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Jim Mallon

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Wikipedia article:

Jim Mallon (born March 19, 1956) is a retired performer, writer, producer and director. He served as the executive producer of the Peabody Award-winning series Mystery Science Theater 3000, and president of Best Brains, Inc., the series' original production company. He directed more than 75 episodes of MST3K and played the role of Gypsy from Season 1 until the middle of the Season 8.

After selling the rights to Mystery Science Theater 3000 and leaving show business, he worked for more than a decade as a therapist. He retired in 2025.[1]

Biography[]

Mallon began producing television and comedy movies while still in high school, and continued while attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

At Madison, Mallon was elected President of the Wisconsin Student Association on the Pail and Shovel Party ticket. The party made a series of seemingly ridiculous campaign promises, including installing escalators on campus hills, changing the school's name to The University of New Jersey, and bringing the Statue of Liberty to Madison. Along with WSA Vice-President Leon Varjian, Mallon oversaw the redirection of the group's budget away from various social causes in favor of artistic projects, including several public neo-Dadaist stunts. These included filling the central quad with hundreds of plastic pink flamingos, and the creation of a replica of the top of the Statue of Liberty, which was placed on the frozen ice of Lake Mendota and gave the appearance of the statue standing at the bottom of the lake and frozen in up to its nose. The original Mendota Liberty was burned by vandals, reputedly a protest by campus feminists against WSA funding such projects instead of giving additional support to an agency that provided safe rides to women after dark. WSA had the statue rebuilt, and placed back on the lake the next winter.

Mallon also produced and directed programs for CBS and PBS affiliates WISC-TV and WHA-TV in Madison, Wisconsin. He directed his first feature film in 1984, Blood Hook, which was distributed worldwide by Troma, Inc.

In 1986, Mallon became the production manager of a new independent UHF television station KTMA in Minneapolis. There, Mallon hired future MST3K cohort Kevin Murphy. In 1988, Mallon met series creator Joel Hodgson and they began to collaborate on the project that became Mystery Science Theater 3000.

As MST3K began to gain national attention, Mallon and Hodgson began to disagree on the future of the series. Hodgson left the show halfway through Season 5 due to creative differences regarding the production of a feature film version of the show.[2] The film was eventually released in 1996 as Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, directed by Mallon.

Mallon continued to executive produce the show and performed as Gypsy until the middle of Season 8. After the conclusion of the original run, he continued to own and operate Best Brains, Inc., overseeing DVD releases and merchandising for the franchise.

In 2007, he revived Mystery Science Theater 3000 as an animated series, performing Gypsy in three episodes. Four episodes were produced, but the project was not well received and was soon shut down.

In 2016, Mallon sold the show and all intellectual properties to Shout! Factory, who revived the show in much the same form as it was originally, with Joel Hodgson at the helm. Mallon was not involved in the revival, but is credited as the original producer in each episode. Around this time, he began working regularly as a therapist.

Mallon was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 2019, leading to his eventual retirement in 2025.[1]

Appearances[]

Regular roles[]

Guest appearances[]

Personal quotes[]

  • "The programming at KTMA was bottom-basin. Our prime-time headliner was Love, American Style paired with Hawaii 5-0 [sic], and we had the worst movie library imaginable.[3]
  • "If I channeled anybody for Gypsy, I channeled my mom. She had a heart of gold and always looked to the best of everything and the best of everyone. And when confronted with difficult things, she was somewhat lost. She didn’t know how to negotiate when things went poorly. She would be hurt, so Gypsy would be hurt at times and turn to the other robots for support."
  • "Joel had three or four drawings on a yellow pad, and he said, “You know how they have these hosted movies? How about instead of having the host at the commercial breaks, we have the host be in the movie?”"
  • "The show was a lot of work. By around March or April [of 1989], we were all kind of burned out. And it just happened at that time that HBO decided—based on the success of music TV—that they could create comedy TV, and they were looking for programming. We went through our tapes and pulled out seven minutes of the best material we had."
  • "Fans of Mystery Science tend to be above-average smart—you know, B-plus students and higher. And those are some of the people that first adopted the Internet. They were very passionate about the show. Later we did our first national convention, and about 2,500 people flew in from around the country. We also did the first live show, and afterward we had a party. On Monday morning somebody looked at one of these Usenet groups and there was a detailed, blow-by-blow description of who had come to the party, who they’d danced with, who had been drinking, and who hadn’t."
  • "I think Joel operated under the idea that this was his show, and everyone was working for him. And everyone else was into this sort of cooperative mode—that it’s all of us working together. So it would be somewhat analogous to John Cleese saying, 'Oh, by the way, this is my show, and you guys work for me.' The rest of the Pythons would have probably taken exception with that."
  • "Basically, we got to this conclusion that whatever Joel thought the show was at the beginning, it now didn’t function that way. And so Joel had a choice of what he wanted to do about it. And ultimately he chose to leave the show."
  • "If you go through whatever’s archived on the web, you’ll see right away that the fans divided into the Joel camp versus the Mike camp. But at the end of the day, the bulk of the show was making fun of bad movies, and that didn’t change at all."
  • "We didn’t cost Comedy Central that much money, and we got a lot of press. So for many years, we had immunity because of that. Ultimately, though, the network started getting a sense of who it wanted to be, and that didn’t include us in the formulation."

External links[]

References[]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "The Minnesota story behind 'Mystery Science Theater 3000': An interview with Jim Mallon", Minnesota Public Radio
  2. ↑ "Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie: The Oral History", The AVClub, April 19, 2011
  3. ↑ "Mystery Science Theater 3000: An Oral History", Wired
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