Bill Corbett

Bill Corbett with his MST3K alterego Crow.

Bill Corbett (born March 30, 1960) is an American comedian and writer. He is known to MST3K fans as the voice/puppeteer of Crow T. Robot during seasons 8, 9 and 10 and for his portrayal of Observer (Brain Guy).

In 2020, Corbett appeared in an interview segment during The Second Annual Puppet Camp and Startling Conclusion of the MIGIZI Fundraiser! and returned to voice Crow for a riff of two shorts as part of a fundraiser for a Minnesota charitable organization. He was also credited with co-writing the two shorts.

Biography

In 1995, Corbett was a faculty panelist for the Playwrights' Center's Young Playwrights Summer Conference in St. Paul, MN.

He is currently a member of RiffTrax (after having been a frequent "guest riffer"), where he continues to riff films with fellow MST3K alums Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy. The trio also worked together on the short lived DVD-only series The Film Crew.

Bill Corbett is married and has two children.

Bill seen far right in the writing room during The Sci-Fi Channel years with Kevin, Mike, Mary Jo and Paul Chaplin.

Corbett, along with Rob Greenberg, wrote the script for the film Meet Dave, starring Eddie Murphy and Gabrielle Union. The movie was critically panned and considered a commercial failure. He has expressed interest in recording a RiffTrax for the film, but also explained that it is unlikely since RiffTrax generally avoids comedy films.

In fall of 2014, Corbett appeared in the music video comedy short The Frank along with other MST3K members. It was released exclusively on DVD.

At San Diego Comic-Con in 2016, it was announced that Bill Corbett would reprise his role of Observer for an appearance on the revived Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was also announced that he would contribute to the writing of several episodes as well. There was some confusion among some press outlets, resulting in reports that Corbett would also reprise his role as Crow T. Robot, but this was not accurate.

In 2018, Corbett began producing and hosting the podcast Bill Corbett's Funhouse. In March of 2021, Bill Corbett joined The Mads for a livestream Q&A session after their riff of the movie Phantom from Space.

Appearances

Regular roles

• Crow T. Robot (1997-1999, 2020)
• Observer/Brain Guy (1997-1999, 2017)

Guest appearances

• Phil the Alien - Revenge of the Creature
• Deep Ape extra - Revenge of the Creature, The Leech Woman, The Mole People
• Bomb Worshiping Mutant - The Deadly Mantis
• Space Father (voice) - The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies
• Intergalactic Court Judge - Agent for H.A.R.M.
• Krankor - Prince of Space, Invasion of the Neptune Men
• Leonardo da Vinci - Quest of the Delta Knights

Personal quotes

• "When we watched the movies, we were looking for a bunch of things. It couldn’t be god-awful in terms of sound and picture, although we did a bunch of them that were borderline in that regard. And the ones that were just boring and really, really talky—where we couldn’t find any space to get any jokes in—those were rejected pretty quickly. We also tended to stay away from super­violent or NC-17 stuff."
• "Sci-Fi wanted the movies to be more “hard sci-fi,” which always sounded a little bit risqué to me."
• "It just keeps chugging along in a way that surprises me—and I think surprises all of us, to a degree. Maybe the artistic freedom we got for a while there actually shines. But also, we had to make so many jokes, and we could make jokes about pretty obscure things, so within the sheer raw tonnage of jokes, you’re bound to find something in there that surprises you."
• "It is a little odd because it was not very common on Mystery Science Theater because the movies were older as a rule, and with our stuff with RiffTrax, we do a lot of video on-demand that’s really obscure and old and shorts from the ’40s and stuff like that where the people involved, mostly, are no longer with us and wouldn’t care anyway. But, yeah, with these people [in Starship Troopers], they’re on Twitter and they’re aware of stuff that’s going on. It’s not a bad thing for us, I think, to know so we don’t get personally abusive, but it’s also flattering in a way to know they support it and are good sports. Just about everybody in Starship Troopers who weighed in was really, really nice about it."

BTS taking a break with Mike and Kevin.

• (on whether the writing has changed a lot for RiffTrax has changed due to them riffing both old and new material) "I think probably not. I think if a movie is somewhat good, we’ve done some good movies, as Kevin has said before, will end up being like an affectionate roast. I’ve always liked that framework that Kevin uses. The other thing is you find more nooks and crannies to kind of impose jokes on the movie rather than commenting on the badness of the movie itself. Which is actually good for us to discipline ourselves. We’re there to provide comedy not social critique necessarily."
• "Right! I would also say it fits our size and our relative cultural…obscurity might be too strong, but we’re not right in the middle of NBC’s lineup or anything like that. We’re really based on the web at this point, almost completely, outside of these Fathom shows. It’s good to have give and take where all the people are, where all the fans can find us. I think that might be one of the reasons why we’re chugging along so nicely. It’s easier to be interactive with the people who want to see what you’re doing."
• "I love the interactive energy. You know, maybe I’m shameless because I like hearing laughs for stuff that I say out loud. I like that the audience gets to direct us a little bit with what they like and don’t like. We will drop a joke here and there, or a add a little bit. It is tremendously fun to come out of the bunker once in a while and make a house full of people laugh."

External links

• WIRED Magazine|Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Definitive Oral History of a TV Masterpiece