| The Rocky Horror Picture Show |
The film was shot in the United Kingdom at Bray Studios and on location at an old nation estate named Oakley Court, best known because of its earlier use by Hammer Film Shows. A number of props and set pieces were used again from the Hammer horror films. Although the film is both a parody and gratitude to many of the kitsch science fiction as well as horror movies, costume designer Sue Blane conducted no research for her designs. Blane stated that costumes from the film possess directly impacted the development of punk music products such as ripped fishnets and dyed tresses.
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| The Rocky B.I.Y. nights turn the attention on YOU the audience |
The L. A. Times went head-first into the cult of crazy that lived on midnight screenings of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show. " Take a trip back to the actual Tiffany Theater in 1978 to a world of rice-throwers and toast makers -- a special event of the notion that it's OK to be strange. This story originally appeared in print upon July 19, 1978.
It’s what you may call a normal Saturday night on Sun Blvd. An hour before the midnight show begins, about 30 people are standing in line while watching Tiffany Theater to “The Rocky Horror Picture Show. ” A few of them look like they have just come from a Halloween party, however that’s particularly unusual in this part of city.
What is unusual is that some of these people have observed this movie more than 100 times. With regard to reasons nobody knows, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” has become the biggest cult film in history. They’ve been running midnight displays to packed houses at the Tiffany each and every Friday and Saturday night for a yr and a a half and the thing simply keeps getting more popular.
The movie is a music parody of the classic horror film, in which Frankenstein and Dracula are replaced by bisexuals from another planet. But the regulars do not come just to watch. They’re here in order to participate. Some are dressed like Rocky Horror characters within the film. They know the songs and the discussion by heard and actually perform a couple of creation numbers inside the theater before the movie begins and just as it ends. They also shout away their own lines as the plot unfolds, and supply special effects. During an early wedding scene, like they throw rice all over the theater.
| The audience of 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' |
At this time, however , it’s still a long wait for the display time. Outside, the first four people in-line, all wearing Rocky Horror costumes they made, tend to be entertaining the others with a zippy little melody with the catchy refrain. “I’m just a nice little transvestite from Transylvania. ” You are dressed as a ghoulish servant, Riff Raff, another as a lascivious maid, Magenta, another as a groupie named Columbia. The fourth, putting on a black Dracula cape with complementing lingerie underneath, is dressed as the movie’s main character, Dr . Frank N. Furter, a transvestite from the planet Transsexual.
Doctor Frank N. Furter, played in the film by Tim Curry, turns out in this case to become a woman who givers her name because D. Garrett Gafford. She’s 28, states. Lives in Hollywood. Isn’t working at the moment, however would love to scrap together $10, 000 therefore she could have a sex change procedure and became a man, she says. Many of the others in-line look like kids from the suburbs in for the Saturday night walk on the wild part. You can’t stereotype all the “Rocky Horror” cultists, Ms. Gafford says. It takes all kinds.
“About a third in the audience know the movie chilly, ” says Elaine O’Rourke, a seventeen year-old from Chino wearing something that appears like a black satin swimsuit over fishnet-stockings and blue anklettes and identifying their self as the character Columbia. “Go in with the mind open. The only message is give you to ultimately absolute pleasure. It’s kind of a chance to escape from the hum-drum. ”
That doesn’t quite clarify the phenomenon, but it’s as near as anybody gets. “Rocky Horror” opened up first as a play in London, them arrived as a movie in 1975. From the beginning, there have been people who kept going back to see it 7 days after week. But they didn’t start “living” the film until the past couple of years, with regards to hit the midnight movie circuit within New York, Los Angeles and other cities.
“Cult movies have been around a long time, but there’s never already been anything like this before, ” says Marc Mancini, an associate professor of film in West Los Angeles College who also shows at USC. “What fascinates me is the fact that it’s the first real example I have observed of participatory film, where the barrier between audience and screen is totally broken. ”
“For hundreds of years the theater has attemptedto break down the barrier between the audience and also the stage. When you come down to it, Shakespeare’s soliloquies were exactly that. But that’s kind of easy to do physically on the stage. A movie theatre is an entirely difference space. A character within the screen cannot walk into an audience. ”
There wasn’t any deliberate effort in order to structure the movie to produce the cultthat’s developed around it. So how did it happen? The actual bizarre sexual theme is part of the solution, Mancini suspects. But there have been plenty of much more bizarre movies made over the years. There truly isn’t any answer, he says.
“I don’t know that there’s any particular information, except maybe that it’s OK to become weird, ” he says. “There’s a good appeal to gays, bisexuals, anyone who seems outside the sexual norm of society. It also appeals to a lot of people who just like playing the overall game, people who go to gay discos even though they are not gay. You’ve got the whole Hollywood perverted crowd. Beverly Hills kids showing strange they are, others who want to see what’s happening. ”
Most of them, in fact , look downright regular. The Tiffany holds 338 people, and many are in line now waiting for the doors to spread out. Those in costumes at the front are still performing. The others are just chatting, while street peddlers work their way down the line selling Rugged Horror T-shirts and photographs of the cast with regard to $5.
They all have different reasons for returning 7 days after week. Erick Passmore, an eighteen year-old premed student at UCLA, states he’s seen it every other week in the past several months. Why? “I like the show, ” he says. Valerie Spencer, 17, the senior at Taft High School, says she has seen the movie 14 times. “It’s therefore energetic, so intense, ” she describes.
The doors are finally opening. There’s the rush by the regulars to get the front series. After all, they are part of the show themselves plus they need to be where the rest of the audience can see all of them. Riff Raff, Magenta, Columbia and Doctor Frank N Furter have the center chairs, befitting their special status. Down the actual row a few seats, Pat Brown, the 19 year-old from Van Nuys, transforms to inform a newcomer that this will be the 127th time he’s seen the movie.
“To me personally it releases all my tensions, ” this individual says.
There isn’t time for further discussion. Although the movie hasn’t started yet, requirements track is up, blaring out a track called “Time Warp. ” It’s among the big numbers from the movie and about thirty members of the audience are on their ft singing and dancing in front of the screen.
Brownish jumps up to join the others, the whole collection dancing and wiggling in the front from the theater like some kind of freaked out Gongo Show chorus line. When they finish, others applaud and they return to their seats since the movie starts.
There’s a ritualistic high quality to much of what follows. The movie itself will take off on the Frankenstein them. Two young ignorant, engaged to be married, are driving via a rain-storm when they get a flat tire. These people spot an old Gothic castle and look for shelter there, not knowing that the residents really are a rather decadent lot whose leader, Doctor Frank N. Furter, is about to reveal his latest creation, a muscle-bound called Rocky Horror.
The newcomers, Brad as well as Janet, are horrified at first by the strange band of aliens from another universe. But by the movie’s end they have skilled a number of close encounters with Dr . Honest N. Furter and others that’s made all of them feel more at home. Throughout, the target audience accompanies the action with appropriate stipulations, boos, cheers, hisses and, at the end, an additional dance number.
That’s almost all, folks. Show’s over, and it will be an additional week before D. Garrett Gafford as well as her friends don their costumes to come back again as real-life movie characters. Since the audience leaves another one files in. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” plays frequently at a couple of theaters in the Los Angeles region. But the Tiffany is where the real activity is, and the crowds have grown so large that they’ve added a 2 the. m. show during the summer months.
Outside, 's Hemstead, a 31 year-old accountant through Sunland, and his wife, Barbara, a admin, agree that the movie was “very various. ” This was the first time for them. They arrived tonight with another couple from Vehicle Nuys, and they want to be diplomatic about the entire thing.
“I know I won’t become coming back every week, ” says Hemstead. “But it’s possible we might bring somebody else to find out it sometime. I suppose it’s the kind of point that’s worth seeing. But I’m not really going to go home and start making a costume. ”
Source: www.latimes. com
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