Today is October 3 and this date marks a major anniversary for me. Twenty-three years ago, on October 3, 1985, my family threw me a surprise party. Actually, the phrase they used was “intervention,” but the point is, my mother, my three brothers and my sister had a lot to say to me about what they perceived as my addiction to drugs and alcohol. Maybe there was some validity to what they were saying, but to tell you the truth I was too hung-over to comprehend any of it. I just wanted them to finish up so I could go have a cocktail. It was 9am after all.

But I never did have that next cocktail, not on that day, or on any day since. Instead, in a rare instance of common sense, I took the one-way ticket they gave me and boarded a nonstop flight from New York City to a mythical land called “Minneapolis,” which until that point I had only known as the location of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” I had always assumed that I was incapable of functioning anywhere off the island of Manhattan, but it turns out that the state of Minnesota, with its plethora of rehab centers, is a great place to send someone in a state of drug and alcohol dependency, which was the general consensus about me, although I had always been too drunk and/or stoned to develop my own opinion about this. I ended up living in that mythical land for nine years. New York is where I was born and raised; Los Angeles is where I currently reside, but Minneapolis is the place where my life was saved.

I am tempted to give you all the sordid details about my addiction and recovery, but in the time it’s taken me to type this sentence, several thousand books have been written and published about somebody else’s addiction and recovery, so I will spare you. But I will say that every good thing that has happened to be in the twenty-three years since that particular October 3 I owe to sobriety (like, for instance, just off the top of my head, the fact that I continued to be alive all these twenty-three years).

The move to Minneapolis and the sobriety that came with it resulted in a ton of great things happening to me, not the least of which was being “TV’s Frank” on MST3K. Here is a partial list of some of those great moments in my life that recovery made possible:

Dressing in a Joe Besser / Stinky / Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit and licking a giant lollipop while skipping across Deep 13.

Getting placed inside a giant “Operation” game and having my body repeatedly “bonked” while I repeatedly said “Thank you!”

Announcing on national television that I was going to throw a “Hat Party” and predicting that my hat would be “The grandest of them all!”

Screaming at the top of my lungs, “WHO IS MERRIT STONE!!!”

Singing “Nummy Muffin Kookle Butter.”

Parading around in a grandma dress as “Auntie McFrank.”

Wearing a unitard and doing a goofy interpretive dance in front of thousands of people at a live Mystery Science Theater 3000 show.

Spending my 40th birthday in a giant crib and making gurgling infant noises as part of my portrayal of a full-grown baby on an episode of “Sabrina The Teenage Witch.”

Yes, sobriety has given me so much, but more than anything else, it’s given me back my dignity.

I just finished reading this great book, “Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies And The Birth Of The New Hollywood” by Mark Harris (don’t get excited, it’s not the Mark Harris that was married to Martha Raye; this Mark Harris is merely an excellent writer and reporter who works at “Entertainment Weekly”; a book from Mark “the-one-who-married-Martha-Raye” Harris would certainly be a literary event, but alas it has yet to happen). In this book, Mark “not-the-one-who-married-Martha-Ray” Harris focuses on the five movies that were nominated for Best Picture of 1967 Oscars, and he makes a compelling case for their historical significance:

“Bonnie And Clyde.” It brought the influence of the French New Wave into a mainstream American movie.

“The Graduate.” In a funny and entertaining way, it tapped into the alienation and dislocation of the baby boom generation.

“In The Heat Of The Night.” Sidney Poitier portrayal of a strong and defiant African-American character was rare in mainstream American films of the time.

“Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner.” A tame and conventional movie but it showed that a comedy dealing with a “daring” theme (interracial romance) could become a huge hit.

“Doctor Doolittle.” It wasn’t revolutionary at all; it was a boring and bloated disaster, but for Harris it represents the last gasp of the old Hollywood studio system that the other four movies swept away.

Yes, 1967 saw the release of many innovative and landmark films. But 1967 was no different from any other year in that it also produced its share of crappy, pointless movies. In fact, five films that we ended up doing on Mystery Science Theater 3000 were released in 1967. Harris doesn’t mention a single one of them, which is probably why his book has gotten such good reviews. But I’m not afraid to confront the crappy and the pointless, so here are the five MST3K films released in 1967, none of which, alas, received any Oscar nominations.

CATALINA CAPER

I’m going to step out on a limb and say that “The Graduate” had slightly more cultural impact than “Catalina Caper.” Dustin Hoffman began his movie career with “The Graduate”; Tommy Kirk pretty much brought his career to a close with “Catalina Caper.” I could make the point that the plot of “Catalina Caper,” dealing with a search for a scroll with a treasure map on it, can be interpreted as a metaphor for the search for meaning that young people were going through in 1967. Yes, I could make that point, but I would reveal myself as a moron if I did, so I won’t.

OPERATION DOUBLE 007

There were two “official” James Bond movies released In 1967: “You Only Live Twice,” (still one of my favorites in the series), and “Casino Royale,” a completely unhinged “send up” of Bond movies from Charles K. Feldman, a producer who owned the rights to that one Ian Flemming novel.

And then there was “Operation Double 007,” which was built around the sole novelty of the fact that it starred Sean Connery’s younger brother Neil Connery. That’s how big the James Bond phenomenon was in the sixties: it was considered marketable just to have the brother of the guy who played James Bond. A few years later, I bet this was an exciting prospect to George Lazenby’s younger brother. But alas, Doodles Lazenby’s dream of starring in an obscure cinematic oddity was not to be. (Full disclosure: I don’t know if there is a Doodles Lazenby or if George even has a younger brother.) As Frank Stallone and Joey Travolta will tell you, being the younger brother of a big movie star is not necessarily a one-way ticket out of Palookaville.

WILD REBELS

This movie was not that wild, nor particularly rebellious. It would be nice to say that the biker movie genre has evolved since “Wild Rebels,” but have you ever seen “Harley Davidson And the Marlboro Man?” Yeesh!

DANGER! DEATH RAY!

I’m pretty sure we did this movie on MST3K while I worked at Best Brains, but maybe they did it during the Sci-Fi Channel era after I left; I honestly don’t remember. The only thing I recall about this movie is the title. If I did work on it, that means I watched it at least six times, and yet I cannot conjure up a single moment from it in my mind’s eye. Is memory playing a trick on me, or is it just protecting me from painful, traumatic images that can only cause psychic scars? Since the movie is essentially a blank slate to me, if I wanted to I could remember “Danger! Death Ray!” as a delicate romantic comedy in the vein of “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner,” except that Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn react to their daughter’s impending interracial marriage not with sophisticated banter and thoughtful rumination, but with a Death Ray (a dangerous Death Ray!). Granted, that sounds like an awful movie, but could it have been worse than the actual “Danger! Death Ray?” Seriously, can anybody out there tell me if I worked on this episode or not?

HELLCATS

I’m guessing “Hellcats” is the “Doctor Doolittle” of this group because of the presence of cats (albeit hellcats). And just as Rex Harrison will be remembered not for “Doctor Doolittle,” but for “My Fair Lady,” I believe that Ross Hagen’s legacy will have more to do with “Sidehackers” than “Hellcats,” especially considering his haunting rendition of “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face” in “Sidehackers,” which is far more memorable than the scene in “Hellcats” when he unleashes a fiery vengeance on Spencer Tracy and Kate Hepburn with his hellacious Death Ray.

Okay, I’m getting a little mixed up and confused, so let me just go back to my original point: “Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies And the Birth Of The New Hollywood” by Mark Harris is an excellent book.