Q (Forrest):  First, I want to thank you for your time.  We really appreciate it.  Let’s start out with this: Which movie on MST3K was the most painful to write for you?  How much pain did it cause?

A:  Where to start?  So much pain.

Actually, any complaints about painful movies have to be put in context, because the truth is that it was a great job.  We had a lot of fun, and I always felt very lucky to be working on the show.  So grumbling about anything seems petty.

Now on to the pettiness:

There were a few general types of movies that I found painful.  One was the kind where we just weren’t given a lot to latch onto, in terms of fun stuff – visually dull, or repetitive.  One I remember like that was THE SCREAMING SKULL.  Oy, so much footage of that extremely worried lady, walking around the house at night!  Or FUTURE WAR, with all those silly people running from silly fake dinosaurs.  Oh, and SQUIRM – too many shots of worms, which is never good, really.

And then there were the movies that might have been all right for MSTing purposes, but which just rubbed me the wrong way, and for any number of reasons just made me feel icky about life after repeated viewings – like HOBGOBLINS, THE TOUCH OF SATAN, THE DEADLY BEES, or INVASION OF THE NEPTUNE MEN (shudder).

And finally, there were a lot of movies which were so badly filmed, just in technical terms, that they tended to hurt your head.  Like THE BLOOD WATERS OF DOCTOR Z, and (deep breath, then:) THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED–UP ZOMBIES.

Every now and then we’d have a movie that caused pain on all three levels, which caused a despair erasable only by a combination of Advil, Guinness, and prayer.

Q (Forrest):  Which was your favorite to write?

A:  I had an inexplicable fondness for those wacky Russian–Finnish movies, even before I worked on the show.  So I got a big kick out of JACK FROST.  It was just so satisfyingly weird.

I also remember enjoying SPACE MUTINY, RIDING WITH DEATH, WEREWOLF, THE FINAL SACRIFICE, PUMA MAN, and SOULTAKER.  And THE MOLE PEOPLE, too, even though I was very new to the show and so a wee bit nervous.  Honestly though, if you asked me at any other time, I might come up with a few different ones.  But never NEPTUNE MEN, never.  Never, I say!

Q (Forrest):  If I recall correctly, you actually participated in writing a few episodes in the Comedy Central run of the show.  How did you get the job at Best Brains?  Who found out about your talent?

A:  I just started showing up at Best Brains one day, and everyone was too darn polite to ask what the hell I was doing there.

Actually, I knew some of the guys on the show a bit from the comedy and theater scene around the Twin Cities.  Mostly Mary Jo, Mike, and Bridget.  I knew them before I really knew about the show – I was just vaguely aware that these guys had some cool job somewhere, where people pointed cameras at them and stuff.  I was definitely slow finding out about MST3K, since I was the last person on the planet to get cable TV.

But when I saw the show I loved it right away.  So smart, such sublime weirdness.  A whole different sensibility, great playfulness, and many individual references I’d never seen or heard anywhere near the tube before.

I don’t remember exactly how I let Mike know that I was interested in writing with them, but I did, and that’s how I first got involved.  I think I sent him some stuff.  (Writing samples, that is, not chocolates and nylons.)  He may have seen some of my plays around town, too – I had a few comedies produced in Minneapolis around that time.  Then at some point they asked me to sit in for a few shows, to see if I could blurt with the masters.  That’s how they kind of auditioned writers when they had a need for them, which was pretty rare.  In fact, if I’m remembering this right, I think they needed a little extra help when I first sat in with them mostly because they were working on the MST3K movie around the same time.  Technically, I guess I was hired twice for the show – one short period at the end of Season Six, during Frank’s last shows, and then again at the beginning of Season Eight, at the start of the Sci–Fi years.

Who found out about my talent?  I don’t think anyone ever found it.  If they do, I hope they’ll let me know.

Q (Forrest):  Personally I love your take on Crow, and I couldn’t wish for a better “Different Crow.”  You truly did an outstanding job.  How did you end up getting the part?  Who else, if anyone, tried out for the part?

A:  You’re too kind.

Actually, when it became clear that Trace was moving on, I think they had to decide whether to replace Crow with a new character – not a pleasant prospect – or to find some new clown to play Crow now.  So they chose what was probably the lesser of two evils.

I auditioned for the part, complete with spazzy puppetry, and my voice totally out of sync with Crow’s mouth movement…The effect was like a live version of a badly dubbed Japanese film.  I thought there was no way they would ask me to do it after that.  But since I had already been hired as a writer for Season Eight and was hanging around the office anyway, and didn’t seem to be stealing stuff, they probably figured, what the hey, give that slacker a puppet. 

Who else tried out for the part?  Rumor has it one Mr. Johnny Depp went home in tears.  (He probably shouldn’t have done Crow as a drunken Cockney pirate.)

Q (Forrest):  One thing I love about your Crow is that you made his personality entirely different from Trace Beaulieu’s Crow, and yet, he was still the Crow we know and love.  Did it take you long to come up with how you were going to pull off Crow’s new personality?  Were you worried fans wouldn’t accept the new Crow?

A:  Again, you’re too kind.  Please stop, I’m hyperventilating.

Losing Trace on the show was obviously very tough for the show at that point.  He was part of the Mount Rushmore of MST3K…And speaking as a fan, I thought his performances as Crow and Dr. F were big reasons why the show was so great.

But I think it’s possible Crow kept working in a basic way, even despite the big loss of Trace, because Best Brains had such great writers.  If a character keeps saying funny, quirky lines, and is put in well-written sketches – and the human-type voicing the character manages to do it with even a slight modicum of comic timing – then that’s a pretty big part of the deal right there.  Not to minimize what we did as performers, but I do think the writing was ultimately what made the show work so well.  That and the very cool original concept for the show, including the tone set in the early days.

At first I think I tried to imitate Trace’s voice a little too much.  It wasn’t pretty.  But my colleagues were great in letting me off the hook about that – they encouraged me to find my own way into Crow, and put more of myself into it, for better or worse.  Honestly, I really didn’t make all that conscious a choice as to how it would be different than Trace’s, or not.  I was too preoccupied trying to not to wreck the show.

I did wonder if some die-hard fans might not accept the new voice, and I’m sure some people never took to it.  But I didn’t lose much sleep over it.  I knew I wasn’t trying to foist anything evil on the world, just trying to help the puppet show keep going.  And as I said, not wreck it. If I wrecked it, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to.

Q (Forrest):  Also, I noticed that in the first one or two episodes of Season Eight, that your puppeteering skills were actually pretty good, but a bit rusty, and then – boom! – suddenly within only the first few episodes of Season Eight, your puppeteering skills for Crow were perfect.  Exactly how hard is it to work Crow?  How much practice did it take?

A:  Yeah, those first few episodes made me cringe a bit when I saw them not too long ago.  I was totally green, and it shows.  You’re very nice to say that the puppetry was perfect after a few episodes, but I think it evolved quite a bit more gradually, and took a while to get to the point where I could be considered even close to Trace’s level.  Because he was very deft with it, and made it look simpler than it really is.

I hadn’t worked a puppet before (that sounds filthy, doesn’t it?).  So I didn’t have much basis for comparison.  But it was a pretty steep learning curve…Crow is kinda top–heavy, a bit awkward.  And if he wasn’t leaning against the SOL desk, he was a bit tough to balance (Trace was great at that, actually).  Plus I was always watching a monitor below the bridge, and so I saw a mirror image of the movements I was making – left for right, right for left.  It took me a few episodes to adjust to that.  And as anyone who ever purchased an MST Poopie tape knows, Crow’s eyes were always popping out…A tad disconcerting.

Despite all this whining, I have to say that once I got the hang of Crow, it was a lot of fun to operate him.  He could be surprisingly expressive with some simple eye movements.

Ultimately, of course, his reality overtook mine, and I became the real puppet, and he became the master, etc.…the usual soul transfer stuff.  Happens all the time in the puppetry game.  Occupational hazard.

Q (Forrest):  Obviously, some riffs couldn’t make it into the show because it was not “TV appropriate.”  Do you recall any that you wanted to use, that were made in the writing room that couldn’t make the final cut for obvious reasons?

A:  Some I recall wanting to use, but couldn’t:

“Man, he sure learned scrimshaw in a hurry!”

“The best sweaters are often made of meat.”

“Cram it, Demosthenes!”

I’m making these up, of course.  Ha ha ha…um…ha…um.  Sorry.

Don’t really remember any jokes we cut for reasons of TV appropriateness, though I know that did happen from time to time.  Mostly we shot down stuff we didn’t think was funny.  And tried to restrain ourselves if it was oh, say, the seventh fart joke of the movie.

Once we had Crow doing taped testimony on Mike’s behalf when he was on trial, and we beeped out a whole string of obscenities.  Sophisticates that we are, I remember we got a big giggle out of the unexpurgated version of that skit.  Cursing is funny!

Q (Forrest):  Were there any occasional made-up-on-the-spot riffs?

A:  Fewer than you might think.  Though we tried to make it seem as spontaneous as possible when taping the movie segments, the riffs were scripted and pretty well timed out, and we didn’t usually allow a lot of dead space in there.  In fact, sometimes we’d pile on too many quick jokes in a row, and realize later it sounded rushed or crowded – diminishing returns, y’ know.  Then our crackerjack editor Brad Keely would get to work thinning it out a bit, and sometimes we’d re-tape a little section.

That being said, we sometimes did manage to sneak in a little made-up-on-the-spot quip here and there, or did some vocal and physical noodling – humming little tunes underneath the movie action or dialogue (Kevin was the master of this) – or making the puppets jump up and down like they were possessed, etc.  Sometimes there was room for the tiniest bit of improv and messing around, but you did risk messing up a take if you didn’t time it well.

Q (Forrest):  What is your favorite episode from the Comedy Central Years?

A:  The first show I ever saw was one of the Gamera movies, so I have a soft spot in my heart for them.  Also loved MANOS, but that’s near the top of everyone’s list, isn’t it?  MITCHELL was great; ditto SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS… I think my fandom for MST3K was cemented by the song “A Patrick Swayze Christmas.”  I also loved the shorts – The Chicken of Tomorrow, Nuveena, et al.

Q (Forrest):  Is there any specific moment from a movie shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000 that still pops in and out of your head from time to time?  If so, what and why?

A:  Oh, I’m haunted by so many of them.  Sleeping is still a problem.

The ones that stuck tended to be lines that were repeated a lot during particular movies – like the 70–lb weakling kid in FINAL SACRIFICE mewling “Rowsdower!” every three seconds, or Joe Don Baker planting his beefy carcass in front of someone and saying “Go ’head on.”  And individual weird moments like the kid in PRINCE OF SPACE saying “I like it VERY MUCH.”  Actually, I think we were pretty obvious about the moments we got obsessed with, since we wouldn’t let them go on the show itself, sometimes even at the risk of not being funny.  And many of them are moments that defy explanation – when you try to describe them afterwards, they’re rarely as funny.  You just have to be there.

I’d say anytime the behavior of a character got weird, even considering the low bar that the movie had already set for weirdness, is when we tended to obsess on those specific moments.

….I just remembered another – in SPACE MUTINY, Biff McLargeHuge does a kind of rebel yell when he’s racing around on one of those floor waxer thingies.  It’s like a kamikaze moment, when he’s about to crash his waxer into the other guy, something like that.  So he does this big dramatic yell, but instead of jumping off as he yells, he then just kind of calms down, and his face goes into repose, and then he just kind matter-of-factly takes his time and…

Even as I’m saying this, I realize you just had to be there.  Sorry.  Never mind.

Q (Forrest):  What thoughts can you share with us about the following characters: Zap Rowsdower, Krankor, and Puma Man?

A:  Zap Rowsdower: the world’s beeriest action hero.  I don’t know who decided that this poor fellow was a leading man.  He sure wasn’t the type whose looks said “Zap” to me.  “Burp,” maybe.

Krankor: I have a one-man Krankor show which will soon be touring the US.  It’s titled “Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha…Ha Ha Ha….Ha Ha…..Ha. Ha.”  Great songs, lots of dancing.  And laughter?…oh yes, laughter.

Puma Man: you just can’t have a superhero in sensible slacks.  Doesn’t work.

Q (Forrest):  What song or skit on the show was your very favorite to perform?

A:  Tough one.  I enjoyed many a skit.  Actually, I loved doing songs.  Loved writing them, too.  Two of my favorite to perform were the Canada song, which I wrote (modest, eh?), and the song “Stay” – or something to that effect – where Pearl and Bobo are imploring Brain Guy not to leave.  Mike wrote that one, and it showed what a great composer and lyricist he is – it had like a three-part harmony, and was a deft sort of Gilbert and Sullivan parody.  We probably would have done more songs, but they were a lot of work, given our schedule…and the burden of that work usually fell on Mike, who was plenty busy as it was.

Q (Forrest):  Kevin Murphy and Mike Nelson have made it clear that they are sick of stupid blockbusters like Independence Day and Hulk.  Are you as strict as them?

A:  I don’t know.  At times I’ve thought I’m a little more lowbrow than Mike and Kevin.  But I’d probably agree with them more times than not.  Most big Hollywood blockbuster movies are pretty crappy.  And a loud kind of crappy, to boot.

It’s hard to enough to make a movie (or write a book, song, play, etc.) that’s any good, and even halfway original, without the added pressure of it having to make kajillion dollars, too.  Because obvious as this may be, it needs to be remembered that Hollywood is mostly about making money, and other values almost always take a back seat to that.  That’s not to say that everyone working in the movies is greedy and craven, and has no desire to make great art or entertainment.  Many people got into the Biz out of a genuine love of movies.  But once the big money and all the giganto cross-promotional-movie-event trappings – your Burger King cups, etc. – enter the equation, it makes it all the harder to do anything good.  Which, like I said, isn’t easy even in the best of circumstances.

Sometimes good stuff gets made in spite of all the commercial exigencies and obstacles, and sometimes all the artistic integrity in the world still produces junk.  There’s no one true path.  But the chances of a Hollywood blockbuster being much good is pretty slim.

I do like some blockbusters – I LOVED the LORD OF THE RINGS movies, and I’m looking forward to the last of the trilogy like the geekiest of uber–geeks.  I also liked the first MATRIX a lot (the second one left me a bit cold).  But your average buster of blocks?  Yikes!  Terrible stuff, no doubt about it.

Q (Forrest):  What was the worst movie you’ve seen outside of Mystery Science Theater 3000 within recent memory (it can be any movie)?

A:  I’m writing this having seen SCHOOL OF ROCK just last night, and it’s still echoing in my head.  Make it stop!

Yeah, speaking of the ways of Hollywood, and the blockbuster mentality, and all that …There’s a movie that was praised up and down by critics, and for the life of me, I don’t get it.  I appreciate that Jack Black has talent, but unless you’ve lived your entire life wanting to crawl inside Jack Black’s skin, that movie relies far too heavily on his real-but-limited charms.  The rest was so formulaic.  I don’t think I laughed once, and that’s just not good in a comedy.  It was very surprising to me to find out that it was directed by Richard Linklater, a pretty creative director.

It also seemed telling that the movie also totally squandered two extremely funny actresses: Joan Cusack and Sarah Silverman.  There’s something royally screwed up about the fact that they weren’t given anything funny to work with – that instead, the camera had to keep rushing back to Jack Black’s every raised eyebrow (and there were many!).  The “rock school” thing was a good idea for a fun commercial movie – which I’m not opposed to in any way, in principle!  Hell no! –– but in my opinion it seemed to take it for granted that just presenting that idea was enough…that you didn’t actually have to then do it well, or make it genuinely funny.  And that there is part and parcel of your Hollywood mentality, unfortunately.

Pardon the soapbox – and sorry to rant on about SCHOOL OF ROCK, which certainly wasn’t the worst movie ever.  But it seemed emblematic of what can be so bad about big Hollywood movies...They put a ton of energy into packaging and promoting and hyping the movie, and not nearly enough into the work of making it actually good, funny, original.  And in the end, that’s the harder part.  By a long shot.

Q (Forrest):  If you could make one more episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, what movie would you choose?  (Personally, I’d like to see you guys rip JURASSIC PARK 3 to shreds.)

A:  Yeah, bring on any of those big Spielbergian dino-movies.  After doing those Summer Blockbuster and Oscar specials, we wanted to take on a big, current Hollywood movie.  I think we were all dying to do TITANIC after we got to do a few excerpts that time…Especially after my favorite line from that, which we gave the noble-looking captain as he stood on deck at the beginning, looking out over the beautiful Atlantic horizon: “I’m gonna sink this bitch.”  (Crude, yes, but so perfect for that moment.)

Q (Forrest):  Was there any specific reason you chose DANGER: DIABOLIK for the last episode?  What other movies almost made the last episode?

A:  There was no real reason I remember why DIABOLIK was the last episode, except that it seemed like the best of the screeners we had available at the time.  I don’t recall if we tried to find a movie that was meaningful in terms of it being the last show – don’t think so.  I don’t even really know what that might be – THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, maybe?  Actually, it never seemed to me like we had a great luxurious backlog of movies to choose from for the show.  How else do you think we wound up with dookie movies like SQUIRM?

Q (Forrest):  Are there any odd or amusing experiences that you had with fans of the show that you’d be willing to share?

A:  Nothing too outrageous.  The fans I’ve met have been unfailingly polite and nice.  I will admit that the dedication of fans took me by surprise at times, especially since our day-to-day work on the show, while lots of fun, was pretty low key.  And even days we filmed – when the crew came, and things were in high gear –– were still very modest.  So it didn’t really compute that people around the country were following what we did so closely.

I remember it took me aback when I did a part in a small play in Los Angeles a few years ago, just filling in as a favor for a friend, and then afterwards met a few guys who’d driven many, many hours from northern California to see me in it, just because of MST3K.  I felt guilty, like I should write them a check for gas, or something.  Also, a pair of very thoughtful sisters knitted me an amazingly long and gorgeous scarf one Christmas when we were still doing the show – I couldn’t believe the work they must have put it.  It was big enough to kept a mastodon warm.  Surely I was not worthy of all that toil.

The only unpleasant side of that was that once when I had to change my phone number shortly after being cast as Crow.  Some guy I didn’t know kept calling me, insisting that we talk about it, and kept getting more and more ornery when I didn’t call back.  Those puppetstalkers, they’re out there, you know.

Q (Forrest):  Finally, who would win in a fight: Space Chief (From Invasion of the Neptune Men) or Prince of Space (From Prince of Space)?

A:  My guess is they’d spend a few minutes trading weak insults with each other, then both just start crying and go home.

Back to An Interview with Bill Corbett Intro