`ROCKY HORROR' FANS CELEBRATE ... 09/22/1995
Publication: The Salt Lake Tribune
Types: DayBreak-Calendar
Published: 09/22/1995
Page: E1
Byline: By Sean P. Means THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
``Well, I see the Quaaludes are kicking in,'' Susan
Steffee tells her less-than-enthusiastic audience.
The crowd rises to the challenge.
``Give me an L!'' Steffee shouts, and the audience
obliges with a lung-busting yell. ``Give me an I!
. . . Give me a P! . . . Give me an S! . . . What's
that spell?''
``Lips!'' the audience roars.
``What do we want?''
``LIPS!!''
``When do we want 'em?''
``NOW!!!''
Having stirred her audience into a frenzy, Steffee
starts the chant ``Lips, lips, lips,'' pounding her
metal-shinned black boots on the Tower Theatre stage.
The movie is about to begin.
Welcome, one and all, to the world's only truly
interactive movie, ``The Rocky Horror Picture
Show.''
Since its premiere on Sept. 26, 1975 -- 20 years
ago Tuesday -- ``Rocky Horror'' has exploded
from a bizarre little rock musical to a worldwide
pop-culture phenomenon.
Fans dress up like their favorite characters. They
throw objects at key moments -- rice during a
wedding, toast when someone proposes a toast. They
shout lines in response to (or in anticipation
of) the dialogue. They even create an indoor rainstorm
with spray bottles and squirt guns.
In many cities, die-hard fans -- some of whom have
seen the movie hundreds of times -- re-enact
the film in front of the screen. Salt Lake City joins
those ranks for ``Rocky Horror's'' 20th
anniversary, with full-cast performances at midnight
tonight and Saturday at the Tower Theatre, 876
E. 900 South in Salt Lake City. Admission is $1,
though fans who dress in costume get in free.
An affectionately batty spoof of old sci-fi monster
movies, ``The Rocky Horror Picture Show''
follows newly engaged nerds Janet Weiss and Brad
Majors on one dark and stormy night. When
their car breaks down on a rain-slickened road, they
seek refuge in a nearby castle. There they meet
Dr. Frank N. Furter, a flamboyant space alien in
fishnet stockings, who is about to complete his
greatest creation: the well-muscled Rocky. As the
night progresses, Frank seduces Brad and Janet to
``give yourself over to absolute pleasure'' -- but
Frank must face the music when his servants revolt.
``The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' made its Salt
Lake City debut on Thanksgiving weekend 1976,
at the now-demolished Centre Theatre. Within a couple
of years, ``Rocky Horror'' found a home at
the Blue Mouse, a defunct theater now infamous for the
times the police raided it for its ``obscene''
art films.
Blue Mouse: It was at the Blue Mouse, in September
1987, where Steffee -- attending with her
debate class from Taylorsville High School -- first
saw ``Rocky Horror.'' The audience's reckless
abandon appealed to her immediately.
``I'd never been to a movie where people did things
like that,'' says Steffee, now a 23-year-old
aspiring art student. ``I've been to plenty of movies
where you wanted to. You wanted to cuss and
swear and say the characters were stupid; you wanted
to throw stuff at the screen. It's like
everything you ever wanted to do in a movie theater,
but would have gotten thrown out for.''
Steffee was back the next night, and within a
couple of months was going up onstage. There was
no emcee then, but soon Steffee and her friends were
inventing audience dialogue that now forms
the core of the Salt Lake stage show.
``We'd just ad-lib,'' Steffee says. ``We'd think of
something funny, and someone would say it. And
the next week, you'd hear someone in the crowd say
something that we had said.''
Many of the jokes took jabs at Utah culture,
specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints. When Brad says ``hi'' at the castle door, the
emcee adds, ``we're Mormon missionaries.''
When Rocky is found huddled under a blanket, the
response is ``BYU campus police -- you're
busted.''
Every city has its sacred cows that are filleted at
``Rocky Horror.'' In Seattle, they joke about
Boeing and the Mariners; in Las Vegas, UNLV takes a
few hits.
``Whatever the big thing [in another city] that
they want to make fun of, that's what the lines are
about there,'' Steffee says. ``Here, it's the LDS
Church that everybody is rebelling against, so that's
what we make R>fun of.''
The Blue Mouse ``was really intimate,'' says
Steffee, who estimates she has seen the movie at least
300 times and has been emcee for well over 100
screenings. ``During the introduction, with a loud
speaking voice, . . . people even in the back could
hear me. It was like having 150 people over to
your house to do it.''
Rotting Dogs: Over time, the Blue Mouse took on a
certain odor, as management allowed fans to
bring in almost anything, and only one janitor was
around to clean up afterward. Hot dogs rotted
under the stage for years. (The Tower bans hot dogs,
confetti, eggs and cigarette lighters; toast,
rice, toilet paper and playing cards are still thrown
freely -- though management will turn off the
projector if anything hits the screen.)
Steffee recalls one roll of toilet paper
permanently stuck in the Blue Mouse's ceiling pipes. ``We
threw everything we had at that thing, but it was just
wedged,'' she says. ``I'm sure when they
knock the building down, they're going to find this
section of ceiling and pipe with this toilet paper
stuck in it, and not be able to figure out where the
hell it came from.''
The Blue Mouse closed in 1990. ``Rocky Horror''
then played at two benefits for the Tower
Theatre, one at the Murray Theatre and one at Cinema
In Your Face. In January 1992, the movie
began its current run at the Tower.
Nicholas von Herberstein saw the London theatrical
production of ``The Rocky Horror Show'' in
1985, and saw the movie for the first time in 1987 in
Colorado. Still, when he first saw ``Rocky
Horror'' at the Tower, in September 1992, it was only
the third time he had seen the film.
One month later, he stood on the Tower stage in
full Frank costume -- bustier, heels, fishnets,
makeup, the works.
``It was kind of a nervous experience, since I
hadn't seen the show very often,'' says von
Herberstein, 26, a scuba instructor and a senior
studying history at the University of Utah. ``But I
knew I could lip-synch.''
Over the past three years,R> von Herberstein has
seen the show 50 or 60 times. Ever since taking
the stage, he has tried to organize a full cast to
re-enact the film.
Steps, Moves: That cast is finally in place. About
a dozen fans -- most of them in their teens and
20s -- have spent the past two months rehearsing the
movie's dance steps and character moves.
They also have accumulated enough costumes and props
to win a fair-sized scavenger hunt,
including a tuxedo, Mickey Mouse ears, a feather
duster, a hair dryer and (count 'em) four feather
boas.
``It's going to be one hell of a show,'' von
Herberstein promises.
Behind the humor and outlandishness of ``Rocky
Horror,'' Steffee and von Herberstein find in the
film a positive message about sexual awakening and
tolerance.
In 1975, gay sex was seldom discussed (and never
depicted) in movies. ``Rocky Horror'' talked
about homosexuality, bisexuality and transvestitism
openly and with humor.
``It was a movie that really dealt with one of the
problems of society that nobody talked about --
or would talk about,'' von Herberstein says.
``It's an open environment -- anybody's welcome,''
says Steffee, who has been out of the closet
since her senior year of high school. ``Maybe there's
a gay or lesbian kid out there, and they don't
know where to meet anybody that they can talk to. . .
. Whatever's going on in the movie, for some
reason it seems all right. That's the setting of the
movie -- nobody gets upset, nobody in the movie
says, `That's bad, that's unnatural, that's nasty.'
It's where things that are different are acceptable.''
The movie, von Herberstein said, also gives young
viewers ``a clean outlet for rebellion, for
frustration. . . . They can sit down and, in a fun
sort of way, complain about their lives, the area that
they live in.''
To the moral guardians who might frown on ``Rocky
Horror,'' von Herberstein asks: ``Would you
rather have [the kids] in the theater . . . where they
can release their frustrations, or would you
rather have thR>em down at Pioneer Park doing drugs?''
Steffee believes ``The Rocky Horror Picture Show''
will never die, because the movie's first fans
are the parents of today's fans. ``It's got an appeal
to it that goes across generations,'' she says. ``If
your parents can laugh at it and you can laugh at it,
that's unusual -- it's a one-of-a-kind.''
After all, Steffee notes, ``How many movies can you
curse and swear and throw things?''
Do the Time Warp
``The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' will celebrate
its 20th anniversary with two screenings,
accompanied by a full-cast re-creation onstage. The
shows are midnight tonight and Saturday, at the
Tower Theatre, 876 E. 900 South, Salt Lake City.
Admission is $1, though fans dressed in ``Rocky
Horror'' costumes can get in free.
