Justin: The following is a piece I wrote in 2001 upon the fifth anniversary of Mutant Reviewers — then called Mutant Reviewers From Hell. In the interest of posterity, personal embarrassment, and historical records, I share it with you now.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a project person. I just love my projects… well, starting them at least. I feel good having a fun idea fleshed out into a series of steps that will ultimately end up with a great end product. I’m also a flightly project person, which means I tend to flit between projects like nobody’s business, and only finish about 25% of the projects I start.

Ask me about how many books I’ve written and completed. Two, to be precise. One was a childhood series of Dave Barry-esque articles, the other was a textbook for a company. Now ask me how many books I’ve started to write but never completed. At least one for every month since I’ve been at college. That’s me, project person.

For me, the internet is the perfect avenue for project people. Webcomics, journalists, graphic artists, MP3 mixers… we’re a hodge-podge of creativity (a lot bad, and a little bit pure genius). Since I went online with my own website in 1996, I desperately fell in love with starting projects of creating these spaces. I’m not graphically talented, and my fashion sense alone tells people I have problems picking out matching colors. But it was cool, very cool, to be able to visualize a website and then make it happen.

Most of the times, it went something like this: I’d be at my computer, browsing for a subject. And since I get very particular and specific ideas about what I should find, I get frustrated when noone in this five bazillion user internet world has bothered to come up with it yet. So the next day I open my trusty HTML editor (and for those of you that keep track of these things, I don’t use modules or editing tricks — all of my HTML is hand-typed from ground up) and begin to work.

I created some really crappy websites. I wince when I think to the Gillian Anderson dedication page that once besmirched my domain. But out of the haze of nonsense like that came sites like PCU: The Website (which I completed after a few months, and enjoyed hearing actors and filmmakers reactions to it) and The Brotherhood of Eternal Bachelors, a joke website that for some reason everyone loved way too much.

So this is all to say that (1) I am a project person, and (2) I like web site creation. Don’t worry, mention of MRFH is coming up soon…

I’m not going to credit myself solely with the creation of the Mutant Reviewers From Hell. I don’t like back-patting, and I would be doing a grave injustice to the many people who’ve put work into the site alongside of me. No, I’m going to go a different route and say that MRFH… pretty much happened by mistake.

You remember that bit I said where I never finished most of the projects that I began? Well, here is the ultimate Never Ending Project: a movie review site. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when Kym and I began to post our little (and by today’s standards, pathetic) one-paragraph reviews. Back in ’97 there were plenty of movie critics on the web, and now in 2001, there are at least six more. When MRFH started to pick up steam, I would constantly get frustrated that we were never an original, stand-alone, pioneering site. There were always other critics, some with actual spell checkers and inside information to Hollywood studios. There were flashier pages and cute spellings like “filmz” and the overuse of the word “reel” to represent “real”. No, we weren’t original — but I always felt MRFH was special.

You’ve got to realize that like so many other projects, MRFH had no set blueprint to begin with. No grand vision, no aspirations to be a newspaper feature, no eye on advertisement revenues. We just had two things going for us: We liked certain types of movies and wanted to tell people about them, and we weren’t so arrogant as to assume that our sole opinion would be the defining word. I’ve loved having counterpoint reviews, because I think it softens the raging emotions people have when their favorite movie is read to be “demonic trash” or when a much hated film is hailed as cinematic masterpiece. We don’t exist for controversy, and although some people have gotten upset at a few of our reviews, by and large the Incredible Hulk population keeps their shirts on and their skin non-green. I think people realize that by trying to express more than one opinion, we’re saying, “Hey, it’s okay to disagree… let’s just bash Adam Sandler in the process!”

As MRFH took on its own life over the years, the reviews expanded, our look changed (and changed and changed again), and what we kindly refer to as the MRFH mythos took shape. Now, I don’t like talking about the mythos too much, since that tends to make it less special, but I have enjoyed seeing the “fake but fun” elements of the MRFH staff and our wacky adventures pop up from time to time. However, what I like best about writing and reading the reviews is to see how much of our true selves is revealed to the readers. We at MRFH recognize that a love or hate for a particular film can stem from a personal background with the movie. We know that plot points in a film can run oh-so-true to life, and it’d be a crime not to share that with you. And we also know that it’s just not fun to read reviews put forth by impersonal, objective No-Faces somewhere over the rainbow.

One of the best ways to sum up the MRFH experience was put forth by someone who said early on that it felt like they were just hanging with friends, jawing about movies that they thought were cool or not.

There’s a lot of backstage stuff that goes on on my end that you’re never privy to, but makes for a great time. Like e-mails we get from people happy (or upset) that we reviewed a particular film (one much-repeated comment I hear is when a relieved reader goes “I’m not alone!”). There are times where a mere idea (made by myself or sent in from a MRFH staffer) has kept me up for days trying to implement over the hundreds of reviews we’ve posted. There’s the subtle ways I have to explain to my video store clerk that I’m not a loser for renting 15 films for a weekend, I’m a movie critic. Cough.

Heh, and there was the time when a girl who was interested in me spent an entire weekend reading ALL 300+ reviews and articles so that she would be educated by Monday.

And then there are the Mutant Reviewers From Hell staff themselves. As much as I loved Kym and her fiestiness, she never kept up with the demand for reviews that MRFH so desperately needed. When she fell away from the project in 1998, a big hole ripped open MRFH. Hence, the call of egotism: Would I carry the project on my shoulders or risk making the site into a free-for-all? I admit, the early attempts to bring on MRFH writers proved a bit disastrous. I take the blame, since I was a little overeager to get more reviews posted and didn’t interview as well as I should have.

So then passed a period of time that, save for a couple of pretty goshdarned good writers, MRFH sank into the depths of mediocrity. It took time to wait for certain people to leave the staff so that we could gleen the best and add people who not only were interesting and could write well, but also had their own styles and viewpoints. I never wanted MRFH to be a bunch of Justin-clones, cause I’m bad enough on my own.

Leaving the past in the past and realizing that new reviewers will eventually come into the picture, I do want to say that I really enjoy the staff as of now. Something happened with MRFH that I never thought possible: people got caught up in the mission of the site and became dedicated to making it the best possible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve laughed at one of Kyle’s reviews, or e-mailed Andie in surprise that we agreed on something, or had Clare send me the umpteenth revision of a review (“this time with a period instead of an exclamation mark!” bless her soul), or found myself extremely fortunate to have a graphical wiz named DnaError to spice up the page.

Then there’s PoolMan (aka Sean Number Two), who went from being a part-time reviewer to a full-time pain in my… whoa! Wrong rant. I mean, the guy became a true friend, and I didn’t expect that. I’ve kind of kept myself slightly aloof in the MRFH community (as one of our message board people have termed it… we’re officially a “community”), not because I’m indifferent or don’t care, but because I don’t want to be an overpowering presence. I enjoy hearing other people’s views, seeing other people take on different creative paths, and contributing to a project in their own idiom. Hands-free management, I believe it’s called. So making friends with all these people came as a surprise, but Pooly has shown me that it is entirely possible to make a great friend after college, and even across the internet.

But the real people who’ve kept MRFH alive and kicking pompous critics in their butts are… you, the readers. This is not some lame attempt to pacify you just because we don’t have a 1,452-person staff to allow for everyone. The readers have been our motivation for writing, our encouragement (and boy have I needed that on certain days), our inspiration (I can’t tell you how many reader-suggested films and ideas we’ve put into practice), and our favorite people. Without readers, MRFH would just be that ego project. With them, we’ve gotten to open up in something we truly love: awesome movies. It’s been a long journey, and I’m glad we’ve had the great company.

When MRFH began, I was just a wet-behind-the-ears college kid. Now I’m in my mid-20s, I have a fairly respectable job that involves playing video games, and I’ve cut my swearing down a lot. Five years is a long time for a project that takes steady, regular work (when I moved to Michigan last year and lost my internet connection for a good month, the e-mails I did get raging about lack of updates convinced me that doing MRFH was a sacred duty).

It’s not always fun; for instance, some times I (and I’m sure other staff members) become burned out or have life get in the way of our contributing. That’s natural, and I’ve learned to roll with it. Take some time off so that we can come back and be our witty best for you.

Ask any of us — writing is hard work. I get frustrated because I want to convey how I feel about a movie, and it sometimes comes across as a lame list. When I have the most fun writing for MRFH is when I realize that there are more serious people to cover the more serious aspects of films, and that frees me up to just be atypical for a while. I always wish I did that more often: write up a totally hilarious review that is worth its weight in gold alone, that I recall a totally captivating story or find some new analogy to bring my views to your home. Yes, it mostly just doesn’t happen. But every once in a while I post a review that I feel really good about, that is funny AND informative, that challenges the readers’ concept of grammatical structure, and charms me a year or two later when I go back to re-read it.

I mean, when you look at it, I think I’ve written enough for MRFH to fill two complete novels. Stephen King-type novels (only without the killer clowns and rabid dogs). It’s gotta be one of the biggest projects I’ve ever done in my life.

One thing hasn’t changed for me, I think. No matter how much gooder my writing becomes, or how large our reviews and extras (egads, I spend as much time working on that part as the actual review) become, the purpose behind it is always the same. I discover a movie that makes me laugh, or gives me goosebumps, or wows me with something I’ve never seen before, or makes me constipated for a near week… and I’ve just GOTTA share that with the world.

I once thought that sooner or later, we’d run out of all the interesting movies to review, and then MRFH would be over. My to-review list, on the contrary, has doubled and tripled and threatened to take over my bedroom due to sheer size. It’s a project that’ll never be done. As I pluck my moustache and consider why I started and continue to be engaged in such a project, what comes to mind is: This is a site that I would love to find on the web, and since it doesn’t exist, I’m glad we’ve made it.