Not since I interviewed Pete Seeger have I been this excited to hear an iconic voice booming from my speakerphone. And while Kevin Murphy didn't popularize the song that would power the Civil Rights Movement through its darkest days, he did lend his lyric baritone to a lovely ditty about a mutant flying turtle. So let's call it even. Having chatted with MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 founders Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu and Jim Mallon at Comic Con '08, the next order of business was to sit down with the great Kevin Murphy, who succeeded J. Elvis Weinstein as the voice of Tom Servo prior to Season Two, and, over nine seasons, made the character his own. Always bubbling over with bonhomie and good humor, Servo was the perfect foil to Crow's acerbic wit and Joel's/Mike's aloof, but lovingly paternal demeanor*. And as the show continued to go through lineup changes, Murphy was the constant, steadying influence that kept you coming back. Lately, Murphy has been up to his old movie-villifying tricks with Mike J. Nelson and Bill Corbett at RiffTrax, where you can download the definitive shredding of TWILIGHT, and, very soon, NEW MOON. But when I spoke to him a month ago, the primary topic of conversation was Shout! Factory's sixteenth MST3K collection, which includes THE CORPSE VANISHES/COMMANDER CODY, NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST, WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD and the virulently racist holiday classic, SANTA CLAUS ('59). Also included in this set: filmmaker interviews, vintage "Turkey Day" bumpers (a huge deal for MST3K buffs), and a Tom Servo figurine (which is currently hanging out on my desk shelf keeping bobble-head Harvey Pekar company). Here's Mr. Murphy!

Mr. Beaks: This is a very Tom Servo-centric collection.

Kevin Murphy: It seems sort of Servo-nic, doesn't it?

Beaks: Do you feel that these five films represent your best work - or, I'm sorry, three? [J. Elvis Weinstein does Servo's voice on THE CORPSE VANISHES and COMMANDER CODY.]

Murphy: What do we got? NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST, SANTA CLAUS and WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD?

Beaks: WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD is a personal favorite of mine, but SANTA CLAUS...

Murphy: (Laughs) Well, in SANTA CLAUS, I did get to dress up as Santa Claus and actually grab Satan, pull him over my head, and spin him like a wrestler. That alone was very gratifying for me. And WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD was really quite fun. They took a great science-fiction/action sort of theme and completely miscast it with all the wrong people in all the wrong roles. And we got to make fun of Yes. Whenever I get to sing and make fun of the band Yes at the same time, you can't beat that.

Beaks: That's kind of a recurring theme on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER: making fun of prog rock bands.

Murphy: You know what it is, don't you? We all felt really guilty for liking the prog rock bands when they were popular. I mean, I saw Emerson, Lake and Palmer in concert. And I saw Yes in concert. But I never saw Rush - which I kind of regret because it turns out I like them more than any of the others.

Beaks: They have aged the best of those groups.

Murphy: That's for sure. They didn't become doughy Englishmen living in manor houses. They're actually working on the road. And it's the same guys, which is kind of cool.

Beaks: In sharing your guilt, Keith Emerson recently appeared at the New Beverly for a screening of [Dario Argento's INFERNO], and I was oddly heartbroken I couldn't make it that night. Then I had an epiphany where I realized, "You know, if I were back in college, I'd have to kick my own ass for feeling this way."

Murphy: That's right. They lost me when Keith issued his Piano Concerto No. 1. That's when I thought, "These clowns have gotten too damn precious for their own good!"

Beaks: So you stuck it out through TARKUS?

Murphy: Oh, I loved TARKUS! Absolutely! And BRAIN SALAD SURGERY. I stuck around for a while. But when they started spinning around in the air in concert and doing piano concertos, I knew it was all over.

Beaks: Would it be fair to say that you were the top cinephile of the MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER gang?

Murphy: (Laughs) Well, I got to write a book, which was cool. I think I at least look like a cinephile, so I'm a very good poser. But Frank [Conniff] is quite the cinephile as well. He's got an amazing memory for films. We all have different tastes, so we all sort of geek out on our own genres or types or styles, or over our own directors. I think I've probably been exposed to more; if anything, I put myself up as a staunch defender of the audience when it comes to actually going to a theater and seeing a movie. I'll take that. But "cinephile"? I'm just as willing to slum around in the shit as anyone else, so I don't know if that really applies to me. Roger Ebert is a "cinephile".

Beaks: Yes. But he does love the disreputable stuff. And he did write one of the great films of the 1970s.

Murphy: BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS!

Beaks: And I say that without a hint of sarcasm. I truly love that film.

Murphy: Yes, indeed.

Beaks: Did you ever think about going after foreign films more? I mean, you did go after foreign-produced films, but they were of genres that appealed to the MST3K audience. I just wonder if you ever thought about going after some very serious, very ponderous foreign film, like some overwrought Bergman knock-off.

Murphy: You know, we thought about it. And it would've been fun if we thought anybody would've watched it. That would've been the whole problem: getting people to actually watch, like, PERSONA. THE SEVENTH SEAL would've been the obvious choice - and we actually made fun of it on several occasions in our live-action sketches. But we saw what the ratings were when we did the German television version of HAMLET with Maximilian Schell. That was very serious, and it was done in that German post-expressionistic style; it was very stark, and it fit very well. But no one watched the damn thing. (Laughs) That told us that our audience - while being what I call a "B-plus"-style audience - got their B-pluses in the wrong subjects.

Beaks: (Laughs) I just ask because I always thought Antonioni would've been a great fit for you guys. Taking on L'AVVENTURA or LA NOTTE would've been wonderful.

Murphy: (Laughs) I always thought that BREATHLESS, the original, would've been fun. Hell, so would the Richard Gere version of BREATHLESS.

Beaks: And that would've been deserved. [Beaks note: Having just re-watched the McBride BREATHLESS, I'd like to retract that dismissal. It's a great film.] So which episodes stand out for you? Which are you most proud of?

Murphy: You know, and not just because it's in this collection, but one I always enjoy watching is SANTA CLAUS. It's just so friggin' weird! It's Mexican, and, from the beginning, they manage to insult every single ethnicity on the planet in the name of the love of Santa Claus. And it features Satan as a prominent character! I mean, SOUTH PARK has been trying to do this for years now! But they got this done in the 1950s, so god bless 'em. And while we're on the subject of Tom Servo, the thing I always get the most fan mail about is when Servo did the United Servo Academy Men's Chorus, and sang a hymn that was essentially made up of chunks of pop song lyrics. That song in particular, from the movie STARFIGHTERS, pleases me the most about what I was able to do with the character: he was goofy and pompous and singing in eight parts. That encapsulates Tom Servo right there.

Beaks: I always enjoyed "Clown in the Sky" from POD PEOPLE the most, if only for your Anthony Newly impersonation.

Murphy: (Laughs) They only let me do it once.

Beaks: So you had to make it count.

Murphy: That's right.

Beaks: When you were writing jokes for a film like SANTA CLAUS, which is just so weird and demented, and you can't conceive of how it was ever made, how much of it was just staying out of the movie's way and letting it do your work for you?

Murphy: Just reacting is sometimes the best way of letting the movie be as funny as it's going to be. And then there are times when you have to find just the right way of expressing what everybody's thinking. If they're showing Santa Claus playing a magical organ that allows him to see children all over the world, and they show little African kids with their hair tied up and a bone through their nose? You've got to say something about that - and what you say winds up being important. I don't remember what joke we said at the time, but what we said was meant to echo and amplify what everyone was thinking. Our job was really a challenge when the film became boring - because then you really had to be funny. But when a film was as weird as SANTA CLAUS, it ends up being a challenge because - you're right - you have to add to what's going on and not just point out what's already stupid. You have to universalize that stupidity. That's what I do for a living.

Beaks: Is that on your business card?

Murphy: (Laughs) It ought to be. No, my business card says "Kevin Murphy: Human Being Since 1956." That's how I like to look at myself.

Beaks: The films that are egregiously missing from these sets thus far are the Sandy Frank titles. Is there any chance of those getting back out there?

Murphy: I haven't been involved in the business aspect of this for a long time, but my understanding is that the Sandy Frank organization got a bug up their ass about what we did to them. So they haven't been very cooperative in re-licensing the films. I don't know if Sandy Frank is still alive, but we did make enough fun of him that I could understand he would get a bug up his ass about that.

Beaks: But it brought out the best in the crew.

Murphy: Oh, it certainly did. I think he's the only producer we wrote a song for.

Beaks: That's another thing! There should be some kind of soundtrack of all the songs out there on iTunes or something.

Murphy: It would be nice. Shout Factory has been doing such a wonderful job of packaging [the movies] that I imagine the music will come back. Way back when the merchandising wing was just poor Barb Tebben fulfilling all of these orders in the back of a warehouse, we did have CDs of some of the songs. But there are so many snippets of music that came through that didn't see the light of day. I'd love to see that come out. You talk about one of the things that pleased me the most: I'd definitely say the music that I did with Mike and Bridget [Jones] and Paul [Chaplin] and Bill [Corbett]. They added a whole lot of great songs to our library.

Beaks: You did have the most wonderful singing voice of the group.

Murphy: Thank you. Let's put it this way: I had a singing voice. (Laughs) Nobody else did.

Beaks: But you certainly raised the talent level of those around you.

Murphy: It also allowed my natural hamminess to shine through.

Beaks: I think that's true for many people. So last August, I went down to the Stone Brewery in Escondito and saw that they were having live RiffTrax nights. Is that still going?

Murphy: It's not live performances at Stone. At Stone, they show one of our shows synced up with the actual RiffTrax. We show up sometimes because they invite us and give us free beer and a good parking place. We haven't done live things like that at Stone. It would be fun to do, but we've been too keyed up in prepping for doing these live theatrical things we've been doing lately. We're doing another one of those in December. People liked it so much, we're going to do another one December 16th. Go to the RiffTrax site, and you'll see that the show is going to beam into 400-odd theaters across the country.

Beaks: How do you feel about live riffing?

Murphy: Live riffing is so much fun! The first time we did PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, but this time around we're going to do a series of shorts - and, especially with things like short subjects, the film is another cast member. The movie is our Margaret Dumont, and we get to go all Marx Brothers on it. It's really fun, because the crowd gets into it, the jokes have immediate feedback, and there's a little room for improvisation. It's like the band's been in the studio for so many years, it's really nice to get out on the road. That's how it feels for me, at least. It's such a thrill to do it in front of an audience; it amplifies the fun for everybody. And we also get to reach people in small towns. If we were doing this on the road, we'd only get to go to big cities. That's been great fun. And the few times we did MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER live, that was great fun, too.

Beaks: Last year at Comic Con, I attended the twentieth anniversary panel for MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000. It was so great seeing the whole group together again. I don't want to hit on any touchy subjects, but--

Murphy: They're all assholes! Every single one of them!

Beaks: I knew it! I knew you'd dish! But, you know, fans really took the show to heart. And everyone I know who's a MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER fan is fiercely protective of it. So the thought that there are these two groups out there... on one hand, it's great for us because there's more to enjoy. But on the other hand, we can't help but ask, "Do these guys all like each other?" It's a little like The Beatles.

Murphy: But The Beatles never liked each other, so we had an advantage. When we were working together, it was great. When it came down to the work, we had great rapport and great communication. We weren't all each other's best friends, and you can see the way things have divided: Bill and Mike and I ended up staying in the Midwest, while Frank and Joel and Trace moved out to the West Coast. So of course they ended up growing a little community out there and us back here, and that's how this thing divided a little bit. Mary Jo went to Texas; I don't know what the hell her deal was. But there is still fondness and affection among the bunch of us. We don't all talk to each other. It's like extended family: they went their way, and we've gone ours. People always say, "I'd like to see the band get back together." But when the band gets back together, they say, "Oh! They're not as good as they used to be. That's not the same as I remembered it." There's always that danger of that happening, so the fact that we've gotten together in the way we have, I think it's as good as it can get for our fans.

Beaks: This way, you can avoid having your PHANTOM MENACE moment.

Murphy: (Laughs) Absolutely.

Beaks: So have you seen any movies recently that you'd like to get after with RiffTrax?

Murphy: Of course, we had the TWILIGHT movie, which is one of the most successful things we've had.

Beaks: It's spectacular.

Murphy: Well, again, we had the perfect Margaret Dumont of a movie. I think the STAR TREK movie could be nice and juicy. It's fun, but it's also kind of dumb. It'd be nice to be able to hook into that a little bit. And, of course, there's the new TWILIGHT movie coming out. I'm already drooling over it.

Beaks: I know. I've never dreaded and anticipated a film more.

Murphy: The other one that gives me a bit of a chubby? The Bruce Willis films SURROGATES. Have you seen it yet?

Beaks: I have not.

Murphy: Go see it. You're going to say immediately, "This needs to be riffed." I'm really hot for it to come out on DVD so we can sink our teeth into it.

Beaks: Maybe I'll save my maiden voyage with that film for the Rifftrax experience.

Could've done that for another hour. The MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: XVI Collection is now available on DVD. No fan of the show should go this holiday season without getting to see Santa Claus beat the stuffing out of Satan. Getting to spend some quality time with Megaweapon? Well, that's just gravy. Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks

*Yes, "lovingly paternal". For all of the silliness, there was an honest-to-god sense of family to MST3K. And this is why - more than even the Peabody Award-winning writing - it is so beloved today.