MST3K’s Kevin Murphy Talks Tom Servo
Summary: <a href="http://tee.pub/lic/TQbz2HiYn9U"></a><br> MST3k’s” Kevin Murphy talks about the history of “Tom Servo,” the show, RiffTrax and why “Manos” is his favorite/least favorite movie ever. Ever.<br> From Wiki- Kevin Wagner Murphy (born November 3, 1956) is an American actor and writer best known as the voice and <a title="Puppeteer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppeteer">puppeteer</a> of <a title="Tom Servo" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Servo">Tom Servo</a> on the <a title="Peabody Award" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peabody_Award">Peabody Award</a>-winning comedy series <a title="Mystery Science Theater 3000" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000">Mystery Science Theater 3000</a>. Murphy also records audio commentary tracks with <a title="Michael J. Nelson" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._Nelson">Michael J. Nelson</a> and <a title="Bill Corbett" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Corbett">Bill Corbett</a> for Nelson’s <a title="RiffTrax" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiffTrax">RiffTrax</a> website.<br> For eleven years Murphy was a writer for MST3K; for nine of those years, he also voiced and operated the robot <a title="Tom Servo" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Servo">Tom Servo</a>, replacing original cast member <a title="J. Elvis Weinstein" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Elvis_Weinstein">J. Elvis Weinstein</a>. After taking over the role of Servo, an anonymous person sent him a 6-foot-long (1.8 m) banner that read “I HATE TOM SERVO’S NEW VOICE.” Flattered by the enormous amount of effort taken to heckle him, Murphy hung the banner in his office for over a year. During the final three years of the series, he additionally portrayed <a title="Professor Bobo" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Bobo">Professor Bobo</a>, an English-speaking <a title="Mountain gorilla" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_gorilla">mountain gorilla</a> in the style of <a title="Planet of the Apes (1968 film)" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Apes_(1968_film)">Planet of the Apes</a>.<br> After the end of MST3K, Murphy spent the year 2001 going to a different movie every day and wrote a book about this experience, entitled <a title="A Year at the Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Year_at_the_Movies:_One_Man%27s_Filmgoing_Odyssey">A Year at the Movies: One Man’s Filmgoing Odyssey</a>. During his year at the movies, Murphy samples theatres from small-town boxes to urban megaplexes, attempts (and rejects) a theatre-food <a title="Dieting" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieting">diet</a>, suffers a <a class="mw-redirect" title="Kidney stone" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_stone">kidney stone</a>, visits both the <a title="Sundance Film Festival" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundance_Film_Festival">Sundance</a> and <a title="Cannes Film Festival" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannes_Film_Festival">Cannes</a> film festivals, sneaks <a title="Thanksgiving dinner" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_dinner">Thanksgiving dinner</a> into a showing of <a title="Monsters, Inc." href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsters,_Inc.">Monsters, Inc.</a>, and records all of these experiences, both good and bad. His feat – viewing over four hundred films on four continents – was mentioned in <a class="mw-redirect" title="Ripley's Believe It or Not" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripley%27s_Believe_It_or_Not">Ripley’s Believe It or Not</a>.<br> Murphy holds a BA in journalism from the <a title="University of Utah" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Utah">University of Utah</a> and an MA in directing for the stage and screen, from the <a title="University of Wisconsin–Madison" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Wisconsin%E2%80%93Madison">...</a>
