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Reprinted from
"Creatures of the Night" by Sal Piro
The first time I saw the ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW was at the Waverly
Theater in Greenwich Village, late in January, 1977. ROCKY had already
been playing there for nine months, but I did not know much about it. Some
girls I met at a party who'd seen the show on Broadway told me of it, and
so did my friend, Michael Kester. He had seen the film nineteen times and
could not stop raving about it. It didn't seem unusual to me that Michael
had seen a movie so often. After all, I had seen many of my favorites more
than twenty times. But that Michael, with whom I shared a passion for
music and film, had seen the RHPS so very many times impressed me, and I
began to be curious about it. I still never dreamed that I would go to
this film - any film - more than 1300 times.
The American premiere of the ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW was at the Westwood
Theater in Los Angeles, in late September of 1975. Even though it played
in a few test market cities, the film was considered a failure and did not
get a wide release and was shelved.
Then, on April Fools' Day, 1976, Tim Deegan, a young advertising executive
at 20th Century Fox, persuaded Bill Quigley of the Walter Reade
Organization to replace the midnight show at the Waverly Theater with the
ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. The Waverly had already been a mecca for
midnight movies and had had two very successful runs, of El Topo and Night
of The Living Dead. The manager of the Waverly, Denise Borden, was
fascinated with the film and she began her own personal hype campaign,
with photos in the box office window and a theater telephone recording
that stated, "This is a film not to be missed."
Denise would play the record album of the RHPS sound track before the
showing of the film to warm up the audience, and a party atmosphere was
generated as a result. The audiences naturally began to respond, by booing
the villain and cheering the heroes, and as Jim Sharman, the director of
ROCKY HORROR, has said, "With typical Saturday morning serial
stuff." This spawned a whole group of regulars who weekly reserved
the same seats in the first row of the balcony. These pioneers of audience
participation from the balcony included two young ladies named Amy and
Theresa; Bill O'Brien, the first person to dress as Dr. Frank-N-Furter;
Lori Davis, who wrote the Ten Commandments of ROCKY HORROR; and Louis
Farese, a kindergarten teacher from Staten Island.
On Labor Day weekend of 1976, Louis felt compelled to speak to the screen.
He is credited as the first person to yell lines at the movie. His
earliest lines were: "Buy an umbrella, you cheap bitch!" - to
Janet walking in the rain, and "How strange was it?" - to the
criminologist's initial speech. (Louis called this "counterpoint
dialogue.") Then, in late September, as they sought a preview of
Halloween, a few people came dressed as characters from the movie. Later,
on Halloween, there was a costume party with many people dressing as the
characters.
Bill O'Brien and a few of the regulars began to lip-sync the record that
is played before the movie in front of the audience. This was spontaneous
and it developed into a mini-floor show before the movie. Audience
response was tremendous.
Around the first of the year, in unexplained circumstances, the floor show
moved to the New Yorker Theater, on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The ROCKY
HORROR PICTURE SHOW had been playing there since June, but was not doing
very well. The theater was larger, with a stage, which may have partly
motivated the move. The audience there, however, displayed no real
interest in the floor show, so it was eliminated and the regulars returned
to the Waverly.
I was a former seminarian who spent three years teaching theology and
directing school plays in Catholic high schools in New Jersey. I was laid
off from my teaching job in June of 1976 and spent that summer being a
drama director in an all-girls camp in the Berkshire Mountains. When I
returned, I decided I would move into New York City and try my hand as a
"starving actor." I took a job waiting tables and got some roles
in off-Broadway shows. Then I went to see ROCKY HORROR.
It was a cold snowy night when four friends and I found ourselves outside
the Waverly waiting for over an hour before we were allowed in to see the
show. One of these friends was Marc Shaiman who went on to become musical
director for Bette Midler, Billy Crystal and other stars. He sat next to
me for the next seventy-five times I saw the RHPS. Both of us contributed
ad-lib lines that became part of the whole spectacular
"happening."
1. VIRGIN / v noun/ (n) - anybody who has never seen the ROCKY
HORROR PICTURE SHOW, (virgin viewing - seeing RHPS for the first time).
The Waverly movie floor show. Anticipating what was to come, I became more
and more excited. I found the energy and enthusiasm generated in the
theater catching. The film started. The lips... the Time Warp... Frank's
fabulous entrance... image followed image, and the impact on me was
tremendous. I began living the movie as it unreeled.
The first time I heard Louis Farese's voice speaking back to the screen,
it was funny and I was delighted. Suddenly I was ten years old again,
going with my mother to see Snow White and the Three Stooges. I remember
that just as Snow White was about to bite into the poisonous apple, a
voice from somewhere in the movie theater warned audibly, "You'll be
sooorry!" The whole theater rocked with laughter. As the film
continued, I wanted to shout out something clever too, but I didn't have
the nerve.
I remembered Zacherly, the ghoulish host of TV's Creature Features, who
interrupted scenes from old "B" horror films with zany remarks
and wisecracks. It always broke me up. (Oh, what he did to The Attack of
The Giant Crab Monsters!) Eventually, I began ad-libbing a remark or two
during other movies myself. Sometimes people laughed, but more often I
heard, "Quiet!" from annoyed members of the audience or my
embarrassed friends.
But now, thanks to Louis and friends, it was all right to talk back to the
screen. By the time I had watched RHPS twice, I knew by heart the places
to yell lines and how to time them. By my third viewing, I was ready to
try my hand at an original line. When Frank asked, "Whatever happened
to Fay Wray?" I answered, "She went apeshit!" - exactly
what the audience did when they heard me. This was the first of dozens of
lines that I created. Some of them were forgotten, but plenty of them are
still shouted out in theaters across the country today.
Pleased with this quick success, Marc and I developed a regular litany
connecting the audience to what was happening on the screen. Marc's
favorite line was his answer to Magenta's, "Master! Dinner is
prepared." "And we helped," was Marc's contribution. My own
favorite, and one of the most popular in the New York area, occurs before,
"Toucha Toucha Touch Me." When Rocky touches Janet's hand, the
audience asks: "Hey Janet, you wanna fuck?" (Janet turns her
head.) "Think about it," they shout, as she smiles from the
screen.
I not only invented lines; if I heard someone else's line and liked it, I
kept it alive by integrating it with the rest of the litany. This is how
the show "went public," people inventing lines and using the
lines of others. An individual would yell a line; others would pick it up;
then a whole group and eventually the entire audience would shout out the
line together. Today, "old-timers" say that sometimes they miss
the spontaneity of a single person creating a new line; they feel that the
impact is lost when over a hundred people yell out lines, usually out of
sync, at that. I don't agree. I feel everyone reacting together to the
film is part of the charm - ROCKY fans as a community chanting and
reacting to their film with love and affection.
Alan Riis was another who excelled at originating lines. Alan was a
college student from Brooklyn, active in local and civic organizations. He
was first exposed to RHPS in May of 1977, brought to the theater by his
friend, Laura Stein. Alan was crazy about Dr. Demento, a disc jockey
specializing in bizarre humor. Once Alan sent him a 700-signature
petition, asking that he play "Time Warp." Since then, Dr.
Demento has featured ROCKY HORROR music on his syndicated show a lot. The
RHPS was clearly a great outlet for Alan's talents and imagination. His
most famous line is the one that starts off the audience participation
with: "And God said, 'Let there be lips!"' just as the movie
begins with an image of a huge pair of lips.
Alan and Ed Bordenka were responsible for bringing many of the Waverly
innovations to other theaters in the New York area. While Ed didn't invent
many lines himself, his devotion to the film was, and is, incredible. He
has seen it over 500 times in many different theaters and he says each
time is as good as the first. He and Alan also traveled outside city
limits to many of the other ROCKY HORROR theater showings that sprang up
in mid-1977. At each of them, Ed's extremely loud voice spread the lines
that had originated at the Waverly. This caused problems sometimes,
because regulars at those other theaters, when they heard Ed and Alan,
believed the lines were being created right then and there. And you can
imagine the arguments that we Waverly regulars have had in other theaters
when we've tried to convince other devotees that most of their lines had
originated with us!
Meanwhile, back in the first-row balcony, creativity had not yet been
exhausted. The logical step after talking in unison with, and then at, the
screen was actual physical participation in the film - through the use of
props. The first ones used were rice and cards. Amy Lazarus says it was
sometime in April of 1977, about a year after RHPS opened at the Waverly,
that she and her friend Theresa ripped paper up and threw it, like
confetti, during the wedding scene. The following night, Bill and Lori
handed out rice for people along their row to throw. I was not there that
particular weekend, but I was the next, when regulars picked up the cue
and threw rice during the wedding scene. It caused pandemonium in the
theater. At the moment when I, a neophyte of only twenty viewings, was
pelted with rice, I realized the possibilities ahead. Something really
new, really exciting was happening and I felt part of it.
Lori Davis was the first to throw playing cards during the song, "I'm
Going Home," while Frank is singing "cards for sorrow, cards for
pain." She explained why she did it: "The Master said cards - I
bring the cards." Lori made a confession, too. For a while she had
kept her weight down to 98 pounds because of a line in the "Charles
Atlas" song, but had to give it up when it made her ill. Now people
throw playing cards, greeting cards, computer cards and pieces of
cardboard marked "sorrow" and "pain."
Candles were the next important prop. Louis Farese tells how one night he
was handed a candle by Bill and Lori, for the "candle ceremony."
During "Light in the Frankenstein Place," everyone in the front
row balcony stood up, a lit candle in their hand. No one intended this to
be a regular part of the routine, but a group from the orchestra took up
the practice and it continued.
During the rain scene one night, Alan Riis, who sat in the orchestra, put
a newspaper on his head as Janet does to protect her head. In spite of the
mockery this caused, Alan continued to do it for three weekends,
determined the idea would catch on.
Eighteen months later, I sat in a theater where at least three-quarters of
the audience wore newspaper hats on their heads. I smiled and was glad at
the tribute to Alan's stubbornness. Today, newspapers are one of the most
popular props because they are cheap and easy to find. Even during a
newspaper strike, ROCKY HORROR fans always managed. To enhance this scene,
people began to use water pistols to simulate rain. (Thank goodness we had
newspapers on our head!)
The use of lines and props spread rapidly from theater to theater across
the country. Hearsay, newspaper and magazine articles, and the fact that
New York City ROCKY fans visited theaters playing the show in other parts
of the U.S. are the reasons for this phenomenon. The fan club often
receives letters from people who have moved from New York, which describe
how they use Waverly lines and routines in their home theaters.
John Mandracchia, producer of the first two New York ROCKY HORROR
conventions, tells that when visiting Florida on vacation, he brought
props to the local theater where the film was playing. The management
became quite upset at his throwing rice and cards during the show - they
had seen nothing like it before. However, when John returned a year later,
the same management thanked him for starting it all.
Costumes and
Make-up
In spring of
1977, a young woman named Dori Hartley came to the Waverly to see the RHPS
for the first time. No one could guess at the profound effect she was to
have on the development of the cult. That night she came with her friend
Robin Lipner, who had seen the film a few months before. Dori's reaction
to the entire experience, the film itself and the audience antics, coupled
with an intense fascination with and attraction to Frank-N-Furter (Frank),
kept her awake most of that night. The next night, although she could not
break a previous date in order to see the film, she did ride past the
Waverly on her bicycle. It was at 2 a.m., when the crowds were leaving the
theater after the show was over. Unable to forget the movie, she went home
and sketched portraits of Frank from memory. The next Friday she saw the
film again. After that, she did not miss a showing of ROCKY until the end
of its run at the Waverly six months later.
At first, Dori was threatened by the crowd of regulars, because they were
so much a part of the show that so fascinated her. She felt like an
outsider. This did not last long. She met Lori Davis, who introduced her
to the others in the first row balcony. Lori had seen the show many times
and this impressed Dori. She was soon accepted into the "pew"
and she and Robin became regulars. She still looked up to the others
because they had been in at the beginning of it all, and she was
especially impressed by Bill O'Brien, who had played Frank in the original
floor show.
The more Dori saw the film, the more her obsession with Frank grew. First
she dyed her blond hair black, then she had a permanent so she could have
the exact hairdo that Frank has in the film. At her thirteenth viewing,
she appeared wearing make-up identical to Frank's and a cape like his that
she made herself. Outside, the crowd waiting in line applauded her. She
was encouraged by the response, and worked constantly to improve her
costume and make-up. It was Dori who re-introduced special clothing for
the film and it was here to stay.
When Robin decided to dress up also, Dori suggested that she go as
Magenta, and she helped with her make-up and with the choosing of a plain
black dress. It was about this time that fourteen-year old Maria Medina
started coming to the Waverly. She also dressed as Magenta, and her maid's
costume was complete. In make-up, Maria's resemblance to Patricia Quinn's
Magenta in the film was uncanny. Seeing this, Robin finished work on her
own costume and wore it. This was the way that the first and most heated
of the rivalries between fans wearing the same costume began.
As her act became more polished, Dori began receiving attention and she
was approached by Bill O'Brien with the idea of reorganizing the pre-movie
floor show. Dori was very excited at this, although disappointed when she
realized Bill wanted her to play Columbia. Obediently, however, she went
home and started to work on the new costume. After all, she still looked
up to Bill as the original floor show cast Frank-N-Furter.
Bill never got anywhere with his plan, leaving Dori with a half-finished,
sequinned Columbia outfit. But nothing could dampen her enthusiasm, and it
was spreading to the others. When Laura Stein showed interest in dressing
up, Dori gave her the Columbia outfit and helped her with make-up. She
herself continued to dress as Frank-N-Furter, and suggested to Thom Riley,
another regular, that he come as Riff Raff; she helped him with costume
and make-up, too. In true Frank-N-Furter fashion, Dori had built around
herself a court of characters.
Forming of
Friendships
At first, I did
not know anyone other than Marc, who was a habitue of the RHPS. So I
started going to the Waverly early each week to meet other fans. Alan Riis
became my first friend and he began saving me the fifth row aisle seat. It
became my permanent spot. Through Alan, I met Laura Stein (Columbia) and
Eric Kleiman - one of the first Transylvanians complete with lightning
bolt make-up. (Later Eric became the fan club's Riff Raff.)
While waiting in line one night, I shouted out a remark to one of my new
friends. A young girl came running up to me and said: "It's you...
you're the one with the voice! I love your voice!" Liz Frank had
recognized it from the many lines that I shouted each week. Liz introduced
me to her brother Josh and his friend Jude Goldin, and through them I met
another regular, Larry Forer, a 30-year old teacher from New Jersey. This
began a chain reaction of friendships, which formed the core of the fan
club. Now I sat in a block; Larry was behind me, Jude in front. Putting
together our lines, bits and props, we formed the "orchestra"
people, and began to challenge seriously the dominance of the first row
balcony.
We all lived for Friday and Saturday nights. We met at 8 p.m. to make sure
that we would be first in line and so get our regular seats. The
atmosphere outside the theater was as electric as it was inside. We sang
songs, we Time Warped (Once we stopped traffic on Sixth Avenue while we
were dancing.), we traded questions, and we waited for the arrival of
Dori. All of us shared this devotion to the film as we gathered outside in
eager anticipation of midnight.
An early predecessor of the TRANSYLVANIAN, or the fan club newsletter, was
distributed by Laura Stein. The TRANSYLVANIAN biweekly or "Mell
Tells" (since she played Columbia, she called herself
"Mell" instead of "Nell") was a two-sided typed sheet
that gave information of new audience lines that had been recently created
or discontinued and other special events. There was an ongoing debate that
the audience line, "she went apeshit," should be discontinued
because it came at a special moment, a close-up of Frank-N-Furter's face.
The balcony group thought it was offensive to yell such a word at that
time.
About this time, a quiz began to circulate among those of us who waited in
line. Dori, Robin and other regulars began trading ROCKY trivia among
themselves and realized just how much information they had in their
possession. They came up with the idea of a trivia quiz. Dori and Robin
put it together and passed out copies with the heading: "Compliments
of Dori and Robin." For the next year and one-half, that quiz was
copied and recopied from one side of the country to the other. And through
it, Dori and Robin became famous.
I had not actually met either of them. When they handed me a copy of the
quiz, I introduced myself as the "voice" from the orchestra who
had thrown hot dogs. Their reception was not warm, and they lectured me on
the problems that my action had caused. Robin even threatened me, as she
jokingly described and acted out a switchblade being snapped open and
thrust into someone's belly. At that moment I could not know, and would
not have believed, that a long and deep friendship was beginning with
these two.
I continued to do my "thing" in the orchestra, although I did
stop throwing hot dogs - because of rising meat costs, not Robin's threat.
In the beginning I looked at them both as terrible snobs, but I soon saw
that this was just their way of protecting the film that they thought was
so special. When finally they accepted me as a creative force rather than
a destructive one, we became friends. Out of this relationship sprang the
famous "balcony-orchestra" wars - with the groups trading lines
back and forth throughout the film. For example, when Rocky is eating the
meat during the dinner scene, the usual line was "Give it to Mikey,
he'll eat anything!" From my seat in the orchestra, I changed it to,
"Give it to the balcony, they'll eat anything!" The balcony
retorted, "You should know, Sal!"
The two groups tried for weeks to outdo each other, but when it got really
out of hand, we called a truce. One night, an anonymous voice in the rear
of the balcony yelled a line of derision to the orchestra. Immediately the
first row balcony people yelled down in their own defense, "It wasn't
us!"
It wasn't long before the theater management received warnings from the
fire department about the use of open flames during the candle lighting
ceremony. It was a fire hazard, obviously, and even more so since many of
the candle bearers wore newspapers on their heads. How could the
enthusiasm of the participants be subdued? For a few weeks, ushers and
security guards marched up and down the aisles warning people to put out
their candles. Mostly, the warnings were ignored.
Then the manager, Denise Borden, came to me, begging me to do something to
convince the others that the matter was serious. The fire department had
threatened to close the show if the practice of lighting candles did not
stop. Denise told me she thought the audience would listen to me because I
was one of them.
I thought about it, and that night, when everybody was sitting in their
seats, I called for their attention, saying I wished to make an
announcement. In as serious a voice as I could muster, I appealed to
everyone's good sense, and to their concern that the show go on at the
Waverly. I ended with the C-U-R-R-Y cheer, now part of the ritual. Not a
candle was lit that night, and from that time on, candles were banned in
many theaters everywhere. The practice of making general announcements
before the film started then. I myself made many of them - about
birthdays, celebrations, and transylversaries. I seemed to be the one who
made the announcements, for the most part and I became known as spokesman
for the ROCKY HORROR cult in New York. Once we started the fan club and I
became President of it, this became a natural role for me.
The All-New
Floor Show
Everyone wanted
to be part of the creative action. Every week some new idea was tried out
and developed, but we were yet to create the audience participation that
was going to make our group famous.
The original pre-movie floor show had disbanded. But now, with the
popularity of the film gaining constantly, rumors began to circulate that
the floor show was going to be revived. Many regulars started to come
dressed as characters from the film, following the example of Dori and her
friends. We had a complete cast now, so why not organize a floor show
ourselves? We spontaneously came up with what seemed like a logical
extension to what had gone before: the holding of a live floor show during
the movie.
Anyone who has seen the RHPS a few times knows how to do the "Time
Warp". "It's just a jump to the left, then a step to the
right... ". I'm sure that at every theater where ROCKY is showing,
people have stood up at their seats or gone into the aisles to dance. At
the Waverly, the number of Time Warpers kept increasing. One night a few
of us really let loose. When Riff Raff and Magenta opened the doors to the
ballroom, we ran up in front of the screen and performed the dance in full
view of the audience. Of course, during the solo verses, we bent down out
of sight. Once, though, on the spur of the moment, I stood up and mimicked
Columbia's tap dance in sync with the film. The applause afterward was
encouraging; clearly the audience was ready for a new variety of
participation. The Time Warp made a good starting point, because everyone
could join in with the dancing.
TIME
WARP INSTRUCTIONS
Out of this came
the individual members of the audience taking on specific
characterizations and acting out scenes simultaneously with their screen
counterparts. Dori's wardrobe continued growing, until everything Frank
wore was included. One night, during "Sword of Damocles," when
she was wearing the green surgical robe, she persuaded a blond, Rocky-type
regular named John to strip to his underwear. Right on cue, as Frank
chased Rocky on the screen, Dori began chasing John around the theater.
Audience participation finally had reached the level of true theatrics.
As for myself, I became more and more fascinated with the Janet character.
(Fascinated, not obsessed - for I was not about to dye my hair blond!) I
marveled at Susan Sarandon's performance and I participated in many of her
scenes. When Betty Munroe threw the bouquet, I jumped in my seat and
pretended to catch it at the same time as Janet did. One night a girl
named Ellen brought me a bouquet to catch - and so I had my first Janet
prop. I also played another scene, the one when Janet shows off her ring
saying, "It's nicer than Betty Munroe had." Betty Rice and Alba
Cordasco, two schoolteacher friends of Larry, brought an oversized
rhinestone ring for me to use. When it came time for each of these bits,
flashlights shone from all over the theater, spotlighting me in a role
that I was to play in our upcoming floor show.
As the weeks went on, members began to establish themselves in specific
character roles. The first Janet and Brad were Donna Bruggerman and Alba
Cordasco. Donna was an innocent-seeming blond from Staten Island who, once
inside the theater, stripped to a bra and slip and played Janet's scenes
inside the castle. Alba was dressed, like Brad, in a tuxedo, plaid tie and
cummerbund. It became standard for Alba and me to get up in our seats and
kiss at the end of the line, "Dammit Janet." I had now added a
wedding hat to my wardrobe.
Marc Shaiman brought Mickey Mouse ears and a hair dryer, and for a while,
during "Toucha-Toucha-Touch Me," he and I mimicked Columbia and
Magenta from our seats. One night, we went up to the small stage below the
level of the screen itself and did the number before the whole house. We
were all getting bolder and bolder in what we wanted to do. The climax
came when Dori, in her completed "Sweet Transvestite" outfit,
performed the entire number in front of the screen and up and down the
aisles.
After this, anything went. Thom Riley performed as Riff Raff during
"There's a Light." At other times, he or Paul Gheradi (our other
Riff) did the Rome Warp with Robin or Maria, our dueling Magentas. There
were bannisters at the sides of the steps down to the orchestra at the
Waverly. One night Robin slid down the bannister on the left, throwing her
feather duster to Riff Raff, at the same time as Magenta made a similarly
magnificent entrance on screen. Laura Stein (Columbia) and Mike Morra
(Janet) danced in the aisles during "Hot Patootie." It became
natural that Maria, in her Magenta negligee, and Laura, in her pajamas,
replaced Marc and me during "Toucha." Donna, still in bra and
slip, wanted to do the "Toucha" number, but she needed a Rocky.
There was no one resembling Rocky around, so I volunteered, turning the
number into a hilarious routine embellished by high camp. From that day
on, we never performed that particular number seriously - or later either,
when I was playing Janet.
I created one bit that I was particularly proud of because I was not
mimicking something from the film. This was the use of the audience cue
cards during "Eddie's Teddy." The audience had always echoed
each line of the song when it was sung by Dr. Scott. Now I devised a giant
songbook containing all the responses, with a few
"sha-bop-sha-bop-bops" thrown in, and writing Dr. Scott's lines
with a German accent.
Alan Riis had a marvelous sense of humor. He had a ventriloquist's dummy
that he named "Larabee." Alan dressed this dummy as Rocky, and
Larabee performed at a number of ROCKY theaters. I had the privilege to
perform "Toucha" with Larabee a few times when the dummy wasn't
performing with Joy, Alan's favorite Janet.
It had by now been established that Dori and I were the driving forces of
the floor show, whose cult following was growing rapidly. Dori's glamorous
and dramatic portrayal of Dr. Frank-N-Furter combined well with my comic
interpretations. What might have been only a passing fad was turning into
an important cultural statement.
As 1977 was ending, we were on top of the world and having the time of our
lives. In our wildest imaginations, though, we never dreamed of the
dramatic future lying ahead for the cult of RHPS audience participation.
Already the media - newspapers, magazines, you name it - had begun to pick
up on what was going on at the Waverly.
http://www.rockyhorror.com/
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