How Bad Movies Changed My Life |

By Gregory Meyer
October 9, 2015

This past weekend I had the pleasure of joining my fellow Children of the Wells collaborators in person for our monthly meeting. I don’t live in Indiana, which is where the rest of the members live, so it’s a bit of a drive to reach them. I made it to one meeting last year, and wanted to do it again, so I took the day off from work Friday and made the trip all on my own.

I had a blast hanging out with everyone and chatting about CotW and life. There’s just something about hanging out in a room with other writers that I find invigorating. Most of my friends aren’t writers, so I don’t get to talk about the creative process often with others who can relate. Tim, Nick, Natasha, and Nathan are great people, and I am so thankful that I’m under their guidance for writing my first novel. I can’t thank them enough for all the encouragement and input they’ve given me and my story.

Figure 1 from www.mst3k.wikia.com

Sadly, I didn’t get a chance to take any pictures of the meet-up, nor the Apple Festival I went to the next day with Tim. But it got me thinking today about how lucky I am to have such great friends that I’ve only met in person twice, other than Tim. How did I get to writing a story in a shared universe with people I didn’t know ten years ago? I started thinking about the DNA of friendship,= and how little things in life can lead to these powerful relationships. So how did I end up writing for Children of the Wells? After some thought, I found the answer: Mystery Science Theater 3000.

So if you will indulge me, let me explain to you how MST3K changed my life and brought me here.

Years ago when I was in middle school, I was flipping through the channels, and saw a strange movie with kids playing hide-and-go-seek in the woods. What stuck out to me was at the bottom of the screen there were the outlines of some guy, a gumball machine, and some weird thing with a net on its head making funny comments at the movie. I watched a bit and found it hilarious, until some scary melting monster appeared and I quickly changed the channel. That was the movie The Incredible Melting Man, my very first experience with Mystery Science Theater 3000, though I didn’t know what it was called at the time.

A few years later, I would pass the Sci-Fi Channel and catch the last fourth of an MST3K episode. I still didn’t know the name of the show, but I became exposed to movies like The Final Sacrifice, Invasion of the Neptune Men, Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders, and Devil Doll. I’d watch what I could and found the show hysterical, but I had yet to become a full-fledged fan.

Fast forward to my sophomore year at college. My roommate Marcus was unpacking his things, when he showed me all the DVDs he brought for us to watch. My eyes widened in recognition at one sitting near the top: Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. I grabbed that movie like Link finding a new item in The Legend of Zelda, turned to Marcus, and said, “I know this show; we need to watch it.” So shortly after, he and I sat down and I watched my first MST3K episode.

From that moment on, I became a hardcore MST3K fan, and it’s impacted my life ever since. With my eyes opened for the first time, I grabbed my friends and made them watch the movie with me. In turn, my college friends too were sucked into MST3K, and to this day, we will watch an episode together when we meet up in person. Over the next few years, I picked up box set after box set, ordering digitally converted episodes to DVD from dealers online. From about 2003-2007, I was obsessed with the show, and my college friends happily came along for the ride. When friends got married, we’d watch an episode at our bachelor parties. It became one of the foundations of our friendships, besides our faith and our love for video games.

After college, my wife (who also became a fan) and I went away to Virginia Beach so we could pursue our Masters. I struggled in making friendships, and I think part of it was that the other people I’d meet didn’t enjoy the show like I did. It’s strange, film school students actually like watching good films, who knew? Most people I showed an episode to would smile and nod, but that was about it.

Then one day, during my first semester meet-and-greet with other new Regent film students, I met a shaggy haired guy from Indiana named Tim. We talked for a bit, and he struck me as a person I wouldn’t mind hanging out with. But while showing an episode of MST3K to a mutual friend, Tim gave him a call, discovered we were watching MST3K, and exclaimed that he, too, was a huge fan of the show. Well, that changed everything; and when we met up for class the following Monday, we had a long discussion about the show, and I invited him over to watch an episode. From that moment on, we became friends, and while we ended up having a ton of common interests, I thank MST3K as being the icebreaker to open our friendship.

I ended up moving back to Illinois during the next semester, but I stayed in contact with Tim through Facebook, as well as through his podcast with Nick. Eventually, when Children of the Wells was looking to add more writers to the series, Tim graciously invited me to join the team, despite having never written a novel before. Once I finished my masters, I accepted the offer, and here I am, writing this blog while editing my first novel.

It’s funny how little things in life can create long lasting friendships. I mean, MST3K is a show about making fun of bad movies, how important can it be? Yet because of it, it’s opened a door for me in my writing career that has been an invaluable experience. I have a solid group of writing friends now, all because I flipped through some channels on TV one boring afternoon.