Hello to all of you. Unconventional conventions. Welcome back to Rocky Talkie. I'm Nicky. I'm John and I'm Aaron. It is so good to be back guys. I missed you and I missed recordings so, so much. How have both of you been? Did you miss me? No, not at all. Not a single ounce of me missed you. Well, that makes me really sad, John. Good. Good. I like it when you're sad. No, it was uh, it was strange just being the two of us for the past. What, like two episodes, right? Something like that. No, I think I actually did one. I think it was like, no, me and then me and then know me again. Yeah, we held it down, we held it down. It was a tight 20 last episode and we had to have Jacob fill in the time before, but that's what it was. Yeah. But I, I am, I'm pumped to Nicky's back. We are all here. This is gonna be fun as shit. Well, how was your time away, Nikki? What did you do? It was really good. So I was able to go on vacation. I've gone to the same place on the cat skills every year since I was born since like when my family has been going, since my mom was born. But we weren't able to go last year because of COVID. So I haven't seen any of my friends for the past two years. So it was so nice to be back. It was so exciting. I had such a good time and of course, you know, he giveth and taketh. I got the greatest week of my life and now I have Lake Plague. If you couldn't tell, I'm sick as a fucking dog. Wait, I was told that you were pillaging tombs in. Yeah, that was, that was two weeks ago, two weeks ago. I was in South America. I got you a remember that it's not the mummy's curse that this actually sounds like con plague to me, honestly. Oh, so Nicky's patient. Zero. For what is Cone? Ok. Well, like, you know, when you go to a convention, whether it's a Rocky convention, a comic con convention, any, any convention? Basically, you're around a lot of people consistently and sometimes with cons, especially Rocky Cons, you may get a little uh a little next to somebody and fuck them, spit in my mouth. Yeah. So then when you get back after being around a shit load of people and potentially fucking multiple people, you get sick crud. You're not aware of this. Apparently not. Congratulations. Nicky's patient. Zero for the test. Staycation. So when everyone else gets sick from staying home from the te vacation, you can all blame Nicky shit. Well, I mean, damn, I guess I am patient zero. Anyway, I don't really want to talk about my week of, you know, dirty dancing and kegs of beer. How are you guys? Fantastic. For all the homies who are listening at home or wherever you're listening to this. This is my last recording for Rocky Talkie. I'm sorry, what? Bye John in the old apartment. Oh Jesus Christ. Don't scare us like that, man. Yeah. So we're for everyone who's listening by the time that you listen to this, I will be moved into my brand new apartment in Washington Heights because we're recording this on Sunday and I move Thursday. Would you say that by next week you will be shaking your ass for like half of the heights. I will have been shaking my ass for half of the heists. Nice. Is that from the musical that I haven't seen yet? Yeah, it's from, well, ok, so it's from in the heights, but it's specifically from the movie and tiktok is like blowing up over that that I've been trying on. Real nice. You better give me a chance. I got, got it. Ok. Yeah, that explained it very well. Anyway, uh that's me. We're moving. It's going to be fantastic. We are super excited like I'd say about half of the apartment is packed up, right now, almost all of the living room is done. Adam's room is basically finished. Savannah is finished packing, almost finished packing their clothes. The only like main room that we really need to focus on is the kitchen. So we got three days to get that done. We're so excited. That's pretty good. Sounds like you guys are right on schedule. A nice this week's been uh it's been good for me as well. No plagues. No, nothing too crazy. We've already got most of our stuff in boxes. We had uh Meg's friend Philip come up and visit us last week. That was really fun. Uh We were able to go have some dinner and go out for a little bit. We went down to Red Bank where F and S performs, Nicky. We didn't make it for the show, but we did, you know, walk around have some dinner. I finally got to go check out the new Jay and Silent Bob Secret Stash. That's uh Kevin Smith's store where he has comics and a ton of memorabilia from the Jay and Silent Bob movies uh from everything in the US Q reverse. So they closed their store during COVID and they moved literally down the street, opened it back up and it's super cool. The space is really nice. Like they have a whole big, I assure you we're open like the whole facade of the quick stop in the back, back at the store for like photos and all this other stuff. It was super fun. I got to check that out and wander around. But yeah. No, we had a ton of fun out there. It was super cool and uh yeah, I am uh Ray do some rocky stuff. Prepping for Staycation Khan is uh what's on my table right now? Uh We're gonna be talking about that a little bit later today. I am pumped. I am so excited for, for K, I'm, I always love K. It's gonna be fun with that. Let's get started with our first segment. We're starting off global news on a bit of a bummer this week, Callum Evans who was slated to play Rocky in the 2021 UK tour announced this past week that he will need to postpone his rocky debut due to injury. Oh, yeah, I saw this on his Instagram page the other day. Oh my God. This fucks. Oh poor guy, man. Yeah. This past Friday. Callum posted a photo of himself in the leg brace and crutches with the caption, ah bugger just one week left until I'd have my first performance and I went and ruptured my achilles tendon bit devastated and still in shock. But at Trafalgar at Rocky Horror official has been nothing but incredible and supportive throughout this process. A simple operation to bring the muscles back together on Monday. Easy job. So I'll be up springing again in no time. J K I need to rest first. I promise I will. Ah, fucking ouch, man. Wow. That is, that is such awful timing too, right. Like, with the first performance only a few days away. Damn, he seems like such a cool guy. Remember how he was offering up all those time warp tutorials to ticket holders a few weeks ago? I wonder if those will still go on. They seemed like a lot of fun. No word on that yet. Although I'm sure he'll keep his fans posted. Callum seems very engaged with the Rocky fan community. I bet he'll let us all know as soon as they've got it figured out. At least it sounds like repairing the injury should be relatively simple. I mean, here's hoping Callum and his medical team have an easy time during surgery and he can get back to flinging himself and women on stage soon after he's properly healed. Of course, and stay tuned folks. This means we'll have even more stage show updates for you. Soon as we'll be getting a new Rocky to step in for at least part of the tour. We'll be sure to keep you updated as we learn more next up. Richard o'brien and Sophie Aldred are back at it again with another season of the Baron author, which is a radio drama based on the Tales of Baron Munchausen. A character created in 17 85 by Rudolph Erich Rasp with the original iteration from the 17 hundreds. Richard's reimagining features in the role of the baron who tells increasingly tall tales to a mysterious character named Smith who is played by Sophie Aldred, who he communicates with only virtually trade 2020. Interestingly, Richard and Sophie met for the first time virtually during an interview with Edinburgh News just a few days ago. This was to promote the program's second series. Wait, they never even met to like have production meetings or anything. Nope. I mean, they talked about it during the interview. Apparently each of them recorded their audio completely separately. The program is done in a sort of like Q and A style where Smith asks the Baron questions that facilitate his storytelling. So Richard apparently recorded his lines first. Then Sophie listened to his answers and recorded her questions based on the way he delivered his responses. In the interview. Richard commented it must have been more difficult for Sophie than it was for me because as I had first crack at it and she had to pose her questions having already heard my answers, which was a very strange way of doing it, Richard went on to comment that the final show would have been extremely different if they'd recorded together or even communicated in any way before or during recordings. Without doubt, it would have changed the dynamic. Whether it would have been better or worse is something else but it would have altered. Oh, weird. Imagine if we did our show that way we should try it some time and see if anyone notices. We already do, like, half our shows that way, Nikki, like, they haven't noticed so far. Stop guys. He's kidding. Am I? How, how would you even know for sure? Like, maybe you just think we're all recording together, but it's really just a simulation and, like, we're in the matrix. Yeah. 1999. Anyway, if you loved season one of the Baron author and can't wait for more, you're gonna have to so far there's no release date yet for the new series, but we'll be sure to keep you posted. And if you want to keep an eye on it yourself, the show is for sale by episode or by season on spiteful puppet dot com which will link for you on our show notes and with that, it's time to move on to some community news. Thank you for finally writing come community news. It has been like 30 something episodes that I've made this joke and it finally made its way onto the show doc. We are so ridiculously excited about this week's community news segment because finally after months and months of Antica, you got it. It is finally time for te staycation con 2021. You who? To me a Mario? Sorry John just gives me real like woo, I'm actually Charles. Yeah. All right. So if you're listening to this episode on the day that it drops, you know, that we've published it a little smidge early this week and that is specifically so A we can promote the hell out of this con and B so that we personally can get in as much prep time as possible for our role in it, which we'll get to in a little bit. So for those of you who have been living under a rock Tessa's virtual com will be taking place Friday, July 16th through Sunday, July 18th. The con runners were generous enough to share the schedule with us a few days early. So we thought it would be fun to give our listeners a quick rundown of events that are going to take place this upcoming weekend. So starting on Friday evening, we'll all be at home plunked right down in front of our screens probably with some of our most fun friends, maybe with a drink in hand if you're into that or an icy glass of milk. If you're not disgusting, don't knock it till you try it. And the opening ceremonies will kick off via Zoom at 8 30 PM where our hosts will welcome us all to the fucking amazing Shindig that they've all orchestrated for us. Pretty much everything will be going down on Zoom this weekend with the exception of the shows that's Brockie and Shocky. Uh The pre shows and the talent show, those are going to be streamed on Twitch 8 30 is also when the virtual vendor room will open as well as the art gallery. The fun will commence at nine pm with 90 minutes of Jack Boxx and other fun little icebreaker games. Then at 10 30 the talent show will start and we'll get to watch our friends throw their magnum dongs on the table in video form. At 11 30 the all star shock treatment shadow cast starts. I absolutely cannot wait for that one. And hey, Nicky, maybe you'll finally get to watch Shocky for the first time after Shocky, we've got a Fancy Friday after party which is a Zoom hangout party with a Fancy Friday theme. So make sure to get all dolled up. Also, just a heads up. The con runners will be very strongly encouraging the Fancy Friday theme all throughout Friday night. So like if you're going to get Fancy, maybe plan to show up looking hot at the start of the night. So you don't feel like an underdressed fool. We here at Rocky Talkie are looking out for you. Saturday is Panel Day and much like an in real life con for me. It kicks off it though. Crack of four PM. Uh The first one is Skills from Rocky Horror Picture Show in life. I'm actually really interested to check that one out. I already feel like there's a ton of crossover between the skills I use in my job and the skills that I use as the assistant director of a Rocky cast. So for those of you who don't know, I work in higher education and the majority of my time is spent doing things like leadership development and organizational management. So I run organizations for a living essentially. So a lot of stuff that I use in my workplace is very similar to what I use in Rocky. It's all about making sure that there's a differentiation between your personal and professional life, um you know, conflict management, so on and so forth. It's, it's a bunch of different things like that. So that, that they're bringing this panel to kind of bridge the gap between Rocky and your soft skills that you probably use in your professional life is fucking awesome. So, props to whoever thought of that. Yeah, it's a great topic. I'm excited for this one. Yeah, I'm really excited to hear about other people's experiences with these crossover skills because I know I'm far from the only one who has them at five PM. We've got the fan theories panel who doesn't love a good conspiracy. Am I right? Oh, man, this one's going to be cool too. I wonder if it'll be like a broad sort of dialogue or if people are going to present their own pet theories like Ted talk style. I, I feel like listening to people as they put on their tinfoil hats is just going to be so much fun. Then from 6 to 7, we've got the shadow casting non R H P S movies, which is going to be hella useful for when I make my debut as Sally during the Reefer Madness shadow Cast at R K 04, right, Roy, and also for our R K 04 Shadow Cats performance, right, Roy. And uh can we also get a naked alien phone pit just like since we're asking for stuff, you know, at seven o'clock, we've got a pandemic. Rocky horror picture show panel where the hottest member of Rocky talkie will be participating in a conversation about keeping the show running during a time when everything was virtual. Oh, that's cool. Nicky. What are you gonna talk about? Oh my God, thank you. But it's not me, Meg wrote the script. It's Aaron. That's right. Bitches. This stone cold geek squad fox is all set to drop some mad knowledge bombs about all the kinds of sexy nerd shit like computer latency algorithms and pixelated synchronous parsing like a hottie, Mick. Hotter cash me outside or possibly in your browser history. How about that, Meg What the fuck did you just write here? You, you wrote words that kind of some computer. These, these are not even real terms, none of these things actually mean anything. So, OK, what I'm actually going to be talking about is uh our H BS live. Uh That's the site that I manage that does live stream broadcasts for Rocky casts that want to put on virtual shows. Uh I've been running it all throughout the last year. Uh It's been fantastic. We've had a ton of performances. I'm super pumped to talk about it on this panel. I really enjoyed getting to work on the virtual streaming platform. I'm in a group chat right now with the other panel members and they are all like really big players in the virtual scene this past year and a half. I, I think it's going to be really interesting to see what everyone has to say. I mean, the, the virtual scene was such a big part of our lives throughout lockdown and it's gonna be awesome to hear about it from the perspectives of other people who were involved in the behind the scenes. You know, just like I was and I hope that everyone who tunes into it, like, really enjoys it. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. Well, you can catch that hottie Mick hotter on the pandemic R H P S panel from 7 to 8 and from 8 to 9, you can catch all three of us geek squad foxes on our very own rocky talkie panel. Damn. Yeah, we are beside ourselves about this guys. We've been so excited about this con for months and months and are thrilled that we get to take a part in it like this. It's going to be totally different than anything we've ever done as a podcast before we're going to be live, which means you all get to experience our blooper reel in real time. You're welcome. Plus, there's going to be an interactive component where we'll be able to do a little Q and A sesh with the panel guests. Oh, yeah. And I've already started researching our extra special snack snack. I think our listeners will really enjoy what we've got prepped for this show. Uh It would really just mean the world to us. If you all stop by showed us some love, we can't wait to get weird with you all in real time. I mean, this is gonna be a ton of fun. So after we wrap, we have a dinner scene from 9 to 11 pm, which will be an open room for people to hang out, get ready for the All Star Show, have dinner and, or drinks and, or an icy glass of milk. Exactly. Pre shows will stream from 11 to 11 30 at which time the MC for the All Star Show will begin hosted by Tori and Harley and of course, show time for the All Star performance begins at midnight as is tradition. I mean, this is going to be a killer show. We really can't wait after the show wraps, we'll all head over to the virtual zoom slumber party where we can continue being weird at each other all night. Don't forget to bring your, I feel like we'd all have a better time if we did forget to bring our melo unless you're meg and that wraps up the con unless you're a cast leader. In which case, you're welcome to join the leadership. Hang out on Sunday, which starts at three. This is going to be such a fun weekend. None of us can wait to start in on the festivities. And speaking of festivities, we'd like to give a bit of an updated shout out to the upcoming debut and opening of the Lola Montez art shop. You'll find work featured in the virtual art gallery as well as an adorable shop in the virtual vendor space. We have word that Lola Store is officially open on Etsy and already filled with sexy art prints and stickers. Plus the fully illustrated Rocky Horror. 2022 calendars are going to be ready for preorder. As soon as the staycation opens, you won't want to miss it. We got some more sneak peeks and they are incredible. One of which is an answer to that age old question that we ourselves have tackled on the podcast. A certain Easter egg hunt around the throne with Playboy bunny styled Janet and other characters for April. This one was hilarious. So the calendars will be 30 bucks each available for preorder and the 1st 25 orders will get some Lola Montez Art gifts along with their purchases. Lola was also kind enough to write us a little note regarding last week's shout out to tell us that I have never been inclined to draw so many penises as I have around meg. That's my wife. Ladies and gentlemen, that's, she brings out the dicks and everyone. If you attended the con and want to share your thoughts, maybe you had a favorite art exhibit panel or if you had an amazing time watching or performing in one of the shows, please write to us and tell us about it. Just go to our website rocky talky podcast dot com and fill out our contact form to share with us. We'll see you on Saturday. But for now, let's move on to our NICUs flavored segment. It's Nicky asks the question time and we've got to write in from our super sweet Tik Tok Pal Gretchen. If you haven't checked out her content, go drop her a follow over at, at Rocky Horror, tiktok on tiktok. That was a lot of ads and a lot of Tik Toks. Let's keep going. Gretchen wrote us a massive ginormous novel of a write in and we are fucking here for it. She has given us permission to slice dice chop and condense. So we'll be doing a bunch of that. She asked us to twist her words because that's what gets her going. Bold move. Gretchen. It's cool. We'll be rough. Did she actually write that? She wrote something like that? I mean, I might have twisted her words, whatever. Here we go. Gretchen writes. Hey, talkies, I have been binging the podcast since I was reminded of its existence by being introduced to Nikki at F N S S Pride Night. I was dressed as Magenta and Molly. Who if you don't know F N S. Molly is one of our longest running cast members. Anyway, Molly was introducing me to people and bragging about my hand sewn costume to the cast and crew. Before the show, we were at the merch table. When Molly goes, Gretchen. Do you listen to Rocky Talky? In that moment? I remembered that in the chaos of finals, I had completely forgotten about this great podcast that I had started listening to last semester and I never made the connection for some reason that Nicky from Rocky Talky was in this cast that she's explicitly mentioned being in. I was honestly so embarrassed before I ask my question. Let me thank Nikki and the Friday Night specials cast for taking my Rocky V card with a show that exceeded my expectations exponentially. And that's saying a lot because I have been a closeted Rocky fan since I was like eight or whenever I first watched the Glee Rocky Horror episode with my parents when it first premiered Fuck Gretchen Way to make me feel old glee. Goddamn it. Wait, it wasn't it just a few episodes ago, we were talking about newbies being introduced through the remake. I mean, I hope we've still got a few years for that, but they'll start showing up. I mean, mark my words. We actually had a virgin at the last show I was at that only ever saw the remake Yikes on bikes. But anyway, she continues a lot of my deleted youtube history in my youth consisted of Rocky horror picture show clips, videos of shadow casts and Sims music videos of Rocky songs. I hope someone out there has seen those weird Sims Rocky videos. Um I haven't seen any youtube videos of Sims and Rocky, but I do have a bunch of Rocky costumes downloaded onto my Sims game as custom content because I'm nothing. If not on brand and just in the interest of time, I'm going to skip down a little bit. Gretchen girl. I would totally be slipping into your D MS. So don't worry, I'm just gonna do a little snip, snip. E you guys are gross. Back to the letter. I just want to say that every single member of the Friday Night specials cast is incredibly hot. Y'all deserve an award or something. One last thing about the cast, please do shock treatment. Nikki, you need to watch shock treatment already. Don't make me drive down to Jersey, find your address from tax records and tie you to a chair to make you finally watch the sequel to the movie that you shadow cast. Don't me with a good time, Gretchen. I will take you up on it and I will like it. Is there a question in here somewhere. We just sucking Nikki's dick for 20 minutes. OK. Trust me. This one is worth the wait. Oh my God. Just stick it in already. OK. Finally, to my question, y'all very likely won't do this in the show because it's a dumb question that relates to a question that you already covered. You vastly overestimate us, Gretchen. So my father grew up in an ultra small farm town in upstate New York. Hey, that's where I just got back from. There are two things that I credit for my dad being a progressive, accepting, amazing person. Despite growing up in this environment, those things are his wonderful mother and the fact that he would watch Rocky Horror at his friend's house a lot after school during his teen years. However, my dad was a teenager exclusively in the eighties. I learned from this podcast that the Rocky Horror V H S was released in the US in 1990 in the UK, in 1987 I told this to my dad and he said that his friend's mom who had Rocky Hor on V H S had a bootleg. Y'all said there were a ton of bootlegs floating around, but there are a few reasons why my dad and I don't think she had the type of bootlegs that people in the Rocky community had back then as in bootleg from the theaters. I don't know, I don't think you guys specified how these bootlegs came to be other than the bootlegs from the UK post 1987. Excellent Catch that was written Lazily. Hey, sorry. Thanks for calling Us Out Us Boys. Keep it in your pants. So Gretchen continues. One thing is that this woman and everyone in this town are not Rocky people, like they're not in the Rocky community, be a lot cooler if they were an entire town of Rocky people. Can you imagine? I, I mean, I can't not like that's all the people that I usually interact with. Just fucking Rocky people. No, no, not at all. Another thing is that my dad said that this family had an impressive movie collection that were most if not all copied from video store tapes or recorded from TV. My dad insists that this particular Rocky Horror picture show bootleg must have been acquired from one of these methods I spent over an hour trying to find if Rocky Horror was ever shown on TV, on a movie channel that you have to pay extra for. I was told to look into the movie channel because my dad says that that's where the B movies and culture movie films were, but I found nothing. Or if a movie that hadn't been released on tape yet could possibly be shown on TV, I couldn't find any answers. Another possibility that I couldn't find any answers on was if a video store might have a bootleg in their inventory, specifically Rocky Horror Yeah, I'm guessing why I couldn't find answers. There was because that would be illegal. So I guess my question is how did people get bootlegs of Rocky horror picture show prior to it being released on V H S and was Rocky ever shown on TV? And if that's even possible prior to it being released on V H si, don't know why these questions have been so heavy on my noggin, but it is. Thank you so much, Gretchen Gretchen. I love you. You have no idea how near and dear to my heart. This question is what like, I mean, you're old but not like was a teenager in the eighties old? The fuck. Do you know about this shit? Honestly, Aaron, where do you get off? Ok. Ok. So about bootlegs in the eighties. I know nothing. Well, I, I know a lot more after I researched this episode but no tangentially one of my first for into, well, the internet was working for a bootleg group on I R C back in the late nineties, shuffling files around encoding video doing tech support, you know, that kind of nonsense. What's an I R C? Uh It was just chat rooms like distributed chatrooms that had the ability to transfer files around. So this was like right around the time when Napster burst onto the scene and all the other peer to peer file transfer programs came around, you know, Kaza limewire, that kind of thing. Fucking Kaza, right? So T L D R I R C was a forerunner to stuff like Discord and Slack and all the other modern chat apps. Uh Twitch, Twitch TV, actually still bases their entire chat system on the I R C protocol or at least that's how they worked a few years ago. So young Aaron, even before I had found Rocky was super familiar with the bootleg scene. Unfortunately, it was about 15 years after the time Gretchen is talking about it was all digital and well, Rocky was already out there on V H S by the time I saw it, in fact, the first copy of Rocky that I owned and watched on repeat was a V H S. Holy crap. And you were giving Gretchen shit for Glee, at least that's unique. The V H S, you disgust me. I'm, I'm sorry. I mean, however, I absolutely love that this is an excuse to backdoor into a different subculture and boy, oh boy Gretchen, do we have more information than you could ever have asked for? So I reached out to a few members of the Rocky community and I was able to snag a conversation with Rocky horror legend Jean Chiri. Oh, that's awesome. If there's anyone that can give us the skinny on the rocky community in bootleg history, I bet it's Jean. Oh, yeah, for our listeners, if you don't know who Gene is, well, educate yourself. Gene is one of the first generation O G Rocky fans like real, real O G. He started going to Rocky in 1978 at the biograph theater in Chicago. And has been an active member of the community ever since. He is a founding member of Midnight Madness and completely crazy and has been a member of the cellular jam and help me mommy among many, many others. He ran multiple conventions in the eighties and was the co-ed of the crazed imaginations fan scene throughout its run, a spectacular Frank. He appeared in the 1993 Fox Five cast broadcast for Floor Show and I'm going home and too many other things to count. He's also a massive collector, prolific graphic designer and well, the man was endowed with a Boss Award in 2017. I think we can all see why. Anyway, Gene is an amazing resource and we are so honored that he was able to chime in on this topic. And did we get the goods? Almost everything we're gonna talk about comes from Gene. So a massive thank you to him. He did, of course, remind me to seek out some additional sources to verify some of this stuff I did where I could, some of it he concedes may not be perfect due to, you know, how long ago all of this was, but it is to the best of his memory. You've got to keep in mind. A lot of this is third hand information that has been passed down over the years. And it's often difficult to verify original sources that may have long since moved on from the Rocky family, especially when there may have been only a handful of people who knew about it to begin with. That said, if you're listening out there and you say, wait, no, I remember. Please, please, please drop us a line. We love when you tell us we're wrong. Ok. So disclaimer out of the way, let's do this. Where do we think Gretchen's dad's friend's mom got their bootleg. That's too much. I'm not saying that every time it's your dad's bootleg from now on. So where did Gretchen's dad's bootleg? Copy of Rocky Horror come from? I mean, none of us have seen it, but we've got a few clues to start with. He had it in the early to mid eighties. He doesn't think it was recorded in a movie theater. Was that even a thing? One question at a time we'll get there and maybe it was recorded from a copy from a video store or off TV. So, I mean, let's fact check the assumption real quick. Number one, there wasn't an officially released copy of Rocky for home consumption until the mid to late eighties and even then those were only available internationally. She's got that correct. I assume after all she's quoting us. Yep. That's right. Well, mostly there was a super eight version that came out in 1980. However, it's not the full movie. It's more like an extended trailer. Super Eight was limited to about 17 minutes of playback time as each row would hold 360 ft of film measuring a movie in feet. Boomers, Boners. You had to have an eight millimeter projector to play it back. It was low quality and it was edited very, very differently than the actual movie. I shit you not in the super eight version. When Brad and Jenner at the door, it cuts from Brad going, do you have a phone to riff going? Yes, whole different movie type one. So it's possible that someone ripped the super eight to a video format. But unless Gretchen's dad remembers Rocky Horror being under 20 minutes long, I think we can safely rule that one out. So, ok, I've seen a lot of let's call it conflicting dates floating around for the international V H S and Betamax releases. Most sources pin it down to 1987 that's including Wikipedia and they base that on the date that the British board of film classifications gave Rocky Horror its rating. However, the copyright on the actual box art which we can see thanks to Tony Zuzu and Mark Jabar's excellent work cataloging all of the home video releases on an odd rocky horror dot com, that one shows a 1984 copyright. So according to their research, prior to the UK release, there was actually an Australian V H S and Betamax release also in 1984 and a German release around the same time. So you've got to remember that the logistics of mass distribution for V H s during its infancy wasn't even close to the market around DVD at its height, you know, with midnight releases and unlimited stock, it could literally take months and months for stores to get a certain tape in stock. So even if something was manufactured in 1984 it could very well have been months if not a year or two before it made it to your local store. So, ok, between 1984 and 1985 there were also releases in Japan, Spain, France and Israel. All of these contain the original mono soundtrack and several of them have localized subtitles. I would imagine Gretchen's dad would remember if there were Hebrew subtitles so that probably rules out bootlegs of those international releases. And while it's very possible that a bootleg of the Australian or UK pay version made its way over to the States, my guess is that we're looking for a bootleg that existed before most of the international releases. Rocky came out in 1975 after all. Yeah, especially because America had a pretty big underground bootleg tape scene. Even in the late seventies and early eighties, you had publications that listed off bootleg tapes and where to get them sketchy P O boxes that you could send a few dollars to and hope something came back in the mail. Like there were definitely copies of Rocky floating around out there as we'll get into in a second. And if you already had a local hookup for bootleg movies as it sounds like Gretchen's dad probably did. You most likely weren't on the lookout for rare imports of a nine year old movie. So before these copies of the international version floated over, what was out there? This is the knowledge bomb's gene dropped on us, right? You got it. So Jean recalled that the very earliest bootlegs were exactly what Gretchen guessed they would be. Someone actually brought a video camera into the movie theater and taped the screen on some of the earliest bootlegs. There's no visible audience and it's dead quiet which tells you that this was done by some of the people who ran the movie theaters just after hours. Jean recalls one bootleg where one of the only indications it's in a theater at all is near the very end of the film. During the end credits, the camera pans slightly to the right in order to get the entire globe into the shot. Most of the ones that were taped in a movie theater by the time that they actually got to anybody were several generation transfers and the quality was extremely degraded. So at that point, it was often pretty difficult to determine if they were shot in a movie theater or not, they'd been copied over and over and because you lose quality every time you duplicate a V H S tape, they would get progressively worse and worse. It's not lossless. Like making digital copies of files. It reminds me of all the, like, blurt memes that crank up the artifacts that are created when you repeatedly resave a JPEG over and over and over. Exactly. But people paid big bucks for the bootlegs because where else were you going to get them? Jean recalled that surprisingly, a lot of the bootlegs were actually the uncut version of the movie and they were going for about $200 in 1979 which is over $700 today. Adjusting for inflation. What do you mean it was an uncut version? Oh, meaning that it had superheroes at the end along with the time Warp instrumental after the science fiction double feature reprieve the way that you probably have always seen it. But at that point, it was in a form that was only available internationally and they recorded them on what, just a handheld video camera. I mean, it wasn't all that handheld back then. So there were prosumer camcorders in the late seventies, but they were outrageously expensive. They came in two parts, one was the camera and then there was another small suitcase you had to log around. That was the actual battery pack. These were intended for high end home usage or for use by A V clubs in high schools and colleges or maybe for low budget commercials or like public access work. However, these early models did have one advantage over the later stuff on some of those cameras, you were able to actually adjust settings to compensate for the role and flicker of the frame rate of the film that you're recording. Otherwise you wouldn't even have a usable reproduction in the first place. So some of these bootlegs were even able to connect directly to theater audio systems and would get incredibly high fidelity audio along with the taped video, which I mean, that's pretty nuts. Modern bootleggers. The guys who do stuff today just plug their thing into the hearing impaired audio jack in a theater in order to get high quality audio. Hold on. We should probably give a quick lesson for everyone out there who doesn't speak film nerd. You drafted a lot of terms there, right? So plenty of people might be familiar with the phenomenon where you're trying to record a screen and you don't see anything weird. But when you play back the recording, you get lines or flashes or whatever other weird visual artifacts, simplified. And this is a gross oversimplification. That's because the number of frames per second that you are recording at doesn't match the refresh rate that the screen is redrawing itself. So you get half rendered pictures and weird flashes. The exact same issue exists when you're talking about recording with a video tape and a film projector. Exactly. Most movies are shot and projected on film that operates at 24 frames per second. Meaning for every second of film, there are 24 individual still frames that when played back, create the of movement while a video tape doesn't record and play back at 24 frames per second. It depends on what encoding you are using. But generally speaking, in the US, video is recorded and played back at just about 30 frames per second. That's the N T S C standard. Internationally, the P standard uses a frame rate of 25 frames per second. This is incredibly simplified. But all this is to say when you are recording playback of a projected film, if those numbers don't line up correctly, you have to compensate in some way. Otherwise you get weird stuff. And apparently a bunch of the earliest video recorders had features that made that adjustment super easy, which isn't really all that surprising given that making copies of films was one of the primary use cases for these recorders. But it's also a neat fact, right? And, and this helps to also illustrate how even converting an official international release into a US bootleg could result in a little Wonky Jean remembers that you could usually tell if the bootleg was European or American because the European copies actually just played back slightly faster. So if your dad's bootleg was just slightly faster. Maybe it came from an international source, it was converted from an international source at some point. But even though the techno babble is so fun to talk about, let's not get too bogged down with it. Gretchen was pretty sure that the bootlegging question wasn't one of those early copies that was taped in the theater though, if it was done, well, you might not even be able to tell, especially after it had been copied and copied and copied. I mean, it is possible we've been talking about some of the more homemade or underground recordings, but there were also the professional bootlegs which were on the scene almost as soon as the V H S came out in the mid seventies. These were usually in conjunction with a disreputable theater manager and an underground conversion and tape copying facility. It was big business. Hell, it's still big business. You can't walk through the New York subway system without walking over a half a dozen little old ladies selling bootleg copies of the latest new release movies. They post up in the quarters on the tunnels selling you copies of the newest Fast and Furious Movie or whatever for only a few bucks. It's family, it is family. Nothing stops. Family generally, right? The bootlegs that you're buying from these little old ladies now are like DVD and Blu Ray rips or they were shot with a shaky camera that was hidden in somebody's purse. In a movie theater in Hong Kong or some other Asian country complete with subtitles on the screen and like a dude's head in front of the bottom half. But who cares? It was five bucks just goes to show you the more things change, the more they stay the same. So if it wasn't one of these filmed in the theater, bootlegs, it had to come from somewhere else. Were there just regular mess market like copies floating around or maybe it came from TV. Gretchen pitched both of those ideas along with our second quick fact check. Rocky Horror did not premiere on broadcast television until it aired on Fox in October of 1993. It didn't air before that did it. Maybe on one of the pay cable channels. She mentioned those as well. So quick mention, I'm pretty sure that Rocky was broadcast internationally once before 1993. I think it was the UK, I swear, I've read that somewhere. But for the life of me, I could not find a citation. I'm sure it didn't air in the US before 1993. I also didn't find any records of it airing on the pay cable networks though. It's not out of the realm of possibility. It's very unlikely Fox would have had to license it. And they were really, really hesitant about putting the movie out there in the US while it was still a cash cow in movie theaters. So I also flipped through a bunch of HBO channel guides from the early eighties. People collect them and they post scans online. I, I didn't see it there either, but of course, that's just one channel and a small window of time. So I did reach out to at Classic HBO guide on Twitter. They post vintage content about HBO, the movie channel, Showtime, Cinemax and all the other premium channels from 1972 to 1987. During what they call the Golden Age of pay cable, he said much to his own surprise that he's never come across Rocky Horror on HBO Cinemax movie Channel or Showtime anywhere between 1976 and 1989. He did suspect that it may have aired on the Z channel in Los Angeles in the late seventies, early eighties. But he couldn't confirm that. Well, then probably not TV, or if it was, it was to a very small base on a very niche pay channel and we aren't even sure of that, right. But, well, ok, actually, I think we're forgetting one kind of TV. Channel one that's exactly relevant to our discussion. Broadcast cable and satellite. No. Oh duh yo ho ho. And a bottle of rum. It's pirate TV. Oh, that makes sense. Like bootleg radio stations. But for TV, you can't still do that. Can you? Nah, everything is digital now, even the over the air signals are digital and there's tons of layers of protection. It's probably still technically possible, but I bet you'd get arrested pretty fucking fast. But in the late seventies and the early eighties Pirate TV did exist. And according to Gene Pirate TV, is also the source for one of the most widely bootleg copies that was floating around during the time that we're specifically talking about for Gretchen's dad's bootleg. Apparently there was a pirate cable channel that was coming out of Colorado and they aired Rocky Horror very early on. And that made it available to the people that tuned into the pirate station local to Colorado who recorded it at home as it was being broadcasted. And then those tapes were duplicated and so on and so on. But we can do you one even better. Jean remembered some very specific details about the Colorado Pirate TV. Bootleg that might help Gretchen in her search. See the bootleg from the Colorado station has the video of Brad and Janet singing during superheroes. But it has the version of the audio from where superheroes was cut, whoever was putting together the bootleg for the cable station spliced in the video portion of Brad and Janet singing superheroes, but forgot to also engage the audio recording at the same time. Thus leaving the original audio track from the cut version. That's super fascinating. So this is another version of the film floating around out there. A midway point between the US version where superheroes is missing and the UK version where it was left intact. It gets even better than that turns out. This is actually the origin of a weird urban legend that there were misprints of the film like actual to be projected in a movie theater copies of the movie that were made and they included this editing mistake. Oh man, I love a good urban legend. And this one's actually even better. Apparently, somehow Fox even believes this legend or at least someone may have because one of the official Fox DVD releases has a recreation of this mistake. Is that true? Which one I don't own all of the many, many DVD releases, but you bet your ass, I'm gonna go hunt for it. Gene recalled. It may have been one of the very first American DVD releases. So I mean, we've got a great starting point there. Jean also mentioned hearing unsubstantiated rumors about actual prints containing the mistake being in existence on 16 millimeter prints. But he noted that the odds are really remote that the same mistake was made both in house at Fox and also for a Pirated video station, editing together a video unless the pirate TV station actually ripped it from one of those 16 millimeter prints. Exactly. That is that is how urban legends start Nicky, stop it. So I'm definitely going to be doing more research into this legend. I, I love finding new obscurities that I've never heard of before. And this one is fascinating OK. So where did the Pirate TV station get it? Who knows a copy of one of the early international V H S releases? Some surreptitiously leaked, early release V H S. Maybe it was an actual professional tele scene transfer from a print. What for the less geek incline? A tele scene is basically the same process of recording your projection on a movie screen. But it's done in a very controlled and professional environment. It's done in a dedicated color suite. So it's literally a room just for performing the careful calibrations needed to preserve the original look of the film. During transfer to video, it was the standard way of converting movies shot on film to video before there was to technology to quickly and easily scan film frame by frame. Once film scanners became the norm, it quickly became the way all modern transfers of movies are created with the color correction now occurring digitally. Yeah, it it's still used during certain phases of the production process but not so much in the creation of modern digital video. But we digress, we could speculate for hours where the pirate station got their source material and many fans certainly have. But I think it's a safe bet that copies of the Colorado broadcast ended up in the back rooms of some specialty video stores or were swapped between bootleg collectors. It's entirely possible that one of those is the origin for the copy Gretchen's dad watched, I don't know, Gretchen. See if your dad remembers there being weird cuts at the end of superheroes where it looks like Brad and Janet are singing. But there aren't any words that would be a dead giveaway. We're not going to leave it there though. Right? Like, I know we may have exhausted our resources for figuring out Gretchen's dad's copy. But there were a lot more bootlegs even after the period that we're talking about, the whole bootleg tape scene exploded in the mid eighties. I feel we should really hit on that for a minute. Oh, for sure, Jean gave us so much information. We might as well keep going through the eighties. He told us a bunch of info all about one of the most widely recognized bootlegs that flooded the market. If you owned a Rocky bootleg in the mid to late eighties, it was probably this one. It was the gold standard for Rocky Bootlegs. This is the bootleg 1985 Japanese V H S and it blew all the others out of the water. Early generation copies were visually incredibly clear and the audio was pristine. It was the original mono audio with low noise, high fidelity dolby and coding. This was a bit of an oddity as Dolby hi-fi mono V H S players only really existed for a short window before they all switched over to stereo. So the creation of this bootleg would have landed in exactly the sweet spot. During that changeover, many of the other international releases from around that time also featured the mono sound mix. But the story goes that the Japanese production team was so meticulous that they went back to the original film source and got the hi fi mono audio and made sure to use the proper mono matrix. Now, of course, it wasn't without its oddities. It was a bootleg. After all, the original Japanese tape was slightly color shifted and effect that became more pronounced as it was endlessly copied and there were Japanese subtitles. But for a very long time, this was the best quality copy you could get and it was affordable and they were everywhere. If you had the right connection where the most widely available bootleg previously ran upwards of 200 bucks. These new Japanese bootlegs were sold at the bargain price of only $50. Now, don't get us wrong. That's still almost 100 and $25 adjusted for inflation. But it's a big departure from the asking price of the other bootlegs that were on the market. And as you get into the latter half of the decade, you get Rocky on laser disc, you get the run up to the eventual official V H S release in 1990 the eventual first broadcast on network TV in 1993 which pretty much was the final nail in the bootleg coffin. Once you could go buy a version released by Fox, no matter how bad the stereo audio mix was or how annoying it was that it was cropped to the wrong aspect ratio. Even with superheroes missing, very few people were going to be hunting for bootlegs. It made Rocky a mass commodity that everyone could enjoy in their living room. And some would argue, especially amongst the oldest of the old guard that it wasn't all for the best. You no longer had to get out there and hunt for a copy of this movie that you could only otherwise see at a late night double feature. When you hear that there was real debate around the V H S release. And if it helped or hindered the community, it's a little hard to put into perspective given just how mass market available everything is today. But what you can't deny is the availability of Rocky on home video. Seriously changed the dynamic of the Underground Movement. Let's be real. Any self-respecting fan already had a bootleg copy of the movie and it was probably better than the official release that came out in 1990. At least your hard won bootleg contained superheroes. You really had to be a committed diehard fan to seek out the underground copies and to pay the crazy price for it. And you cherished that thing, many have said that the mass commercialization of the V H S release took away the mystique of discovering Rocky as a late night film that it removed that unique experience of only being able to see the film in the theater. Hard to really grasp considering just how easy it is to watch Rocky. Now. Be it streaming or on Blu Ray? Fuck, you can watch Rocky on a plane as in flight entertainment. If that isn't the definition of how not to experience Rocky. I don't know what it is. And as a side effect, the mass market release brought in a completely different audience to theaters. Everyone wasn't suddenly there to explore this weird community to dress up and like join the circus. Many plopped down tuned in, turned off and dropped out. They started expecting the cast to do all of the entertaining and the participation. And like why not many had already seen the movie like rented from their local video store. It was no longer this unknown, mysterious commodity. Rocky was no longer underground. It was no longer rarity and by the end of the eighties, Rocky wasn't only available on bootleg video. It was available at your local video store for only 29 95. What a cheap whore just like all of us. And well, that's our show. We want to thank Jeanne for helping us out with our write in. We want to thank Gretchen for writing in our write in. We also want to thank Lola Montez Art for sending in their heads up about staycation con and to test her act and everyone else organizing the Amazing Con that's coming up just this week. Everybody out there needs to tune in. You don't want to miss it. If anyone has a question, they'd like us to answer on air for Nicky asks a question or some community news they'd like us to talk about or even just a cool story to share with the community. We'd love to include it in our show. Just go to our website rocky talkie podcast dot com and fill out our contact form to tell us about it. If you're enjoying Rocky Talkie, please help us out by rating, reviewing and subscribing to the show. Makes the podcast more accessible to new listeners that really helps us grow the show. And if you want even more Rocky talkie content, check us out on Facebook, youtube, Instagram and tiktok all at Rocky Talkie Podcast. We'll see you all live next week. See you. Bye. So either you guys still have a working PC A, ah, bugger just one week left. And why is he, why is he Australian? He's like a combination of an Australian and like Mick Jagger. Yeah. Hold on, um, ah, bugger just one week left. I'm just gonna read it. Ah, bugger. Oh, Trace 2020. Is that what I'm supposed to say? Oh, Trey 2020. Sorry, I broke my left. Don't forget to bring your, oh, it's with a, with a hard, don't forget to bring your, I feel like we'd all have a better time if we did forget to bring our, I'll do it again because I was an asshole. Well, let's keep going because baby's nose is getting fucking clogged by the minute as you do. I can't not like that's all the people I usually interact with just fucking Rocky people. No, not at all. All right. I didn't write it. That is one way to read that. I, I mean, I can't, not like that's all the people that I usually interact with. Just fucking Rocky people. No, no, not at all. And even then those were only available internationally. She's not that she's got that correct. I assume after all, she's quoting us. The whole bootleg tape scene exploded in the mid eighties. I feel we should really hit on that for a minute. No bitch, we answered the question. I want to go to bed, ok? Have a good night, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Be sure to check out our social media, ok? Uh You can do it almost. Uh And as you get into the latter half of the decade, you get Rocky on laser disc, Laser Dick. I, I wrote it that way and then I changed it. So you wouldn't just go to our website Rocky talky podcast dot com and fill out our contact form to share it with us. Fuck, I was so close. Can you tell us about it? Uh We'll talk to you all next week. Bye. Hopefully I'll be healthy next week. Well, actually we'll see them live next week. We'll see you all live next week. See you bye. Do either of you guys still have a working V C R? I actually think I do. That's not a real question. That's just an out sitting stopping.