Let me set the scene…
It is a cold fall night in 1979. My buddy Bill is driving. My other buddies, Tony and Jimmy are all huddled with me in Bill’s Nova, turning the twisty, semi-quiet suburban streets between Clifton and Hackensack to get to the Oritani Theater. We are on our way to catch yet another midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
From 1977 to 1979, the Oritani Theatre on Main Street in Hackensack was one of but a few New Jersey theaters to regularly screen what would become legendary midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, complete with one of that movie’s infamous “shadow casts.” Tony, Bill, and I, with a semi-regular cast of other suburban teens would descend on the Oritani round about 11pm, line up outside, and wait as the last movie let out its crowd and we’d get gawked at by these folks. Some of the Rocky fandom outside were dressed in Rocky Horror character garb, whether just fans or about to be part of the aforementioned shadow cast…a bunch of Rocky ‘freaks’ who would stand in front of the screen during the movie and ‘act out’ the respective character parts.
(I refer you to the movie Fame and the Rocky scene in it, to catch exactly what this regular Rocky phenom is all about).
In addition to these recreations, there were water guns, lots of bread thrown, ‘doing the Time Warp,’ and of course, the requisite talking back to the screen. ‘Doing Rocky’ was a crowd-share experience like no other I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve been to a lot of events filled with enthusiastic fans, from the small to the mega. I was in Meadowlands stadium plenty in the 1980s when Giants won big games. I flew to the UK to attend The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness at Wembley Stadium. I sat in a packed-to-the-gills NYC hotel ballroom at the second ever Star Trek convention when none other than Captain Kirk himself addressed the crowd.
What was really fun, as it was interesting, was catching a pre-Halloween showing of Rocky just a few years ago in Bethlehem, PA. I realized that some of what is screamed back at the screen seems to change given the location of where Rocky is playing. In PA the night I saw it, I heard the usual “Hey Janet, do you have a burger to go with that shake,” and “What’s for dinner? It’s Meatloaf,” but there were plenty more hilarious screamed-at-the-screen lines I heard that night that I had never heard when seeing this movie the many times I had in the 70s.
The reason I am climbing over Rocky shoals in this piece (see what I did there?) is because Tim Curry died this week (same day as Dolly Parton. Coincidence? I’ll let you decide) and if you don’t know (although I can’t see how you wouldn’t) Mr. Curry played the dangerously-sexy-no-matter-your-bent Dr. Frank-N-Furter in both the Rocky Horror Picture Show and its first incarnation as a stage show, both in the UK where it originated and when it came over to the US.
Being a heterosexual fellow, F&F’s ‘sweet transvestite’ and sure bisexuality did not resonate with my budding teenage sexuality per se (quite frankly, I was too transfixed by Susan Saradon’s breasts…she plays “Janet” in the movie), although I know it did with plenty of closeted youths, as much at the time, as Frank has become an icon, and the show’s message has become a rallying cry to the LGBTQ+ community at large for many a year since. For my buddies and me, and lots of the kids coming to the Orinati Friday night after Friday night, Curry and cast, the wonderful campy songs, the audience participation, the entire Rocky Horror experience was a bonding experience across gender, age, and ethnicity, for us suburban youths who got to act a little nutty together for a few hours each week.
It was glorious. It was innocent. It was impactful. And it was led, in no small part, by our good doctor.
RIP Tim Curry.
