Associated Content's Exclusive Interview with Michael J. Nelson

A Talk with the Former Host of Mystery Science Theater 3000

It takes a special kind of talent to make a career out of riffing on bad movies, a certain snarkiness that's not inherent to most of mankind.

Michael J. Nelson has that certain Midas touch of heckling, a sense of humor that he displayed for five seasons as the head writer and main character of the cult hit TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000 (also known as MST3K). Every episode, Mike and his robots would watch classically terrible films like The Sinister Urge and Space Mutiny, making comments easily more entertaining than the movie at hand.

Since the end of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Mike has written several books and, with Legend Films, developed RiffTrax, an online service that sells commentary mp3s to users that can be played along with owned or rented DVDs for popular films like 300, Spiderman, and the Star Wars prequels--as well as less-than-popular films like Mariah Carey's Glitter and the cult classic Missile To The Moon. Mike's regularly joined by guests like MST3K co-stars Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy (who voiced the robots Crow and Tom Servo), Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother), and Fred Willard (Best in Show).

I spoke with Mike about RiffTrax, dealing with celebrity guests, and the somewhat straining process of coming up with jokes for full-length movies.

Associated Content: Thanks for speaking with me, Mike.

Michael J. Nelson: My pleasure.

AC: Most of our readers are familiar with your work on Mystery Science Theater 3000. You're now riffing on movies again on RiffTrax.com. Why didn't you go with the more established Mystery Science name?

MN: Well, for one thing, I don't own it--the Mystery Science name is owned by someone else. And it's really different [from Mystery Science Theater]--the main thing with RiffTrax is getting around the copyrights on the movies, and we had to do that by having people supply their own DVDs. It's a different animal, obviously no puppets and no sketches. (laughs)