I'm like everybody else - when I'm in a movie theater, I'm relaxing and hoping for what everybody hopes for when they watch a movie: that it'll take you into it. I compare it to a magic show. A really good magic show is amazing, but a bad magic show is even better.

If you take a deal in Hollywood now, you pretty much have to take notes. If we went to someone for the money to make six or eight or 12 shows, they would go "Okay, but we really have some strong opinions on how you need to do it." And "Mystery Science Theater" was really rare in that the Comedy Channel [which was later redubbed Comedy Central] was so busy getting a network going that they really didn't give us notes. After being in Hollywood for ten years, I said to myself, "This is really screwing me up. Right or wrong, I'm kind of used to doing these autonomous shows. 'Mystery Science Theater' was an autonomous show, so maybe we should just do that again." The only way to do that was to just pay for it ourselves.

Mystery Science Theater still sells. I still get a royalty from it.

[Talking about Michael J. Nelson, who replaced him as the host of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988)]: "You have to admit, the man looks great standing next to puppets."

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

Being an oddity doesn't bother me, as long as I'm a thought provoking one.

By day, I'm a clever comic magician, by night...Agent J.