What, you're too good for the Time Warp?
No, just too old ... I already felt like the creepy guy in the theatre. And Rocky screenings always have LOTS of creepy guys at them.
Noah,
Last Christmas (I believe), Karen and I went back to Tower Theaters for a show.. Let's just say I felt the same awkwardness as you did. I felt *way* too old, and was sketched out by the other people my age and older who were there.
The show was fun.. although we had slightly different versions/sayings as everyone else.. Apparently it changes throughout the years. Plus, they gave out "gift bags" of stuff to throw... ?!?
I decided 'round about college that when I would go to a screening, I would only say the funny lines back at the screen. After this viewing, I'm fairly sure none of the lines the audience says to the screen are funny.
Well ... "she went ape shit" is kinda cute ...
I bet there's still some bottles of Everclear stashed in that auditorium somewheres.
The last time I went to a Rocky Horror screening was in early 2004 with several castmates from the production of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead I was in at the time. Some of us hadn't seen the show in years, so we trooped down to the Harvard Square theatre after one of our Saturday night shows to take in the experience again.
There we were sold the Stuff You Can Throw kit, which I hear is a good way for the local cast to make some scratch, as well as keep the theater management happy (I seem to recall one incident at Tower that involved someone bringing in flour, of all things.)
The "Full Body Cast" group runs the proceedings at Harvard, and they're pretty much made a whole production out of it. They first kicked things off with about 45 minutes' worth of pre-show stuff, and I don't mean virgin auctions or "R-O-C-K-Y" chants or the usual silly things, I mean musical skits involving lip-synching to Animaniacs songs and this comic fake Irish song about menstruation that you'd probably only hear elsewhere on the Z-100 Morning Zoo program.
By this time we were growing restless; my friend Mare the being most disappointed. She'd been involved with the movie in the mid-80s, back when it really was this crazy kind of cult movie phenomenon. She just wanted to see and heckle the bad movie, not sit through what were obviously in-jokes for a someone else's crowd.
When the movie eventually did start, Full Body Cast did everything they could to make the show their show. They had sets (including a fully-built bedroom set, with shadow screen, for the seduction scenes) and a working lightboard (and, I swear to God, a follow spot with "Purple Onion" gel) all for their cast. This wasn't one of those "oh hey, you're here, can you do Eddie? We need someone in fishnets who can pass for Frank" kinds of things, no, this was a strictly organized operation, and it turned the experience from "going to see Rocky Horror" to "going to see the Full Body Cast floor show with Rocky Horror playing in the background."
We were warned not to throw stuff at the screen (which, of course, is a given; The Screen Is God, The Screen Costs More Than You Do) but also not at the cast as well, whose costumes were Very Important. Well, then, where the hell else are you supposed to throw things?
It also became painfully clear that Mare and I were one group among three who actually knew any callback lines. There were two loud drunks up near the front of the audience who had a few good obscenities, the girls working the light board actually were saying stuff, and then there was Mare and I. Nobody else was even reciting the typical Audience Participation lines that we used to rote memorize off that double album.
The one good thing about all that relative silence was that when you managed to bring out a good tried-and-true call
Whoops. Wrote too much.
At any rate, let's just say that with all that silence, we got more laughs with our lines than we deserved, but we also realized our time at the movie was finally over, and it was best to leave it to other people who obviously had a radically different idea of how to enjoy it.
Cue the Wonder Years' classical guitar music here.
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