Last week’s grab of nine Tony nominations for the new Broadway revival of “The Rocky Horror Show” – coming in the midst of the ongoing 50th anniversary of the cult-classic movie version – seems like a great excuse to look back at a phenomenon that’s kept us “doing the Time Warp” for decades.
It’s a big history, so instead of attempting a definitive conclusion about why it matters, I’ll just offer my personal memories and thoughts; maybe you’ll be inspired to revisit your own.
First, the facts: Richard O’Brien’s campy glam-rock musical became a London stage hit in 1973; that success continued with a run at Los Angeles’s Roxy Theatre in 1974, and a Broadway opening was slated for early 1975. In the break between, the movie was filmed, timed to ride the presumed success of the New York premiere and become a mega-hit – but it didn’t happen that way. The Broadway show closed after a mere handful of performances, and the movie disappeared from theaters almost as soon as it was released.
This, however, was in the mid-1970s, when “cult movies” had become a whole countercultural “scene,” and the film’s distributor (20th Century Fox) found a way to give “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” another chance at life. It hit the midnight circuit in 1976, and everybody knows what happened after that.
When all of this was happening, I was still a pre-teen in Phoenix, and a sheltered one at that. It wasn’t until 1978 – the summer before I started high school – that it entered my world. Already a movie fanatic (yes, even then), I had discovered a local treasure called the Sombrero Playhouse, a former live theater converted into an “art house” cinema; my parents would take me there and drop me off alone (hey, it was 1978) for a double feature. I remember that place and time as pure heaven.
It was there that “Rocky Horror” found me. The Sombrero, like so many similar venues across the country, made most of its profits from the midnight shows, and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was the star attraction. I saw the posters, watched the previews, got my first peeks at Tim Curry’s Frank, Peter Hinton’s Rocky, and all the rest of the movie’s alluringly “freaky” cast; when I came out of the theater after whatever I had watched, I would see the fans lining up outside for the midnight show. I could see their weird costumes, and smell the aroma I already knew was weed, and I knew this was something I should not want to have any part of – and yet, I absolutely did.
After I started high school and found my “tribe” with the “theater kids,” I was invited by a group of them – all older teenagers – to go and see it. I had to ask my parents’ permission, which (amazingly) they granted; they even let me ride with the rest of the “gang” in our friend’s van – with carpeted interior, of course – despite what I could see were their obvious misgivings about the whole situation.
It would be over-dramatic to say that night changed my life, but it would not be wrong, either. I was amazed by the atmosphere: the pre-movie floor show, the freewheeling party vibe, the comments shouted at the screen on cue, the occasional clatter of empty liquor bottles falling under a seat somewhere, and that same familiar smell, which delivered what, in retrospect, I now know was a serious contact high.
As for the movie, I had already been exposed to enough “R” rated fare (the Sombrero never asked for ID) to keep me from being shocked, and the gender-bent aesthetic seemed merely a burlesque to me. I was savvy enough to see the spoof, to laugh at the lampooning of stodgy 1950s values under the guise of a retro-schlock parody of old-school movie tropes; I “got it” in that sense – but there was so much about it that I wasn’t ready to fully understand. Because of that, I enjoyed the experience more than I enjoyed the film itself.
I’m not sure how many times I saw “Rocky Horror” over the next few years, but my tally wasn’t high; I drifted to a different friend group, became more active in theater, and had little time for midnight movies in my busy life. I was never in a floor show and rarely yelled back at the screen (though I did throw a roll of toilet paper once), and I didn’t dress in costume. Even so, I went back to it periodically before the Sombrero closed permanently in 1982, and as I gradually learned to embrace my own “weirdness,” I came to connect with the weirdness that had always been calling me from within the movie. Each time I watched it, I did so through different eyes, and they saw things I had never seen before.
That process has continued throughout my life. I’ve frequently revisited “Rocky” via home media (in all its iterations) and special screenings over the years, and the revelations keep coming: the visual artistry of director Jim Sharman’s treatment; the dazzling production design incorporating nods to iconic art and fashion that I could only recognize as my own knowledge of queer culture expanded; the incomparable slyness of Tim Curry’s unsubtle yet joyously authentic performance; the fine-tuned perfection of Richard O’Brien’s ear-worm of a song score. The excellence of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” revealed itself in new layers with every viewing.
There were also more intimate realizations: how Janet was always a slut and Brad was always closeted (I related to both), and how Frank’s seduction becomes the path to sexual liberation for them both; how Rocky was the “Über-Hustler,” following his uncontrolled libido into exploitation as a sex object while only desiring safety and comfort (I related to him, too), and how the “domestics” were driven to betray their master by his own diva complex (I could definitely relate to both sides of that equation). How Frank-N-Furter, like the tragic Greek heroes that still echo in the stories we tell about ourselves, is undone by hubris – and anybody who can’t relate to that has probably not lived long enough, yet.
The last time I watched (in preparation for writing this), I made another realization: like all great works of art, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is a mirror, and what we see there reflects who we are when we gaze into it. It’s a purely individual interaction, but when Frank finally delivers his ultimate message – “Don’t dream it, be it” – it becomes universal. Whoever you are, whoever you want to be, and whatever you must let go of to get there, you deserve to make it happen – no matter how hard the no-neck criminologists and Nazi-esque Dr. Scotts of the world try to discourage you.
It’s a simple message – obvious, even – but it’s one for which the timing is never wrong; and for the generations of queer fans that have been empowered by “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” it probably feels more right than ever.
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