.

KP: How fine is the line between making a serious point in a funny way, and making a serious point that’s intended to be funny, but falls flat?

BREATHED: Listen, the line between funny and not funny is whisker thin. A serious point told in a serious unfunny way is a disaster. Many cartoonists think this is okay. It’s not.

KP: Are there any storylines/characters that didn’t live up to your expectations in either Bloom County or Outland?

BREATHED: You mean are there cartoons in the past that didn’t? Good God yes. It’s shocking. There’s some that make absolutely no sense, as I drew them in a near state of sleepless coma. Shocking, frankly. Amazing I wasn’t thrown out of the page every year.

KP: Is there any subject that you never felt qualified to tackle? Any you weren’t comfortable tackling?

BREATHED: There are subjects that I find hilarious that nobody else does. Cosmetic surgery is one. Because, I think, everyone secretly believes that they may indulge in it one day, so laughing at its absurdity is self defeating.

KP: Your brief flirtation with legitimate news reporting early in your career didn’t work out too well. Even then, it seems, you couldn’t resist inserting your own point of view into the pieces. Where do you think that desire to speak out came from?

BREATHED: Its not an issue of needing to speak out. My impulse was to embellish, because everything isn’t usually interesting enough for me. Imagination is a dangerous thing in journalism.

KP: What was the development process for A Wish for Wings That Work as an animated special? I remember it airing one year, then disappearing quickly. Even the VHS of Wings is out of print. I’m actually quite a fan of the special, but I know you weren’t terribly happy with the outcome. What happened, exactly?

BREATHED: Unspectacular ratings. Simple as that. My humor wasn’t meant for network television, even when the show is done right, which that one was not.

KP: What was the development process like for the special? What, in your view, were the stumbling blocks towards it falling short of what you wanted it to be?

BREATHED: In my case, lack of writing experience, as I wrote the script. And the director was way over his head.

KP: You did an animated version of Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big for Nickelodeon – what is the current status of that? I noticed you got quite a stellar cast…

BREATHED: An unmitigated technical disaster. Unfinished and unwatchable.

KP: This is a favorite book of mine, and I admit that your assessment of its abysmal execution disappoints me to no end…

BREATHED: We hired an animation company with 0 experience. But they promised much for the dollar. Classic mistake. It was simply beyond their skills and it never got finished, although for legal reasons, they delivered film. Unshowable.

KP: An Opus film had been announced awhile back – what is its current status? Are plans for it to be live action or animated?

BREATHED: Wonderfully dead. As it shall remain.

KP: Doonesbury was a musical – why not Bloom County?

BREATHED: The first part of that question is the answer.

KP: Who do you hear in your head as the “voice” of Opus?

BREATHED: I always wanted Sterling Holloway for Opus (Winnie the Pooh). He’s unavailable.

KP: Are there plans for any further animated adaptations? Here’s a hearty wish for another go at Opus, as well as Red Ranger Came Calling…

BREATHED: Mars Needs Moms! is in development at Disney with Robert Zemeckis producing. Flawed Dogs is also with Disney. Opus shall remain unsullied by another director’s vision. He’s mine.

KP: Are you looking at Moms and Flawed Dogs as traditionally animated, or as Zemeckian CG motion-capture pieces?

BREATHED: It will be Mo Cap. Just to annoy the animation community. But it’s a good candidate for that technology, which, like it or not, is going to grow.

KP: How would you describe working with Zemeckis? Are you on the same page, creatively?

BREATHED: I haven’t started working with him, as he’s finishing Beowulf. But his folks seem dedicated to preserving the look of my art. They were fanatical about this with Polar Express. We’ll see. You never know really. It’s all a gamble in Hollywood.

KP: What elements do you see as being essential to any adaptation of Opus for the big screen? How, essentially, do you define that character and his place in any world that might be created onscreen?

BREATHED: I’m not setting Opus up again. Nobody will give me the control needed to protect him. Miramax wanted to redesign him, if you can believe that. I knew at that point that it was fine that the project was doomed.

KP: How would you sum up how your philosophy towards merchandising and adapting your strip to other mediums – a philosophy that differs from Bill Watterson’s…

BREATHED: I’ve come around to Bill’s view that unless they would let me draw every frame, forget it. More precisely, unless they let me write it, forget it. They never do this. Merchandising is fine, essentially because the fans love it. To pretend that the cartoons are above the sullied ground of commercial products is… getting a bit ahead of the artform, I think. We’re deep in the thick of the pop world. Embrace, I say.

KP: Have you ever been presented with a merchandise proposal that you refused to give permission to?

BREATHED: Ha! Nearly all of them! I only approved things that I would have in my office. And I wanted a Bill The Cat doll as much as the fans!

KP: What are the odds of getting Bloom County action figures into the mix?

BREATHED: 0%

KP: Were you at any time ever worried about negative feedback from the syndicate, editors, or the audience to any strip you’ve done?

BREATHED: I only worry that the readers are unamused. I could care less about editors.

KP: Were you ever censored?

BREATHED: Edited. Which is part of the game. I know where the boundaries are… usually. I am occasionally surprised. And I will probably go out on my sword one day, insisting on a particular strip running despite the furor. One day.

KP: Is there any one strip you can recall that you were surprised did not cause a ruckus? Or any you were surprised that did?

BREATHED: I used a Yiddish word that means “shit” one time. I had no idea. THAT got me a boycott from Christian groups . But many surprised my syndicate when they didn’t cause problems.

KP: What motivated you to engage in winning back your copyright in the late 80’s? How difficult a struggle was it?

BREATHED: It took threats to quit. When I got the rights back, I did quit. It was an ugly game of chicken that they forced us to play. The rules have changed now… and I feel good that I lead the way in this.

KP: How would things be different if you had lost the battle? For one thing, I’m sure we’d have had a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon by now…

BREATHED: Watterson didn’t have the rights when he stopped the merchandising. It was a huge risk for him. But they blinked, as they should have.

KP: Speaking of an animated Calvin & Hobbes, I was wondering if you had seen this student film piece, which just hit the web…

BREATHED: Oh my God. That’s my only reaction. And this: Bill is going to have a cow when he sees this. Not that it isn’t terrific. I think it’s like how we’d feel finding our wives naked on YouTube… no matter how hot they look.

KP: What creative muscles do you utilize while writing your children’s books that you were unable to use during your “stripping” days?

BREATHED: Emotion. Drama. Tears. Good storytelling. I love this far more than evoking a laugh, to tell you the truth.

KP: Which emotional “beat” in your children’s books thus far is the most resonant to you, personally?

BREATHED: Sacrifice. The same in movies. Because people rarely do it, truly, in life. We’re largely selfish machines.

KP: How big of an influence was Dr. Seuss on the tone of your children’s books? They often remind me of Seuss stories without the rhymes…

BREATHED: None, I’m afraid. My influences in the books are more from film I think.

KP: Which films have had the most influence on you?

BREATHED: Lawrence of Arabia. Close Encounters. To Kill a Mockingbird. Gladiator. Field of Dreams. Porky’s 1 and 2… Okay, not the last ones.

KP: Are there currently any plans to bring the Bloom County and Outland books – here’s a vote for Academia Waltz, as well – back into print? Even Watterson hasn’t let his books go out of print… What were the factors that led you to let them lapse from view?

BREATHED: It’s the publishers decision. If they sell, they come to print. My readers are middle aged… and somewhat past the cartoon book stage… for the most part.

KP: Have there been any discussions of doing a massive omnibus edition, such as those for Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes?

BREATHED: Wouldn’t sell. Nada. Zip. My fans are middle aged now… and they don’t buy cartoon books. Bloom County books were meant for dorm rooms and reading while sobering up at 3 am.

KP: What is your relationship to your fans? I know you’ve had issues with privacy in the past, but is there a positive to the continuing fame of both yourself and your characters?

BREATHED: I love the fans, even more now. Their heartfelt expressions of love for the work is deeply moving. It took a few years out of the game to really appreciate it.

KP: You were once quoted as saying that you had a “boring life”. Do you still feel that?

BREATHED: Did I ever say that? Must’ve been drunk.

KP: Where is your Pulitzer right now?

BREATHED: It’s on a bookshelf behind a picture of me meeting Ronald Reagan, but in front of my Bill the Cat doll. You can draw the significance in this.

KP: Do you ever take photos of it and have a mysterious courier leave them on Pat Oliphant’s doorstep?

BREATHED: Pat’s a broken man. Is he alive? Nobody’s killed him yet?

KP: As an aside, I noticed in Mars Needs Moms! that in one panel you have a mother holding bags of groceries that contain two name brands – Trix and Lucky Charms – which seems an odd bit of product placement (one would think you would go with something generic, just for clearance issues). What led to the choice to use real brands?

BREATHED: My children’s choice. Come to think of it, Kelloggs or whoever it is owes me a check.

KP: I know you’re a big collector – what is your most prized vintage ray gun?

BREATHED: That would be like choosing the favorite of my children. But you just can’t improve on the Buck Rogers Classic Disintegrator with the sparking window and genuine pop sound. When toys were really toys. Did I mention that I’d left my extended adolescence? A lie, like everything else.

KP: Have you been able to “hang on to the silly” in your life?

BREATHED: I’m friends with John Cleese. This makes it easier.

– by Ken Plume

For eight seasons (1 on local Minneapolis station KTMA, 1 on the old Comedy Channel, and 6 on Comedy Central), Trace Beaulieu filled triple duty on the cult favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 – as a writer, the voice/performer of one Crow T. Robot, and as the evil Dr. Clayton Forrester (the mad scientist who stranded hapless Joel Robinson – then Mike Nelson – on the Satellite of Love and subjected them to those awful, awful movies).

Since departing the MST3K fold following the release of the big screen Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (in which Dr. Forrester subjected Mike & the ‘bots to the Universal sci-fi classic This Island Earth), Trace has found gainful employment as one of the writers for America’s Funniest Home Videos (reuniting with AFV head writer J. Elvis Weinstein, MST3K‘s original Tom Servo and Forrester compatriot Dr. Laurence Erhardt). He’s also penned the limited comic series Here Come The Big People and guest-starred on Freaks and Geeks (as science teacher Hector Lacovara) and The West Wing.

What few people may know – and a topic we discuss right off the bat in the interview below – is that Trace also participated in a group called The Sleepers, a Minneapolis based band which holds the world record for the most venues played in one day in one city (112). They released an album called Heart Like a Shield in the early 90’s that has been a rarity ever since. An eclectic mix of music and comedy, it’s currently being prepped for re-release by bandmember/producer Gary Rue (you can keep apprised of its release via www.garyrue.com). To set the stage for my discussion with Mr. Beaulieu, Gary has given Quick Stop permission to share a wonderful pair of tracks that feature Trace. The two tracks – “Trace Intro” & “Point/Ernie” – have been edited together into a single piece. I hope you get a kick out of them, and make sure you pick up a copy of the CD when it drops.

DOWNLOAD: (right click to save)
The Sleepers – “Trace Intro” & “Point/Ernie” (MP3 format) ““ 3.76 MB

And now, let’s chat with the one, the only, Trace Beaulieu…

KEN PLUME: I spoke with Gary, and I have a copy of Sleepers sitting in front of me.

TRACE BEAULIEU: Oh, good! The whole album?

KP: The whole album, which he’s prepping for a re-release.

BEAULIEU: Oh, cool. I had no idea. Did he remaster it?

KP: It’s nice and pristine and sparkly fresh.

BEAULIEU: Cool. I still have some cassettes in the cellophane, which are turning yellow.

KP: Well, those’ll be the eBay collector’s items.

BEAULIEU: Yeah, exactly.

KP: “This is from the original release, still in their wrapping.”

BEAULIEU: Yeah. One of the complaints we got was that… there were 21 or 22 songs or something like that on this thing, and it was in a cassette format then, and the guys wanted every song and all the lyrics on a sheet. So, I mean, that’s a lot of information. And I think we put it into eight point type, and it’s riddled with spelling errors, and one of the complaints we got was you couldn’t get that back in the cassette box. If you folded it, it was like one of those raincoats you buy at the drugstore, you know?

KP: So, in other words, once the insert was out of the case, there’s no going back.

BEAULIEU: No, no. It was hopeless.

KP: So, really, it should have been an album.

BEAULIEU: It should have been. I think albums were going away when we made this thing. We even thought about doing an album, but it was more expensive at that time to do one in vinyl.

KP: Well, especially since you also were in the CD age.

BEAULIEU: That’s right. Oh, that was a long time ago!

KP: Well, at least you’re not talking about, “Well, we could have put it out on 8 track…”

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Well, that would have been cool. There’s actually probably enough for two albums in there, or three really small ones.

KP: Well, it certainly should be well-served by CD then.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. How did you find the two tracks you have?

KP: I don’t know how I came across them. It must have been about 10 years or so ago that someone handed me a tape of the stuff on it, and it was just one of those things were I always wondered what the rest of the album sounded like, but never had any access to it. And I remember asking you at that time about it, and you mentioned having the box in the basement. I think even then it was up in the air as to what the status of it all was.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Well, it’s been up in the air since we did it.

KP: What an odd occurrence that I should inquire about it just when Gary’s prepping a re-release…

BEAULIEU: Well, you can take credit for bringing it back to life.

KP: Oh good. Can I take that in writing?

BEAULIEU: Uh, no.

KP: “Gary, Trace said I could take credit.”

BEAULIEU: Yeah, good!

KP: I’m just glad that I’ll be able to finally hear it, and so will everyone else.

BEAULIEU: That’ll be cool. And he’s planning to re-release it, so I guess that’s marketing, huh?

KP: Well it’s particularly interesting in this internet age to see how he markets it. You never know – you might be doing press stuff for Sleepers.

BEAULIEU: That would be… you know, it was one of the strangest calls I’ve ever gotten. I wasn’t expecting you to mention Sleepers.

KP: So when you heard that phrase on there, what were you expecting? Like, “This is a Mystery Science Theater call…”?

BEAULIEU: Well yeah, that’s usually what those calls come up to. But Sleepers, that’s even more obscure.

KP: Well, I would never bother you with Mystery Science Theater. (laughing) That’s pretty well documented.

BEAULIEU: I was looking at a site on the web the other day – “Tom’s Temple” or something like that. Every tiny scrap of information is up on the web.

KP: Anything that you wish wasn’t out there?

BEAULIEU: No… In fact, it’s very handy. When I can’t remember stuff, I go there and I go, “Oh yeah, yeah, I remember that now. Thank you for remembering that for me.”

KP: So it’s sort of like a separate brain for you.

BEAULIEU: Yeah, exactly. It’s a hard drive.

KP: Storing all of the knowledge and memories that you’ve managed to get rid of over the years.

BEAULIEU: People will ask me questions and I go, “Gee, I don’t remember.” Or I’ll see videotape or something on YouTube and I go, “Wow! I don’t remember that! But there’s Frank and there’s me and we’re dressed as pirates, and I have no memory of doing it at all.”

KP: Yeah, but that was just a Saturday night…

BEAULIEU: Yeah, exactly.

KP: How’d they get those photos?

BEAULIEU: Yeah. (laughing) I’m dressed as Billy Jean King and there’s Frank and we’re playing tennis or something. I have no memory of that. I should, I guess.

KP: I think it’s sort of an “MST syndrome” that you all suffer from. These big informational dumps that you would do after each episode…

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Or just a big dump.

KP: Whatever it took to get by.

BEAULIEU: That’s right.

KP: Otherwise, I think you would have been driven insane.

BEAULIEU: And I think we probably were.

KP: Some of you, to varying degrees. Do you look back on the time fondly?

BEAULIEU: Yeah. You know, we had a lot of fun doing it.

KP: You’re literally now, what, 10 years out…

BEAULIEU: Yeah. And almost… it’ll be 20, in about a year or so, since we started doing it.

KP: The thing I’ve never been entirely clear about, is I’ve always wondered what your stand-up act was like…

BEAULIEU: It was really bad. I never really wanted to do stand-up. It was never my goal, but it sort of happened. I was hanging out with all those guys in Minneapolis doing improv, and I liked that much more. I like working with people rather than just on my own.

KP: When did you start doing improv?

BEAULIEU: Just like ’82, or something like that. There was a club called The Comedy Cabaret which a friend of mine started, Scott Novotne, who was oddly enough my… I think he was like student teacher in my high school theater. So I knew him from way back. And he started this little cabaret with some friends of his, and it was a place where they were just doing really weird shows and fun little super 8 films. That’s where I met Eugene Huddleston. I just really liked working with those guys. Doing little improv shows and weirdness.

KP: Had you always had that sort of inclination, as far as performance and those performance pieces?

BEAULIEU: I think they were closer to things that we were doing in high school. We would do the plays and all that stuff, but we had built a cabaret in our scene shop theater, and it was very kind of bohemian and eclectic and people were doing all kinds of weird stuff, and it was a very freeing and creative space. Another friend of mine and I wanted to do that same kind of thing since we got out of high school – open a cabaret – and then we found that our old instructor had started one, so we just kept hanging out there.

KP: Was it always your own material, or did you sprinkle it with established pieces?

BEAULIEU: It was always our own stuff. It was always… we were creating stuff that we could perform.

KP: How would you characterize a given piece? If you could recall one of the pieces, what was the average type of piece that you went to?

BEAULIEU: I had this weird little act where I’d saw my leg off. And my friend would accompany me on the piano. I would start out playing the saw, and it would appear as though I became possessed. Whatever music my friend was playing, like, The Exorcist would start possessing the saw. I was sitting on these boxes that we had in the theater, these big white cubes, and I would levitate on those cubes. It was all a goofy… I wouldn’t really say magic trick, but my real leg was hidden in these cubes, and then I could levitate.

KP: A stage illusion…

BEAULIEU: Yes, exactly. And I had one fake leg that was appropriately placed for sawing in half.

KP: What were the audiences like that you would play to?

BEAULIEU: It always got a huge reaction. Because, you know, first it’s this stupid, goofy clown bit, you know, someone playing with a saw and, “oh that’s cute” and reacting to this music. And then I’d saw my leg in half. I don’t think they expected it, and it was a very bizarre little theater piece.

KP: Was it a nice pristine cut, or did you get a bit intense with it?

BEAULIEU: It was kind of a jagged cut through the pant leg down in through the fake leg, and sawdust and paper would… initially it looked as if I was really cutting my leg, and then you’d see this stupid thing fall out of my pant leg.

KP: It’s not like you Gallaghered the audience with blood or anything…

BEAULIEU: No no no. I never was into gore or anything like that. It was like, “Okay. The initial shock was enough. Stupid.”

KP: How large were the audiences that you would generally play to?

BEAULIEU: I don’t know… probably the largest maybe 50, 100. On a good night.

KP: Was that capacity?

BEAULIEU: Yeah I think so. Mostly we were playing to, like, eight people. And there would be a decision whether or not we would have a show or order pizza. We’d ask the audience what they wanted to do.

KP: Do you miss days of decisions like those?

BEAULIEU: I miss the kind of spontaneity and the wacky anything-is-possible. Now everything is… very little is possible.

KP: Because of outside forces or just the way that life has to be at this point?

BEAULIEU: Well, there’s a certain amount of safety. You kind of want it to work all the time. You don’t experiment too much.

KP: Do you miss performing at all?

BEAULIEU: I do. I do. I miss those days when we would interrupt each other’s act with, like, playing golf from the back of the theater… Bring a car into the theater so when a curtain was drawn into the lobby, you’d see us working on a car. Really absurdist kinds of things.

KP: At that point, how large was the troupe that you were with?

BEAULIEU: Probably maybe five. There was Eugene and myself, and Scott and his wife Stephanie, and Gary… How many is that, five?

KP: Five. Out of that group, how many are still performing at this point or still involved in the creative side of things?

BEAULIEU: Eugene’s still playing piano in Minneapolis. He’s still doing comedy. I see him whenever I get back there. I really enjoyed working with him. He’s a very free and generous performer. and I don’t think appreciated very much. I certainly don’t appreciate him.

KP: If you can’t, then how can anyone else?

BEAULIEU: Yeah. We had this history. We really liked each other and enjoyed performing, but then we got into this stage where neither one of us had seen each other’s act. He’d never seen Mystery Science Theater and I’d never seen his piano playing. For like 15 years we’d just never see each other perform.

KP: So it was just remembrances of times past?

BEAULIEU: I think it was just flat-out avoidance. Then it became, not necessarily a feud, but a challenge. Even if I showed up and he was playing, I’d have to wait until he was finished.

KP: So who won the challenge?

BEAULIEU: Well, I started bringing him in on different things. I had an art show out here a couple of years ago and I brought Eugene out to play piano.

KP: So you lost. So he turned to you and went, “Ha, I won!” At which point you should have presented him with an MST box set.

BEAULIEU: I should have. I think he has a TV now. Yeah, he probably does…

KP: Well, with age you get certain perks.

BEAULIEU: That’s true. Now he’ll reap the benefits of the Sleepers resurgence.

KP: So is he part of the group?

BEAULIEU: Oh yeah, yeah. He played piano. He recruited me into Sleepers because they wanted to do – or he wanted to do – more comedy bits as well as the music. And I know nothing about music. I’m not musical at all.

KP: I’m sure you’d be handy with a triangle.

BEAULIEU: A drawing triangle. That’s about as close…

KP: You could have played with Yoko.

BEAULIEU: It was an odd group. Poets and artists and comedians and musicians… a very eclectic mix of people. Very creative, too. I always really enjoyed working with those guys. Gary and Gregory Bitz, who did the artwork for the album, and Eugene and another fellow that passed away a few years ago, Kent Taylor, who was the bassist.

KP: When were you asked to be a part of the group?

BEAULIEU: This was like ’92. We were already doing Mystery Science, so I would work Mystery Science during the day and then I’d go hang out with these musicians downtown until wee hours of the morning.

KP: How do you remember the actual recording and creation process being? Was it everything that you hoped it would be?

BEAULIEU: It was fraught with personalities, let’s say.

KP: Towards a better goal, eventually?

BEAULIEU: You know, I think we just got really, really lucky a couple of times that things came together as they did.

KP: Was there the feeling that this would be a one-off even while you were doing it?

BEAULIEU: No, I think we all wanted it to continue. But one by one everyone’s lives started to kind of disintegrate. Some of the guys were going through divorces at the time and various, just creative meltdowns. That’s what I have in the box in -well not in the basement anymore, it’s in the closet – of the Sleepers, the performances. And we did a tour, which was Eugene’s idea, called “The Sleepwalker Tour,” in Minneapolis for the Muscular Dystrophy… I guess challenge, or fund… We played 111 clubs in one day trying to raise money for muscular dystrophy, and also to try to break the world’s record.

KP: I can’t imagine the logistics of that.

BEAULIEU: It was kind of remarkable. Eugene put it together, and he called all these places in town and said, “Okay, we will be at your restaurant, club, bar – whatever – at 9 in the morning,” or whatever time of day we got there. And he scheduled it all, coordinated it all. We got some limos donated to us. We got a bunch of guys with video equipment following us around. We started out, I think, at 9 in the morning and wound up at 11 at night.

KP: So, did you make all 111?

BEAULIEU: We did. The goal was 100, but we kept going. It was also Memorial Day weekend, so some places weren’t open, or the manager had failed to tell anyone that we were going to be there, so we’d wind up at the kitchen door and there’d be a guy with a knife and a head of lettuce going, “What?”

KP: Exactly what you’d want to be greeted with.

BEAULIEU: Yeah.

KP: How much material would you play when you hit a club? I’m assuming you could only get a minute or two.

BEAULIEU: Yeah – they’d run in, play like a minute worth of material, and then run out again, run into the limos, and off to the next place.

KP: Being the non-musical portion of the show, what was your function?

BEAULIEU: Once we found that it was kind of a nightmare logistically actually doing it, I’d run ahead and make sure that either A, the building was still there, or it was unlocked. And sometimes I would do something strange like blow bubbles or something, just for something to do.

KP: Something nice and performance arty.

BEAULIEU: Yeah.

KP: Does that footage all still exist?

BEAULIEU: It does. To the large part that and a show that we did still exists. I haven’t looked at it in years. I gave it to a friend of mine to break down and log all the video tape, but I still haven’t really had the stomach to go through it again.

KP: When you say “the stomach,” what is it that makes you uneasy about viewing it again?

BEAULIEU: Oh, memories. Some stuff is best left to memory.

KP: You’re saying it was very much a charged period?

BEAULIEU: It was. It was. I don’t know if I really have enough distance from it to cut it into any kind of documentary, or if there’s anything really there to look at.

KP: When you think back on the actual material that’s on the album, are you proud and content with what the album eventually became?

BEAULIEU: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

KP: So the material itself you have no problem with.

BEAULIEU: No, no. The album is… I had very little to do with it, really. I was there when they were doing some of the recording and we were goofing around a lot with stuff. I think there is some stuff… you know, it’d be interesting to hear. Because I don’t remember exactly what I did.

KP: When was the last time you heard the album, or pulled out the cassette?

BEAULIEU: Oh boy, I’d say at least 10, 15 years.

KP: Probably the last time I mentioned it to you.

BEAULIEU: I think probably that’s when it was. You have a better memory than I do. I’d have to go to the website and find out what I remember.

KP: Well, that’s good. You’ll be one of the first downloads. Like I said, it wouldn’t have stuck in my brain for this long if the two tracks I heard weren’t memorable.

BEAULIEU: Well, you know, Gary and Eugene and Gregory and Kent Taylor are extremely talented musicians, and they did a great job.

KP: Which is weird because neither of the tracks I have are music tracks, they’re comedy tracks.

BEAULIEU: Oh really?

KP: One is you running up to the recording session…

BEAULIEU: Oh, I think that started the album. I push a button or something.

KP: Where I guess you’re the pyrotechnics guy, but you show up for the recording…

BEAULIEU: Yeah, I did a lot of that kind of stuff, too.

KP: Which I thought was one of the best performances I’ve ever heard from you. A very natural performance.

BEAULIEU: Oh really? I don’t remember what I was doing.

KP: Just your delivery on some of the lines. Like, “Oh, what does that do? Sorry.” The kind of thing that a lot of people can sound very unnatural delivering, particularly in a prepared comedy bit.

BEAULIEU: Naturally confused, perhaps.

KP: Well, you pulled it off well. And the other one is the dueling stereo conversations.

BEAULIEU: That one I’ve never heard. We did that, and Gary has often commented about how funny that was…

KP: You do your Gregory Peck in it.

BEAULIEU: Oh really?

KP: Yes.

BEAULIEU: Oh boy, I don’t even remember. I think we were just goofing around in the booth and we didn’t know he was recording it.

KP: It sounds just like two conversations that were recorded just as conversations…

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Huh…

KP: It’s quite good.

BEAULIEU: That’ll be interesting to hear again.

KP: That’s one of the other ones we were gonna put up.

BEAULIEU: Oh, cool.

KP: Going back to the 80’s, if you were comfortable in that sort of performance bubble, what pushed you into standup?

BEAULIEU: Everyone in our little group started realizing they could make more money doing standup, and I sort of went, “Oh, okay, well I’ll try standup, then.” I really just kind of floundered around with that, and continued doing it because I liked being around all those creative people.

KP: Wat did your act consist of?

BEAULIEU: Oh boy. I think some of it was somewhat improv’d and then beaten to death by trying to make an improv bit into a standup bit. I can’t even remember much of it.

KP: Because you’ve blocked it out?

BEAULIEU: Yeah, that part I did have to put a screwdriver into my forehead and squish it around so I wouldn’t remember.

KP: Are there any gigs around that period that you remember as going particularly well?

BEAULIEU: I had a show in Lincoln, Nebraska that I remember liking. And afterwards going into the men’s room and there was a guy on the toilet who enjoyed it.

KP: From the men’s room?

BEAULIEU: Well, I don’t know if he was in the men’s room…

KP: Or he just felt it was necessary to relieve himself after such a fantastic set?

BEAULIEU: He was working on an epic at the time, and I don’t know if he had heard my act through the wall, or if he had just immediately felt the need to… (laughing) yeah.

KP: That’s good. You’ll always remember Lincoln, then.

BEAULIEU: I’ll remember Lincoln.

KP: During that period of standup, how often did you cross paths with your eventual coworkers?

BEAULIEU: Well, Josh went on his first road tour with me and a guy named Charlie Walker, who’s also out of Minneapolis.

KP: How did that work? Wasn’t Josh still underage at that point?

BEAULIEU: I think he was. I thought Josh was 35, but it turns out he was 15 or 16 or something like that.

KP: So he could comport himself really well.

BEAULIEU: Yes he could. The tour manager, or the tour organizer, said, “I think this kid’s underage. You’re gonna have to watch him in the bars.” And I said, “He knows more about bars than I do. No, I’m pretty sure he’s old enough. What is old enough? He’s that, whatever that is.”

KP: So were there any awkward moments, driving around with a minor? The comedy circuit at that time was not known for being terribly above board.

BEAULIEU: No. Nobody really cared once we were out. That was a fun trip with Josh. Didn’t really work. Mary Jo, we worked together a bit on some sketch comedy stuff at the… I think the club had been called the Ha Ha Club after that. It was the Comedy Cabaret and then the Ha Ha Club. I worked with her there. Never saw Joel’s act live. I always missed him when he was in Minneapolis and I finally saw him on the Letterman show. That’s long before I worked with him.

KP: What was Joel’s reputation in town?

BEAULIEU: He was a genius. He was… you know, he was Joel. Very funny, very creative guy. He had this mystique, because he’d been on SNL and Letterman and had gone out to Hollywood and then come back. He kind of quit show business and then came back to Minneapolis and he was working in a tee shirt factory. And so he had that kinda… you know, that cool reputation of going, “You know, it’s not that great.”

KP: What would you say that your perspective on the future was at that point? What was the goal you were aiming towards, if any?

BEAULIEU: I think just to quit my real job.

KP: What was your real job at that time?

BEAULIEU: I was working for a display company. It was another one of those things where I’d work there during the day, and on my creative outlet at night, at these clubs.

KP: Was it difficult work, or just drudgery?

BEAULIEU: It was interesting. It was a company that started very small, just six people, and had a product that was very successful. So I’ve always been very fortunate to be around stuff that was kind of in the embryonic stages creatively and then had taken off. This company now, I think, is a multimillion dollar company with 350 employees and offices all over the world.

KP: Would you have ever guessed it would become that?

BEAULIEU: No. I left in ’86 or ’87. I still have family members who work there, and now they’re ready for retirement.

KP: That’s got to feel a little odd.

BEAULIEU: Yeah, yeah. I kinda feel like I’ve had a number of different lives. You know, I worked there kind of off and on out of high school, and then I went to Europe and worked in an ice show for a while.

KP: This was the infamous monkey show, right?

BEAULIEU: That was the monkey show, right.

KP: How do you make the decision to go off to Europe and work in an ice show?

BEAULIEU: I had a pal that I’d known since grade school, really, and we became very close in high school. He had gone off that summer after high school. We’d both seen Star Wars together. You know, the good one – the first one.

KP: Right. The only one of two worth mentioning at this point…

BEAULIEU: (laughs) We had both seen that, and we were just high school kids ready to go out into the world, and it was the perfect movie. So he went off and left Tattooine, and I stayed. He went to Europe and got a job with an ice show and toured around the Far East and Australia and came back and said, “Hey, this is really cool. You should come back with me.”

KP: So he was Biggs and you were Luke. And it’s unfortunate that I should make that association…

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Yeah.

KP: He came back to tell you tales of the outside world.

BEAULIEU: That’s right. And I didn’t have the foresight to tell him, “Hey, you’re gonna get cut out of this thing…”

KP: You should have told him that. Poor Biggs.

BEAULIEU: Is it foresight or is it hindsight?

KP: Maybe some kind of insight. Had you had any other thoughts of college or any other direction? Or was it a matter of when that opportunity presented itself, how could you turn it down?

BEAULIEU: Yeah, it was really… I guess I had gone to University of Minnesota for a year when he came back. Or by the time he’d come back. And I was just kinda burned out and didn’t feel like going to school anymore. It was just time.

KP: What’s the audition process for the ice show?

BEAULIEU: Uh, I showed up. (laughs)

KP: “Do you work well with monkeys and can you skate?”

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Actually, I didn’t skate – we were just working crew. We were building props and moving the show from town to town. So I showed up one day thinking, “Hey, if I get a job, that’d be great – and if I don’t, that’s okay, too…” and hung around for a while, and they said, “Okay, we just fired a guy, so you’re in.”

KP: Props have played a large part in your early career. Had you always been crafty in that sort of way?

BEAULIEU: Yeah, always building stuff. I grew up with a very creative family. My mom was a painter and my dad was always fixing something or salvaging something and repairing it. My brother’s an engineer and my sister’s an artist, so there was always that attraction.

KP: So you found that you took really easily to that…

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Or I just outright lied and said, “Yeah, I can do that. How hard can it be?” I think that was always my attitude. I’d look at what somebody was doing and I was too stupid to know I couldn’t do it.

KP: You know, that exact phrase is in one of the Sleepers tracks…

BEAULIEU: Well yeah, I used to say that a lot. Until I found out how hard it is…

KP: At what point did you find that out?

BEAULIEU: I think it was very early on. Once I learned how hard can it be, and it actually was very hard.

KP: What would you say, of all the various lives you’ve had, was the hardest thing you’ve ever done?

BEAULIEU: Hmm… boy that’s… I don’t know. I guess the hardest thing is working in an area where you’re not allowed to be creative. So maybe those early days, when show business was the lure. I think I maybe stayed in the display industry too long.

KP: How many years did you actually spend there?

BEAULIEU: Let’s see, from high school to… maybe off and on 10 years.

KP: Was it something you’d come back to?

BEAULIEU: Yeah, I’d leave and come back. Like I left, went to Europe, came back and got the same thing again. Went back to the same old job.

KP: So how long did the sojourn in Europe last?

BEAULIEU: That was really pretty short. It was about four or five months.

KP: Behind the scenes the entire time?

BEAULIEU: Yeah.

KP: When did the monkey incident happen?

BEAULIEU: Well, we had a barrel jumper – a guy that would jump through a flaming hoop. My job was to soak his hoop with gasoline. And they taught me how to say, “I am out of gasoline” in French, which I don’t remember. “Je ne plus par essence,” I think is what it is. So I’d go up to these guys and say, “Hey, I’m out of gasoline,” and they’d give me a can of gas. I’d bring it backstage and I’d soak this guy’s fire hoop. His instructions to me were, “Put as much on as you can.” And we had the monkey, Mickey, who was also in the show, whose act consisted of playing badminton in a kilt while skating. And he also had a fire hoop that he would skate up to, and it was rigged so he could light it. And one night my friend and I switched duties. For some reason I had to take his side of the stage and work his props, and his prop was the monkey hoop. And I thought, “Well, what’s good for the fire hoop guy is good for the monkey,” so I just soaked that thing with as much gasoline as I could put on it. This was kind of Mickey’s finale. It was his closing bit. And he skates up to the hoop and he triggers the little gimmick that lights it and it was like a tower of flames. And his eyes get big as saucers and he shrieks and skates right offstage and into his dressing room.

KP: Oh, he had his own dressing room?

BEAULIEU: Oh yes, he always had his own dressing room.

KP: So he was a bit of a prima donna.

BEAULIEU: Yes. The crew guys were usually changing in the public bathroom, and Mickey had his own dressing room. In fact, I heard his trainer screaming at him one night. You could hear them through the wall. And they were, like, having a real conversation. The trainer was screaming at him, but Mickey was responding in monkey talk. He was shrieking. He goes, “I don’t care if you don’t want to go on, Mickey! It doesn’t matter if you ate your costume! You’re gonna wear your other costume!”

KP: That’s got to be a little disturbing.

BEAULIEU: It was surreal.

KP: But after the whole hoop stunt, I’ll bet he could never work the same again.

BEAULIEU: He knew it was me.

KP: So he personally asked for his regular crew guy back.

BEAULIEU: Yes, he did. We had this grand finale in the show, and I would be backstage prepping scenery or some props while the pyrotechnicians were loading up the flash pots with powder. And I’d be there watching them, and Mickey would skate up to me, and he’s, like, looking up and down and I go, “You know, this monkey – if he wanted to – could crush my testicles.”

KP: Or tear an arm off.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. And he would skate up to me like, “I knew it was you.”

KP: Instead he just asked that they dock your pay.

BEAULIEU: It was terrifying.

KP: I wonder whatever happened to Mickey.

BEAULIEU: I don’t know. He had a little brother, Bobo, who… you can’t make up circus names. He was being groomed to take over the act.

KP: So it was a whole Norma Desmond thing.

BEAULIEU: Yeah.

KP: Mickey knew his days were numbered.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know how long chimps… he’d probably still be alive. Chimps live for 30, 40 years, don’t they?

KP: Yes, theoretically Mickey could still be out there, full of bitter memories of you.

BEAULIEU: He’s drawing my picture on his wall with a banana or something.

KP: I hope it’s just with a banana.

BEAULIEU: Oh yeah. Well, you know, highlights. Adding depth and shadow with whatever color he can muster.

KP: It’s good to know that you might still have an impact on a poor aging chimpanzee out there somewhere.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. I hadn’t thought about that. He’s probably still alive.

KP: Well, there’s a reunion for you. Who knows, this many years later after the career’s gone, he might be bitter enough to rip an arm off.

BEAULIEU: He could.

KP: Or he could just feebly try, but with age and infirmary, he can’t hack it.

BEAULIEU: Just gum me.

KP: It’d be a sad, pitiful reunion. You’d feel a little pity for him, wouldn’t you?

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Well, we’d both get on the news.

KP: That’s absolutely true. And then you’d go out for drinks later.

BEAULIEU: Yeah.

KP: Talk about old times at the ice show. So after that couple of months, was it something you expected you would return to the next season? What ended your tenure?

BEAULIEU: Well, the show moved to South America, and I stayed in Europe. And then I just traveled around to some of the other shows, seeing if they had work, and eventually just came back to the States.

KP: Was it a decision that you regretted having to make? Did you want to stay outside the States, or did you feel and urge to return home?

BEAULIEU: No, I was kinda done. I was ready to come home. The hostages had just been taken that November, and it was kinda tense there for Americans.

KP: So it felt like a good time to get back to home base.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. I was wandering around Hyde Park one Sunday and realized I was the only one that wasn’t wearing a turban or a shroud or something… I looked very white and from the Midwest. And I thought, “It’s time to go.”

KP: You could have said you were Canadian.

BEAULIEU: I did that. But people wouldn’t believe me.

KP: Really?

BEAULIEU: No.

KP: How would they call you on that?

BEAULIEU: Well, actually, they called us “North Americans,” which I thought was kinda cool. I took it as more of a compliment.

KP: Did you feel that you had gotten everything that you possibly could out of Europe?

BEAULIEU: For the time being. I always thought I’d go back, but never did.

KP: Do you still feel you’ll go back?

BEAULIEU: At some point. I kinda got tired of being around big wet cities. Big wet cold cities that were full of dog poop.

KP: And yet you returned to the Midwest.

BEAULIEU: That’s true. We’re better at picking up our feces, though.

KP: But not known for being dry most of the year.

BEAULIEU: No.

KP: Or warm.

BEAULIEU: No. Well, that’s why I came here to L.A.

KP: When you made your return, that was when you started increasing the performing?

BEAULIEU: Yeah, that’s really when it started. Started hanging around that club.

KP: At what point did Mystery Science Theater present itself? Since you would have been deep into standup at that point…

BEAULIEU: Yeah, and that’s when I started hanging out more with Josh and Joel. We had a little group that would meet at the library to write bits and work on stuff. Joel started coming to those sessions. Boy, I guess that’s like ’87, round in there. We started Mystery Science in ’88, something like that.

KP: When you talk about writing bits at the library, that’s not exactly where you would assume that a raucous sort of get together would occur.

BEAULIEU: Well, we started working at a bar in Minneapolis on Tuesday nights. It was Eugene and a friend of mine, Paul Williams, and another friend, Paul Kelleher, and other people would drop in. It became known as “Writer’s Block,” because we never got any work done. But it was the only night of the week that Eugene could get out of the house. And then we moved it to the library because we thought we’d get more done – we wouldn’t be able to have a beer and we’d be more focused. We actually, I think, got a lot more done there.

KP: How collaborative were the meetings? Was it each person writing their own thing, or would you workshop it?

BEAULIEU: We’d go around the room and someone would have a bit and we’d help them with it. It was a really collaborative environment. It was fun.

KP: Was Josh the one who invited Joel into the group?

BEAULIEU: I’m not sure how that happened. It might have been. It got known that we were there and a lot of people would come. I think Joel has… I’ve heard him say he remembers seeing something I had drawn in my notebook that made him believe that I could make stuff.

KP: How many of those notebooks had you filled over that period?

BEAULIEU: I’m still working on the one notebook.

KP: What are the contents of that notebook at this point?

BEAULIEU: Well, every page is virtually black by now. But there’s still a little bit of white, and I won’t be happy until every page is completely solid ink.

KP: Is that your life’s goal?

BEAULIEU: Yes.

KP: Then publish them posthumously as the almost DaVinci-like notebooks of Trace Beaulieu…

BEAULIEU: Yes. Well, they’ll be issued as black paper. That’s all.

KP: That’s good. I hope you’ve outlined what should be done with that single notebook.

BEAULIEU: You could probably squeeze it and get a lot of ink out of it.

KP: Or you could expand it into many volumes. It’s sort of like the Tardis of notebooks, is what you’re saying.

BEAULIEU: (laughs) It’s all in there.

KP: Was there a difference between the kind of bits you would develop during the library period and what you did with the improv work earlier?

BEAULIEU: For me, I think it was just… well, I was trying to focus more on doing the standup act, but never really had the discipline to make it work.

KP: Where would the critiques lie if, say, Josh would give you a critique on a performance? What would you generally hear about your performances?

BEAULIEU: I don’t remember him giving me any critiques. Maybe that was the problem. We never really were breaking stuff down like that, at least that I remember. It was more additive than subtractive.

KP: Did you feel confident in front of an audience, regardless of the material?

BEAULIEU: I did more so, I think, than I do now. I think I gradually worked myself out of it.

KP: Out of that comfort level?

BEAULIEU: I don’t know if it’s like a therapy, like after a while I didn’t need it anymore.

KP: Is standup anything you think you could see yourself returning to? Or performance in front of an audience?

BEAULIEU: The latter. I don’t have any interest in standup, really. But performing perhaps sketches or prepared material – well rehearsed, prepared material.

KP: So improv is not really something you’re too keen on.

BEAULIEU: Well, I think it’s a good tool for developing stuff, but I really don’t like… like, there’s all these improv shows now, and I just don’t think it’s a performance piece. I think it’s a good tool for developing stuff.

KP: So it’s like seeing the rehearsals for something.

BEAULIEU: Yeah, it’s so hit and miss. One of the best improv sessions that I experienced was on a Saturday afternoon when we were all just working out bits without an audience. I think it was one of the best cohesive times that I’ve experienced, and it was probably better because we didn’t have an audience.

KP: Would you say, then, that you were never terribly comfortable with the fact that those KTMA MSTs were improv?

BEAULIEU: Well, that was kinda different. You’re not jumping up and changing character…

KP: Or having to have an audience there.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Our audience was us. For me, my audience was Joel and Josh, and the guys in the control room occasionally would come in and go, “Oh, uh, that segment’s done.”

KP: Well, with that kind of support…

BEAULIEU: Yeah, exactly. But I was much more comfortable when we had worked through the bits and we finally got onto Comedy Central, where we had time to develop the lines and the writing, and script everything out. I think the hit rate was higher, and it still had that improvisational element in the way we riffed and wrote initially, but then you could pick the best lines out of all of that and make it a better viewing experience.

KP: So it had that improv, but with a nice revision process built in.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. That’s kinda how we work with America’s Funniest, too, when we’re writing jokes and riffing.

KP: How similar are the two writing rooms, if you were to compare them? You’re still basically sitting down with video material and riffing, right?

BEAULIEU: Yeah. The process is similar in that 80% of our show is provided to us. Any Mystery Science movie was there for us. And similar with the videos. They’re provided to us, so that part’s done. It’s reacting to it that becomes where the work is.

KP: Would you say the revision process is more or less intense?

BEAULIEU: It’s a different kind of work. We don’t have the freedom that we had on basic cable, where you could basically… how many hundreds of jokes are in a Mystery Science two hours? You can be real obscure. It didn’t matter. But now we’ve got, like, 80 clips in a show, and we’re maybe commenting on half that many. We have to be more on the nose and more of a broadcast kind of joke area. Broader and not so… not so clever. (laughs) It’s easy to be clever when you can talk for two hours, but we have to be pretty concise and try to hit a broader audience.

KP: How fulfilled do you feel, creatively, comparing the two processes?

BEAULIEU: It’s a different kind of challenge to craft a thing that is… it’s two different audiences, really.

KP: Do you feel that AFV is in some ways more technical, since you’re having to hit that many marks?

BEAULIEU: Yeah, I guess that’d be a fair assumption. A little more technical. A little more finite in our choices, because how many piñata hits can you see and say something different?

KP: And how many have you seen so far?

BEAULIEU: Oh boy, hundreds. Hundreds of piñatas. Trampolines… you know, it falls into those categories of guys wracking their nuts on a railing after skating or skateboarding…

KP: Do you have a database that you can go to and say, “Did we make this joke?”

BEAULIEU: We don’t have a database for the jokes. We pitched that as an idea but then we realized that if we had a database for the jokes, why would they need us anymore? They’d go, “Uh, we got about 50 nut hit jokes here, why don’t we just use one of those and just change the words around a little bit.”

KP: So, in other words, you would have been creating your own replacement.

BEAULIEU: Yes, exactly.

KP: Although I am kind of intrigued by the AFV bot, sort of Hal-like…

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Well, there is a database for the clips, and you can type in “nut hit” or “groin hit” and you get five thousand different kinds of groin hits.

KP: How much material comes in that’s completely unsuitable for AFV?

BEAULIEU: Well, it’s unsuitable for not maybe the reasons you’re thinking. We get very few that are really that good that we can’t air them.

KP: I’m assuming camera quality sometimes is just atrocious.

BEAULIEU: Yeah, camera quality, or baby sleeping. For a while we were getting a ton of kids sleeping in their high chairs with those bumble balls, those vibrating ball things, and they’d be sleeping on them. And we’d just get a ton of those, and they’re not very interesting or funny.

KP: Only kind of cute if you know the kid.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. But we don’t get that many that are so racy or salacious that… unfortunately, we just don’t get that kind of stuff.

KP: Could you name a clip that you wish desperately could have been on the air? Saying “desperately wish,” I know is hyperbole…

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Well, every couple of shows there’s one that we really… it’ll drop out for… either it’s got a song that we can’t license the music to, or we can’t find the people in it. And then that becomes disappointing. But we get so many in that it’s hard to fall in love with any one clip that doesn’t make it. You kinda forget about those.

KP: How exactly did the transition to AFV happen?

BEAULIEU: I moved out to California about 10 years ago and reestablished contact with Josh. And Josh had… well, actually, I called Josh. Another Star Wars connection – my agent had me read for Jar Jar Binks. I didn’t have any way of recording my voice, so I knew Josh was in a band and he had that kind of equipment, so I called him up and said, “Hey, can I borrow your recording thing? I gotta do this stupid voice for this Star Wars, which could be cool, but I’m reading the script and it’s just… oh, the dialogue is horrible! It’s almost bad Jamaican patois…”

KP: So he had written the patois in there…

BEAULIEU: Yeah, yeah. I got like three pages, and there’s this creature speaking to a Jedi master. And I didn’t know. I thought, “Boy, this is really awful! Oh well, must be good, though!”

KP: How could it not? It’s Star Wars!

BEAULIEU: Yeah! It’s gotta be cool. So, fortunately, that didn’t happen, but I started hanging out with Josh again, and he had this offer to do the reimagined version of AFV after Bob Saget left. They were doing it as a more, I guess, later in the evening thing. It was about 9:00 on a Friday. And they had Daisy Fuentes and John Fugelsang as hosts. So it was a reinvention, you know? And Josh asked me if I wanted to come in and apply for the job – or audition, I guess, for the job – and that’s how that happened.

KP: Was it an interesting dynamic to be working with Josh again after all those years?

BEAULIEU: Yeah, it was. It was a different relationship. He was the head writer. It had been 10 years since we even talked, really, from when he left Mystery Science and he came out to L.A.

KP: My understanding is one of the reasons he left MST was because he wasn’t satisfied with the move to it being a more structured riffing for the movies…

BEAULIEU: I hadn’t heard that. I don’t know if that was ever an issue, because we started scripting it right away, and I thought everybody pretty much agreed that that was a good thing. But I hadn’t heard that.

KP: That’s the story I had always heard. Of course, it could be apocryphal.

BEAULIEU: It could be one of those things.

KP: But obviously he was the first of you all to make the transition out to L.A.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Joel had already been out here and had established his beachhead, but Josh was the first of that group to leave Best Brains.

KP: How difficult a decision was it for you to leave Minnesota and make that transition? I mean, the last time that I spoke with you would have been as season seven was airing, and it sounded like you were still there for the foreseeable future.

BEAULIEU: I think I was waiting to see how the movie was going to do, and to see if we had a future either doing more movies or anything else. I think I was just looking to do something else. I think even back when the Sleepers were active, that was sort of my “something else” at the time. I think it became clear – probably moments after I talked to you – that we weren’t going to do anything else. That was kind of frustrating.

KP: I remember there was also some personal upheaval that you were going through at the time.

BEAULIEU: Yeah, my life was kind of spinning out of control.

KP: So a change probably looked to be a very good thing.

BEAULIEU: Yeah, yeah. Couldn’t go back to the ice show, so what’s next?

KP: Well, not after what you did to Mickey.

BEAULIEU: No. We also had two really horrible winters in Minnesota. That was probably the last horrible winters that we’ll have with global warming, but they were harsh. And I just couldn’t take it anymore.

KP: Had you been hearing from the West Coast contingent about, “Hey, come on out!” ? When I spoke with Frank years ago, he mentioned that there was a siren call that had been made by those that had already made the transition, that, “Hey, you can probably make a good living out here.” And Mike’s talked about it as well. Of course, he resisted it until last year…

BEAULIEU: Yeah. I hadn’t really kept in touch with a lot of people. We reestablished contact once I got out here. In the Midwest, everyone was talking about how horrible Los Angeles is – and to some degree it is, but people are working here and making a pretty good living. It took me a while to get into the groove. Josh certainly helped a lot in getting me into a pretty steady gig, or what has been… this is my ninth season, going into my tenth season.

KP: It’s a remarkably steady gig.

BEAULIEU: Yeah.

KP: You have a nice fallback position with AFV at this point. Have you felt like straying into other territory? Obviously there was, what, People Traps that came and went…

BEAULIEU: Yeah, People Traps was a very bizarre experience. I kind of felt like I got dropped onto the deck of a pirate ship and had to kind of deal with that. The show was kind of in mid-production when I joined it. I think I mentioned to you before that they had to find me through the guild. I didn’t have any representation at that time. The producer had written a letter to the guild trying to track me down. They offered me lunch, and at lunch I noticed they had a monkey. I said, “Yeah, sure, I’ll work on this.”

KP: It would have been great if it was a relative.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Well, you know, they’re all related somehow.

KP: That’s true. But it’d be great if it communicated in the monkey-to-trainer talk that only they know, that, “Oh, that’s the one that worked with Uncle Mickey. The bastard.”

BEAULIEU: “That guy’s no good.”

KP: “Watch out for him!” So it just felt like an awkward situation the whole way through?

BEAULIEU: Well, it was very odd. The nature of the show changed as people were working on it. It was called something else when I got there. Animal Traps, or something else, and it was going to be Candid Camera, only with animals. It just seemed like it wasn’t really fully formed, and I was kind of brought in as a Band-Aid to apply some kind of ripping commentary. I was in this van, the control room…

KP: Yes, I remember the uncomfortable looking van from the pilot…

BEAULIEU: We’d be outside a pet store when they were doing bits and I’d be in this van and supposed to be making commentary, but only if they had the camera on me. At one point it would get dark, and so I couldn’t comment. So we reshot a lot of that stuff in another van, which didn’t really make too much sense, and the whole thing was sort of patched together.

KP: Did you feel going through it that this thing probably wouldn’t be going anywhere?

BEAULIEU: Yeah. It had a feel of kind of disintegrating even as we were doing it. It was a very strange production. The director had… I don’t know what the clinical term is, but he had Marty Feldman eyes. They’d look in two different directions. I never knew if he was talking to me.

KP: That’s got to be awkward in dealing with a director…

BEAULIEU: This guy had done thousands of Candid Cameras in Turkey or something like that. It was a strange experience. We were in Vegas for a week working, and there’s one segment where we’re at a petting zoo at an elementary school and they’ve rigged one of the goats with a microphone and a speaker so I can talk to the kids from the van, as the goat. And boy, this bit is really not working well… and I find out that most of the kids speak Spanish!

KP: Did you get the feeling at the time that you were living an anecdote?

BEAULIEU: Yeah, yeah. It was just a very odd, odd experience.

KP: You also did the comic book (Here Comes The Big People) at one point…

BEAULIEU: Yeah, that was fun to do. That was something I kind of talked about and agreed to before I left Minneapolis. It didn’t happen, it didn’t happen, and then finally… as soon as AFV hit and I was working there, then the comic book came through – so I was really kind of tearing myself apart trying to do both things.

KP: Were you happy with the final product?

BEAULIEU: I was happy with the artwork and it was fun to actually have a product. But I didn’t want to do anything that was super violent and I didn’t want to do anything with superheroes in it. (laughs)

KP: Boy, you picked the wrong time in comic book history for that.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. I kind of shot myself in the foot there.

KP: Have you finally sold out of copies?

BEAULIEU: I think I still have a few.

KP: But the PO Box is long gone?

BEAULIEU: No, that’s still there.

KP: So people can still send in their money.

BEAULIEU: What happens is that the post office occasionally will close my box, and I’ll have to go and tell them, “No, in fact I have paid my bill. Why did you close my box?”

KP: And what do they do, just trash the mail that might be sitting in there?

BEAULIEU: I have no idea. I don’t know if they sent it back. Someone told me, “Hey, your PO Box sent my letter back, what’s the deal?” “I don’t know. Thanks for telling me.”

KP: So the offer still stands? People can still send in their money?

BEAULIEU: Oh, absolutely. It’s still there. In fact, I think I’ve been sending three comic books out instead of two. Another one of those overdeliver kind of things. Only because I have them. (NOTE: You can order your signed copies of Here Come The Big People by sending a check or money order for $9.00 – made out to “Trace Beaulieu” – to: PO Box 931357, Los Angeles, CA 90093). Laurie Bradach, who was the publisher, still has I think a warehouse full of them somewhere.

KP: We’ll definitely plug it during the interview, then.

BEAULIEU: That’d be great. She’ll like that. I’ll send her downtown to get her copies for me.

KP: We’ll make sure that product moves.

BEAULIEU: We’ve talked about doing another one.

KP: The market’s in a much better place to do something quirky like that now.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. I think this time I’d like to do something super violent with superheroes.

KP: That audience is still there, too.

BEAULIEU: I think the thing I’m most pleased about is that Geoff Darrow did a cover for the book.

KP: The art looked fantastic.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. I’ve always been a huge fan of his, and he agreed to do the cover. That was before The Matrix and he got really busy.

KP: Are you saying you might not have him back for the sequel?

BEAULIEU: I don’t know if there would be a sequel. We talked about it. In fact, we pitched it as a film idea. Well, animated. Somebody called us up out of the blue and wanted to do an animated version, but that never went anywhere.

KP: I’m surprised you never pitched it to the Henson company.

BEAULIEU: I never did. I only recently took a meeting over there. Josh and Joel and I were pitching an idea a while back, and actually got into those old Chaplin Studios on La Brea, which was pretty cool.

KP: It was great. I was there when they were doing the renovations, when they first bought the studio, so they were excavating underneath some of the buildings, and they were finding all of the prohibition era beer bottles that they would hide under the buildings.

BEAULIEU: That’s cool.

KP: Brian Henson has his offices in Chaplin’s old dressing room. In fact, my boss is right across the street from there in one of Chaplin’s old bungalows.

BEAULIEU: Oh. That’s cool. Who’s your boss?

KP: Kevin Smith.

BEAULIEU: Oh, I’ve heard of him. I think my friend Lori made a cake for his birthday one year.

KP: Oh really?

BEAULIEU: Yeah.

KP: It is an incredibly small world.

BEAULIEU: It is a tiny, tiny… well, you know they shot Mallrats in Eden Prairie Mall. That’s where I grew up… that was close to Best Brains.

KP: They shot that when you guys were still there, didn’t they?

BEAULIEU: Yeah. I think that’s the only reason the studio executives would come out to see us. They were shooting a real movie.

KP: It must be good to know that there’s still a shelf life for the MST movie.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Someone told me that it’s no longer on DVD, or it’s out of print or something,

KP: It’s been out of print for about five years now in the US…

BEAULIEU: I never got a copy of it. I was buying up the VHS copies when I’d see them at Suncoast, when they’d have the fluorescent green sale price stickers on them.

KP: I had met you originally during the promotion for the film in New York, when you guys were frazzled and doing the Planet Hollywood tour.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Was that in Planet Hollywood? I remember we did a lot of press kit stuff in a room somewhere in some hotel.

KP: Yeah, the hotel. You did the roundtables at the hotel, and then you did that dontaion of the robots thing for Planet Hollywood. That was followed by the book signing, because the book came out at that same time. So you had a book signing down in the Village.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. I remember the book signing, that was fun. The Planet Hollywood, we did so many of those all over the country that those kind of blur together.

KP: I can imagine they would.

BEAULIEU: And now there’s no Planet Hollywood, right?

KP: No Planet Hollywood. No, it’s changed hands. It’s down to maybe a dozen of them open in the country. Whereas they used to have sometimes four or five in a city back when they thought it was going to be a viable chain.

BEAULIEU: The one here is gone.

KP: Oh, they finally closed the LA one?

BEAULIEU: Yeah, that’s been closed for quite some time. I don’t know if they’re still in Minneapolis or not. We were in Minneapolis and Dallas and… boy, it all blurs together.

KP: As a performer, I’ve always been curious how you felt about having the Crow character continue on beyond you. If you’ve ever had any thoughts about that…

BEAULIEU: It never really bothered me. I never thought much about it after doing it. It was hard to leave two characters that I essentially created. I think that was the hardest thing. That whole environment was kind of… well, it was tailored for us. And we tailored it. So to leave that and to try to duplicate that is impossible. We were very lucky to get that going and to have it successful and to have been embraced. It’s rare. I still run into people who either remember it fondly or are now seeing it on DVD. That’s a hard thing to find again. Joel and Josh and I talked about trying to get something together, but it’s a lot harder. We’d need a lot more money to get a project going.

KP: You would think that the internet age would be tailor made for you all.

BEAULIEU: Yes, but our price is so high now. We know what we’re worth, and we just won’t take any less. Just to call Joel…

KP: It’s a 900 number, isn’t it?

BEAULIEU: Oh, absolutely.

KP: It’s his billable hours that get you.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. I can’t afford it.

KP: Do you ever hear him clicking on the clock when you call?

BEAULIEU: Yeah. (laughs) “Your hour begins now.”

KP: Does he ever give you updates, like, “We’re up to 10 bucks…”

BEAULIEU: I just hear the constant stream of coins in the background. And a cash register.

KP: That’s good. Leave it to him to create something that will give you a nice little audio cue that your greetings are just blowing all kinds of money.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. (laughs) It never bothered me that the character continued. It bothered me that Kermit continued. I think it should have just been Jim Henson and that was it.

KP: Yeah, well, there are various schools of thought regarding that. I’m good friends with some of the Muppeteers, so I’ve heard all kinds of background stories on what actually happened with that.

BEAULIEU: Oh yeah? With something like that, it’s an icon and a brand and you can’t really stop… a character has to live.

KP: I also think you’re underselling what you accomplished over seven years. I mean, the fact that the stuff still exists to this day and still is attracting fans means that you’re every bit a cultural icon as any other character that may have been around for a much longer time.

BEAULIEU: You might be right. A lot of people contributed to all of that. I don’t know. I’d love for it to happen again. (laughs)

KP: Didn’t you build yourself a Crow after your period ended?

BEAULIEU: No, I had…

KP: Or at least you accumulated parts to do so…

BEAULIEU: I had enough parts to do it, but then I’d give parts to people and they’d make molds off of them. I never really put it together, and it’s still in a little suitcase. I still have all the parts. I could if I wanted to, but it would be creepy.

KP: What part of it would be creepy? It’s like having an artifact. It’s not like it talks to you… well, maybe it does. I don’t know, does it?

BEAULIEU: Well, you know, I took Crow home once to put him in a tuxedo for the premier at the Uptown in Minneapolis, and it was just too creepy having him there. Like, “You don’t belong here, you belong on the Satellite, and you’re looking at me and stop looking at me.” So I had to put him in the garment bag.

KP: Do you think he was quietly passing judgment on you?

BEAULIEU: Mocking me silently in his way.

KP: Well, the press tour must have been creepy beyond belief then.

BEAULIEU: The press tour was kind of fun. Aside from sitting on the floor all the time and lifting a puppet up, I enjoyed that.

KP: And it was a nice moment in the spotlight.

BEAULIEU: Yeah.

KP: How do you view things like Mike’s RiffTrax project, or The Film Crew? Have you ever felt the urge to do something like that again?

BEAULIEU: Not riffing. Not movie mocking or anything like that. Joel and Josh and I did a little thing… what was it… Star Wait… And we were riffing on footage that a guy had shot of these Star Wars fans waiting for the movie to open. At first it was kind of weird being back with Joel and Josh and mocking something. That had its own strangeness to it. But I realized that without that character, I really didn’t have a reason to mock anything. I actually kinda like stuff. People have talked about, “Oh, you know you should do that again.” It’s like, “Well we did it.” I mean, that’s kind of why I left, was like, “I got it. I did that thing already.” And I haven’t seen what Mike and those guys have done.

KP: I asked Mike about bringing you up to do a guest turn on one of those Rifftrax…

BEAULIEU: You know, I’m not even that familiar with how it works…

KP: Basically, as you know, there was always the conversation for years of, “Why don’t you do Star Trek V, or this big blockbuster,” and of course rights clearances always precluded that. Well, now with the internet, they’re essentially doing audio tracks that you cue up to your own copy of a given movie.

BEAULIEU: Oh, I see.

KP: So it sidesteps all those legalities, and yet you still have a riff track that you can play along to your copy of Star Trek. They’ve done Star Trek V, and he did Roadhouse – which he always wanted to do. I think they’ve got a dozen or two so far…

BEAULIEU: Oh, really? Wow.

KP: They did Phantom Menace. Kevin’s been doing some with him, and so has Bill Corbett. But yes, everyone keeps asking – me included – “When are they gonna get Trace to do one?”

BEAULIEU: I don’t know. Since now I know what it is…

KP: And it’s all written ahead of time, so it’s not like you’re just improv’ing. So it is similar to the MST process.

BEAULIEU: I would have a hard time synching my DVD player up to that.

KP: It actually has a little cue at the beginning that tells you where to start your DVD at.

BEAULIEU: Oh, what marvelous things technology has brought us.

KP: Unless used for evil purposes.

BEAULIEU: Yes.

KP: At this point, you talked about dabbling in performing again. What projects are you working on outside of AFV?

BEAULIEU: You said dabbling in performing, not babbling in performing…

KP: I said dabbling, not babbling.

BEAULIEU: There’s a couple of projects that I’m working on that I’m really slow to get going. Since there is no real pressure to actually make anything, I can kind of noodle on these things as long as I want.

KP: Anything that looks further along than most?

BEAULIEU: Right now AFV is taking up so much time that that’s sort of the focus. Josh and Joel and I, like I said, we’re trying to get something off the ground, and getting something together is tough. We’re not hungry young bucks anymore. We’re old men with families… well, Joel has a family.

KP: Did you ever think you would see that?

BEAULIEU: You know, maybe the robots were sort of a practice for him. I think he’s a pretty good dad.

KP: I know his wife from my New York days.

BEAULIEU: Yes, Tiffany.

KP: So again, what a small world.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. We get together with them quite often. They’re just regular folk.

KP: So, you’d say that you’re in a good place right now?

BEAULIEU: Yeah. I’ve been doing a lot of art in the last, like, 10 years.

KP: You mentioned you had a showing, what, a few years ago?

BEAULIEU: Yeah, that was about… I guess three years ago, now. Since I didn’t have any furniture in my house, I decided to turn it into a gallery, and had a big party, and that’s when I brought Eugene out. Sold a few pieces, and the goal has been to try to get a website together to put it up on the web, so people could see it.

KP: How close are you to having that?

BEAULIEU: Well, since I was trying to do it myself, not very close. And now I’ve enlisted the help of someone else and so I’m much closer. Technical stuff, I don’t care… I just go, “Oh, whatever.” I’d rather just make stuff.

KP: Spoken like an artiste.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Or just lazy.

KP: See, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.

BEAULIEU: Oh, well, I appreciate that.

KP: Do you see another gallery show in the offing, or do you think that the online version will be the way you’ll display stuff in the future?

BEAULIEU: Well, if I don’t get the online thing going, then I’ll have another show.

KP: How would you describe the artwork you do?

BEAULIEU: It’s found object. It’s a little bit maybe Mystery Science influenced, as in toys and that kind of assemblage of stuff.

KP: So it’s three dimensional artwork.

BEAULIEU: Yeah, it’s three dimensional. I don’t know how I would describe it.

KP: Would you describe it as playful?

BEAULIEU: Very playful. Very whimsical. I started doing this probably for therapeutic reasons, and because I didn’t have anything on the wall. As I filled the house with this stuff, people would come by and say, “Hey, you should show this stuff. That’s great.” “Oh, really? I just needed to fill that wall because it was blank.” And so people have responded to it and people like it.

KP: How many pieces would you say you’ve done so far?

BEAULIEU: Oh, 50 or 60, probably. If I were to count them all up.

KP: Something I’ve noticed – but would you say, with the creation of eBay, it’s harder to find found objects than it would have been 15 or 20 years ago?

BEAULIEU: Well, I have people giving me things now.

KP: Oh really? So they know, “Hey, this is a great thing for Trace.”

BEAULIEU: Yeah. In fact, a lot of the pieces started that way – from fans who had sent stuff, that I didn’t know why they were sending me stuff. And then suddenly I went, “Oh, okay, I can make this out of it.”

KP: What’s the oddest thing that you were sent?

BEAULIEU: My dad actually found something on the street. One of the areas I work in is stuff that’s smashed beyond recognition, and he sent me this champagne basket that had been run over about 100 times. He said, “I found this in the street and thought of you.” “Oh, I think that’s nice.” But now my niece, when she comes out to visit, she brings me stuff that’s all smashed up. I don’t really know how to feel sometimes.

KP: They’re always thinking of you, then.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. “I found this is the street. Here.”

KP: “Something broken, battered… thought of you. Here, do something with it.”

BEAULIEU: Yeah. And I usually do.

KP: Well, you definitely have to let me know when the website launches.

BEAULIEU: I will do that.

KP: I hope you’ve enjoyed the interview so far, and it hasn’t been too terribly awkward…

BEAULIEU: No, not at all. I’m off this week. We had a little vacation, so I was sitting in the yard…

KP: I’m sure you’re having much better weather than we are.

BEAULIEU: Are you in South Carolina?

KP: North. We just had that incredibly odd dead of spring cold snap, so it’s been freezing.

BEAULIEU: I’m sorry to hear that.

KP: And yet there’s no global warming at all.

BEAULIEU: No, not at all. I’m kinda looking forward to global warming, because I’m living part of the year back in Minnesota, and kind of looking forward to tropical weather.

KP: Just sort of equalize between your two locations.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. And I’m a neighbor of Jeff Stonehouse now.

KP: Oh, really?

BEAULIEU: Yeah.

KP: It’s like the group never dissolves.

BEAULIEU: It never does. I’d really love to work with Jeff again, and maybe this is how to do it, is by living here.

KP: I don’t know. I think there’s finally a method for making work on the net profitable. Or at least direct delivery of material.

BEAULIEU: That’s what’s very exciting about it, is that you can bypass all the people that usually say no.

KP: You’re your own distribution network.

BEAULIEU: Yeah, it’s brilliant. I’ve seen a lot of crap, but… it’s also a great place to go to so you don’t have to remember stuff anymore.

KP: Oh, with Wikipedia and IMDB, and Google…

BEAULIEU: Yeah.

KP: How different do you think doing the writing process of MST would have been in that internet era, if you had IMDB and Wikipedia and Google?

BEAULIEU: Um… it certainly would have made us more accurate.

KP: Although your accuracy rate was tremendous for the amount of stuff that you wrote.

BEAULIEU: We were okay. But all those minds were sucking down comedy albums and watching movies whenever we could. There wasn no videotape of, or really ways of recording, TV shows in our younger days.

KP: And forget about obscure items…

BEAULIEU: Yeah, yeah. So I think that was kind of the charm, too, and part of the club of it was that some stuff was so obscure that you had to read a book or you had to listen to an album over and over and over.

KP: Be one of the few people who actually ran across it…

BEAULIEU: Yeah. And then you felt like, “Oh gee, I’m the only guy that knows that. Oh, they know it too!”

KP: “I love this show!”

BEAULIEU: Yeah…

KP: It certainly has proven, even in this age, to be an enduring concept for a show.

BEAULIEU: Yeah… It’s funny, you know? People still get a kick out of it, even on DVD. I’m still running into people that are old fans, and they’re always surprised to hear that I’m still around.

KP: Has it gotten to the point where you finally started getting those people saying, “I loved it when I was a kid…”?

BEAULIEU: Yeah, yeah. Or adults will say, “I was watching this when I was four.” “Oh, and now you’re forty.”

KP: That’s got to make you feel good. But still, hey, it’s enduring. You’re going to be attending those conventions years from now…

BEAULIEU: (laughs) Yeah…

KP: Be sitting next to… well, I guess by that time, Star Trek The Next Generation people will be all that’s left.

BEAULIEU: That’s true.

KP: Oh, and Shatner.

BEAULIEU: I was on a flight with some of the Voyager guys. This was a while back. And George Takei was ordering orange juice from the stewardess, and I was sitting in front of them, and I went, “I can’t believe Sulu is ordering orange juice.”

KP: Do you find that you still have geek moments?

BEAULIEU: I still get some mail now and again. I just got a bunch of movies from a guy in New Jersey that sent me some of these films that he’d made, and they’re rather odd and ambitious. One of them’s got… is it Ted Michaels, or Ray Dennis Steckler… has little guest spots in these movies. That’s pretty cool.

KP: Why did he send them to you?

BEAULIEU: I think just to check them out. He was doing some sort of interviews here with different people like Neil Innes and all these other…

KP: Who’s a good friend of mine.

BEAULIEU: Neil Innes?

KP: Yeah.

BEAULIEU: I just saw him in this little movie.

KP: What’s the name of the film that he was in?

BEAULIEU: Let me see if I can pull it out of the box here. He’s telling these guys basically not to be so arty.

KP: Yeah. Speaking of another one who works in found objects, Neil just had an art exhibition.

BEAULIEU: Oh yeah?

KP: Objets Dada, where he was showing off some of his found artwork.

BEAULIEU: Oh really?

KP: I’ll let you know the next time he’s in town.

BEAULIEU: This guy… Terminal Pictures is his… what’s the movie? One of them was called The Paranoid Show, and this one is Teenage Beatnik or Devil Girl. I think it was Devil Girl that Neil Innes was in.

KP: I’ll have to ask him about it.

BEAULIEU: Is he in this country now?

KP: No. He did a couple of US tours, but they just reunited the Bonzos last year.

BEAULIEU: You’re kidding!?

KP: Fantastic concert. They did a one-off concert for the 40th anniversary, so they had guest people coming in to do Viv Stanshall’s parts…

BEAULIEU: Really?

KP: Like Stephen Fry and Paul Merton and Phil Jupitus, a standup comedian over there. And Ade Edmonson…

BEAULIEU: He did…

KP: The Young Ones…

BEAULIEU: Yeah. My manager, I think, used to rep him. No, Lenny Henry. All those guys are friends.

KP: They did a one-off concert, and that was so successful and sold out that they decided to do a tour last year.

BEAULIEU: You’re kidding!? I am looking at my Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band album as we speak.

KP: They released a DVD of the concert.

BEAULIEU: Really? That’s amazing. I’m surprised that Death Cab For Cutie… you know that band?

KP: Right.

BEAULIEU: Took the name off… one of the people – one of the young people – at work said, “Oh yeah, Death Cab for Cutie, you gotta listen to them, they’re really cool.” I thought, “Why did they pick such an obscure name… I know what that is!”

KP: Well, there’s this great documentary that they aired on Viv Stanshall last year on the BBC. Really fascinating portrait of him.

BEAULIEU: Oh, cool. My friend Lori, who did the comic book, her husband is Howard Johnson.

KP: Oh, really?

BEAULIEU: He’s the Python biographer.

KP: Right.

BEAULIEU: You must have talked to Howard at some point.

KP: I’ve never talked to him. I know people who are good friends with Howard, like Mark Evanier, but I have never crossed paths with Howard at this point.

BEAULIEU: He used to work in Santa Barbara because he was working with Cleese more closely. But now he’s moved back to Illinois. It just got too expensive to live in Santa Barbara. In fact, I just talked to Howard. We’re looking for writers for AFV and I suggested Howard as a writer.

KP: Did he express interest?

BEAULIEU: Yeah, he did. He sent a sample in. I’m still waiting for word as to whether or not he got the gig, or somebody else did. I’m out of it. Hands off now.

KP: Well, you put the foot in the door, and now it’s beyond your control…

BEAULIEU: That’s right. But Howard’s a cool guy.

KP: I’ve heard nothing but good things about him.

BEAULIEU: He introduced me to Cleese. When he was leaving Santa Barbara, John threw a dinner for Howard and I went up and… very nice… I get to meet a comedy hero.

KP: Everything you expected him to be in person?

BEAULIEU: Yeah. Even beyond expectation. Just a very nice man. He asked me how I got my name. And then he said… (laughs) in his way he said, after dinner, “Well, should we order dessert, or should we order cheese?” And then he started doing the cheese sketch. Not intentionally, he just started ordering cheese. I leaned over to my friend Michael and I said, “He’s doing the cheese sketch!” It was hilarious. A real treat to me.

KP: I don’t know how we got onto this, but I’ll let you know if Neil ever comes back out. I think you two would have a lot of notes to share.

BEAULIEU: Yeah. I’ve always been a fan.

KP: Nicer guy you’ll never talk to. Very down to earth. And definitely let me know when things are coming up – and honestly, I think you guys should explore the internet a bit more.

BEAULIEU: Yeah the internet, I’ve heard of it.

KP: It’s made of tubes.

BEAULIEU: Yes, and it goes right into your house.

KP: There are fascinating, wonderful modes for creative and also financial expression. It’s just a shame you guys don’t get together and do anything.

BEAULIEU: Well, we may get back in that mode.

KP: I’m trying to be subtly motivating.

BEAULIEU: (laughs)

KP: I’m just keen to see whatever you guys can come up with.

BEAULIEU: Well, I’ll let you know.

KP: Now you have an advocate, or at least someone who will blindly plug anything you throw out there.

BEAULIEU: Well, that we love.

KP: I thought that was an offer you couldn’t refuse.

##

-by Ken Plume

After jobbing as a standup and working in a string of groundbreaking UK TV series (including Asylum, Big Train, and the beloved sitcom Spaced), Simon Pegg – along with co-writer and director Edgar Wright – hit the big screen with the even more beloved Shaun of the Dead.

Their latest is the genre-bending cop flick (and Shaun of the Dead follow-up) Hot Fuzz, currently in theaters.

Pegg stars as a London cop banished to the hinterlands by jealous colleagues, who’s then teamed with a witless partner (Nick Frost) before stumbling on a series of suspicious events that uncover the dark underbelly of the seemingly bucolic village.

We had a chance to chat wth Pegg as literally the last official interview of the Hot Fuzz press rounds…

(Be sure to check out our interview with Edgar Wright here)

KEN PLUME: I assume you’re probably sick of answering Hot Fuzz questions so I thought we’d just talk about Big Train.

SIMON PEGG: (laughs) You’re my last interview, actually, of the whole press tour…

KP: Really?

PEGG: Yeah.

KP: I’m never going to live up to that.

PEGG: You’re the 500th caller.

KP: What do I win?

PEGG: A Big Train DVD.

KP: That’s actually what I was hoping for.

PEGG: (laughs)

KP: You’ve made a small boy’s… well, large man’s dreams come true.

PEGG: You know, they don’t even give me a free Big Train DVD.

KP: That’s unfortunate. But it is the BBC.

PEGG: Yeah.

KP: But you would think that Graham or somebody would send you a set…

PEGG: Yeah, I know. It’s hard to get free stuff from certain people.

KP: I think maybe you just need to start a website, simonsdvdappeal.com. Just “Here’s a list of the stuff I haven’t gotten yet. If anyone can send something from HMV or something, it’d be appreciated.”

PEGG: There’s plenty of it…

KP: It could be your own registry – like for a wedding or a baby shower – but stuff that you want…

PEGG: Well, I was in Dublin recently and I was walking down the street and walked past a shop and, unbeknownst to me, there had been a 12-inch talking me released. A Shaun of the Dead doll that I didn’t actually… I knew it was coming out, but I didn’t know it was already in the shops. So I went into the shop and they actually gave me one, which was sweet. But I don’t want to embarrass Universal by complaining that they set my tiny version free in the shops without even telling me.

KP: And even then, do they send you a box?

PEGG: No.

KP: So, police officers can commandeer a car – you, as a celebrity, should have the ability to go, “You know what? That’s me. I want it.”

PEGG: I know. I wouldn’t ever be so pushy, but I was quite pleased that when I went into the shop they actually did say, “You shouldn’t have to pay for this.” (laughs)

KP: That was good of them.

PEGG: Yeah, I thought it was sweet.

KP: Of course, they went hungry for a month after that because of the loss of that sale…

PEGG: Yeah. Well, what I did is I autographed another couple so they could flog it for five more pounds.

KP: Well, that’s good. I guess if they really want to get on your good side they should have offered you a smoothie along with the doll.

PEGG: Exactly. That’s the way to my heart.

KP: Have you finally fulfilled that dream of having that machine installed in your home?

PEGG: The unlimited smoothie machine?

KP: Yes.

PEGG: No. I think it’s called craft services.

KP: So, you’re going to get a craft services installed in your home.

PEGG: That would be nice – just to have them hanging around providing me with treats. The only thing about craft services I’ve found, working on an America film, is that you’re not hungry when it comes to lunchtime because you’ve just been pecking all morning. They keep putting out peanut butter sandwiches and nuts and stuff.

KP: That’s when they have the most outrageous things available at those mealtimes – so everyone’s full and yet you have lobster and steak…

PEGG: Yeah, and then you get this amazing sort of beautiful pork belly and roast potatoes and you’ve spent all morning eating beef jerky.

KP: So what were the craft services like on Shaun or Hot Fuzz?

PEGG: We don’t really have craft services. We have catering companies that come along. You get your breakfast and then you get a midmorning snack, possibly, and then you have your lunch, and that’s it.

KP: So, it’s literally like you’re in school.

PEGG: Exactly. It’s not like there’s a running buffet – it’s regimented.

KP: You should issue milk cards or something to the cast, and they can go up and get them punched. “I’m awfully sorry, but you’ve had your juice for the day, Nick.”

PEGG: Exactly, (laughs)

KP: “Can I have one more?” “No, you’ve already had your chit.”

PEGG: It is. It’s like Dickens.

KP: So you’re living Oliver Twist.

PEGG: Exactly. That’s what the British film industry’s like, it’s like Oliver Twist!

KP: What was the biggest, besides craft services, sort of culture shock doing a Hollywood production?

PEGG: It was remarkably similar. In fact, that was almost the bigger shock, was that the production structure remains the same. There’s still the director and the 1st AD and the gaffers and the props people and the costume and makeup. It’s all pretty much exactly the same – it’s just happening on a bigger platform. The video village is more high tech and there’s more chairs, but that’s it. I mean generally speaking, you’re doing the same job of work. It’s not like everyone is walking around on gold hoverboards.

KP: Were you expecting that?

PEGG: I don’t know what I was expecting. I kind of arrived in Beverly Hills and stayed there for a few days on my own trying to get over my jet lag, being slightly freaked out because I hadn’t received any script pages. And then…

KP: Welcome to Hollywood…

PEGG: Yeah, and then like received this monstrous monologue the night before I had to shoot it. And turned up extraordinarily disoriented – which is compounded by suddenly being face-to-face with Tom Cruise. So it was a strange but gratifying experience. I went back again and shot some more stuff, and that was a lot easier. I had a much better time because I kind of knew what to expect and I was looking forward to seeing JJ again, who I got on with really well. So it was a good experience.

KP: Well, you and Edgar used to – and it’s more common in the UK, where the rehearsal process is usually a big part of the production.

PEGG: Massively, yeah. It’s absolutely vital to us that we have a period of time where everybody can get together and go through their lines and have time to come up with stuff, as well. I think because the way Edgar shoots, there’s not really much room for impro once we get on the set. It’s pretty regimented when we’re on there because the camera works sort of symbiotically with the script, so the minute you start adding things, the cameraman might not get to his right point at the right time. So we like to have a period where it’s just us. Particularly with Nick. We get Nick a week before anyone else and we go through the whole thing. All his lines. Anything that he wants to bring to it or that he kind of… a joke he thinks of will, if we like it – which is usually yes – we’ll feed it into the script.

KP: Is there anything for which you’ve had to tell Nick, “No, that’s not working…”?

PEGG: Sometimes you do. Edgar and me are quite anal, and obviously Nick is on our wavelength, so pretty much everything he says we love, but sometimes people will suggest things and you kinda go, “Um, yeah, we could try that…” which basically means no.

KP: That’s what you told Bill (Bailey), wasn’t it?

PEGG: Yeah, (laughs)

KP: “I can’t bring the otter?”

PEGG: Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

KP: “People are always saying that to me.”

PEGG: (laughs)

KP: Of course, he was talking about Phil Jupitus.

PEGG: Yes, yes, of course. Yeah, his otter thing was hilarious.

KP: By the way, that was a very good use of Bill in the film…

PEGG: Yeah. We worked with Bill on Spaced a long time ago, and he’s always grateful. I find him very hard to work with because he just makes me laugh. It’s actually slightly shooting yourself in the foot when you employ him for me. But he’s great, and it was lovely to have him in the film. Because we did write him a part in Shaun of the Dead, but he couldn’t do it.

KP: It’s unfortunate that more people haven’t utilized Bill’s talent.

PEGG: I think so. He’s very much still a standup comic, though. He’s still very much a live performer. He does the odd TV and movie, but first and foremost he’s a standup comic. It’ll be nice to see him on the big screen a bit more I think.

KP: I’ve always been curious exactly what your standup act was like…

PEGG: I would say it was like surreal observationalism. It’s hard to remember.

KP: I’ve heard about what it was through the filter of Nick, when I talked to him a few years ago…

PEGG: Yeah. It was conversational and a bit absurd. It wasn’t a character as much as an extension of me. It’s the most immediate and exhilarating form of performance, I think, because you’re validated immediately. Even more than in theater, because in theater there’s the pressure to just sit and watch rather than actually respond. And also it’s you – generally speaking, if you’re a standup, it’s your material. So it’s like the crack cocaine of performance.

KP: Do you miss it at all?

PEGG: Absolutely. I don’t miss the grind of it. I don’t miss the schlep. People would say, “Oh god, it must be the hardest job in the world,” and I would actually disagree. I think it’s probably one of the best, in terms of how great it is. Because once you get to a point when you know your material’s good and you know you’re good, you’re pretty unflammable, in a way. Even if you have a bad gig and you walk into a room that doesn’t want to listen, you know it’s not your fault. It’s not demoralizing. It doesn’t happen very often, either, when you get to a certain match fitness. So, that, I don’t miss – but what I do miss is the fact that as a jobing standup, you would pretty much have to spend your entire weekend in a pub without drinking. And that’s tough to do. I could now. I could probably, if I had the wherewithal and the time, I could set up like a little stint in a West End theater and do a live show. But I wouldn’t want to go in there half-cocked. I’d want to get back out on the circuit and get an act together that was really good, and then do it.

KP: Do you ever see yourself getting to a point where you would do that?

PEGG: I’ve done a couple of gigs recently. I did a couple of little quick shows at the Comedy Store, and when we were filming Hot Fuzz I did a gig at the local comedy club. It was fun. It reminded me of just how much fun it was. It is. So you never know. Never say never.

KP: So there is, at this point, no video of your act…

PEGG: I did some television appearances in the 90’s…

KP: On the Comedy Store program?

PEGG: A show called The Stand Up Show, for the BBC. Which I have, but I doubt anyone else does. They probably won’t turn up on YouTube or anything.

KP: Are we taking bets?

PEGG: Well, you never know. That’s the weird thing – it’s incredible what does turn up on the internet…

KP: Anything that you’ve been surprised at, or shocked at, or disappointed, that’s turned up on YouTube?

PEGG: Not disappointed… Oh, the one thing – there’s a clip of some guy who supposedly looks like me, playing the guitar, and it says underneath “Simon Pegg Shredding It Up” or something. I just saw it the other day. And it’s just not me. It’s just someone who looks maybe… insultingly like me.

KP: Well, that’s nice. And I bet he gets free drinks and free dolls.

PEGG: Yeah. Everything else… I quite admire the ingenuity of people to bother to put these things up. There are little phone camera segments of us at various things we’ve been to recently in the run-up to Hot Fuzz. Oddly enough, I think the most watched thing that’s up there is a DVD extra that Nick and I did for his…

KP: Danger, 50,000 Volts…

PEGG: Yeah. This Danger, 50,000 Zombies. It was this ridiculous bit. The whole thing happened because the company that made Nick’s show lost all the tapes, all the rushes for the show. So when they came to the DVD there was no hope of deleted scenes or outtakes or anything. So we thought, “We have to make this…” And then they were charging a lot of money for this DVD. Nick was saying, “I’ve got to make this worth people’s money, otherwise it’s just insulting.” So we hastily put together this kind of half-improvised survival guide to zombies. It’s just utterly ridiculous anyway, and it’s on YouTube, and it’s had like 150,000 hits or somerhing. It’s quite bizarre.

KP: And now that DVD’s available in the US. I’ll bet half the people don’t even know it’s out here.

PEGG: I know, I know.

KP: Does it disturb you how many people are coming forward claiming to look like you?

PEGG: Yes.

KP: In fact, one of them works for us.

PEGG: Oh really? I have two MySpace impersonators.

KP: He met you a few weeks back and introduced himself as your son.

PEGG: Oh yeah, right, yes. That’s happened a couple of times. Any sort of faintly ginger, potato-headed, snub-nosed person is going to claim to look a bit like me. It’s a cross that they have to bear as well as I do.

Pegg and Quick Stop’s own Ian Bonds

KP: Does anyone go up to Nick and say that? You never see them showing up with a Nick counterpart…

PEGG: We did a radio show in Seattle recently and there was a guy… the main DJ on the show was a big fan and he had a kind of sidekick who was a hefty guy a bit like Nick, and we were joking about him being Nick’s equivalent. And it turned out they were actually born on the same day, which really freaked us out. There’s an on-air freak-out in Seattle on opening day.

KP: Well, that’s good.

PEGG: Yeah.

KP: I’ll bet that’s on YouTube.

PEGG: Well, you know what, it might be, because there was video footage. It was opening day and it was about 7 in the morning, and we went to this radio station. It was our first press engagement of the day. And everybody was drunk. It was like a big beer celebration and we walked into this bar and it was like, “Hang on, what time of day is it? This is ridiculous.” It was 50% sort of baseball jocks with pitchers of beer and 50% are sort of fans, these lovely colorful geek kind of people that we are.

KP: And by the end of the day you had won them all over.

PEGG: By the end of the day we’d won 50% of them over.

KP: You can’t beat that effort.

PEGG: No it’s pretty good.

KP: And now that you’re working on the road comedy with Nick, you’re finally, fully going to become Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear.

PEGG: Absolutely, yeah. We’re trying to. It’s not easy when you’re doing a press tour as intensive as this one. We came away with the best intentions of, like, “We’ll ride on planes and we’ll grab five minutes here and there.” But the second that we can switch off, we literally just, you know, (laughs) don’t want to do anything. We sort of lie on our back in a cold dark room.

KP: I found it interesting – obviously in tackling Shaun of the Dead, and particularly Hot Fuzz as a genre piece – within UK films, you don’t exactly see big action pieces like Hot Fuzz…

PEGG: No, not at all.

KP: In fact, I was talking to Edgar about it, that it seems like the entirety of British cinema is in 1:85, and to have a British 2:35 film that isn’t a Bond film is quite rare…

PEGG: Yeah, exactly. Well, Edgar was very specific about that.

KP: He was surprised, and pleased, that I commented on it. But another genre that you don’t really see in the UK is a road picture.

PEGG: Right.

KP: Which I’m assuming is just because of the size difference.

PEGG: Absolutely. There’s no… you can travel the length of the country in eight hours.

KP: I can’t even travel the length of my state in eight hours.

PEGG: Exactly. And you can travel the width of it in less, so that whole thing doesn’t really exist unless you’re doing a film about somebody who’s going up and down.

KP: Or runs a fish & chip van.

PEGG: Yeah, and is trying to circumnavigate the UK. The film we’re writing is set over here, and when we came up with the idea, in the back garden, when we were shooting Shaun of the Dead, it was something that we always envisaged as being set in the U.S. – I mean, it’s about two British guys, but it’s definitely set in the U.S.

KP: What was your perception of the country the first time that you arrived in the U.S. and transversed it at all?

PEGG: Well, we had a little sort of research trip at the beginning of the year. I was utterly floored by the size of it and the crippling emptiness it engenders when you’ve been traveling for an entire day and you haven’t seen a single soul and the road seems to come to a hill and you think, “Okay, well, there’s going to be something over this hill…” and it’s just more road. It’s quite incredible. But then the scenery can be fantastic. We had this day on the trip that we called “awe day”, because it was just… I think we were coming through Utah into Wyoming, past Salt Lake City and over the mountains, and it was really snowing. We’d had a load of snow and it was just… every single corner inspired this awe from us, which was great. It was wonderful. So, that was amazing. But it was incredible to be in a country with such a gigantic population and travel for so long and not see a single human being.

KP: There are certainly different perspectives on the U.S., from a UK point of view. When I was talking with Phil Jupitus, he talked about one of his dreams is to take a road trip across the U.S. And then you hear about the perspective of the U.S. that someone like Jeremy Clarkson has, which isn’t particularly pleasant. I’ve talked to Neil Innes, who did a tour the year before last, and he just was continually baffled in being able to time things right, because he always thought he’d be someplace hours sooner than he actually was.

PEGG: Yeah, because our perspective is just different. Our notion of size and distance is different. It was weird. We’ve had two odd experiences which we kind of hoped might bode well for Hot Fuzz. But on two occasions, both on this trip and when we were doing our road trip, we racked up in a tiny little… it was literally like a kind of a town in Nevada that was just some trailers and a diner. And we went in, and immediately two guys went, “Hey, Shaun of the Dead!” (laughs) But we hadn’t seen a single person for 100 miles. And then we were in Waco, Texas, driving from Dallas to Austin, and stopped off at a gas station, and the same thing happened again. These two guys, “Hey, Shaun of the Dead!” So it was a peculiar thing to be so far away from everything and yet still be spotted. It was both creepy and encouraging, I guess.

KP: What has been your view – as a comedian, as an actor, performer, writer, filmmaker – on what success in the U.S. means? There are UK comedians like Eddie Izzard who chased establishing themselves in the U.S., and there are some that could care less about the U.S. …

PEGG: It has to do with – what kind of fundamentalizes our sort of output, in terms of Shaun and Hot Fuzz, is it’s kind of a diet of American culture, growing up. There is a desire – and it’s nothing to do with finance or even credibility – it’s to do with getting it right. The acceptance of Hot Fuzz or Shaun of the Dead in America means that we’ve done what we set out to do. Do you know what I mean? Because we sort of adopted American archetypes. So, for us, it’s gratifying, because it just means that we got the subject matter right. We’re finding on the press tour that the American audiences seem to respond to Hot Fuzz with even greater enthusiasm than the British, in terms of how they receive it, and that’s amazing. It’s also, obviously – in terms of making movies – it’s the biggest territory in the western world for moviemaking. So you do tend to need to have a presence here in order to progress in the industry.

KP: Why do you think that so few British filmmakers tend to try to attempt a film of this type?

PEGG: I think, generally speaking, British film will be about British things, and there’s a cultural barrier between us, in that we live in different countries and, despite speaking the same language, we have different life experiences and different… the minutia of our cultures are different, and often British films will be about those things. And, you know, what you have essentially is a foreign movie. In this territory, a British film is a foreign film, and a lot of people see it that way. I guess the way that… without ever being divisive or even meaning… using this as a way of doing well here, the thing that we’ve done is kind of take what we’ve learned from American cinema – what’s inspired us growing up – and kind of tried to make those films at home. So, immediately you have the familiarity both home and abroad which seems to have worked quite well.

KP: It always upsets me when people try to say that these films are spoofs in any way…

PEGG: Yeah.

KP: But is there anything else that you’ve seen – besides a road picture and what you’ve already done – as a sort of American genre that hasn’t been tackled before in British cinema?

PEGG: I don’t think so. The UK had a great tradition of genre cinema leading up to the 70’s. And then America kind of took over in some respects. I think particularly when it came to, like, horror…

KP: Hammer horror being the biggest…

PEGG: Hammer horror was sort of bludgeoned to death by the likes of Landis and Carpenter. That’s not to say that was a bad thing, because they came forward with this new horror, which I love.

KP: You could also say the small, quirky comedy type was basically an Ealing type…

PEGG: Yeah, absolutely. But I think, with us, we just kind of want to make the films that we want to watch. That’s always our starting off point, is that we never… without sounding selfish or exclusive, we never really make films for anybody other than ourselves. It’s like, “What would I want to go and see?” That’s how we judge what we do. It’s like, “Let’s make the film we want to see.” And you can pretty much guarantee that the whole… there are a lot of people around that kind of feel the same way. So it’s never like we think, “Right, let’s do period pics or let’s do this or that.” It’s more like we start with the story or just the feel of the film and go from there. The fact is, we grew up in the VHS age, at a time when we were renting films that were slightly unsuitable for us and watching them in darkened friend’s houses, and grew up on this diet of American cinema. So inevitably it affects our own output. I don’t really want to make a film about inner city problems in Birmingham, you know what I mean?

KP: You say that now…

PEGG: Yeah, I know.

KP: When we talk in five years, “I was really thinking about Birmingham inner city problems…”

PEGG: Yeah… (laughs)

KP: “And I felt I really needed to tackle this with Nick.”

PEGG: That’s never going to play well in… the only place it will play well is in Detroit and Alabama, where there are Birminghams. We might be able to trick people into going into the cinema.

KP: Every place has a Birmingham.

PEGG: Even the moon has a Birmingham.

KP: Yes. It’s on the dark side.

PEGG: That’s right.

KP: Is there any movement on the release of Spaced in the U.S.?

PEGG: Not so far. We’ve been asked a lot on this tour, and the problem remains just a simple clearance issue for six… there are six tracks on the soundtrack which we don’t want to change, which weren’t cleared for North America. Because when we made the show…

KP: I’m assuming some of these are dealing with Lucasfilm properties?

PEGG: No, not at all. We have a very good relationship with Lucasfilm. I don’t know if George has seen it at all, but the people at Lucasfilm, I think, quite enjoy… I think they have a vicarious thrill from the dissent in Spaced. Even to the point where, when they released the new film… I’m sorry, when they released the original trilogy without any augmentation – without any of the special edition stuff – I got a parcel in the post which I opened, and there was an embossed envelope with “Lucasfilm” written on it. And I opened it up and it was a card saying, “We thought you might like these,” and it was the three original films on DVD.

KP: So you can get that, but you can’t get Big Train.

PEGG: Yeah, I know! (laughs) See, that’s it. I’m treated better by Lucasfilm – who I have criticized vocally for their prequels – and the show that I’m in, I don’t get for free.

KP: Well, maybe you need to start criticizing it.

PEGG: Yeah, Big Train was shit.

KP: A box is on its way to you. Here’s hoping the Spaced set eventually comes out. Is the door completely closed on Spaced, as far as you’re concerned?

PEGG: I think so, yeah. I think the worst thing we could do now is spoil it. I’d hate to… you know, time and logistics aside, the notion of actually adding to it and diminishing it frightens me. I think it’s best left now. Because we’d want to kind of pick up where we left off, and we can’t. We’re almost 10 years older and it’s kind of… I think it would look a bit weird.

KP: And you certainly did have that coda in the “behind the scenes” features on the DVD set.

PEGG: Yeah. I’d love to do a kind of… it’d be nice to wrap everything up, but I just honestly don’t know how we possibly could.

KP: Do you see the doors being closed on you returning to TV at any point?

PEGG: I don’t think so. Never say never. TV is as valid as anything. I think the thing is, with films it just feels like you’re working in an arena which is slightly more permanent. One of the heartbreaking things about doing TV was that you’d work your ass off as hard as you would do on a film, and then it’s on and then it’s gone. Sure, DVD’s kind of changing that a bit now, but plenty of times you’d feel like it would be on and then the ratings wouldn’t be that good… like, Spaced only ever got about a million and a half viewers, probably max, when it was on TV. And it was quite soul destroying. And so film it feels like you’re working in a slightly more… in a medium that has a bit more permanence. But yeah, as an actor and a writer, you shouldn’t just say, “Right, I’m doing this now, and everything else is shit.”

KP: Are there any arenas that you haven’t pursued yet that you are keen to? Obviously you’ve done radio, you’ve done TV, you’ve done pictures. When’s your first musical role?

PEGG: I did a musical when I was at college. I don’t know if I have a strong enough voice.

KP: That’s what they all say.

PEGG: I’m not a big fan of musicals, either. That’s a genre that we probably wouldn’t spoof – even though we do’t do spoofs I thought Joss Whedon did it very well in that episode of Buffy. I think what has to be in place before we make a film is an utter devotion and affection for what we’re taking on. Do you know what I mean? Anything less… that’s why I think Mel Brooks’s films, they start to fall away as soon as he starts addressing things he’s not that interested in. Big, big horror movies and Hitchcock films and westerns are brilliantly done by him, but as soon as he starts… like Spaceballs. He hates Star Wars. He doesn’t really like it that much. And you can tell because Spaceballs is shit.

KP: And by then, he also had this feeling that he had to live up to a formula…

PEGG: Exactly.

KP: It’s like Airplane 2 or Naked Gun 3…

PEGG: Exactly. Spaceballs is funny, though, because it’s a film that has the distinction of being 10 years too late and 10 years too early.

KP: Do you worry about falling into the trap of becoming your own cliché?

PEGG: Yeah, but I think people are kind of second guessing us before we’ve had a chance to prove either way. The question we’ve had the most on this tour, the one that I trust you’ll finish with, because it would be a shame if you didn’t, would be, “You’ve done cops, you’ve done zombies, what’s next?”

KP: I wouldn’t ask that.

PEGG: (laughs)

KP: You know what? I’m going to leave you with a nice little sense of openness instead of closure on this. I would feel bad if I asked that.

PEGG: But it’s a fair question, in a way, because even though when you start to break down the two films, they’re actually pretty different – in terms of Shaun of the Dead is simply us kind of appropriating a genre as a context, whereas Hot Fuzz we are actually trying to say something about a specific genre. What links them is the sort of incongruity of seeing Romero-style zombies in Crouch End, North London and seeing Michael Bay sort of pyrotechnics in Somerset. They both take on board a sort of American ideal. Whether we do that for the next one or not, I don’t know.

KP: I thought what was fascinating with the two films is that it took the fantastic – and I don’t mean this as a criticism – and made it pedestrian.

PEGG: Yeah, exactly.

KP: It actually brought these things down – in talking with Edgar, we were talking about the ending in miniature of Hot Fuzz, it’s that you literally take these outsize concepts and place then within this easily manageable, and therefore enjoyable, sort of context.

PEGG: Yeah. It was like, with Shaun of the Dead, the whole idea was to try and highlight the mundanity of zombie invasions. The kind of ordinariness of it. And you just do that by reframing things. We didn’t do that much. In the final sequence of Hot Fuzz, there aren’t really any jokes – it’s just the joke is entirely seeing those kind of events unfolding in a village.

KP: It’s interesting that particularly in British sci-fi, every post apocalyptic British sci-fi film, Britain is the only country left somewhat intact.

PEGG: Yeah. That’s because we’ve got a great infrastructure.

KP: You’ve become fascist, but besides that, you’re still there. We’re a barren wasteland, but Britain is still relatively intact.

PEGG: Big Ben’s still ringing.

KP: When you end in miniature like that, you’re kind of proving that it really is about the characters, the films you make…

PEGG: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

KP: Well I don’t want to end this with that question so I’m not going to. So I will say that I’m glad that your press tour’s finished and you can finally relax.

PEGG: Yeah, as I put the phone down I’ll fall, and there’ll be a shot from just beneath me falling – like Godzilla felled by a missile.

KP: That’s unfortunate.

PEGG: As you say goodbye, you can just imagine me tumbling like a giant oak.

KP: Goodbye… and “Timber”…

##

-by Ken Plume

After directing a string of groundbreaking UK TV series (including the beloved comedy Spaced), Edgar Wright – along with co-writer and star Simon Pegg – hit the big screen with the even more beloved Shaun of the Dead.

Their latest is the genre-bending cop flick (and Shaun of the Dead follow-up) Hot Fuzz, currently in theaters.

Co-written and directed by Wright, it stars Pegg as a London cop banished to the hinterlands by jealous colleagues, who’s then teamed with a witless partner (Frost) before stumbling on a series of suspicious events that uncover the dark underbelly of the seemingly bucolic village.

We had a chance to chat wth Wright as literally the last official interview of the Hot Fuzz press rounds…

KP: I guess the question that everyone’s asking you – and I should probably start out with – is, what was it like to work with Bill Bailey?

WRIGHT: (laughs) Well, I worked with Bill Bailey before. Bill was in Spaced, and I also did his show back in the late 90’s, Is It Bill Bailey?…

KP: Oh yes… that was a six episode run, right?

WRIGHT: That’s right. And Simon Pegg was in it, and I directed all of it. It was a lot of fun. One of the sketches in Is It Bill Bailey? is kind of almost like a very similar character to Nicholas Angel, actually. It was about a baggage handler. I don’t know if you’ve seen that. You can actually see it on You Tube, if you look up “Bill Bailey baggage handler sketch.” It’s the spark of inspiration for Nicholas Angel, in that he’s the most dedicated baggage handler of all time.

KP: Now I have to go back and re-watch that sketch. I can’t get the one of Bill as the warlock applying for his unemployment check out of my mind…

WRIGHT: Oh yeah, that’s right.

KP: It’s hard not to notice – and I don’t mean this in a negative way – just how incestuous the British comedy community is…

WRIGHT: Well, to be honest that’s more sort of like a practical aspect of it, in terms of, as you might imagine, it being a smaller country and a smaller industry, there’s only a finite amount of absolutely world class comic actors, and all you do is gravitate towards the best people and the people you want to work with. We’ve been very lucky, between Spaced and Shaun and Hot Fuzz, to work with some of the best. There are still people that we haven’t worked with, but it usually comes down to you’ve got these brilliant comic actors… Spaced, we only did two seasons of – fourteen episodes – and when you’re writing parts you tend to think, “Oh, you know who’d be brilliant playing this? Bill Bailey.” And of course he is brilliant. So why should there not be a reason to cast him? Why wouldn’t you want to work with the best comic actors around?

KP: So when you’re saying “people you haven’t worked with,” does that mean you still get phone calls from Jimmy Carr?

WRIGHT: (laughs) I know Jimmy Carr, actually, and he is just starting to break out into doing acting, so he’s only done a couple of films. But out here he’s a very famous stand-up.

KP: Well, obviously his part in Confetti must have been an audition for you guys…

WRIGHT: I haven’t seen Confetti, actually. (laughs)

KP: You know Jimmy’s going to be heartbroken.

WRIGHT: I’ve been busy. I’ve been making the film.

KP: In writing the film, do you – in the process of writing – go, “This is a part we’re really looking at Bill for,” or, “so-and-so would be great for that role…”?

WRIGHT: In that particular case, yeah, we kind of wrote it with him in mind.

KP: When you’re writing the films, what is your pie in the sky sort of, “God, we wish we could get so-and-so for this part…”?

WRIGHT: Well, I think we have quite a number of those in Hot Fuzz. People like Timothy Dalton, Jim Broadbent, Bill Bailey… people who were our dream cast, actually.

KP: Did you write with Dalton in mind, or you had that character type in mind and Dalton just fell into place?

WRIGHT: I think in the case of Timothy we actually had that character type in mind and then later it occurred to us that we should go after Timothy. So, in that case, it didn’t happen straight away but we had it written in notes “a Timothy Dalton type.”

KP: Has anyone that you’ve really been chasing turned you down flat?

WRIGHT: Yeah, that’s happened a couple of times, but I think it’s bad mojo to mention them by name.

KP: Yeah, that bastard Jonathan Ross. I did want to ask you, having watched the film, were you intending to make a British version of Batman?

WRIGHT: Of Batman?

KP: Of Batman, yes.

WRIGHT: Why do you think it’s like Batman?

KP: It wasn’t until about the 20 minute mark when it started clicking in with me, when I thought, if you were to make a British version of Batman and have that driven character type, he most likely would be a British police officer – because vigilantism isn’t huge in the British mindset. And you introduce Robin in Nick’s character, who grounds Angel. You have the aversion to handguns. To the point where, does he every actually kill somebody?

WRIGHT: No, he doesn’t do that. And that actually is interesting, Simon used that analogy when we were talking about, you know, that Nicholas Angel is such a great cop and such a great shot, and nobody actually dies by gunfire in the film. He kind of takes them out, he disarms them. That’s an interesting analogy.

KP: One that you’re not wholly sold on, I can tell.

WRIGHT: The thing is Nicholas Angel is not a vigilante. In other words, he doesn’t have a secret identity. So, for me, that’s where it slightly falls down.

KP: Right. But like I said, it would be the British version of how you would pull off a character like Batman. I’m going to die with this.

WRIGHT: I’m not one to dismiss a metaphor or anything. I love the idea of it.

KP: It was either that or I was going to say really the two of them, Simon and Nick, are Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear.

WRIGHT: (laughs) Well, they mention Kermit the Frog in the film.

KP: Which they do, but never the Fozzie Bear analogy.

WRIGHT: Well he would be Fozzie, and Kermit is who Simon wanted to be when he was a kid.

KP: Well, I hear you’re doing a road picture next…

WRIGHT: That’s something that Simon and Nick are writing… I’m not involved in that.

KP: Yet…

WRIGHT: Well, they’re writing it. I’m not writing that one. I might come on board as an executive producer, but we shall see.

KP: You’ve made various statements about the state of British films and certain genres that British films haven’t really done in the past, and in watching Hot Fuzz – and Shaun of the Dead – it always struck me that British films are usually a very 1:85 world…

WRIGHT: Yeah…

KP: I can’t think – outside of the Bond franchise – of any real 2:35, cinemascope British films.

WRIGHT: Well, no. We made a really concerted effort, and we did that with Shaun of the Dead as well. With Shaun of the Dead, having done TV, I really wanted it to look cinematic and I think what’s interesting is that 2:35 is great for action, but it’s also good for comedy as well, because most of your shots end up being two shots – essentially Simon and Nick – and that really works for the comedy. In the case of Shaun, it kind of worked that it had a similar ratio to John Carpenter films. And in Hot Fuzz, we’re kind of making like a prolonged Tony Scott, epic so it worked for that as well. You’re one of the first people who’s actually spotted that, and I appreciate that.

KP: Well, I appreciate you guys doing it. Why do you think that, traditionally, British films have shied away from that sort of grand vista approach to telling a story?

WRIGHT: Well, I think – for the most part – a lot of British films are maybe more concerned with realism. That might be it. That’s a very sweeping generalization, but I would say that’s one of the aspects.

KP: It seems to me that even in comedy, even looking at high and lowbrow comedy – from Ealing to the Carry On films – that British comedy always struck me as being very insular. Even the Carry On films are almost like an in joke for a British audience.

WRIGHT: I think when the Carry On films were made, I think they were making them mostly for the Brits, but the Carry On films were hits in Europe as well. It’s only really in the US that they didn’t really take off. But in Europe, and especially in Australia, the Carry On films were huge.

KP: You’ve made statements about breaking the mold in the past, as far as what a British film could accomplish, and that British film traditionally was largely uninterested in being a hit overseas…

WRIGHT: I don’t think that was necessarily the case with Ealing, but it was when the more recent comedy films have been spinoffs of TV shows that maybe people haven’t seen. What we tried to do with Shaun of the Dead is just kind of start from scratch so anybody could enjoy it and didn’t have to have previous knowledge of previous work.

KP: The one thing I’ve enjoyed about both Shaun and Hot Fuzz is that it’s not just a series of gags strung together. That it does make a point that there is a story, there are solid characters here…

WRIGHT: Yes.

KP: … and the comedy happens naturally within the world you’ve created.

WRIGHT: Yeah. I think that’s very true and hopefully that’s what makes them not spoofs, really, is that they do have a story and characters and the comedy comes out of the characters in the situation rather than just being… I think probably one of the things that people misrepresent Shaun and Hot Fuzz as the most is that they’re spoofs and every scene is from something else – which isn’t really the case. There are nods to things, but the idea is that it comes out of a character structure and characters and friendship. Shaun of the Dead is all about Shaun’s different relations, and in Hot Fuzz the buddy aspect of it is like two kind of disparate people kind of completing each other.

KP: I thought the wink and the nudge isn’t there. In American comedy, it’s all been about it being a pop culture thing. It’s like, “Oh look, you should know what this is, and aren’t we clever for putting it in,” whereas in Shaun and Hot Fuzz, it’s more that it’s in a natural situation in a world in which pop culture exists, and the characters are just going to go, “Oh, that was just like that movie,” and actually reference the fact that “we’re acknowledging the fact that this stuff exists within this world.” Which I think makes the characters much more real than if they were being, again, sly and pop culture savvy in a wink and a nudge kind of way.

WRIGHT: Right.

KP: If that made any sense whatsoever.

WRIGHT: Yeah, I know what you mean.

KP: What was the tougher nut to crack, story wise? Was it Shaun or Hot Fuzz?

WRIGHT: I think probably Hot Fuzz is tougher, because I think that we were working slightly outside our comfort zone in terms of… like, with Spaced and Shaun of the Dead, we were essentially writing about people we knew and experiences that we had – but neither Simon nor I have been police officers, so we had to do a lot of research… and it wasn’t just watching our favorite cop films, but it was basically interviewing police officers and doing a lot of genuine research.

KP: Were you basically looking for strict procedural information when you were doing that, or were you also accumulating anedcotes?

WRIGHT: It’s everything, actually. The greatest thing about it… doing practical research is fantastic, because you just kind of get a sense of people’s characters, and there are elements of a Nicholas Angel and a Danny and Frank Butterman, and some of the other people that we met are based on people, interview subjects that we had. Even though we had an idea for the characters already, when you meet people who are the real people – like you meet an officer who has moved from east London to the country and the difficulties that he had in terms of adapting to a rural life – we already had the idea for the story, but then you actually seek out people who’ve done exactly that. And you just get great information and detail from them. So writing characters and anecdotes, there are several bits in the film that are kind of inspired by real anecdotes. The escaped swan sequence…. The idea of people having to buy cakes as punishment…. The idea of using a local policeman as a translator… that all came from real anecdotes.

KP: One of the other fascinating things – from an American perspective – is to view this sort of action film, and particularly the police force, in a non-gun culture.

WRIGHT: Well, this is the thing, it’s a sort of… and that’s why there haven’t been any British cop films, is because basically the British police are lacking that basic filmic requirement of having a gun. That’s why there have been no British cop films.

KP: But they’re remarkable runners and throwers.

WRIGHT: Yes, exactly. Though that’s not necessarily the case in real life.

KP: Was there any point where Simon was just sick of running?

WRIGHT: No, he really got into shape for it.

KP: When you’re visually trying to conceive of how exactly to pull of and ratchet up the action of a piece like this, knowing that you’re handicapped by not having something visual like a gun, and the ability to use that as either an action piece or a way to end a scene – how do you, in the writing, get around that? What were the discussions that you and Simon would have about, “Okay, well, how are we going to pull this off?”

WRIGHT: I think this is the idea. It’s kind of like with Shaun, but Shaun with budget and time constraints. Part of me always wished the action at the end went a little bit further in Shaun of the Dead. And with Hot Fuzz, I mean, we had double the budget – which is still incredibly modest by Hollywood action budgets, but we really tried to push the boat out as much as we could so the final act goes completely over the top.

KP: In doing that and cutting loose, did you ever find yourself checking how far you let it go, or was it always “What else can we throw in here?”

WRIGHT: Well, I think we just wanted the entire thing to reach a climax and every loose end be tied up. The idea of the climax of the film is – it’s almost like a sort of Russian doll ending in terms of like each set piece kind of comes out of the next and each one gets smaller and smaller to the point – not to give to much away – but the location of the final fight is almost like a scale gag in itself.

KP: A wonderful telescoping effect…

WRIGHT: Absolutely. That’s exactly it. And even, it could be said, like a video game structure. One of the ideas – like, there is even a line when Simon says, “You guys stay here. We’re going after the big boss…” referring to the end of level boss that you have in video games. And obviously video games are mostly based on action films and the idea of like… we really wanted tick every box of having every single action cliché – of every bonus ending and surprise baddy and hostage standoff – that you could possibly have. We really tried to go all-out on that.

KP: I enjoy the fact that it still has quite a British rationale for the criminal motivations of the piece…

WRIGHT: Yeah.

KP: How far off base do you believe the commentary is on that sort of “Little Britain” type of thinking?

WRIGHT: I think even though the film gets quite ridiculous, that a lot of it is based on truth and some stuff that’s quite close to home. You do have that sort of little England sort of mentality of people kind of more interested in a surface gloss than what’s necessarily deep rooted problems. And that probably is quite a universal aspect – kind of people are more worried about graffiti then they are about what goes on behind closed doors, because graffiti is visible to everybody. There are definitely satirical aspects within the film, and the idea that the film can’t truly be slam bang unless it does have a load of guns in it. So there’s lots of aspects to it, in that respect.

KP: I guess you’re also commenting on how outsize and over the top these films are, as you say, by ending up in a tiny version of the world they’re inhabiting.

WRIGHT: Yeah. It’s like a big scale gag.

KP: And you got to do your Godzilla picture.

WRIGHT: In a roundabout way, yeah. I think that idea came… I’m trying to remember when that idea came around, but I think as soon as that came up, as a model village idea, it was, “Wow. That’s the way to end the film.”

KP: How would you describe the conceptualization process, and Simon as a working partner?

WRIGHT: We do write everything together. I think because I’m directing and we’re writing, I don’t really go into a great detail on the visuals in the screenplay, because I don’t need to communicate it to anybody. If I was a screenwriter and it’s been given to a director and I have strong ideas, I try and write them in – but because I’m going to be doing the storyboards, that’s where I can communicate that information. That’s where I’d put that information, really. So if you read the script for Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, they don’t really give a great indication of what the visuals are going to be like.

KP: When you talk about writing together, is the process the two of you in a room? Or do you go off and write separately and then meet back together…

WRIGHT: In a room thing, opposite each other.

KP: Are you generally on the same page, or do you guys go back and forth often?

WRIGHT: Pretty much. We literally sit opposite each other and just kind of hammer it out. You always have disagreements about everything, but then I think the best way to approach writing is to be completely honest with each other all the time. You never worry about hurting somebody’s feelings. You just be honest the whole time.

KP: In the two films, what would you say was the biggest point of contention you two have had over a story or character point?

WRIGHT: I can’t really think of anything, particularly. Nothing that springs to mind. And even if there was, I probably wouldn’t tell you! (laughs)

KP: I’ll bet Simon would.

WRIGHT: No, I don’t think he would… (laughs)

KP: How fluid, when you actually get on set, is what you’ve written?

WRIGHT: Well, what we do is we write the screenplay, and then we rehearse it with the actors. Firstly with Nick Frost, and then with the whole cast, and basically any good new ideas of improvisation that come out of that we then put in the script.

KP: Who would be the person, besides your core group, who surprised you the most on the day?

WRIGHT: Well, you’ve been in rehearsal, so you kind of know what people are going to do. Has anybody surprised me the most? Usually in that sense it’s kind of tiny parts, because they’re people that you haven’t rehearsed with maybe, like… um… which is very few. There’s only a few people in the whole film that I didn’t rehearse with. Like maybe our mystery, Oscar-winning cameo, for instance. Or the guy, actually, who plays the gas station clerk.

KP: Can you ever envision doing a film without that rehearsal process?

WRIGHT: It would not be a good idea, because I think it’s quite crucial for the… especially if it’s a comedy. If it was an action film it’d be different. If it’s a comedy, I think it’s a really good thing to make sure you rehearse, because you can work out a lot of stuff. If you’re doing it as a drama or a horror film or an action film, you might not need to rehearse.

KP: There’s been an aspect of, after Shaun was a hit outside the UK as well, particularly in the US, that a lot of people were going, “Well, now certainly you have control of the world and everything’s your oyster…”, and both you and Simon were always quick to deflate that by saying, “Well, you know, it did well in the US, but it was not a 400 million dollar blockbuster.” That there was this perception that all of a sudden you two had this immense power, you were leaving the UK, you were going to be Hollywood Edgar Wright and Hollywood Simon Pegg. Do you still feel that people perhaps are overestimating exactly what kind of power a modest success gives to a filmmaker?

WRIGHT: I don’t remember ever saying that. (laughs) No, I think maybe what we said… it sounds like we’ve been misquoted. What we said was… because after Shaun of the Dead we both had offers to do stuff over here. That might still happen, but we wanted to make our second film in the UK. It was as simple as that, really.

KP: What do you think that making a film in the UK, as opposed to the US, allows you? What are the benefits that you see, particularly having made your second film in the UK?

WRIGHT: I don’t know…

KP: Ricky Gervais has been famously dismissive of the British film industry…

WRIGHT: Well, Ricky Gervais is dismissive of everything. (laughs)

KP: That’s the best way to sum it up. Do you see where he’s coming from, in the statements that he makes?

WRIGHT: When he includes Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead in that bargain I disagree. (laughs) He did say that in an interview maybe about a month after Shaun of the Dead had come out. I thought, “Hmm, that’s a bit strange.”

KP: Well, that’s nice of him. Particularly since Stephen Merchant’s in the film.

WRIGHT: Exactly.

KP: But not Ricky. Maybe that’s why.

WRIGHT: Well I don’t think… anyway…

KP: I’m not going to start a feud, I swear. (laughs) So at this point, now that the film is out, are you encouraged by the feedback it’s received? It already did well in the UK…

WRIGHT: Yeah, it’s been great. It’s been really great.

KP: What doors has this one opened up that you’re currently looking into? Obviously Ant-Man‘s on the horizon…

WRIGHT: All of the things that I’m working on are things that I was working on before Hot Fuzz. To be honest, we’ve been doing the press since… I finished doing the film in January. I haven’t even thought… literally tomorrow is the first day when I start thinking about the rest of my life.

KP: And I’ll bet you can’t wait for that.

WRIGHT: I’m looking forward to having a lie in, but I am gonna go and have some fun tonight.

KP: Well, I was definitely encouraged by your statements regarding Ant-Man, that it’s not going to be a tongue in cheek affair.

WRIGHT: No. It will be funny, but it’s not going to be, like, a comedy. It’s not going to be a superhero spoof. That’s not the idea.

KP: A “spoof” is something which you guys have not done yet, even though many people who obviously haven’t been paying attention have tried to say that about both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, though neither of them are in any way spoofs of genres.

WRIGHT: Yeah.

KP: But right now, I’m eager to let you go and hopefully start your life anew.

WRIGHT: Thank you.

KP: But as always it’s been a pleasure to speak with you.

WRIGHT: Thank you very much.

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