Hello to all of you. Unconventional convention is out there. Welcome to Rocky Talkie. The show where we talk about anything and everything related to Rocky Horror. I'm Aaron and I am John and we've got a great show lined up for you today. But first off before you jump into that, let's talk about what we did this week. Nicky. What have you been up to? I'm kind of pumped. I had a really good week because yesterday Josh took me to Best Buy and finally forced me to buy a computer. I've had the same like piece of shit computer for the past six years and it barely ran. It barely functioned. It wheezed at every click. So I got this really fancy like gaming computer. I'm not a gamer. I just gave Josh all of my money and said, buy me something that can run fortnight. Well, and it's so dope. It's the coolest computer ever. I'm so excited about it. The amount of vomit that just uh, appar into my mouth when you said Fortnite is astronomical. Listen, it is a guilty pleasure like he'll kill me. But me and Josh, we, we play it all the time. At what point is it just a pleasure? Well, I mean, I'm actually, I'm the type of person that's like there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure. Yes, there is. It's Fortnite. Yeah. No, I can acknowledge that or as long as you know. Thank you. Well, how was your week, John? You know, if you want, if you want to judge, let's talk about you. I mean, I had a fantastic week. This past weekend was this big event that I was a part of with Twitch. It's called Friend Fest. It was an event that celebrated the one year anniversary of Animal Crossing, New Horizons. And I was part of a group of Twitch Streamers who toured these like extremely like fantastic islands. And I got a lot of follows. A lot of subscriptions and a lot of money from that. But most importantly, it was just such a cool gratifying experience to be part of something that other content creators helped to create with me. It was super cool. I'm still kind of riding the high from it if I'm being honest. So not necessarily any better or worse, but Animal Crossing is much better than Fortnite. And we all know it, man. I don't know if I can agree with that. I haven't played Animal Crossing so I can't, I can't say that you're wrong but you're probably not wrong. Yeah. And Aaron, you have no leg to stand on. You play card. Games, but on a computer. Oh. Oh, I think Fortnite beats Magic the gathering. Wow. All the fuck out. What did you do this week? Aaron. Well, I played card games on a fucking computer. There is some new me. No. Um, actually even, even kind of a little lamer than that. I finally picked the pineapple that's been growing in our house for the last year. Honestly, that's pretty fucking cool. Did you eat it? We did. Oh It was, it was wonderful. So about a year ago, my parents brought us AAA cutting from a pineapple plant that they had and it was just the tiniest little thing was in a tiny little pot. And over the last year it has grown to like consume a quarter of my living room and sprawl everywhere and despite our best efforts, we could not kill it and it finally gave up the fruit and just the other day we were able to pick it, chop it up, had it with some ice cream. I've got some saved for some drinks and I've got some saved to go with some like pork. I'm gonna make it. It was really tasty. So that was, that was the highlight. I'm so jealous. That sounds super dope. No, seriously, like not even joking. That beats anything I did all week. It beats anything that I've probably ever done in my entire life. Yeah. You literally grew that and then you ate it. What the hell, you fucked it. What, what did you do that? You didn't do that? Did you? I did not. Well, I mean, that's a transition. If I've ever heard one, let's get started with some global news. Yeah. Yeah. No, let's go from there. That's great. So, we've got to start out global news on a bit of a downer this week. Houston's Historic River Oaks Theater home to the cast. The Royal Mystic order of chaos will be shutting its doors for good. At the end of March, the River Oaks Theater was an 82 year old art house theater that many have described as Houston's most loved cinema. It's hosted film festivals showed movies by local indie filmmakers and routinely showed midnight matinee films including the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Never heard of it. Me neither. Unfortunately, River Oaks fell victim to the world shutting down last year and hasn't been able to pay rent since March of 2020. Much like everyone else in this country and has been open about the fact that due to the need to host much smaller audience capacities in each of its three theaters, it will likely be unable to pay its full rent for the foreseeable future. Yeah, although the cinema has tried to come to an arrangement with the building's landlord, both parties were unable to reach an agreement. So the theater will be closing down at the end of its lease which expires at the end of March. We know a lot of our Rocky family have lost their home theaters in the midst of the pandemic. We know that on the grand scale of pandemic related loss, this is just a drop in the ocean. But we do want to acknowledge how difficult it must be for your cast to suddenly be without a home, especially during a time when relocating isn't exactly easy. We wish our friends at the royal Mystic Order of Chaos all the best and we hope that all of you are able to find a wonderful new theater as soon as it is safe to do so. So shifting gears to a bit of a lighter topic, perhaps a hotter one if you will. Seriously, I said what I said. So hot topic has just recently launched a line of this is my Rocky horror costume apparel, which sounds great. But wait, these are black t-shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies featuring a red and white image of different Rocky horror characters with white, double feature text, badly badly distorted, double feature text reading. This is my blank costume. So far they've released Frank Riff Rash, Magenta and Colombia flavors in sizes ranging from small to three XL. But who knows or cares they could come out with some more later. I hate this. This is hilarious to me. No, this is absolutely hilarious to me because I don't, I didn't do Christmas with my family this year because of COVID. So I got all of my Christmas presents this week and one of my cousins got me $100 worth of hot topic gift cards, even though I don't shop there. So now I have a reason to go spend all of them. Thank you very much. I'm thinking hot topic. Theme night. Anyone else with me? Absolutely. Fucking not. No. That, that sounds like one of the theme nights that I'd hate the absolute most. see between this stuff and all the other rocky crap that hot topic sells. You could probably pull it off. I'm pretty sure it would just end up being like a janky punk theme night. But worse. Yeah, it's super meta. You're super meta. It, it, it kind of sounds like an absolute train wreck. But honestly, it might not be the worst idea to keep a few of these on hand for, you know, like those nights, you know, the ones that happened in the dead of winter when you've got seven cast members, everyone's already double cast and someone calls out last minute and you need to ask one of the brand new prop tarts to fill in his magenta or something. Like the magenta doesn't have a costume because this is only the third night on cast. You throw them the shirt that just says this is my magenta costume to wear as a dress and everyone's just like, yeah, prop tarts. Prop tarts. Yeah, those would be, they're like pop tarts. But they stand around and don't know what they're doing instead of being in my tummy. Confirmed a wants to eat all the new people. Oh, no, no, no, no. Oh, my God. F and S is pretty cool when it comes to like, casting because if we all normally come to every show with like at least one extra costume just in case. But last year we did a switch night and I played Brad and I don't know what was going on in my head. That day, I packed the whole costume like I was ready and I rolled up to the theater and I don't remember what I was wearing. I think I was wearing like Uggs. Like I was just like, it's cold out. It's January. I'm going to wear my Uggs like it's going to be fine and I didn't bring any other shoes for Brad. And I was like, how am I gonna, how am I going to get away with this? And the like the newest cast member, she was like 17. I had never met her was wearing shoes that looked like Brad shoes. And I was like, what is your shoe size? And she was like, oh my God. And we had the same shoe size. So I stole this girl's shoes for the entire night and she had to just run around in my hugs. It was hilarious. Uh I actually, like, contrary to popular experience, I don't think I've ever had a situation where I haven't been able to figure it. Like, if I've forgotten something, I'm pretty sure I've always figured it out, like, to the point where it's not even worth mentioning. I've never gotten to the show and then, like, oh my God, I didn't, I forgot this item and then had been completely fucked. Kind of proud of that. Oh, man, I have the exact opposite. I cannot count the number of times that I have screwed up my costumes and it's just ruined my entire night. I'll show up to the theater. I'll get my Eddie stuff on. I'll be all ready to go. I'll look down and it turns out I put my backup set of rings into my box instead of my regular set of rings. So here I am. Right. I'm going on stage and like my tiger's eye doesn't even look like it's in the right setting and I'm wearing a weird off centered comedy Tragedy Ring. It's oh my gosh, your diamond shoes are too tight and your wallet is too small for your fifties. John, I have a very important question. We have to whisper. So Aaron can't hear us. I think we should replace him with Jacob for good. Ok. OK. You got to speak up. I'm glad we have this talk, Jacob. I have a proposition. Sorry, Aaron, you're fired. Ok. See you have fun. All right, bye Aaron. So anyway, if you're interested in checking out these hilarious shirts or any of hot topics. Rocky Horror merch. We've got a link for you in the description and with that, let's move on to community news, community news, more like community news. I was about to sing a happy song. God. OK. So a little behind the scenes here, guys, we're recording this episode at 6 30 pm on Monday afternoon. And about an hour ago, there was an extremely exciting post that went up on the R H P S 2020 Las Vegas Winter Hangout Facebook page. Oh, what kind of post? I haven't even seen this honestly, Aaron neither have I. This is literally hot off the presses breaking news even for us, Arturo Garcia from the Los Sardo asked who ran the 2020 Vegas Winter hangout just posted to the group? Hm, 2022. That is spicy as fuck. So like there's no real info, but it sounds like maybe a winter hangout in the works for next year. You guys this time next year, we could all be chilling by the pool in sunny Las Vegas, gambling away all our diamond shoes. We'll definitely be updating you guys as we learn more about what's going on. Get fucked. Aaron. Uh one of us has lost a significant amount of money gambling in a casino and it's uh not the guy over here who was recently fired. One of us has had a lot of fun gambling away his money. In a casino. The other was a little c and just looked at the tables waiting for his opportunity, which never came. One of us fell asleep at nine o'clock and you all went to the casino without me. And one of them went wee wee wee wee all the way home. All right. Moving on to some more community news. What do we got? Uh, so the Clinton Street Theater in Multan, Noma County, Oregon currently holds the record for the longest consecutive screenings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show of any theater in the country. Nobody wants to react to that. Ok. So, so they started playing the movie on Saturday nights in April of 1978. And since then, they've hosted screenings of the film every Saturday without interruption. That is 42 straight years of playing the movie every single Saturday, no matter what that shit is. Bananas. Good for them. I think I could do it. Give me 43 years, but everyone expected their street to be broken in March of last year. However, the theater powered the fuck through the entire pandemic playing the movie for private groups of 10 or less audience members. Often, the only audience members were Nathan Williams, the theater's Rocky Horror MC and like one or two of his friends in an article for Wille at Week, Nathan. Now 39 talked about his first visit to the Rocky Horror Picture Show back in 1999. Williams says that for him. Rocky horror at Clinton Street is a shining beacon that has lit up the lives of countless people who had no other place to go and be themselves. We're just keeping that alive even if just in spirit. So people know there's a place that will always exist where they can go, let their hair down and not worry about being judged. I don't have any hair. You can do that too. Yeah, you can keep it up. So between the Clinton Street Theater and Nathan Williams, they've managed to keep the 42 year streak alive with virtually no audience. But starting the first weekend in April, the theater will start opening up a handful of tickets to the public screenings and Rocky will resume once again. That's so exciting. It really is. It won't be quite the same. Of course, according to the wome week under the moderate risk designation, indoor entertainment venues can only operate at 50% capacity. So only 50 people will be allowed into each screening and because venues have a curfew of 11 PM, the screenings won't be taking place at midnight just yet. They aren't sure what the show's start time will be, but we'll be releasing more info as soon as they've got it. And honestly, no matter what time the show takes place or how many people will be in the theater, I'm sure it will be amazing for everyone to be able to bring some life back to this decades old tradition for the theater. On top of all this, the Clinton Street Theater will also be available for private rentals. Beginning in April bookings will be limited to 12 guests at a time, but they only cost $100 per hour. So if you and 11 of your closest most vaccinated friends wanted to rent out the venue and put on a fun little shadow cast in a historic cinema. Now is your chance? If you'd like to learn more about the Clinton Street Theater, we've got all this info and a ton more linked for you in our show notes. Speaking of shows, we just want to remind you all about our community preshow night this Saturday, March 27th at 10 PM Eastern, we're going to be hanging out with you guys getting cozy and watching some of our absolute favorite pre shows. No, we won't. Yes, we will. I will be there. We really want to give a humongous. Thank you to everyone who has submitted videos. We've got so many and we're in the process of finalizing the lineup. We're all really excited about how much great stuff we've got. We think this is going to be a lot of fun and we really appreciate everyone who's gotten involved. So if you're looking for a chance to have some fun this Saturday with your Rocky family, the show will take place this Saturday, March 27th at 10 PM Eastern on R H BS live dot com. We're going to be throwing virtual props yelling callbacks with the whole audience and just having a total blast with all of you. We can't wait to see you there. Uh It looks like the powers that be decided that always a little too much serotonin for our brains. Too much good news. We need to take it down a notch and invite Jacob Irving Roger Gordon to join us for our next segment. Hi, everybody. John Nicky Aaron Jacob. What's up, bro? You know me, I'm the side character with a flutter in my heart and a straining in my pants. I'm here today because me and my papa bear have been exchanging certified letters through U SPS. Most recently I sent him one of my soiled handkerchiefs and he sent me uh like a sarcastic little restraining order and it was so funny. It made me think. Wow, Barry's so much funnier than all his Rocky Horror cast mates. I should write something about that. So I commandeered the Google Doc and I'm ready to give everyone my dissertation on why Barry Bostwick is the best actor in Rocky Horror. Ok. I'll, I'll bite. Let's do this, Jacob. Why is Barry Boswick the best character in Rocky Horror? I think it's important. First to note that Meatloaf and Barry are clearly the two most male forces on the cast. Peter Henwood will not be taken into account in this ranking as he's actively disbanded himself from the rocky community and alienated himself by managing an antique shop. Tim Curry has lost enough in his lifetime. So I'm not going to nag him in this because why kick a man when he's already immobilized in a wheelchair would probably hurt your feet for one? Yeah, that sounds like a bad idea on your part. And yet still I would do it. Just get it over with. Keep going. As I looked into Papa Bear and meat loaf. I was surprised to see their difference in height. Meat loaf is a chubby little snack at 5 10. But Barry's the whole meal coming in at 64. Like Leonidas's towering visage looms over you and makes you weak in the knees. Now, I could stop at their respective heights to highlight Barry's bitterness. But I know Meatloaf personally, in fact, just the other day we were emailing about, I would do anything for love, but I won't do that and it came to light what he won't do is spend an hour or two. Replying to my emails, suffice to say Papa Bear has no issue sending me a tight little package full of words like within 10 ft and under no circumstances and litigation. While Meatloaf can't even be bothered to send me a single paragraph from the Miami Dade County District Court. Not only that Meatloaf is a lazy grifter in 2016 while performing in Edmonton. Meatloaf fainted on stage, Meatloaf says it was dehydration but before his body even hit the floor, the track was still running, revealing him to be lip syncing the whole time dehydration. Really? You need your people to make the music for you as well as dance your body around like a meat puppet, fucking lazy artist. Now, look at Barry, he hasn't missed an appearance in years. Why I've listened to everything ever he has done and I can guarantee he's never used a recording. It would just hide the audio smic nature of his voice. A perfunctory that comes with every utterance. The man even sells his underwear just last week. I made a bulk order and everything arrived on time and in pristine condition. Now that's the kind of artistic dedication I can get behind, but he's more than welcome to get behind me too. Charles Gray has a chin. You can fuck. And Jonathan Adams, if you look online, seemingly stress aged more between the stage production and the movie than Obama over two terms, I'm sure it was very hard for him to stand and talk and then sit in that wheelchair. Let's move on to Richard o'brien who in 2016 said that trans women can't be women. Yeah. What I really love about Barry is that he knows how to keep his mouth shut and keep whatever idiot opinions he may have to himself. Now on from the boys, Nell Campbell, I don't know if you've noticed. But what really sets Nell apart is her tendency like Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl to lose track of her nipples. Oh, fuck's sake. Barry is a much more organized person. If you're seeing his nipples, it's because he wants you to. Uh Furthermore, has anyone seen do the swim? If not, you should treat yourself. It's a three minute wet dream as little nell flops around on the floor and tells us about how she swims, how in fact she does the swim all while trying and failing to keep track of her nipples. I like stilettos and lipstick more or maybe brown like a record round like a record is probably her better. Maybe something off a fever fun fact in all those albums, she also has a hard time keeping track of her nipples. I don't think you've seen any of those, but I know that that's a safe statement to make. Now Campbell Oops, Patricia Quinn has the face of someone gracefully aging, but her career has the markers of a 60 something throwing a tantrum against father time in 2006. Pat tried at the ripe old age of 62 to relaunch her career as a DJ and a club kitten. I'm not sure who out there is waiting on old Quinn to DJ in between kitten humping them in a Molly haze on the dance floor, but Barry is much more refined. Sure, he's old, but he knows it he's taking L S D trips in a teepee in the desert with his friends the way God intended for old people to take drugs. He's making youtube clips where he mockingly spouts all the fluffy off color opinions. A man of Berry's age is like to have and he's involved in a lascivious relationship with a much younger man. What could be more in line with someone his age than that last and certainly least we have Susan Sarandon the starved for attention. Twitter hungry spouting politics at the mouth all to get one story on the Guardian about her second coming out dying artist who played opposite Papa Bear. Sarandon is in an ugly way shrinking away as the spotlight leaves her, she's clutching back up for a meager taste, but no one cares, Barry didn't get the spotlight all at once. So he's still kicking, pumping out content whether it be merch or movies or youtube clips because he doesn't need to claw for the attention. It comes naturally. Why even in the remake, Barry was the best and to talk about that, why don't you guys do the thing and transition into our next segment? Nicky asks a question. That dude, do you know Barry wasn't in the remake? Right? You're, you're just a moron. Yeah, Barry was in Teen beach movie. Honestly, I fucking hate when he does this, but I do love Nicky asks a question time. Ok, guys, we teased the hell out of this week's Nicky as a question and we cannot even begin to tell you how pumped we are for this. Write in right here, John, why don't you go ahead and read it for us? Of course. So this message is from the Duke of New England. It's a really weird noise to make when you're horny. Nicky. I actually followed him on Instagram the other day. So we cool. Well, hello again, Rocky Talkie. It's been a while. There's a question, I've been pottering far longer than this podcast has existed. And while it may be more opinion than factual research, I need to know the answer. Why is the 2016 remake, the Rocky horror picture show? Let's do the time warp again. So universally hated now I'll be real. This is one of the few things I agree with the bulk of the fandom on. I was super excited for it to come out since it was announced very shortly after the first time that I have ever watched Rocky. But it was disappointing. It wasn't all bad. It had its moments, but I never pick it over the 1975 version. Now, I have a few reasons. I consider it bad. Strange characterization choices, overproduced cinematography, detracting from the camp Riff's weird guitar gun. But I'm curious what you think and why you think it was such a flop? Is this a good Nicky asks a question? No, probably not. Am I gonna ask anyway. Hell yeah, if it goes well, maybe I'll just have to ask the same questions about shock treatment. Just be glad it's not another rumor. Yours as always the Duke. All right, let me, let me get this out of the way real quick here at the beginning. Uh Shock Treatment is a good movie and the remake is a bad movie. So I don't know what you're talking about with shock treatment. Duke, but I'm gonna bust your ass back down to like, I don't know what's lower than the Duke. A little shock treatment. I will quit right now. I've never seen shock treatment like a real live a little bit shock treatment. Me and Jacob are starting a ban has left the chat. I fucking love that song from Shock treatment. All right, we're not talking about shock treatment though. We are talking about the remake. A remake and a sequel are completely different. A remake is worse. So let's talk about the remake. Uh general info about the remake. Let's just crap some facts out here in case you somehow missed this when it came out. So the plans for a remake started back in 2002 with a possible date in 2003 for the 30th anniversary of the original 73 musical. The remake had former Broadway producer Gail Berman attached to it but the production failed to materialize MTV. Planned a remake for 2008 also with Gail Berman as a producer, but that production failed as well. So coming around 2015, Lou Adler, he was the producer for the 1975 film, served as a copro producer for the new remake movie that eventually got made. He worked with Gail Berman and Kenny Ortega, the director. So this creative team remained faithful to the original script in music but had a new reimagining of the story rehearsals started in January of 2016 and filming took place between March through the end of April of 2016. It eventually released in October around the Halloween season, probably the best time to release something for Rocky. And in December later that year, an extended cut was finally released that contained Brad's song once in a while, it was shot and cut from both the broadcast and the original version. So they kept that and it also included an extra scene at the end credits that had the bright red lips singing the reprise to science fiction double feature, the commercial breaks were replaced and all that other stuff. But in general, it's pretty much the same thing that you saw on TV. All of this, they wrapped up and produced for around $20 million for the Fox Network and it aired in prime time on Fox. The film's director Kenny Ortega was originally a choreographer throughout the eighties. His first directing roles were newsies and Hocus Pocus and he's responsible for films like Xanadu, Saint Elmo's Fire. Pretty in pink. Ferris Bueller, dirty dancing and Wang Fu. Thanks for everything. Julie Newmar Ortega has multiple primetime Emmy awards for choreography. And by 2016 he was most known for directing the high school musical trilogy. Yeah. If you didn't know that. Now, you know, now I know. Yeah. Let's talk briefly about the remake cast. Ok, never mind. Um So you have Ivy Levon as the user. You have Victoria Justice from Nickelodeon Victorious, Zoe One oh One playing Janet Weiss Stana as Rocky. Christina Milian as Magenta. And then of course, you have Tim Curry as the criminologist. Adam Lambert played Eddie. He was the 2009 runner up on American Idol. He is extremely hot. Oh my God, you've got Reeve Kearney Pre Hades Town playing Riff Raff Anna Lee Ashford as Columbia Ryan mccarton O G J D from Heather's the musical playing Brad Freakin majors, Ben Verine as Dr Scott. And then of course, we have Laverne Cox from Orange is the new black playing Frank. It's a great cast, but we know that doesn't make a movie. Let's talk about the problems. Why does the community hate it? So if you ask 50 people in the community, they're all going to tell you 50 different reasons why they hate it. Let's talk instead right off the top about all the things that the critics said and that generally the world said about why this wasn't even a great remake to begin with. All the points we're going to be making are pulled directly from articles from Vox Time magazine variety, the New York Times USA today and a bunch of others. But I think we all know we've heard many of these same complaints levied by members of the community. There's a few points here that we certainly don't agree with and are obviously over the line even for five years ago when the remake came out. But we're gonna go through them aware that this is what the mainstream media was saying about the remake. It was big news at the time as you can tell by the massive amount of press articles you can still find even today, I promise we'll get to our opinions and more about the community reception in just a minute. Disclaimer done. Here's what the critics had to say. First off, let's do the time. Warp again, tries to honor Rocky Horror's legacy, but they use an incredibly stupid framing device in order to do it when the remake opens, you have the Usherette Ivy Lavon and she's singing science fiction double feature as she preps a crowd of Rocky Horror super fans to sit down and watch the movie in this giant movie theater Castle thing unclear. So this frames the action of the movie as a film within a film and it allows the onscreen audience to provide classic audience participation moments and that's probably the most original and boldest thing that this thing even does the crowd then pops up sporadically throughout the rest of the show, mostly for audience participation bits. But the juxtaposition never really makes sense. It sort of comes off as a halfhearted attempt to bring some meta commentary into the mix. But it just kind of reads as weird viewers without any knowledge of the source material will be really lost with how this is framed VX covers this really well in an article about the movie where they state the flat sets to the stilted acting to the lame costumes makes Ortega's Rocky Horror feel like it takes place at a middle school dance. And unfortunately, they're really not wrong. So Fox had done a live production of the whiz in 2015 and Greece earlier in 2016, which I loved both of them. I don't care what anybody says, fuck all of you. So they proved that they could produce a relatively successful send up the remake managed somehow to feel both less ambitious and more bizarrely bland than grease. But then again, if Fox wanted to put on a live Rocky Horror, it would have had to look elsewhere for its cast, right? Not to diminish any of these actors, but the cast just isn't really up to snuff for Rocky Horror, even for a remake. So you have like strong individual performances, but they don't really make a hole. And while Columbia Brad, Dr Scott Eddie Riff and Frank were all good. They had none of the chemistry or flow that permeated the original. Everybody is practically in a different show. And when you add in the performances that didn't work well, Victoria Justice's Janet doesn't make any attempt to go on a journey. She literally has one mode and that's Peppy and Kenny Ortega failed miserably when he let Christina Mil's performance make it past the rehearsal stage. Her magenta is both unfaithful to the original while simultaneously offering up absolutely nothing of redeeming value and manages to be a hideous distraction every time she's on screen. And as for Rocky, if Frank's perfect sex toy man shows up in a fucking safer Disney board shorts. I think someone got the recipe very, very wrong. I feel like this is anatomy because I wear board shorts as Rocky. So whoever wrote this script, fuck you. You're welcome. That was Jacob. You're just mad. I'm a hotter Rocky than you'll ever be Jacob versions of you as your hotter rocky self. Haunt my dreams, John. Speaking of haunting dreams, Tim Curry's criminologist. Ok. It's appreciated. It's heartfelt, but God, it's just a reminder that we're all gonna die and some of us in particularly less dignified ways. It's, it's the same reason that New Year's Rock and Eve viewership plummeted for years when the network insisted on hauling out Dick Clark's corpse and made the poor man count backwards from 10. I've got to say something. A Aaron at the beginning of that period. You said Tim's criminologist and it's written out as Tim's crim which rhymes and you saw that it rhymed and you chose to say the thing that didn't rhyme. You did the work in your head to get to a phrase that didn't rhyme from one that did, you did work to do worse. How does that feel? I just wanna know. Honestly, I have never ever agreed with Jacob before, but I agree with Jacob. Well, speaking of doing work to get a worse result, let's talk about Laverne Cox and how she's not really Frank. What a transition? Fuck you. I'm gonna transition on that. Plenty have taken issue with a trans woman playing Frank and that has nothing to do with it unless you're the kind of special that thinks casual transphobia and gay bashing is an effective way of communicating your point. Eat my dick. Gender ban casting is super frequent in theater and normal in every rocky theater across the world. But when you do gender bent casting, you either allow it to go unacknowledged or you ensure that it doesn't significantly alter the subtext of the piece. You cannot just simply ignore it. Take Dr Scott, for example, they happily cast a black actor as a possibly ex nazi school teacher in the Middle America in the sixties and they just left it at that no extra explanation. You just have a black nazi. It's all the more absurd and that's fine. Right? Instead of subverting every gender and sexuality expectation that you might have, you know what Frank is supposed to do. You're just confused as to why a woman's playing a male role, she doesn't even attempt to embrace Frank's most defining characteristic. And that's that he's a relentlessly gender fucked weirdo Laverne's Frank is glamorous. It's stunning. But at no point, does she give off anything resembling weird or scary or sexually frightening without Frank straddling gender lines? Who gives a fuck that she made a man? What's so weird about her seducing Brad? The production's only queer moment becomes Frank's flirtation with Janet, which is the least racy of Frank's encounters in the show and was not revised or modified in a significant way to play up the impact all said and done. Laverne tries her best but comes off way way, way too popular. A criticism that you will often hear with the glitz and glam versions of stage shows in years past. And Tim Curry's Frank clearly flips between Jekyll and Hyde personality. Kind of a self absorbed narcissistic diva and a psychopathic crazed alien murderer, Laverne Cox's Frank in furter is far more restrained and just refuses to allow the crazy to come through in any meaningful way. This isn't an interpretive choice. It's more like a flagrant disregard for a core part of the character. Why? Because they refuse to show a trans woman as a crazed psychopath on eight PM network television or whatever other reason you want to give, it just didn't work great. So let's talk about who the hell is this movie? Even for? There's nothing less charming than that, which sets out to be campy. They polished it up, but Rocky doesn't do well with Polish and they included a p an entirely unique, spontaneous and 100% live phenomenon and then refined its slick asides that did more to pull you out of the action than make you feel like you were part of the show. If the urgency people have long felt towards Rocky is the collective experience of watching it. Give us the real thing. Show us a live show with all the flaws and the risks, not this perfectly functioning theme park ride that just borrowed the Rocky horror name. The portion of the show that differed the most artistically from the original four show takeover. I'm going home that had more of a feeling of a hot topic emo phase rather than can't be glitzy. Send up what even was with Riff and Magenta's crazy costumes and, and this applied to all of the Transylvanian too. The show completely loses the weirdness. The Transylvanian's are supposed to provide instead of looking dressed for a night at the opera and wrestling with the juxtaposition that these are creepy aliens done up in bonkers colors, their entire presence becomes boring when they all look like they just stumbled out of the fish Nets and leather section of a Spencer's gifts. The weirdness of Rocky just becomes sad and then I'm so edgy kind of way when it came out and indeed leading up to the production, the community was hopeful but cautious. I mean, if I'm going to talk about it because everything that we just talked about are, are like actual, like critical reviews and not necessarily our own opinion. So, like, I'm gonna throw a wrench into it. I fucking love the remake. Uh When I first watched it, I hated it. I was like, how dare Fox do look what they did to my boy, you know, but the more that I watch it and I've seen it quite a few times at this point because I just hate fun. I fucking love it. Now I admit that watching it first, I just had this expectation that was just never going to be met. And I think that that's OK. The one thing that I would still take issue with is kind of like what all the critics were saying about how they took camp and they polished it, which I do agree with. And I did when I first watched it, I still feel like they took camp and they made it glitzy and pretty which it shouldn't be, you can't be camp with that much intent, but I still fucking love the remake and all of its terrible glory. Yeah. No, we, we differ there but we do not agree. I hate the remake in all of its terrible glory. I joined the community a couple of years too late for this movie. So I didn't watch it until like 2019, probably or 2018. And I vividly remember like, torrent it on my phone, like in bed at like three AM. Like, I can't sleep. What am I going to do? I'll just watch the Rocky horror remake. And I was excited for it because like, I love Ryan mccarton and like, I don't love Victoria Justice, but I thought that like she would might have been a good Janet. I saw a lot of differences in the casting and I was just pumped. I was super pumped and I was let down completely. There was just a lot about the show that rubbed me the wrong way. I hated the way they did the songs. I hated Taa, I hate it. I still hate Taa makes me angry and I want to talk about it. There's a moment in Taa where instead of doing like a verse, they cut out Janet's second verse where she's singing like touch, touch, touch me. And she's just like rolling around the bed moaning but like safe for TV, moaning. So she's just like, ah who and then they have Magenta still say like Creature of the night, but they don't have Columbia take her like uh I get a, I'm getting angry, I'm getting so angry. I think that they did not do any of the songs justice. I think that the casting was weird. I think that they changed the wrong things when they could have done so much better. I'm sorry, I'm so mad. I hate this movie. You know, I, I think I'm gonna have to straddle the line here and not because I want to have a third opinion, but mostly because like there's parts of this movie I actually really do like, I'm with John on this. There are some numbers that are fantastic. There's bits of it that are just like super fun to watch and a lot of the criticism that we just talked about, I don't necessarily agree with a bunch of that, but you got to remember that. What Duke's question here is, is very much about why does the community hate it? And I think that being around then gives you a bit of an understanding of how excited everybody was to see this thing, right? I mean, it had been 30 years plus since the movie had come out and everybody had been talking about remakes forever. There were rumors in the eighties that Mick Jagger was gonna do it. There was rumors in the nineties that there was gonna be a remake with Marilyn Manson. There were rumor was like all over the place and finally we got it right? Like everybody organized big giant viewing parties. I know Meg and I crammed ourselves into a tiny apartment in Brooklyn with about 30 other people from the New York City cast. It was so exciting. We were so engaged. Everybody was ready to go and you could just feel the energy deflate as the evening went on. Like, frankly, we would have had a better night if we'd all just watched the 2015 live stage show version. At least that felt like we were watching Rocky Horror. It wasn't until a while later and having watched this a few more times that I kind of gained an appreciation for it and maybe that's just a bit of Stockholm Syndrome. But no, I, I, I think it's real. I think there's actually something there that's not horrible and the community's hate for it is very much throwing the baby out with the bathwater kind of thing. I don't know, Jacob, what do you think about it? You saw it when it came out? Right. I actually joined the community a bit late to watch it when it came out, but I did not enjoy it. I really liked the guy who played Brad Majors, Adam Lambert and I enjoyed parts of Eddie's musical number because there was the motorcycle and it crashed through a window. It was very, very cool. I got was enthralled by that part. But what I really like about Rocky Horror and why I enjoy performing it is because I feel like it's such a garbage pile. Like it's such a trashy movie. None of it makes sense. There's a million plot holes and there's something that feels artistically inventive and fun about putting yourself, like, doing the best you can with a really trashy piece of art. And the remake tried to get rid of that. Tried to be like, no, Rocky isn't trashy. It's like upstanding and weirdly cool. And I, I hated that, that juxtaposition the, trying to make it campy. Yeah. I am going to completely agree with you, Jacob. That, that's kind of my main issue with it because I don't like the idea that they tried to say that this like can't be trashy movie is cool. You know, like Rocky was never cool. The one is and like, I feel like, you know, you can hate the movie all you want. But I think that there's also a difference between disliking the movie and gatekeeping what the community behind the movie because like for the people that are like, well, Laverne shouldn't have been Frank because Laverne is trans, I don't fuck you. Like I mean, you can dislike Lavern's choices to play Frank but like can we not like gatekeep? What Frank is or isn't, should or should be represented as can we not gatekeep whether or not fucking doctor Scott needs to be white for it to work like, right? Like that's the bullshit that I hate and like, like I said, you can hate the movie all you want. But like let's not gatekeep the characters, especially when somebody like Tim signed on to do this movie he clearly had, or at least, at the very least they attempted to have the original Rocky Horror Spirit in mind. But hate it all you want. You know, like, I totally understand it's one of those things that's like I like it, but I totally understand why people don't. Something we mentioned earlier that made me think about it in a different way too is we referenced that Frank in the remake is a woman. And so a lot of the uh sexual things she does aren't different at all. They're just straight sexual things and part of the allure of the original Rocky is that it's like really, really weird sexually and especially the time it was put in theaters, right? For a lot of people, it was their first time seeing those sort of sexual relationships occur. And I think the remake lost that because everything felt very blase sexually. It felt very natural like there was no, there was the, the value of, oh my gosh wasn't there because it was so clean and crisp and precise. And that's the one thing that I loved about Rocky is that it wasn't clean and precise, it was dirty, it was grungy. It was something that nobody had ever seen at this point. We've kind of seen what their version of Rocky was. So, yeah, like we've said here, a lot of the Rocky community has felt a compulsive need to hate this adaptation far more than it is justified. And that's the key if you look at it and want the original with a fresh coat of paint, if you're just looking for a remake, well, you're not gonna find anything redeeming value but if you think about it in the grand tradition of like the Rocky Horror show and really any stage show where every new production is room for a reimagining and may do things better, worse or simply different from the original. Well, I think that there's a lot more to offer. They figured out how to fix the pacing and dinner scene. No small feat. And Planet Snet, I hate to say it is actually a visually interesting scene instead of a throwaway to simply get all the characters and the action back to the lab. I cracked up when Frank was dragging Janet by her hair across the screen. It was like the funniest part of the whole movie and don't even get me started on Hot Patuti. I love the version of Hot Patuti that's in the remake Meg and I even did Eddie and Columbia for the remake blocking screen accurately and it was cut into our April Fools show a few years back. So you get to Hot Patuti. The movie just switches to the remake for Hot Patuti and switches back and boy, that's a hell of a lot harder than anything. Meat loaf does like he is passing his microphone back and forth from hand to hand. He wraps it around himself. He turns different directions the whole time. Surprisingly, the mics almost like has continuity, which is very nice except for this one part where it jumps from hand to hand, it's fine. It's hidden behind a cut so you can swap it. Not important. What is important? Those costumes though? I fucking love the costumes for Eddie and Columbia during Hot Patuti. And let me tell you when you're trying to recreate them, costuming is so much easier when you know that all of the products are actually on the shelf today at your local store and you can go buy them. Not to mention that there's actual honest to God youtube clips where they show off the costumes from the remake and you can just go through them slowly and see all the little details. They're in high res, it's fantastic. The original artwork that's on their shirts. Super easy to replicate in Photoshop and your local print on demand t-shirt service. And then you just got to buy a lot of studs, some expensive leather jackets, a $400 pair of boots and have a lot of patients, a nice sewing machine and have to cope with a bunch of broken needles. But man, that was so much fun. I loved learning that and the fact that it was part of Rocky in general and like a cute thing to throw in. I didn't care. It was from the remake. It was just so much fun. So the attempt to acknowledge the community is not done in malice. And it's generally positive, like they didn't make their audience members any crazier than the community were like more outlandish or anything. They even put salon as the photographer at the beginning of the film. But like did it fall flat and it seemed like they were resigned to it and it led to the poor framing and created a ton of pacing issues. I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that everything about it was horrible. It was certainly different but no different than a stage show where Frank rides in on a giant penis or Columbia plays guitar instead of tap dancing or Doctor Scott doesn't have a German accent. But I think that that's a lot of the problem that the community has. They weren't doing an adaptation of the stage show. They were doing a sanitized, made for TV remake. And that's just not what the community wanted. Apparently the community either wanted a grand self indulgent, erotic absurd send up or something completely out of left field original and different. And what we ended up with was Nickelodeon American Idol and high school musical. Even with that, I don't think anybody in the community would have been happy regardless of what they had put out. Let's talk about this real quick and I think that this will completely illustrate the point here. What would we want in a remake? The four of us, if we were gonna pitch a new remake to Fox, what would want to be in it for me personally. Number one thing I want to see the original stage show converted to film. I wanna see the original gritty like I wanna see the version of it. That isn't the glamorized version that we saw in 75 isn't the pop culture thing that they did? Now, I wanna see the raw version of it from the original stage show. That's, that's my remake. What about you, Nicky? What's, what's the remake you want to see the thing that I want most in a remake or in Rocky Horror in general? I feel like nothing would ever be 100% perfect. But I would love to see a rendition of Rocky Horror where they completely follow the Roxy arrangements. I love the Roxy album. It makes me so happy. I love Janet. I love that. Her, her voice is less traditional than Susan's and I just, uh Roxy has such a place in my heart and I would love to see that brought to the mainstream more and redone in a way that is more reproduced in a way that is more true to the original and has the quality of today instead of 1980 or whenever Roxy came out, I just want Christian B to play Frank and F no, no, no, no, no, no. Robert Sheehan, Frankie Klaus from Umbrella Academy. He was born for the role. Do you know who Christian bore is? And you're saying that Robert Sheehan some Rando, not a Rando would be better than Christian fucking boal. Sure, Jan. Sure. Oh, you see, I thought John was crazy. Turned out. I just googled Christian Bale. Yeah, I want Batman as, as Frank actually. And up batman, I'm batman. I'm that night. Oh, I see it now. I'm looking, I'm looking for Rocky Horror. Oh, I see. I see. Christian Bore now I see it. Well, here's my thing. Christian Bore would be a great Frank Robert. She, I don't even think he sings so, like doing that would make sense. But I look at Christian Bo and I just see Shakespeare and I know that that is perfect. He'd be a great Frank, but it would take me out of it completely. I'd be like, bring out Nick bottom because something rotten was like the first musical I ever saw. So like, I'm very much just like, no, I'm stuck in my ways. I'm sorry. That's why I couldn't watch 13 reasons why. Because Hannah Baker's dad is Nick bottom. Oh my God, he is. I didn't even think. And Shrek, well, see, here's the thing right before COVID, I went to go see the Off Broadway Little Shop revival and Christian Bore was Oran Scar he just radiated this like intense Franken furter energy. And ever since I saw him in that I was, it's like this man needs to play Frank. Also another cool Frank that I would love to see play Frank while we're on the topic of it. As much as I would love Christian world. I feel like it would be an awesome dope challenging and he would do fantastic. I think somebody that even though this probably won't happen because to my knowledge that this individual has retired from acting, I would love to see John Cameron Mitchell play Frank. Oh, yes, please. Absolutely love it. So I have a hot take about Frank actually because me and Andrea often will recast remakes of Rock Car just for fun. Me and would do it all the time and the other day we were researching like just looking on Tik Tok at like what other people want for a remake just to see and somebody made a joke one and they made Peter Dinklage Franken Furter. But if you think about it, Peter Dinklage can sing. Ok. I saw him in and he was amazing. He's hot. I know that Meg would absolutely lose her shit. I wouldn't hate Peter Dinklage. Franken Furter. I would absolutely love that. Yeah. See why are we doing the work for Fox? Right. Well, if you want some hot takes, let's see what Jacob has to say that. Yeah. Thank you. That leads perfectly into my idea because what I really want is something like something that reminds me of scary movie, but without any punch lines, I just want it to be really weird. And I think Tyrion Lannister as Frank and Fur would fit into that. Like, what I was thinking about is bedroom scene in the first one is great that that moment where Frank's eating out, Brad and Brad shoves his legs in the air and he fucking coming while some dude's eating his ass out. That's, it's, it's like crazy, right? It's, it's absolutely insane to see in a real way. Just think of the things you could do with Tyrion Lannister as Frank. And uh I think that sums it up even if they gave all four of us exactly what we wanted. We wouldn't be happy with it anyway, but we all agree on Peter Dili. Frank. Yeah, actually like fuck everything that I said. I love both John Cameron Mitchell and Christian bore as Frank ideas. But like Peter Dili as Frank would actually be fan fucking ta Harry styles Brad. I rest my case. You've got to acknowledge what it did for the community though while this may all be purely anecdotal. I know that we saw the effects on our attendance long after it aired much like Lee, it drew a lot of people in to see the film that had never shown interest before airing during Halloween. It's difficult to track week to week but I know we sold out shows all through the middle of 2017 just based on people coming to the show who had only seen the remake. And at the end of the day, I mean, just like Glee, that's a great example. That's all we really care about. Right. Keeping Rocky in the social consciousness and boy, it did that. I mean, you've got people joining casts now you've got people on the New York City cast. Now you've got people all over whose introduction to Rocky was seeing the remake. Just like people come in and they say honestly, I saw it first on glee. We're getting people who say they first saw it in the remake and you know what? I don't care how you came to Rocky as long as you're here now, enjoy the party, right? Can we do? And Nick, he asks a question about the Glee episode at some point. I just, I just really love it. I have nothing to say about that. I mean, content warning will Schuster but content warning. Matthew, content warning Matthew Morrison. But like I want to talk about that sometime me put that in the calendar. No, do not, do not listen. You can go jerk off to John Stamos by yourself. Like John Stamos is not who I'm waking it to in that episode. Do not say what I think you're about to say, not wank it to the M word man. The M word man. Matthew Morrison Morrison, right? We hate him. Yeah, I'm all about. So you say his name three times he will appear. And that's our show. We want to thank the Duke of New England for writing in with this fabulous question. We love getting to sift through that train wreck. Pick out the fun bits and rip into the parts that sucked if you'd like to submit a question for us to answer on air or write to us with some community news or even just share a cool story about your time in the Rocky horror community. Go to our website rocky talky podcast dot com and fill out our contact form to share with us. We really enjoy getting to hear about all the cool stuff you guys have been working on and we love having the opportunity to share it with the rest of the community. If you're enjoying Rocky Talkie, please help us spread the word about it. All you gotta do is go rate review and subscribe on itunes. It helps us make our podcast more visible to new listeners which helps us to grow the show. We're on Facebook, Instagram and tiktok all at Rocky Talkie podcast. So please go check us out and if you like us and you want more content, hit us up there or on any of the social medias, we can't wait to see you guys this Saturday for community pre show night, we'll talk to you all next week. Bye bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye bye, Matthew Morrison. No, but Nicky John her own Jacob Nikki again. John. Nicky Jacob Spud Aaron's muted. I am not. Oh, I totally am. Aaron, you're muted. Aaron we got there now. Right? Yeah. Fantastic. That looks like a Jacob Line. I was fired. Oh, yeah, Jacob, why don't you hop on it because Jacob recording, uh, now I am, please. Are we talking about? Oh, what kind of post? I haven't even seen this. Uh So the Clinton Street theater in, what the fuck is that? Yeah. No, that sounds right. Right. So the Clinton, you know it really, it, wow. I just hit my hand on the fucking desk. Give me, come here and give a kiss. Thank you. Do I pronounce lame differently? There's an accent. OK? I'm, I literally know nothing. OK? And Jacob who I don't care what he thinks. But if no, actually I have to care what he thinks because I'm about to use him. Um That's right, Aaron. That's right. I'll fucking cut you. It helps us make our podcast more visible to new listeners, which helps to grow those that, which helps us to grow the show. I just