Interview with Mike and Kevin
Mike & Kevin interviewed by Entertainment Weekly Online "Virtual Radio" in New York. April 10, 1998.
I've of course edited out many "uh's" and pauses and stumbling over and repeating words and some of the laughter; even a "you know" here or there was dropped. So as to make it more coherent and less annoying to the eye, and to preserve my sanity. I put ?'s after the things I wasn't sure of the spelling etc. of. Enjoy.
Mike: I'm Mike Nelson, I'm a Libra, I play Mike Nelson. Thank you.
Kevin: Kevin Murphy, I'm producer of the show, and I play Tom Servo, the puppet. I'm a puppeteer.
Interviewer: This is your ninth season?
K: Yes it is.
M: Yeah.
I: Mike, were you with it when it was on UHF?
M: No, no I joined when it hit the lucrative cable world. (K laughs) I knew where my bread was buttered.
K: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
I: When it was first started on cable, did you imagine, that, you know, when it was a decade later it would still be goin'?
M: No, I mean, you, you--you honestly think, you know, if you get through the first couple shows, and that's it, you would never assume that you could get a job in TV for two years, let alone nine. It's amazing.
K: Actually, I did. I had it, (M: Yes?) I looked in my notebooks from, um, calendar book, from back then, and it said "Run show at *least* nine seasons," uh...
M: "Sell out..."
K: "Be in New York at Parker Meridian, talk to virtual radio guys!" And you know? So, I'm just knockin' 'em off on my Franklin Cubby (?) day planner.
M: [as if reading] "Strangle all before they escape from hotel room..."
K: Well that's later.
I: Is there any conceivable point, you say like, you think the show can go on as long as there are bad movies out there?
M: I think the movies do energize the show itself, obviously, but, you know, you think you're done, you think you've had it, and then a movie like Hobgoblins shows up and, it kinda injects a new life into the show, or a new death, depending on how you look at the movie. (K: Yeah, yeah) But the movies drive it, and so yeah, if we can continue to get those.
K: The movies are, I think, the least of the problem, because there are bad movies being made every single day, day in and day out, all over the world, particularly in Hollywood. But I think it comes down to whether it's, really, it's interesting and funny for us, and for our audience. If those two things hold true, you know, Lord knows how long we'll go.
I: You talk about bad movies being made every day. Do you ever go out and see something--The Postman comes to mind--and you just salivate at the prospect (Mike chuckles) of getting your hands on it?
K: I missed The Postman this time.
M: I *ran* to the theater when I first saw it, and it was already out of the theaters by the time I got there, so, ah... no, I was unable to see The Postman. I can't believe somebody gave money to him to make *another* post-apocalyptic film, after...
K: Mike, if you don't mind, tell him what you did the other night.
M: Well, it's not enough that I hurt while I'm on the job, but I went out with our editor and we saw, The Wedding Singer. And that just sat on my head like a big, feather pillow and smothered me. So I do it even on my off-hours.
K: Yeah, after Billy Madison, you *continue* to go out and see Adam Sandler films.
M: I wanted, I wanted to see the triumvirate. Billy Madison, uh...
K: Happy Gilmore.
M: Happy Gilmore, and The Wedding Singer.
I: Are you guys, when movies come out, are do you two find yourselves drawn to those, or, you know, something As Good As It Gets comes out with great reviews, do you just put that on the backburner until you can get out to The Wedding Singer?
M: Yeah, I think there's something exquisite about paying full price for Adam Sandler. It's this exquisite pain that you must live through, and I figure I can always rent a good movie and see it in my own home. But you have to go out, take the time, and give the money and that hurts just that much more.
K: There's less people in the theaters so there's no lines.
M: Right.
K: You know what you're getting up front, so there's no room for disappointment. Because you're disappointed before you go (laughter from the other two), so anything that happens on the screen is a delight. You know? I'm always suspicious of reviewers, I mean, because it comes down to taste, and somebody's, you know, review may be perfectly legitimate, and they're just... and I hate the movie, and so I'm disappointed. But with a really crappy film, you know, you know you're gonna go see The Postman and you're gonna get exactly what you came for and you're gonna be delighted. So seeing bad films is actually a good exercise.
I: You guys just did an Oscar special.
K: Mm-hm.
I: Any thoughts on Titanic ?
K: Actually, to preface, it's the "Mystery Science Theater 3000 Academy of Robots' Choice Awards Special."
M: Cause we wanted to simplify it so it could be easily disseminated to the press, and uh... No we, we get to rip on, on the big one, the big movie.
K: Yep.
M: Which is fun, because it kinda makes you salivate for it. We get the little electronic press kits and just work on the clips, and it makes you salivate for a real movie, to be able to do something that big.
K: And the currency of the stars is very helpful too. You know, to be able to pick on someone like little Leonardo DiCaprio. Y'know, it's great fun.
M: I hear he's starring in Electric Company: The Movie. (K&I laugh) Zoom: The Film. He's going to be...
K: Look Who's Talking 3.
I: People seem incredibly protective of that film. When you guys are doing something that's a current film, and you're riffing on things like that, do you ever get calls from someone that was very hurt, thirteen-year-old girls (M laughs) "Oh now you've gone too far"...
M: It is hard, when you run up against, when you mentioned, well we're gonna be doing Titanic, "Well I like that movie!" We're like Okay, all right, you can like it, but, you know, we don't.
K: It's not that we didn't like any of these films, because a lot of them are very good films, the ones that are up for Academy Awards. But in each and every film there is some person or some aspect that we can just, as Mike has said, pull out of context and then unfairly lambaste.
M: That's our EBA, (?) just sit in the Midwest and unfairly lampoon other people's hard work.
K: Damn good at it, too.
I: When your film came out, Mystery Science Theater movie came out, a couple years ago...
M: Mm-hm.
I: What was that, I mean you talk about living in the Midwest, sort of away from it all...or at least most of the politics I mentioned of Hollywood. What was that process like, in uh, cause I remember reading about this film was going to be made for a long time and then that came out what was this whole process?
M: Well I think, though we struggled two and a half years to make it, I think the eleven people that saw it appreciated our efforts, and uh... No, it was much different, it was, you know we do a show in two weeks and we can see the end results and we know "This is a good episode" or this, you know. We get our reaction right away too cause it's out on TV not long after that and you see some fan reaction. With the movie it was just two and a half years of crawling inside this film and watching it over and over and over again, and it was just much different.
K: Yeah. The harrowing (at least I think that's what he said) part was being, was, I think, ultimately over-scrutinizing this goofy little puppet show that we do. And uh, I don't think any... I think we could've written the script in a week and a half, shot it in the same amount of time, and had just as successful film as it turns out, without having to spend all that money. And, I think it's a good film, I think it's a funny film, I think it's, you know, a lot of fun for your theater dollar, especially if you go with a crowd of people. Unfortunately, our film came out two weeks before *Barb Wire.* So the entire promotion engine switched from us over to Barb Wire. And it's a good thing it did, because, you know, everybody knows what legendary success Barb Wire had.
M: They made, they made tons of prints of that, of Barb Wire, in expectation that they would make all their money up front, and then afterward, they'd, we'd call 'em up and say "Well how's our film doing?" "Well, you know, there's only twenty copies of i--Do you want a copy of Barb Wire, by the way?" They wanted to actually ship us copies of it (K&I laugh) Seriously, seriously! They said, "You can have one of these." Great. That's our budget right there.
I: How much of the time was actually spent shooting?
K: We had one of those amazing production schedules in which we had delivered , in the first three days of shooting we delivered two-thirds of the film, which was making fun of the movie This Island Earth. And then we spent four weeks doing all the wonderful in-camera sorta special effects that we did and the puppeteering and all the stuff that wrapped around the film. And that was actually the harder work, the smaller part of the film ended up being you know some real hard work there. With our tiny little budget and...
I: What was your budget?
K: It was two million dollars. Which, I shouldn't say "tiny little budget" because in some ways it seemed extravagant and rich and in some ways it also seemed kinda... we did a *lot* for that. We got DTS (?) sound out of it, for cryin' out loud.
M: Yeah, yeah.
K: Try to get *that* on less than two million dollars. Our cardinal rule was that the live-action part couldn't look any better than the film that we were making fun of. And I think we succeeded.
M: Yes, yes, aim low. Y'know, it was very difficult, you know, the suggestions that came up. It's hard to remember now, but you know if someone had suggested, uh, roller-skating nude women, that wouldn't surprise me. It was that kind of thing, like, "Well, it's great what you do but if we y'know layer this on the top think of it now." And those suggestions kinda wear on you where you, day after day, you've gotta fend those off and you have to remember why you're making the film and pretty soon you do start to forget. You know, because you've been asked a thousand times, "What about Bonzo the roller-skating chimp?" and when you have to go "No, I think that doesn't fit the vision" and then by the thirtieth day you don't remember. "Aw, maybe it does, I don't know, throw chimp in there, I don't care!"
K: Yeah. There's a lotta grinding down. I don't know how many different versions of the script we went through, but it was at least a dozen, and each ending up...and the film was entirely different by the time we actually got the script approved from when we first did it. There was a lot of song and dance in the first script, Crow recreating a scene from The Great Escape (movie?) that was made famous by, um, you know, that guy... Steve McQueen. (sp?)
M: McQueen.
K: That all changed.
M: We had uh, one of the early drafts we had Pure Energy came and visited us, you know, the old staple, and Pure Reason came, and they don't like each other so they started wrestling on the Satellite of Love. But they just, the studio just "What, what does that mean, what...?" I don't know, it's just *funny*...
K: Not just wrestling, but classic, AAU, freestyle, collegiate wrestling.
M: That would be very funny to see two old men, you know, *wrestling*...
(Next two lines simultaneous)
K: And we could get Dan Gable to be one of the wrestlers, it'd be hysterical...
M: Just stared at us, with blank... (Now speaking alone) Perhaps rightly so, now that I think about it. (I&K laugh) That gets really surreal, when you have, when it takes like a week of memos and meetings to decide whether or not you say, y'know, "Should we put the fart joke in or do the..?" You know, it just gets really weird. (K: Yeah.) But there was one, there's a pretty famous creature in it, little pincher, pincer-handed guy with a big bulbous brain at the top. And when he first appears we had a joke that, uh, we said uh... who's the thing?
K: "It's Bootsy Collins."
M: Bootsy Collins. And they said "We don't know who that is so that's not funny," and we said "No, it's not funny cause you don't know who it is, it's just that you don't know who it is," but they made us change it because of that, and we kept, you know, we'd send 'em pictures of Bootsy Collins, "Look, it looks exactly like him!"
K: [They] Had no idea who Bootsy Collins was.
M: So we struggled for like two weeks on that and it's just like, ok, fine, "Leona Helmsley" or whoever we ended up saying.
I: You guys films that in Los Angeles or is that out in Minnesota?
K: Everything we do we do in Minnesota.
I: Find it helps a lot, to stay out there?
M: Yeah, you know, with the movie it was very helpful cause they *never* wanted to come out there. They just, they couldn't under-- You couldn't get bottled water by the truckload so they never stopped in, and... It also just isolates us from the people who make the films that we make fun of, you know? One day we're making fun of Joe Don Baker and then we're actually out living next to him, that would get weird. So we hide out in the Midwest and throw mudballs at 'im.
I: Doesn't Joe Don Baker have a, uh...
K: Yes, apparently he has a vendetta against us. And I say, bring him on. We'll kick his fat ass right back again.
I: Now when what, was it Mitchell, was that the thing?
K: Mitchell.
M: Yeah, very good.
I: (couldn't make out, sounds kinda like) I brought up a show (but maybe That was quite a show) (M laughs)
K: The (sounds kinda like) pilot (maybe highlight) with the air-burping, underpant-exposing, greasy, tired, crumb-infested...
M: Which if you'll remember, one of my favorite moments, now this is the way they used to make movies in the 70's, Joe Don Baker lolling about in bed with uh, what's her name, one of John Derek's... (sp?)
K: Oh...
M: ...anyway, on the side of the bed is a six-pack of Schlitz (sp?) and some baby oil. (K laughs) And this is supposed to be *appealing* to us. , man.
I: You know when I think of the Midwest humor, I think of you guys, I don't know if you've heard of the Onion...
K: Sure, oh, a lot of...
I: Yeah, sort of a...small paper reports fake news, it's also available on the internet... and it's very, at times esoteric, but at times, incredibly tasteless, it's just...
K: Nasty things. [Whoa, big slam against the Onion out of *nowhere*!]
I: It's just nasty. What qualifies as sense of humor in the Midwest, you think it's a special kind, or is it...?
M: Hmm...
K: Less cynical and yet just as bleak as anything you'd find anywhere else. I find that one of the things that distanced us from Comedy Central I think is the tendency for all of the humor on their network to be really nasty and cynical. I mean, sort of just "the world hurts me so I'm going to hurt it back" sort of attitude.
M: Well we've always tried to maintain, you know I don't wanna sound too serious about it, cause it's just a puppet show, but we do try to make it seem as though there is some hope and joy in the world when we're making fun of these things. I mean, often it doesn't come down to every single joke, but in overall tone you try to keep it like, it's like we're having fun, we're not saying the world is spinning down the drain so let's just join it.
K: People in the Midwest are less inclined to make deals with the Devil in order to achieve success, so...
M: The Devil is-- It's flyover territory for the Devil.(K: Yeah. Pretty much.) He doesn't stop in Minnesota, so...
I: Have you guys had over the years, many opportunities, people saying, "Well why don't you bring this out here, bring this out to L.A., or bring it out to New York, what're you doin' out there"?
K: When we first started, before... right after we'd actually sold the show to, at that time, the Comedy Channel, it was suggested that we move the show to New York, and nobody wanted to go. And then they said "Okay, what you can do is, we'll *shoot* the show in New York, but you can live at home." Well that would've meant that on Sunday night we would fly out to New York, we would work all week on the show, and we would fly back on like Saturday morning, so you'd have about 36 hours at home, and they would consider that living at home. And that, it just didn't have any appeal. I like where I live, I don't have to do a nasty commute, I don't have to live in Los Angeles, you know, it's...well except for the winters...
M: And the well-protected secret is it's not that hard, you know. We just shoot the movie, and the live action, it's very easy, and so... they'd find out it was easy if we lived here and they would take it away from us...
K: Somebody'd blow the whistle.
M: Let us do it.
I: What is the production schedule like, any given week, how do you usually break down the production?
K: It's five days of writing and then five days of production, and then another actually almost ten days to do the post-production. The writing phase is probably the most, uh, hardest work we do, I think, actually. Cause you sit down, and you start a tape on this really stupid dumb awful taste-- often tasteless movie. And you're with that movie with this, you know, group of writers, for two days, two whole days, starting and stopping it, sometimes frame by frame. And thank God for these funny people, cause you'd never be able to *do* that otherwise. It would be like somethin' out of Clockwork Orange. But it's fun, and we try to keep each other up, and try to make each other laugh, and that's what makes it enjoyable.
I: Are most of the writers from that general area, from the Midwest, or do you, are there more and more people that you hire that come from New York or L.A.?
M: Bill Corbett, the guy who does Crow now and one of our writers, is from Brooklyn, originally, but he's been in the Twin Cities for awhile. And most of the rest of them are from around the Midwest. Although Frank Conniff, who used to be on the show, is from Manhattan. But mostly the Midwest.
I: Are these guys cause, you know when Joel Hodgson, creator Joel Hodgson left, and then Trace Beaulieu, and Frank left, did they all go to pursue other projects, did they go out West, or did they, uh, still...
M: Yeah, every one of them goes out to the magnet of L.A.
K: They're all in L.A. And Trace writes for America's...
M: America's Funniest.
K: ...Funniest Home Videos, which is not called America's Funniest Home Videos anymore, called like America's...
M: The Daisy Fuentes Show.
K: Yeah, the Dasiy Fuentes, and Jon Fugles... (?)
M: Yeah, and so does Josh Weinstein, who used to be on the show, he's the head writer for that.
K: Frank Conniff's writing on Sabrina The Teenaged Witch, so they're livin' the high life out there, these guys.
I: And when they go out there, is it, has that ever been tempting to you guys to uh, to you know when the show's over say "Well maybe we'll head out west"?
K: I'd rather change careers.
I: Really.
K: Yeah. Hehe...That's not my idea of a good time. We have very few rules and very few fetters with what we do right now, and I really enjoy that, and it's just more fun. Having to live up to somebody's else's rules is hard enough the rest of my life, I'm not gonna do it on my... My career is not something I look forward to doing it on.
M: Personally, I send resumes to Silk Stalkings every week. (I chuckles) I'm hopin' I get somethin' back soon. (K laughs)
I: Bill Corbett took over the voice of Crow last year...Mike, taking over for Joel, when he left the show, is that, I mean did you provide him comfort? Cause I imagine there are fans galore who can't handle any adjustment to the show. (M chuckles)
K: Nah, we just threw him in the pool and let the sharks eat him. It was great.
M: I just told him "Just duck." (K laughs) " Just bend over and duck and get out of the way of the bottles." No, we told him just don't look at the internet, don't even look on there, it'll just make your blood boil. And so he's been pretty good about it, pretty isolated, if people are saying it, he doesn't know it. I think it's better to work that way, just kind of in isolation; it's nice to see the letters drift in now and again and sorta know what people are sayin', but largely keep away from that sort of hyper-critique that people do on the internet. If, you know, we change the color of the jumpsuit and people go beserk, it's just... leave that stuff alone.
I: Was that tough for you, when you had, I mean that a tough decision, to take over from Joel?
M: Ahh... No, it seemed, it seemed the right thing to do because, you know I had been performin' on the show already, we always took people from within our ranks, we never really hired anyone from outside and threw 'em on camera, so it seemed to make sense. And then I learned how wrong I was. No, it was pretty easy. I think there's this illusion, when you look on the internet, that millions of people are having this war about you know, but it's just like five people battling back and forth between themselves. But they create so much material, it gives the illusion of import.
K: By and large our fans I think are very bright, interesting, normal people, and then I think like with every show there's a certain element that will obssess on what you're doing and take it apart, and let 'em do it. I don't have to sit there and read it.
M: Mm-hm.
K: But by and large our fans are wonderful to us. We get kids sending drawings, and people will send Bill things encouraging him in his new role, and all of us, and it's just great.
I: There have been come Mystery Science Theater conventions, haven't there?
K: Mm-hm.
I: You guys were amazed at the tiny things, minutiae people remember from the... (M laughs)
K: More than I ever would!
M: Yeah, it's very strange, the...
K: Absolutely.
M: To have people know that much about something that you make. Because you, honestly you have this memory that just allows you to remember what you're currently working on, but I don't remember... I *kinda* remember some movies that we've done, but I don't have the kind of memory they do.
I: Obviously you're mostly behind the scenes, or your voices, or people must know your voice really well, do you find that people sorta do a double-take when you talk, when you meet them in real life?
K: Not when I meet them in real life, cause then I think my kind of bland, nasally voice just blends in with everybody else's, but when I'm on the phone, say, I don't answer the phone very often at work because quite often people will call to check on their order with our catalog and stuff and they'll want to talk to me rather than taking care of business, and if I'm busy I try not to answer the phone because people recognize my voice all the time. And, flattering as that is, if you're in the middle of a meeting and you pick up the phone and then somebody says "Wow, it's Tom Servo, hey can I talk to you for a few minutes?" [regretfully] and I have to say no. [laughs] I always find that kinda flattering.
I: You guys never have celebrity cameos. A lot of times, with small shows a lot of celebrities love to be part of a cult thing and wanna come on. You guys even gotten that?
K: We've had one celebrity on our show.
M: Yeah, very small.
K: Robert Smith from the Minnesota Vikings.
M: Now the highest-paid running back in the NFL.
K: That's right.
M: Yeah.
K: There's your powerhouse programming... (M laughs) He was a, really, he was a wonderful guy, he was very nice, and he was a fan of the show, and the Vikings training camp is literally three blocks from where we are, so he was a perfect match for us.
M: We get, uh, we have sort of a celebrity list where we hear either through the grapevine or somebody's publicist calls, like Emilio Estevez's publicist calls in, wants to get copies of the show, and so you hear that way. But no one ever overtly asks to be on the show, *except,* the former guitarist for Starship, Craig Shikeeso, (sp?) once.
K: He lobbied!
M: He had his publicist calling me daily, "He wants to be on the show." I had to say first off "Who's Craig Shikeeso?" Then when I found out he was on Starship (w/K's next line), I said, "Hey, we're knee-deep in the hoopla (?), my friend."
K: (over M's last line) "We built this city, my friend. We built this city." Uh, Roger McGwinn (sp?) came to town and wanted to visit out studio and he actually used our, got the, from us permission to use our silhouette at the bottom of his most recent CD and I was floored by that, because he was like a hero of mine when I was younger, and kind of a guy who was the king of the folk/rock world, which was wonderful. So I got to meet him and I actually sang on a track of one of his songs. He didn't use the track, cause my voice didn't fit in, but it was still just a thrill to do that. And he said he'd love to be on the show sometime. I'm sure there are a few people if they're out there, who we could get to do it, and maybe we will in the future, we've never ruled it out, it's just never been... it's hard. You know, you have to bring 'em to the Midwest, and if we were out on the coast, and it's perhaps one reason why we haven't. Could *fly* 'em to Minnesota...
M: Former wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura? He's a fan of our show. This is the kinda celebrity that Minnesota turns out. We were doing this, judging this cookbook competition for charity the other day, and it was me and Jesse "The Body" Ventura and the first-base coach for the Twins. So that was the celebrity. [Jesse Ventura voice] Howdy! (I think) [/JVv] People going "Who?" (K laughs) Jesse "The Body" Ventura, and then I. But he's a fan of the show, so.
I: Were ever you guys, uh, the golden boys of, the greater Minneapolis area?
M: We go totally unnoticed. Yeah, nobody knows who we are. (w/K) It's very nice. (Alone) We never get recognized.
I: This is your own production facility, how did this, how did it get started?
K: We started doin' the show with a local station, KTMA, in Minneapolis, and realized that when we actually ended up selling the show to Comedy Central that we needed a company in order to make the show. The show came before the company did. Cause we were makin' for a local TV station, didn't need a production company. So Trace's brother had leased a warehouse space in Eden Prairie and it had a big, you know, an office up front warehouse in the back, it was perfect for a production studio. And we got us all together, and I think there was six of us, plus a couple of extra carpenters who came in to help us, and we in six weeks, from the time we took the space, built the sets, designed the miniatures, wrote the first episode and was shooting.
M: And built this city on rock and roll.
K: And we built this city, that's right...
M: All in the same period of time.
K: ...that's right. And yeah, it was strange and humble, tiny little roots, and I think the simplicity of the show is part of what I like about it. It's never gotten too complicated or over-burdened with production effects and highly egotistical stars, like Mike. He's the only one.
Part 2
To the beginning of the interview.
Take me back to the Neat MST stuff.
