Friday, October 11, 2019

Let's Never Do The Time Warp Again



Recently, for the “podcast” Saturday Morning Something or other… in which I’m involved (the word is in quotes because like many things I’m involved with, it’s a bit questionable*) my co-host and I went to a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

For those not in the know about midnight screenings of said movie, allow me to elucidate you. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (from hereon out to be referred to as TRHPS to save me from having to type that shit out every time) is a bad 70s horror-spoof musical movie based on a bad 70s horror spoof musical stage play. It’s about sweet transvestite aliens from the planet Transsexual and the wacky sexual hijinks they get into while on Earth. There are songs, plenty of dancing and even an orgy in a pool. It’s one of Tim Curry’s best performances.

Unfortunately, when the movie was released in theaters, it bombed like the Enola Gay. ** A year later it was played in a New York theater around midnight, garnered (I’ve always wondered about that word, how does one ‘garner’ something?) a cult following and arguably became the first audience participation movie.

An AP movie is a movie wherein people interact with what they’re seeing on the screen. Be it responding to things characters are saying in the flick, yelling at the screen, throwing things at the movie and at each other, or using props to act scenes out, audience participation movies draw in the viewers and make them apart of the experience. They’re ever so much fun!

In theory. The reality can be much more…disconcerting…and saggy.

To watch the movie, my co-host Fred and I went to E Street Cinema, a theater in DC known for showing movies that aren’t completely mainstream. You wanna see the latest Jason Statham shoot-em-up? Take your ass to Regal Megaplex. You want to spend three-and-a-half hours watching the latest art house film about some little girl in Tibet with no arms who writes beautiful poetry while you chomp on a $10 artisanal panini, you go to E Street. Get it?

As soon as we were seated, the first thing we noticed was that half of the audience was just chillin in their underwear. “Oh, it’s gonna be that kind of party,” I said to Fred. “Let’s see where this night takes us!

Once everybody was settled in their seats, (including the drunk birthday girl) the group who hosted this monthly event decided to play some games with us to get us loosened up for the movie. They wanted the audience ready to participate. A half-hour of cringe-worthy games followed. They were so awkward that I have sealed them off in the forbidden room in my Memory Palace and couldn’t tell you what the hell we all did even if I could. Moving on!

And so the movie commenced. Now, I have to be straightforward here. I really like TRHPS. I got into it at a young age. I find most of the songs pretty catchy. I even got the soundtrack for Christmas one year. I’ve seen the movie enough to know most of the audience cues, like saying “slut” whenever somebody says the name Janet, or putting a newspaper over my head during a rainy scene. But to make sure we wouldn’t be caught too off foot, Fred and I had done a little research. It’s crazy how many sites there are telling you all the stuff you’re supposed to do as an audience member for that movie.

And then it happened.

At one point, near the end of the movie, Dr. Frank-N-Furter (don’t ask) chases the protagonists around his mansion while they’re in their underwear. Suddenly, half the audience jumped up, stripped down to their underwear (if thy hadn’t done so already) and ran out of the theater and into the lobby, where they cavorted like maniacs for a few minutes before running back into the theater.

Fred and I were speechless. I’ve seen some crazy things in my life, a cat walking on its hind legs, people doing parkour, a pizza that foretold the future, a Snallyghaster, even a Ginger with a soul. But I’ve never seen something all get out stupid as what I had just witnessed.

After the movie, Fred and I conducted a few interviews, including one with a guy who seemed to know all of the audience cues and would create his own, (not at all annoying, super hilarious, you could tell because he kept laughing at everything he said.) It turns out he was the boyfriend of one of the ladies who hosted the monthly viewing, meaning he had to go every time. He had gone from never seeing that movie in his life, to seeing it at least once a month for well over a year. I shot him to put him out of his misery Old Yeller-style and then we left to go drink the memories of what had just occurred out of our brains.

10/10, would recommend.

*For example, we still haven’t settled on a name for the damn thing.

**Look it up. That’s today’s history lesson for ya.

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