Kevin Murphy is perhaps best known for portraying the squat loveable bubble-headed robot Tom Servo for nine seasons on Mystery Science Theater 3000, appearing in 152 episodes. Over the life of the series Kevin worked as a writer, director, producer, setbuilder, videographer, editor, lighting director, graphic designer and a talking plant. He’s the only member of the Best Brains team to have worked on every single episode of the series, from its inception at KTMA in Minneapolis to its swan song on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Kevin has worked in nearly every aspect of film and television, from field production for Public Television to hanging lights on a slasher movie set to running coffee and cigarettes as a grunt on the set of an Old Style beer commercial. As a location production assistant on the film Mrs. Soffel in 1983, Kevin witnessed Mel Gibson puking on the steps of a train caboose.
Kevin spent one year of his life going to a movie theater and watching a film, every single day, for the entire year. He chronicled his experience in the HarperCollins book A Year at the Movies: One Man’s Filmgoing Odyssey. Kevin crossed the country and traveled the globe to sample the world’s vast variety of moviegoing experiences, in ten countries on four continents, from the Arctic Circle to the South Pacific.
Also a former film commentator for National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday, and an unabashed ham in public, Kevinspeaks at colleges, book festivals and science fiction conventions around the world, has sat on the jurys of the Miami and the Wisconsin Film Festivals, and once brought down the hut at the Rotary Club of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. Recently Kevin has teamed up with his old MST pals Mike Nelson and Bill Corbett, for the Film Crew DVD series on the Shout Factory label, and for the pioneering online movie-riffing service Rifftrax.com. His next book is tentatively titled Why Movies Suck and What We Can Do About It.
For more information and booking, please send a note to mail@kevinwmurphy.com