Kevin Murphy, �A Year at the Movies � One Man�s Filmgoing Odyssey�
I don�t think it�ll surprise anybody on this site that I am a huge, unabashed fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you walk into my living room, you�ll see the working Crow T. Robot puppet that I built with my bare hands. Peek into my room and you�ll see the framed poster of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the Movie hanging on my wall.
While you�re peeking, if you look to your right left see an entire bookcase that holds nearly every episode of MST3k, including some of the episodes before they were ever picked up by a cable network. (And it�s these tapes that involves one of the only times you�ll see me praising the Internet, as that was what I utilized to get these tapes � I think I have about 40 to go to complete the collection.)
The show was in its third season when I had a house with cable � this was a house full of people who had just turned 21, mind you � and yet we would wake each other up at some ungodly hour on Sunday morning just to gather around the television, nursing hangovers and watching MST.
It is a rare night indeed that I don�t put on a tape of the show before I go to sleep and in fact, I can see my copy of Season Five, show number 505 � The Magic Voyage of Sinbad in my VCR. It�s not often that I make it through an entire episode lately, as I�ve been going to bed around five in the morning � in fact, as I type this, it�s 5:30 in the morning � but before I drift off to sleep I still manage to get a few laughs.
I bring all this up because for those dumb enough to not know, the author of this book played Tom Servo on the show for almost its entirety, missing only one season on cable, and the first year when it was on the Minnesota UHF channel.
As I said, I have a home-built Crow in my bedroom. (The parts for Servo are harder to find and/or fake. But I�m working on it.) I like the character of Crow a lot � especially the sarcasm and near mean-spiritedness he could convey, as much mean-spiritedness that you could get out of a puppet, anyway.
But Tom Servo/Kevin Murphy always had the lines I would think about later. Servo also would use more in-joke references that you might not understand immediately. A reference to Jung? You could bet it came from the robot on the right. The Clash? Servo. And anybody who makes countless tips of the hat to Tom Waits is automatically my best friend (and as I typed that sentence, my 300 CD shuffler just started playing �The Piano Has Been Drinking.� How great is that?)
As I grow older, I�m constantly tickled to discover a new reference that I didn�t get before � and that actually happened earlier today, believe it (say this in a deep, breathy voice like Jack Palance) or not.
So, with such unadulterated praise, I�m going to automatically like this book right? Well, no. I�m not going to watch Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves just because Joel did some of the rewrites, and as much as I love TV�s Frank and Clayton Forrester, I can�t bring myself to watch TV�s Funniest Home Video�s, even though they both share writing credits.
I would, however, read a book by any of these guys, and I already have read one by Michael J. Nelson. So yeah, when this came into the store, I squealed like a little girl, snatched it up for myself and started on it almost immediately.
Last year I started this project to read as many books as I could in one year. Two years ago, Murphy decided he was going to watch a movie every day for an entire year. After reading Kerouac�s Vision of Cody, I would be prepared to say he got the much better gig. But then again, Murphy watched Rob Schinder�s The Animal.
Twice.
But he didn�t just run down to the mall � oh no, he visited the world smallest movie theater in New South Wales. He went to a theater made entirely of ice. He practiced the art of sneaking into the movies for a week straight, topping it later by sneaking in an entire thanksgiving dinner for a screening of Monsters, Inc.
The style he writes in is not unlike this journal. If he feels like writing about the movie, he will. If something more interesting happens, he�ll talk about that instead. And here�s where the unadulterated praise begins.
This book reaffirmed why I love reading. Murphy�s prose and voice are so engaging that I�ve been annoyed that it took me so long to finish � the only reason it took me so long being that I was constantly interrupted by life. I was annoyed that I had to put the book down to go to work, and I like going to work. I was irritated that I had agreed to meet people at the local watering hole and thus couldn�t read. I was even annoyed that my body was too tired to continue reading one night. Finally, I got home from work tonight and started reading at 10 p.m., not putting it down until I finished at 3:30 in the morning.
I laughed out loud, long and hard, more times than I can remember. I wanted to visit places that he wrote about. And most surprising of all, when he wrote about September 11th, I wept. This is coming from a person who can be incredibly callous; this is from a guy who made bets on how many people died when the twin towers fell.
And not only won, but made damn sure to collect.
I should mention that this was at 1:30 in the morning, and I was just finishing my second pint glass of Early Times and coke. Still, this is a humor book and no book has done that to me since Sweet Thursday, which I also read at 1:30 in the morning and had just finished my second whiskey and coke.
This is fantastic stuff, the best thing that I�ve read all year. Of course it�s also the first thing I�ve read all year, but I think this raised the bar for all that�s left to come to a near unachievable high level.
This book is so good in fact, since I got it from a used store, I feel bad that Murphy isn�t getting any money from this. So Kevin, if you read this, let me know an estimate of what your royalties are for a single book, and I�ll send you the money. It�s that good.
Oh, and one more MST reference if I may. A long time ago, I was verrrry interested in a girl who had shown up to our old apartment a few times. Finally, she came again, and I sung her the �Creepy Girl Ballad� shown in Catalina Capers in an attempt to woo her.
She never came back.
