Kevin Murphy Interview [murphysmall.gif] Don't recognize the face? Well, maybe that is because you know him best for doing the voice of Tom Servo, the sarcastic robot on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The good folks at Rhino gave me to chance to interview the man and I have to say, it was a fun time. The man is just as funny via the phone as he is on the show. So here is the interview... ::I got a call around 245 from Christopher at Rhino, telling me Kevin is here and then the interview began:: Kevin:: Hey Marcus! How are you doing man? Marcus:: Hey how's it goin? Kevin:: Good thanks! I am actually looking at your site right now and I have to say, it is really "Kick Ass" Marcus:: (laughs) Well thank you! I should quote you on that! Kevin:: You can! You can say this, My ass has offically been kicked! (laughs) Marcus:: Awesome! (laughs) Ok I have about 9 questions for you... Kevin:: Ok, Fire away! Marcus:: First of all I want to say you were my favorite on the show... Kevin:: Awww geee...that's nice of you to say.. Marcus:: (chuckles) but before we begin, lets get to meet the man behind "Tom Servo" [Kevin_Murphy8.jpg] Kevin:: Alright the man under the puppet...well first of all, I am not generally as loud as Tom, that's one thing. I am taller then Tom, I'm not quite as red. I am red! I'm an Irishman so I have a "reddy" complection that helps. I have more facial hair then Tom ever did...and I have more opinions...I think. Ya know the nice thing about Tom was that he was this nice, kind of goofy guy! The things we shared in common were that we were both very self conscience and occasionally break into song for no reason so I share those qualities with him. I tend to be shy because I hate people...in general. I really just don't like those guys very much. So I don't let people get to know me very well very often so it has always been a challenge for me to be out in the world...because the world is full of people! And when you don't like people very much...it's tends to be hard to even get your mail! I think I am pretty normal...I decided a long time ago after being in Hollywood because I don't even know if you can call them people out there. I decided to stay in the mid-west where it is a little bit safer and I felt like I didn't have to have my soul on the line every time I walked into a meeting! Marcus:: (laughs) Kevin:: So that describes me in a nutshell...I'm a very happily married fellow and own a dog and I live in the suburbs. Marcus:: Oh wow, so what got you into acting? Kevin:: I was a ham! It got me in trouble when I was in catholic grade school and I had a very smart priest in high school direct me over to the theatre where I could act out all of my bizarrness and actually get people to hopefully applaud for it so I credit that. I always like being a clown and I liked being a clown on stage and I gravitated towards that. I actually didn't set out to be an actor, I actually set out to write and direct TV and films. The acting thing came along the way I would always do little things like community theatre and college theatre but I had no aspirations to be an actor. I was always self conscience about my appearance and my voice, didn't really want it but when the oppurtunity arose to be a "puppeteer" now that's different!!! Because they don't see your face and a puppet can get away with a lot of things that a human can't so I jumped at the oppurtunity to do puppetteering. Marcus:: Interesting. So what was your experience like on Mystery Science Theatre 3000? What was it like being forced to watch the worst movies of all time? [Kevin_Murphy3.jpg] Kevin:: (Laughs) I would like to say it was really hard...but...it really wasn't. It was the dream job to have to be able to come in and sit in a room with a bunch of talented people and try to make each other laugh everyday and get paid well for it! You can't ask for a better job then that. And to be able to make fun of the popular culture and have a national stage to do it on...to shake up conventions of television and show something you couldn't see anywhere else. I pride myself on the fact that we created and maintained something truly unique on television. There was a fellow who I respect very much, who said to us as the show was coming to an end..."Think about it...you added to the vocabulary of popular culture." Wow that's a heavy rap to lay on someone! But it's very flattering and it makes me proud of everyone who was involved that people would think such a thing. Marcus:: Wow, so who ended up chosing all of the movies? [Kevin_Murphy9.jpg] Kevin:: It was various ones of us for a long time it was Frank Kauniff would be in charge of going over the screeners for he had the patients for it and believe me, he had the patients for it! Mary Jo Peal took over after Frank and I really appreciate thier patients for they did the initial sorting through and then they would present a bunch of films to us that they thought we would want to watch but for every one film we put on the show...there were about 20 that we turned down. So you can imagine how bad those 19 films were. Yeah...they were preeetttty awful. The one that springs to mind all the time is "Demon Rugsuckers from Mars" The only thing I remember about it was this big fat slobbering white guy, laying on the ground and making graphic love to a vacuum cleaner! Marcus:: What!?!? Kevin:: Yeah it was pretty awful, you're going to have to look that one up! Marcus:: Dear God!!! Kevin:: You probably won't be able to find it anywhere and I am telling people about this movie because I want them to avoid it actually. This film is SO bad you should definetly avoid it at all costs. Marcus:: Just the sound of it...damn! Kevin:: Yeah, so it was a tough job doing that. That was the most drudgery we had was looking through these films, they would start out with some promise and then they would be riddled with all this violence and gore and bloodshed ya know there is a place for that but it wasn't really on our show. We didn't do a lot of movies with a lot of gore and bloodshed unless it was really comical. The horror films were sort of left to the horror crowd and we tried to things that were a little broader then that...if that makes any sense. Marcus:: Yeah it does. So how much of the dialogue on the show was actually scripted and how much of it was improvised? Kevin:: I got to say that better then 95% of it was very carefully scripted like I said we [Kevin_Murphy7.jpg] had some very talented writers on our staff and we would spend days getting the script just right. Assigning the jokes to a time code on the movie screen of which we would watch when we went in to the studio to film the movie segments. We didn't do a whole bunch of adlib because we trusted the writers so much and believe me when you have the power of 6 very intelligent people behind you your jokes are going to come out better then if they are just yourself. Most of the time they are going to be better...there was a little adlibbing generally when you heard one of the characters laughing during the movie that was because we were generally tickled by some joke or another. But there was very little improvisation and it's a complement when people come up and say that the whole thing seemed like it was adlibbed. I will speak for myself...I could never be that smart or funny to come up with that many jokes! Marcus:: So where are all of those puppets now? Kevin:: Puppets are locked up in a secure storage facility and I can't tell you where it is. All I will say is that it was Saddam's favorite bunkers and that is all I will say! Marcus:: (laughs) [Kevin_Murphy5.jpg] Kevin:: (laughs) so they are locked away and secure. I haven't seen my puppet in a very long time and that is fine by me because I always had a very hard fast rule in the show early on and that was to never bring the puppet home...because you don't want to end up like Anthony Hopkins did in "Magic" the one where his ventrilliquiest doll starts talking to him and telling him to kill people. I didn't want Tom to start looking at me in the middle of the night and start telling me to kill people because I would have! It's a good thing I didn't bring the puppet home! Marcus:: (Laughs) Pretty much! Are there any plans for the show to come back? [Kevin_Murphy6.jpg] Kevin:: There are no specific concrete plans for the show to come back. I think it would take some interesting alignment of the stars to make it happen because we, the stars, are all out doing other things with our careers and all over the map as a matter of fact. It's a challenge for the network to pick up the show because of the problems with the movies. We have to get the rights to the movie and they have to pay extra for that and there is always some legal negotiations for that and it takes a lot of work in order to be able to do that. I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility but there are actually no plans for it. Marcus:: What are your favorite movies? Kevin:: That we did on the show or in general? Marcus:: Both [Kevin_Murphy4.jpg] Kevin:: Oh Geez! Well the one that keeps leaping to mind is one called "Space Mutiny" It was bright and colorful which is a good thing, it was so pathetic of a story that it was so delightful to fun of and we just laughed all the way through it. These people borrowed the sets from the original "Battlestar Galactica" show They wore the same kind of flowing moo-moo's that Lauren Green had worn on the show and it's all supposed to take place on the spaceship which is so obviously a factory somewhere in Austrailia I think. The biggest top action scene is this chase where these golf carts were designed to look like high-tech hover crafts or something and you can just tell they are golf carts. So the hero and the bad guy are just chasing each other around this factory shooting each other from these golf carts. It was just so delightful! Marcus:: Ok, out of all the movies you have seen, what was the single worst movie of all time! Kevin:: Ya know, it changes all the time! I will tell you what the worst one I think I saw last year....the one that made me feel great disgust was "Sky Captain and the World Of Tomorrow" Marcus:: Oh my god! I hated that movie!!! Kevin:: There was a lot to hate in that movie! It was so cold and dreary, and so stiff! The whole reason I was told to go see it was because I would be blown over by the technology and frankly I wasn't blown over by the technology! Marcus:: Same here! It looked like an old, vintage, Coca-Cola commercial! Kevin:: Yeah and I have seen better comic book art and I have seen better animated art. The story was so dull and uninteresting and the characters were just...it was like the director said "Be as stiff and lifeless as you can, don't add any emotion! Don't act! Don't act! Just read your lines and be stiff! So the guy was a worse director then George Lucas when it came to actors and that is pretty bad! So that is the one that stuck in my mind. I have a hard time saying what the worst movie is because it changes all the time. We will see...there will be a new bad one out that I can really despise. Marcus:: (Laughs) I read that in 2001 you saw a movie every single day... Kevin:: Thats right! And I wrote a book! I live to tell the tale! I went to a theatre and [Kevin_Murphy10.jpg] saw a movie the entire year and the book is called "A Year At The Movies" and boy did I have fun making that book; that was great fun! Marcus:: Where is it available to buy? Kevin:: Harper Column has it, it is available in bookstores on amazon and all of your favorite book outlets so ask for it by name. It is actually in a lot of libraries now I was glad to see. I chuckle at the fact I have a book that is in libraries all over the country, it's really great fun! I have a lot of adventures though, I snuck into the Cannes Film Festival, I went to the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Finland. I watched movies all night. On Thanksgiving I snuck an entire turkey dinner into the theatre because I am a big believer in smuggling your own food into the movies. It's always better, it's always cheaper and it always has that extra added flavor of defiance! Marcus:: (Laughs) Are you planning on writing any other books or... Kevin:: I'd love to! There are a couple of things I have in mind; I had so much fun combining travel and movies together but I am trying to cook up something along those lines. I have a couple of other things in the works but they are super top secret right now so I can't tell you. But I so loved writing and traveling that I am going to find a way to combine the two again in the near future. In the meantime I am working with a couple of my old coherts, Bill Corbin and Mike Nelson and we call ourselves the "Film Crew" and we are working on a deal with Rhino where we'll add commentary tracks to some DVD's of there select, B-grade films. My point is that most commentary tracks on DVD's are dull and uninteresting unless you are like a real genre fan. So this is a chance for us to make a commentary track that is funny and entertaining without it all being informative if that makes any sense! Marcus:: Yeah it does! ::chuckles:: Are you guys going to be in the characters from MST3000 or... Kevin:: Just us...Just us. This thing, the "Film Crew" I believe we want to become the friend of the movie fan and that would be the whole point of what we are doing. Later in the year we are hoping to do commentary for national public radio, Weekend Edition Sunday, and it is sorta humor from the point of view of movie fans and that is really what we are trying to do here. So keep your eye out for "Film Crew" products coming this year! Marcus:: Awesome! I shall! Thanks again! It was great talking to you! Kevin:: Thanks! You too! OH! I keep forgetting to tell people that Volume 7 is coming to DVD on April 19th from Rhino home Video. I will look for the interview when it's up! Marcus:: Alright! Awesome. Bye Kevin! Kevin:: Bye Marcus. There you have it folks, the hilarous man behind the hilarious puppet has spoken and if you want to get more of Tom Servo, Crow, and Mike Nelson be sure to pick up Volume 7 on DVD when it hits shelves on April 19th. I want to thank Kevin Murphy for doing the interview, and also the great people over at Rhino Home Video! Be sure to check out the other 6 volumes and also keep your eye out for FILM CREW products! Marcus out! Back to Interviews Back to Main Page