The Rochester story behind ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’

On TV, she was a robot. But in Jim Malone’s hands, it’s a package from the home improvement department.

Her neck is a Menard drainage tube. Her head is the car seat. Her eye is a flashlight.

Malone pulls a string and opens the robot’s mouth.

“Welcome to the show,” Malone says in his best way.

Up close, the homemade quality of the show is evident, and that was part of its charm.

Malone co-created “Mystery Science Theater 3000” in 1988 as a new production manager on the Twin Cities television channel 23. He also occasionally appeared in the role of Gypsy the robot.

The show was science fiction in its infancy — a man sent into space by two mad scientists — but the core of each episode involved a running dialogue of jokes and quips about low-budget B movies.

The team, including Malone and co-creator Joel Hodgson, won a Peabody Award in 1993 and has been credited with inventing a new kind of comedy. The original version was picked up nationally by The Comedy Channel and then Comedy Central, which ran until 1999. It quickly became a cult classic.

All the while, the show was produced in the Twin Cities.

Malone grew up in Rochester, Minnesota, in the 1960s. He calls his childhood there “Spielberg-esque” – it was exotic and gave him space to spread his wings creatively.

“We were allowed to go as far as the dinner bell would go,” he said.

When Malone and his friends were children, they created comedy routines using an 8mm camera. He took this passion with him to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

After graduation, he received a $20,000 scholarship from Madison PBS. Malone collaborated with high school friend David Herbert to create the campy horror film, "Blood Hook,” was filmed in Hayward, Wisconsin, where Herbert had a family cabin and the couple made another high school movie.

The film follows young people at a Wisconsin lake house where a man has gone missing under mysterious circumstances.

“Blood Hook” was made on a shoestring budget, but it is very popular today. The city of Hayward hosts a parade every summer, in conjunction with the city’s famous Muskie Festival. The movie was recent Re-released on DVD.

Despite the obvious camp behind “Blood Hook,” Malone didn’t think it was appropriate to screen “Mystery Science Theater 3000.”

“The best Mystery Science movies are the ones that the production company and the people behind them took seriously,” Malone said.

At the time of the show’s creation, computer graphics (CGI) were becoming more prevalent in films and television. Malone and Hodgson went the other way, doubling down on their low-budget methods.

The robot character Crow’s eyes were ping pong balls and his beak was a bowling pin. They produced the show from a warehouse they rented for free from the brother of one of the actors.

“One thing I learned from Joel (Hodgson) early on is that audiences are very tolerant of low-tech, if you make the rules to say the show is low-tech.”

“Mystery Science Theater 3000” was revived in 2017 and 2021, but without Malone’s participation.

He changed his profession. Malone retires this week after more than a decade working as a mental health counselor.

The career change was partly due to tragedy in his personal life. In 1997, his daughter died in an accident.

“It turned my world upside down, and I was pretty much lost,” Malone said.

Malone was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017, one of the factors that led to his retirement this week.

As a therapist, he finds himself working mostly with artists. He understood where they were coming from because he had been in their shoes.

In graduate school, Malone learned that most good therapy is about the relationship with the client. And his willingness to run a little has served him well on this career path as well.

“I think having a sense of humor builds relationships,” he added.