nostalgicIf you ever want to make absolutely sure a movie lives up to the hype, make sure you show it to a group of twelve-year-olds after they've spent the entire afternoon gorging themselves on pizza and sugar. Seriously. Every line was poetry, every song was the music of the spheres, and every fishnet-covered body part was a revelation (I hadn't even known you could put fishnets on some of those body parts). I walked away obsessed with all things Rocky. I acquired the photo "novelization" of the movie, a book on the history of Rocky Horror, and a copy of the score. I begged until my grandmother bought me the soundtrack from the stage show. I developed a real fondness for fishnets.
As the years stacked up and I plummeted into my teens, I began going to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show almost every Saturday night at the UC Theater in Berkeley, where Indecent Exposure was the standing cast. I dutifully learned all the call-backs and dance routines. I bought cast T-shirts and learned to put on pancake makeup. I even started making my own sequined applique patterns, and designed my own Transylvanian costume* from scratch. I pan-handled for quarters to pay my admission. I dragged my friends. I sat up all night in IHOP, talking about this movie which was a shared experience and a shared community for all of us.
If you've never been a Rocky fan, it was sort of like being a Browncoat, only sluttier and with more sing-alongs.
I'm older now than I was then; I no longer have the time to devote three nights a week to being part of a specific fandom. But I miss it. I really do. I miss the feeling of community, the in-jokes that we were happy to explain to anyone who said they wanted to join, the ticket stubs and the smell of damp velvet and the after-movie donuts at the cheapo donut stand down the block. I miss sewing canvas backing into my lingerie and calling it "outerwear." But most of all, I miss the moment when the whole theater would be chanting "LIPS! LIPS! LIPS! LIPS!" and the lights would go down, and for two sweet hours, the world would start making sense.
Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change ready. This moment of nostalgia brought to you by tonight's Rocky-themed episode of Glee, which will be watched by twelve-year-olds, and which brings my world full-circle.
Let's do the Time Warp again.
(*My hand-sequined tuxedo coat was one of the things I lost when we lost our entire storage unit the year I turned seventeen. I scoured yard sales and flea markets for years, hoping it would show up. It had a sequined applique of a teddy bear dressed as a Transylvanian on one sleeve, and one of a doll whose hair matched the way I always styled mine on the other, and it was battered and odd and I loved it. I still miss that jacket, even if I don't do Rocky anymore.)
Cards for Sorrow; Cards for Pain
October 26 2010, 16:00:30 UTC 6 years ago
Re: Cards for Sorrow; Cards for Pain
October 26 2010, 17:48:42 UTC 6 years ago
The theatre that used to show it in my town when I was in HS used to implement searches at the door to keep stuff out. This pretty much only kept out the low-hanging fruit (the true rocky virgin experience was being knowledgeable enough to bring stuff - and then to lose it all at the door), and as long as you had some basic smuggling skills you could bring in whatever you wanted.
They eventually "for-reals" banned lighters after some dweeb set the upholstery on fire. I think that might have been the same showing that one of my classmates lit up a strip of magnesium for the light, but he was far enough away from the theatre seating not to burn anything other than possibly his shoes.
They stopped showing it when some dweeb threw a toaster at the screen rather than toast. I'm surprised they didn't stop showing it when someone threw a hot dog (w/bun, and fully dressed), but that might have been what caused them to institute searches in the first place.
Another theatre took over showing it, but now they usually just do a Hallowe'en show, and there's a regular cast that takes responsibility for cleaning up the theatre afterwards.
Re: Cards for Sorrow; Cards for Pain
October 27 2010, 10:18:54 UTC 6 years ago
But toast, toilet paper, water guns, all were okay. (The rice and confetti and glitter ban really was because cleaning it up was SUCH a pain, and it was part of the cast's job to clean up the theater afterwards. And the lighter thing was basic safety. Because, as we said in our rules, some people come to just show just a bit messed up, so it needed to go out if you passed out.)
Re: Cards for Sorrow; Cards for Pain
October 28 2010, 15:14:32 UTC 6 years ago