Eventually I got asked to be in a Michael J. Fox sitcom called High School U.S.A. I didn’t think it was funny and said no. They doubled the money, and that kind of offended me. I realized, oh, that’s right, my opinion means nothing in Hollywood. I’d seen other people compromise, and I felt that once you gave up on what you wanted to do, you couldn’t go back. It was selling out. So I decided to go back to Minneapolis.

Mystery Science Theater is really a postmodern show, it's really derived of many influences.

But if you think you aren't creative that's cool, too. I think being around people who aren't creative is kind of refreshing and nice.

So the actual riffing came out of us just sitting there and doing it the way I think some people think we really did it, which is all spontaneously, and it really was.

I spend a lot of time thinking about what I do and how it fits into the scheme of things. I won't do something just because it's funny.

Sometimes I go into my own little world. It's okay, they know me there.

A lot of times when I sit down with the other comics and try to talk theory, they say I'm being too serious.