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Kevin Murphy is perhaps best known as the voice of Tom Servo, one of the witty puppet robots who ripped apart bad movies on the cult TV show Mystery Science Theatre 3000. But, after ten years of watching the worst films known to man, Murphy, a film school graduate and cinephile, found he had lost his love for movie going. So, he launched on a quest to watch a movie a day—in a theatre or public exhibition—for a year. He chronicled this adventure in his book, A Year At the Movies, a view of the film industry from an audience member's perspective. Applelinks' Bill Stiteler managed to catch Murphy to get his thoughts on—amongst other things—the Macintosh and its influence on film making.
Applelinks: What kind of systems do you use?
Kevin Murphy: When it comes to computers I swing both ways. I've worked on an Apple IIe, a Mac Plus, a Mac II, a Quadra, and iMac running OS 9. I'm in the market for a dual G4. I've not yet known the joys of OS X. Right now on my desk is a Micron Pentium III, so you can see I don't move fast, just decisively.
Applelinks: It's kind of unusual for people to switch from Mac to PC
and then back again. What are your opinions of the different OSes, and how they
affect your work?
Kevin Murphy: Well, back in the early days of Mystery Science Theater, we had a whole mess of systems. The writers liked the Mac, the producer liked the whole MS-DOS thing, God only knows why. We had an Amiga running a system called the Video Toaster. We did our music with Macs, graphics with Corel on a PC. And of course, we had all our offices networked together with PCs so we could play Doom and Quake during brakes. It was a bit depraved, but boy was it fun. For me, Macs always seem like this elegant smooth foreign car that starts on the first grind and runs like a dream. Everything works together seamlessly in this synergistic responsive work of art. Until it breaks down, then it's hell to fix. Now your PC, it's like an old Chevy, maybe a '68 Nova, not pretty but with a little smarts you can put it up on the bench, pull the engine, grind out the valves and have it back on the road in nothing flat. And you don't need some guy with a soul patch charging you 250 bucks an hour for the trouble. Turns out that knowing both systems is very handy, and in any work that requires more than a pencil, not knowing one or the other is like not knowing how to drive a stick. It's just dumb. Is that enough car analogies for you?
Applelinks: So the (in)famous "Macs vs. PC's" sketch on MST3k was born out of that?
Kevin Murphy: Yep. Trace Beaulieu and Joel Hodgson, left-handed thinkers and artists at heart, preferred the Macs. Jim Mallon, impresario and IBM brat, and the guy who ran the business end of things, preferred the PC. Mike Nelson and I swung both ways. It was inevitable that we'd make a sketch out of it for the show.
Applelinks: You said that you don't own a machine that runs OS X, but
have you had a chance to play around with it at all? Have you tried iMovie or Final Cut Pro?
Kevin Murphy: I have played with Final Cut Pro. It's brilliant, I can't wait to learn it. I'm waiting a little longer to jump on and buy, but I've found myself drooling at the Apple Store window. Final Cut and all its plug-ins do two things: they'll make professional editor's tools more innovative and flexible; and make amateur editing more affordable and accessible. Final Cut lets doofuses like me and the MST guys actually create new, experimental stuff without having to find masses of money for development. I just finished a TV series demo that was cut by a director friend on a Mac in his spare time and with minimal resources. With DV and high-def cameras coming down in price, whole movies are being made, mostly docs for now, and although the look is still miles from film, there's some excellent work out there. And since indie film makers can now get their work print outputted onto a DV disc with time code, and essentially cut on the fly—remember just a few years ago this kind of shit was only available to big-budget films—not only will it change who can make movies, but how movies are made. Of course, with such an easy accessible technology, millions of really shitty film makers will be spawned as well.
Applelinks: Do you mean in term of not knowing how to tell a good
story, or not knowing cinematography?
Kevin Murphy: I mean more than that, just fundamental technique. It isn't the tools that make the film, it's the minds. Learning how to operate a camera or an editing system ain't the same as knowing how to shoot or edit. You know how many Hummer-driving ninnies are wandering around LA county with three-thousand-dollar 24P digital video cameras "making movies" only because they can, even though they don't know how? I'll tell you, there are more
than ever. Editing is one of the most undervalued arts in the mind first-time film makers. Anticipating the edit before shooting is invaluable—it's why
storyboarding is so helpful. I suppose I shouldn't be so negative. Many of my favorite films were made on a shoestring; and remember, bad film making has no budget limit.
Applelinks: Can we teach people how to make a movie without going to
film school for years?
Kevin Murphy: Hell yes. Listen, watch, learn; think of what you're doing, think of every frame you film and what it does. Develop your talent. Be miserably bad for a while, but learn. And for God's sake, don't get hung up on snob-ass guys like me telling you that you suck. Prove us wrong. And fer dang sure, with the new tools, you don't need to go to school—you could spend that tuition money on a good camera and a G5—but please don't tell your folks I said so. Take, for example, Richard Linklater. Never went to film school. He dropped out of college, worked on an oil rig, moved to Austin, learned by doing. See, one problem with film school is that it often teaches you how to make film like other people. Richard never had that handicap, so he made films like his. He could make films that were less concerned with plot and traditional story, and instead float in and out of the minds of the characters. He's one of my favorite film makers—when he's good, he's brilliant; when he's bad he's daringly so. Of
course, now he's done School of Rock, his first completely commercial film, and it's wonderful.
Applelinks: So, what do you think the result of putting all this low-cost technology in the hands of film makers and potential film makers will be? Will we see more independent films, or will they use them as calling cards for Hollywood?
Kevin Murphy: I think it could crack the whole biz wide open. We have to redefine cinema as it is. For me, it's the public exhibition of a motion picture. I don't think actual film as a physical medium will die for a long while, but I'm not hung up on the old ways. I mean, look at Robert Rodriguez. Once Upon a Time In Mexico was a digi-movie. It's a big goofy mess but it was sure fun to look at, and he did it all on his own turf. The biggest roadblock has been the channel of distribution. Video downloads are improving, whole movies are now available, portable watching devices get more elegant. You're gonna see the old line of the movie industry behaving just like the old line of the music industry. They'll circle the wagons
and try to prevent distribution in ways that make them no money, but which new artists use to get their stuff out. I'd like to go up against that directly.
Applelinks: So what is the function of the movie theatre in all
of this? Why, in an otherwise decentralized system, do we need a place to go and see movies?
Kevin Murphy: Damn fine question. It's all about cinema. As I've said it's the public exhibition—it's meant to play to a group. Imagine going to a play with an audience of just you, or commissioning a work of art that'd hang in your living room and never be shown. Cinema's a shared experience. A century ago the Lumiere brothers came up with a dandy self-contained machine that not only was a camera, but the projector as well. You could take it anywhere, and the early film makers spread out like apostles, shooting all over the planet, showing the world to itself in a way they'd never seen it. The streets of Bombay shown in Paris, Berlin shown to Beijing, New York shown to Moscow. It was prophetic.
Okay, now we have digi cameras and portable digital projectors. Lightweight, easy to use, ready to move. We have the opportunity for a new mobile world cinema. You can put up a screen in your own basement, or back yard, or in a courtyard in Prague, a pole barn wall in Burundi, or wherever, and show your movies. Cinema has the potential of coming back around to its roots.
Take a look at FilmAid International. This organization takes rolling movie theaters around to some of the most displaced human communities on the globe, the oldest and newest refugee camps in Kosovo, Afghanistan, East Africa. They show movies to the folks in the camps, selected by the people who live there—their country's own classics, some Hollywood fare, and movies made by the camp's folk themselves with donated equipment. It may seem less important than food clothing and shelter, but by God does it bring out the life in people.
Applelinks: Yet, some artists are resistant to digital, as opposed to film. Is there a qualitative difference between the two, other than the frames per second?
Kevin Murphy: It's simple. People who don't like digital still have the whole wonderful mechanical-chemical world of film to mess around in, and it's still one about as colorful and malleable as a medium can get. Look at the
work of Guy Maddin, a wonderfully mad Canadian Film maker. He delves into film, and he's coaxing images out like we haven't seen in ages. I find it a whole different process to cut film, actually sit at a flatbed editor with pieces of film taped to the walls, snaking out of bins, the smell of it in the air, the act of looking through a semi-transparent piece of plastic and seeing an image. It's very tactile to work in. And with video so popular, and still so "video-looking," it's tempting to pick up a hand-wind 16mm Bolex and some stock. It's an elegant machine. You can buy one in good shape for about three to five hundred bucks. It's like a VW beetle; with a little patience and some experience you can fix the thing your self, and you can probably find someone to fix it for you in any good-sized city on the globe! You can shoot anywhere with it, under any conditions—no batteries required.
There's a real alchemy to working in film that's missing from digital, so you see, I understand the resistance to the digi. But, it's a new world out there, and digital film making as an aesthetic is still an infant. There's no reason why the two won't coexist for a good long time. Think of this—the vinyl LP was allegedly dead, but now look at any hip-hop act, or club DJ, or a rock or pop or reggae or even some jazz act, you'll see someone spinning vinyl. It lives. Film lives—not all the mini-DV cams in the world will change that.
Applelinks: Okay, we've talked about how new technology is benefiting the film maker, but what about the audience? In your book, you rail against the modern movie multiplex, with its emphasis on the "fast food" level of film going. Can technology, or anything, be done to improve the experience of going to the movies, or do we need to go back in some way?
Kevin Murphy: First of all, we can't just blame "Hollywood" or the multiplexes for the shit we see. Businesses only continue to market what sells, and crap sells. It's our fault, in part; we get what we deserve. This is not to excuse giant corporate-owned studios from having standards, but if people pay to see Dickie Roberts, we're gonna get more Dickie Roberts. People pay to see an excellent indie like The Station Agent, we'll get more. Again, the problem is distribution. Indies roll out slowly, remain in urban theaters and have piddling promotion budgets. You have to look for them, it takes work and effort and giving a damn. Otherwise it's The Cat in the Hat on sixteen screens. If the giant studios have a lock on the multiplexes, well, forget it.
Listen, you want to go to a chain, visit a Landmark Theater. Modern, comfortable screening rooms, terrific fare. It's an indie chain disguised as a multiplex chain. But, one of the things I love—besides their slate of the best in foreign and independent current film—is that the employees give a shit. Many of them actually know film and love it, And I mean real film. Try asking the greasy kid at the AMC 30 about The Weather Underground or the brilliant use of narrative in American Splendor; he'll look at you like a dairy cow. We vote with our bucks, folks; you want good movies, see good movies. Leave the crap for cable.
Applelinks: And in your book, you talk about how audiences aren't satisfied with these movies ("It was okay," being high praise), but don't do anything about it, and continue to go to them anyway.
Kevin Murphy: Yep. See? You eat at McDonald's, you're liable to get a fat ass.
Applelinks: Zing! Now, you had also mentioned an interest in using computers to edit sound and print; what's your experience with that been?
Kevin Murphy: Well I know from having done sound post in the old world and the new non-linear world that things have gotten better. My pals and I did this goofy web series for the SciFi Channel that never saw an inch of rolling stock, and I did all the music for it on a MIDI sequencer and using ACID looping software. Man, was it fun. It has become incredibly easy to custom tailor a decent soundtrack for short work. With the proper equipment for getting stuff into and out of your computer, and with programs like Logic and Pro Tools, things just get more fun.
Applelinks: Fun in what way?
Kevin Murphy: Well, take me, for instance. I have a decent ear, a barely trained singing voice and absolutely no training in music. I have never been able to snap my mind around to the fully functioning two-handed rhythm you need to play piano, both hemispheres firing in synch. The sequencer is my crutch. Moreover In the roughly ten years that I've been farting around with sequencers, I've gotten much better at keyboards.
See, my old MST colleague, Mike Nelson, is an accomplished pianist—he can knock out Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata (Op 53) at a cocktail party, while I can maybe get through "Evil Woman" by ELO on a good day. So, Mike handled the accompaniment on nearly all our MST songs. One time, on the song "Godzilla Genealogy Bop," did I handle the arrangement—Simple acoustic bass line and keyboard rhythm, a la Count Basie. No way in hell could I do that without a sequencer. I also use sequencers to chart vocals. I wrote two solo Choral pieces for MST, an octavo and a madrigal, and I arranged them on keyboard, then sang the parts with the MIDI sequence broken down part by part and played through the headphones. I don't know a quarter note from an acne scar, but with a sequencer I can arrange and chart vocal pieces. Pretty friggin' cool, and a lot more fun than learning music the right way. Since then, I occasionally compose choral works with thoroughly bizarre lyrics just to keep in trim. Eventually I'll have a collection available.
Applelinks: What about graphic design? Have you played around with any of the big boys like Quark XPress or Adobe InDesign?
Kevin Murphy: Ages ago, I did the production graphics for MST, because we were too poor to hire a real graphic designer. We published our newsletter with Quark, used Photoshop for messing with images, and, I hate to say it, I Love Corel on a PC for designing with vector graphics. I've had Corel since version 2, and I just got the hang of it—but I also learned Illustrator. Early on, Mac's ability to work on one project using a bunch of programs was brilliant and very helpful for a hack like me. Again, my Mac-PC dialogue grew by using Illustrator to do things that Corel couldn't and vice versa.
Applelinks: In A Year At the Movies, you mention that one of the alt.movie festivals—I think it was Slamdance—was using a lot of technology to display their films.
Kevin Murphy:Oh, man, the first year I saw Slamdance, they had really teched up—I think Apple was a sponsor. Instead of fighting the crowd on Main Street of Park City, they camped in a Silver mine turned Silicon Valley retreat center above the town. There were iMacs strewn around like drink coasters. Many films were screened on video projectors arrayed in several different rooms; it relieved the usual overcrowding and long lines. I loved this, l-o-v-e-d it. It's the great equalizer—show your films for free for everybody who wants to see it—exclude nobody. It defeats the usual festival tone, the snotty-ass "I have a pass and you don't" attitude that makes Sundance such a pretentious crock of shit for movie goers. It made watching movies inclusive, not exclusive—that's cinema. It's joyous. Unfortunately, last year Slamdance moved back into town, went back to overcrowded exclusive screenings and in my estimation went down in quality about sixteen pegs.
Applelinks: Ever thought about organizing your own festival? You could ban anyone related to the movie industry.
Kevin Murphy: Believe me, there are so damn many festivals already I can't even attend those, so forget running one. It takes dedication, and it's a true labor of love. I was on a judging panel for last year's Wisconsin Film Festival, and it was terrific, but hoo boy, the work involved. I'm an instigator, not an administrator. And to run a festival you have to be half diplomat, half tyrant, half saint—that's one and a half persons already and you run out of person three weeks before the festival begins. I've always been able to gauge how lame a cinephile I am by meeting a festival director. They're not human.
Applelinks: So what makes a good movie?
Kevin Murphy: Oh, fer God's sake. If you could bottle that, you'd be the next Bill Gates. Do you mean, what are the commonly agreed-upon qualities of good cinema here in the aughts? Vastly over-simplified, a good movie is character, word and action presented through sound, image and montage in a way that evokes passion. It's passion. But it's also intelligence, wit, clarity, and God help me for saying it, dialectic. The film maker's invitation for the audience to invest themselves in the experience. "Art" films be damned, if you don't embrace or at least address an audience, I don't think you can make a good film.
And I'm not talking about marketing—hell, any pin-dick with an MBA can market a film—I'm talking about shared emotion, experience of truth, through comedy, tragedy, history, satire, documentary, you name it—cinema does a poor job of masking the truth, and great cinema has truth in its heart. Okay, enough of me; here's the way Shakespeare put it:
...suit the action to the word, the
word to the action; with this special o'erstep not
the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is
from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone,
or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful
laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the
censure of the which one must in your allowance
o'er weigh a whole theatre of others.
I mean, damn. If half the film makers in Hollywood carried a copy of the text from Hamlet Act 3 Scene 2 in their wallets, understood it simply as is written and referred to it like a catechism, there'd be fifty percent less shitty movies made.
What gives me the spark is the adventure of it all, the risk necessary to do well and to do good.
Kevin Murphy's website is [url=http://www.ayearatthemovies.com]http://www.ayearatthemovies.com[/url]. His book is available now from Harper Collins.
Bill's been using Macs since the late 80s. When he's not making smartass remarks to amuse Kirk Hiner, he enjoys fighting for the user.
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