Hello to all of you. Unconventional conventions. Welcome back to Rocky Talkie. I'm Nicky. I'm Aaron and I'm John. Hi, John and Aaron. Hi season. Uh, don't get me started. How have you all been? How are you, John? I'm fantastic. I'm just prepping for this. Absolutely heinous week ahead of me. Why is your week? So heinous because it's the week before Halloween, Nicky. Well, what does that mean? Oh, well, see the week before Halloween and the Rocky Horror community is probably one of the busiest bus. It's gotta be right. The whole year. Busiest. There is no week or no, like stretch of days in the Rocky community that is as busy as this unless you're playing like nine roles at R K O and then you leave it until the week before to get all of your costumes and blocking down aside from that, like Halloween is probably the busiest week. So this is what's going on with John. Ok. So I have a show Monday where I'm playing Columbia. I have a show Wednesday where I'm playing Eddie and Doctor Scott and then I have a Halloween proper show on Sunday where I'm playing Riff Tuesday. I have prior engagements. Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I will be in Saint Louis going to a Ludo Halloween concert and I somehow still have to work full time on top of all of that. Oh, it's not looking good for John. It's not looking good at all for John. I'm going to die this week. Like, I'm so busy that I'm not streaming from Monday until Sunday. Oh, taken off from your second job to do your first job and your third job. Yeah, exactly. America America. What about you, Aaron? What's going on with your Halloween schedule? Oh my God, dude. So I just pulled it up here. I've got, I've got 1234 shows, five shows. Yeah, I'm doing all these. Uh so I am just absolutely jam packed every single show that New York's doing. I'm gonna be there in some capacity. I'm doing Eddie and Scott and I'm hosting and I think I'm even doing crim for one of these. It's, I'm super pumped for it. Uh My schedule is absolutely packed as far as that stuff goes. But I gotta tell you about this thing that uh that we did last night. So last night there was a bar that was just about 20 blocks or so away from our apartment that we went over and dropped by because they were doing Rocky Horror trivia. Oh, I hate that. Please tell me you absolutely slayed. Oh, we absolutely slayed. We beat the second place team by one point. Now, let me tell you why some of these questions uh were wrong. Uh So we answered them uh wrong because we knew that they wanted the wrong answer. My favorite one, absolute favorite one was about midway through the woman running it who was absolutely fantastic. This was a great event like it was super fun. Uh There was a woman who was there who actually joined our team because she was there by herself and we were like, oh awesome. Yeah. Uh You don't know who you just sat down with, but that's cool. Uh You're, you're not really gonna, she, she was so excited. She was like, I watched the movie a bunch of times. You're like, yeah, you're not really gonna need to participate at all during this turns out she actually did uh and actually saved her ass on a couple of questions. We were just like one of them that it was like uh write out the names of all the characters and we just wrote Rocky on it. She's like in the credits. Uh It says Rocky Horror, not just Rocky. I, I think that we need to put both names and I was like, fuck you are probably right. All right, cool. Um But my least favorite question was midway through where uh the one and asks to quote. So there are three places in the movie where you can see actual real life Easter eggs. Oh God, that is exactly the reaction that our entire table had where we just burst out. She did. She had no idea why. Like this just a whole table just raucously was like, ah, in the middle of the fucking question. I got so upset. I only wrote down two of the three that I know are wrong. But like, oh, I had a, I had a real moment. I'm still, I'm still upset that I had to write down the this answer. Uh but it was an absolutely fun time. We ended up winning. We got a, we got a sweet $25 gift certificate uh that went to the girl who joined us because we're never going back to that bar. Uh We were just there to win. Um And my, my ego was left intact by the end of the night, still confident that I know a lot about Rocky Horror. So I that was super fun. Like it was, it was just a nice way to screw around for an evening. Uh And yeah, I mean, that's the kind of stuff that I love about the Halloween season. Like even the normals get in on it, right? Like even even all the virgins are going to have fun. So we were able to go and uh you know, poop on their fun and win the prizes. I can't believe you've only won by one point. Yeah, I know, dude, the one that I was most surprised that we didn't know. On, let me see if you guys know this one on crims desk. There are two pictures of people who are the two people. Oh, I don't fucking know. Right. I thought it might have been Eisenhower or something because there's all those like IKE references in shock treatment. No, no, no, no. It's F D R and it's fucking Ronald Reagan. And I can hear you saying, Aaron, what's wrong with that? It's two presidents. Here's the thing though, Ronald Reagan didn't become president of the United States until 1981. When Rocky was filmed, he was just the governor of California. So it's a president and the actor Ronald Reagan. So like that was super fun. Like I missed that 11 that blew my mind that I didn't know was, what is Eddie's number in his police photo? I mean, I know that it exists but who in their right mind would have that memorized? Yeah, exactly. Meg meg fucking hasn't memorized. Both of you are so disappointing. Well, no, here's the thing. She hasn't memorized her but she got the last number wrong and they didn't even did like anybody get it. No, not a single person. Got this one. I was gonna say if somebody got that they were cheating. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, it was Mick was so close that it was almost like, hm, what? But like, I don't know, it was super funny. The actual number is, what is it, sweetie? It's uh, 2743 oh six. You heard her? It's that. But yeah, so that was a super awesome evening. Like I had a ton of fun. I'm just getting ready for Halloween and, oh boy, it's going to be a week. Speaking of that, Nikki, you're already in the middle of your Halloween season. How's stuff going with you? Yeah, it has been a crazy ride. We are doing nine full shows and we have sold out every single show that we've done so far. And it's just been really exciting. We've gotten to meet a lot of really crazy and really diverse crowds and I feel like one thing that, like we don't talk about with Halloween and Rocky Horror, like we always discuss the craziness of it, but I mean, maybe this is not a New York problem, but in New Jersey, sometimes crowds can be a swing and a miss like we've done, um, let's use my math brain for a moment. We've done six shows so far and in those five of the crowds were stellar. Incredible, like, so fun, so crazy. But then you always have that one show where there's a full sold out audience of people that just want to watch the movie and you're like, you did not know what you, you signed up for and like, what are the chances of getting like an entire crowd of people who are silent and they just want to watch the movie like that. There is not a single person there that wants to do call. So on Friday, I, we did a sold out show to an audience of people and like, they were all very nice, but they clearly didn't know what they signed up for. So like the cast, the remaining cast members that weren't performing were doing a P and I was tricky guys. I took my bra off, I revealed my boobies. I didn't barely get a woo. Like I literally heard my best friend in the back row go. Yeah. And that was it. And I was like, wow, this is, this is horrifying and then I got off stage. Damn it. Janet started and four people walked out of the theater and they were all like burly, very hetero looking men. And I was like, OK, I understand uh like, they, they, they, they were not, they were not here for Rocky Horror. Um They thought that this was Rocky Balboa. Um But it was, it was a weird vibe. Like it was a very weird vibe and it kind of threw me off kilter, but I'm going to be at a very rowdy, very crazy college campus tonight and I think that's going to get me back into the spirits. Oh, that's good. I mean, we, we've had those shows like I obviously we don't talk about about them as much because they are uh well, they're just not as fun to talk about but they, they do happen, you know where the, the venue didn't promote it, right? Or just the audience showed up and decided that they wanted to, I don't know, sit there and watch Fern Gully or whatever the fuck they think they're watching. Hey, is a good movie. Yeah, but you don't do api don't even know what that is. Tim Curry in it. Come on, Nicky guys, I literally don't give a fuck about anyone in this movie unless they're in this movie. I have never seen Shock treatment. Well, I mean, that's not a problem. Goddamn it. You guys. And with that, let's get started with our first segment first up in Global News. Our resident slut, Susan Sarandon gave an interview to you magazine this past week where she opened up about the last ever conversation she had with her former boyfriend David Bowie. I had no idea that they dated in 1983. Susan and David filmed a vampire movie called The Hunger. Susan had gotten divorced from her first husband Chris Sarandon a few years before she and David met the two got close on set and eventually became romantically involved. What a power couple? Are you kidding me? Right. Horny for that. Susan first went public with the affair decades later in 2014 commenting that he was worth idolizing when asked why the affair ended. Susan only stated that he's extraordinary. That was a really interesting period. I wasn't desperate to have Children. I felt I had been a mom to my younger siblings for quite a while. So when I was told I couldn't have Children without operations because of endometriosis, I thought that's ok. There are so many kids in my family, I never felt that's what I needed to complete me. So even though they split up, Susan and David remained in touch and just a few days ago, she spoke about the final conversation that she had with David the week before his death in January of 2016 at the age of 69. In the interview, Susan recounted, I was fortunate enough to be close to him right before he died the last couple of months, he did find me again. We talked to each other and said some things that needed to be said. Susan stated at the time she was overseas in Greece helping to bring attention to the country's refugee crisis and stated I wasn't sleeping. So I took a pretty strong sleep aid and I had this dream that David had called me and that we'd had this conversation. Then later I thought, did he actually call me? And I went back to my phone and he had, but I have no recollection of what that conversation was. He died a week later. It's all so frustrating. Oh my God. Wait. So that's, that's it. That's, that's the conversation. That's it. David Bowie. Called Susan Sarandon in Greece. They had a whole last conversation right before he passed away but she has no idea what it was. Holy shit. Her calling it frustrating is like the understatement of the century, whatever it was. I hope it was something nice. Yeah. Really? I, I definitely hope it was something that made his last few days a little bit brighter if he remembered it either. You know, that is calling your ex in the middle of the night while she's away in Greece screams like, I don't know, drunk dial to me. Who knows? Man? It's David Bowie. He probably did that shit all the time. Anyway, Susan opened up quite a bit in this new magazine article about her family and her political advocacy work. We've linked it for you on our show notes if you'd like to check it out. But the big reason for this article was to promote her upcoming show, Monarch. It's an epic multigenerational musical drama about the Romans, which is America's fictional first family of country music in Monarch. Susan plays the family's leader, Dotty Roman A K A, the queen of country music. The plot revolves around Dotty running her musical dynasty, but a bunch of skeletons from her past are brought to light which creates a ton of drama. It's all set to popular country tunes. Plus some original material created specifically for the show Monarch will premiere on Fox with a special two night event on January 30 and February 1st of 2022 you'll also be able to stream it on the Fox now app. So mark your calendars. Folks in just a few short months, you'll be able to catch Susan as a hardcore Nashville badass. Honestly, that sounds kind of dope. Yeah, I'm, I'll at least check it out. Yeah, absolutely. So, next up, we've got a really fun announcement for all of our Greek literature fans out there, which is probably every single one of you. The Del Rey Artisans, which is based in Alexandria, Virginia has just announced a Rocky themed addition to their Groovy Movies exhibit. The Del Rey Artisans was founded in 1992 as a way to support new and emerging artists develop and foster community based art events to promote the arts as a resource for community outreach and to help make a full range of creative expression more available and accessible to the general public. The group hosts exhibits classes, workshops and receptions to introduce their community to both fine and functional art. In addition to all their events, which is all open to the public, they also host art summer camps for youth and holiday markets. In December. The Del Rey Artisans offer all sorts of art classes, book clubs and creative programs as well as online exhibitions. One such exhibition is their upcoming Groovy movie series which will run through November of this year. The Groovy Movies exhibit is presented in partnership with the Alexandria Film Festival and features artwork influenced by film from American Film Institute classics like Abbott and Costello meets Frankenstein and Barbarella to Yellow Submarine and Zorba. The Greek. This is a curated exhibit, showcasing artwork by local artists interpreting the movies. The last groovy movie to be showcased will of course be the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The program's curator Dr Erica Hughes will be leading a Zoom talk titled Euripides and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's a lecture that unpacks how Rocky can be considered a modern reworking of an ancient Greek tragedy. The talk will be held online on Zoom and is free to the public if you're interested and would like to register. All you have to do is visit the event page at del Rey artisans dot org, which will have links for you in our show notes and click the button. Once you're registered, you'll be sent a Zoom link a day or two before the event and you'll be able to view the talk from any device. This talk sounds like a great time. I mean, I've already gone ahead and registered for my spot. If you're an absolute Rocky nerd like me and you love hearing a new spin or like a reframing of the movie. This sounds like something you would really, really enjoy if you want to check it out and sit in on the lecture with me. All you gotta do is click the link in our show notes. And with that, let's move on to some community news. Get it because come, I don't get it. Actually. See, come is slang for seamen, which is, are we talking about Spooge? Yeah. Ok. Yeah. All right. I got it. First up in community news, we've got a fun community project to share with you. Theater coven productions is a Baltimore based performance group for lovers of all things. Spooky. The company was founded by Tavon Vinson as an artistic outlet for his community, wanted something a little different and as a lever of dark stories leaning into the horror genre, felt like a good fit for his creative works. Savan is also a huge LGBT Q I A plus advocate and wanted to help give this group in particular a space to contribute to the horror world on Saturday, November 6th Theater Coven Productions will be performing the Rocky Horror Freak Show at the million dollar theater in L A where you can see the Rocky Horror Picture show like never before. This is a live shadow cast performance with a circus freak show theme and of course, what circus re show would be complete without sideshow acts. The preshow will include all sorts of appropriately themed performances featuring Hollywood master hypnotist, Kevin Stone and the amazing contortionist twista Troy James. If you're in the Los Angeles area and want to check out this show, there will be two performances, three PM and eight PM, both on November 6th tickets at the door will cost you 40 bucks. But if you buy them online ahead of time, you can save $5. This will be theater Coven's first time producing the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but Tavo is a Rocky vet and has directed two prior shadow casts in this show, Tavi will be directing and starring as Frank and Furter. We reached out to Tavon to ask a little bit about the upcoming production and the show sounds like the best time. As we said, the theme is freak show, Tavon described it by asking us to imagine what it might be like if Frank ran away to earth to start a circus and recruited a freak show. Frank is the ringmaster. Of course, his domestics all have their place in a circus and poor Brad and Janet are about to become his new attractions. Tavo absolutely gushed about the group of actors he gets to work with on the show stating that the most fun part of the production process so far has been to watch his cast execute their performances and characters with ease. He commented we have a very talented bunch. I am extremely proud of them. He also talked a bit about the difficulties of running a show outside of your home turf. See theater coven is based in Baltimore, but this show will be held out in L A where promotion is obviously a way bigger deal like just because there is so much more happening out there. Maybe we can help to out you guys live in New York. How do you handle show promotion up there? There's definitely just as much going on as in L A, I'll be realistic with you. I feel like N Y C R H P S is just such a staple in New York and because there's just so many goddamn people, I feel like a lot of it is just word of mouth. Like we've been here for so long and we've been so consistent throughout the years that people just kind of like know that N Y C R H P s is here. And of course, at every show, we have a little part during our hosting ceremony where we talk about our social media handles and how you can get in touch with us and we have the website and all of that, but there's really no other like gorilla marketing aside from just making sure that the word gets out. And I also feel like a lot of times, especially within N Y C, a lot of like venues talk if one venue has N Y C R H P s and we do a great job there and they really like having us back. Maybe there was somebody in that audience who also has a venue somewhere around the city or maybe they liked us so much that they were talking to other people. Who oversee venues. So I, I feel like 90% of the time, it's just a lot of word of mouth. Yeah, I think for New York specifically, that's definitely the case. But this Halloween season I've seen a lot, an absolute lot of what other casts around the country have been doing to promote their events. And I've kind of, you know, I haven't been keeping track of it but I do post everything on the Rocky Horror news site. Uh whenever I see, you know, uh show announcements and then I kind of like will see as those casts post on social media that they've, you know, sold out their shows. And let me tell you, one of the biggest things that I've kind of, you know, correlated together between those is the number of postings that I see on third party sites for these shows, correlates very quickly to those shows selling out. So this is the kind of stuff that yes, your theater might promote the show on their website or whatever. So go make the postings on sites like all events or Eventbrite or, you know, if you can get your shows up on Ticketmaster or any of these other kind of like ticket sales sites. Uh It does a couple of things, one, it puts it in front of more eyeballs and two, it makes sure that those sites get indexed by Google search. So when somebody like in your town is just going Oh, I want to see Rocky Horror. Rocky Horror near me. Right. That's all they ever type in Google is using all of those search results that it gets to pull exactly those and show them right there to you in front of you, uh, at the top of the listing page. So if you've got a, you know, an event that's posted on event, right? Or on Ticketmaster or one of these other places, that's how they're gonna, you know, know, to show it to people when they're searching for it. All of the shows that I see, you know, constant streams of things coming in posted on different sites, getting news articles written about them. Those are the ones that seem to sell out real quick and news articles. Another big thing reach out to local papers, local, you know, TV stations, even local radio stations. I know. I know. I know it's 2021 who listens to radio video. But the other thing about radio stations is all of their segments. They tend to do online posts about or they repost their like morning show or whatever they're talking about in like a podcast form, another great venue to get the word out there and just to make it more spread out to the local community that you're trying to reach. All right, nerd. Sorry. What about your cast, Nicky? Like you're based in Red Bank, New Jersey. Not quite as big, but it's certainly not like the sticks and y'all get really, really good audience numbers. Honestly, I have to give it to F N S. Their advertising style is lucrative as fuck. Like not to flex or anything. But you know, I do make the ads for F N s but just like the way that they get the word out is crazy to me because we really do well for ourselves with every single ad, we run a Facebook campaign. So, you know, we boost it to as many people as we can. And one thing that we try to do is make every single show an event regardless of if it's Halloween, regardless of anything. So, like come to the show tonight, we're giving out a free poster. We're giving out a free button. We're having a costume contest, we're having a worst costume contest. We're doing this, we're doing this like it's always, we're releasing a new Merch drop, you know, like always something to try to draw the public's eye in a little bit. We do theme shows once a month to try to keep it fresh. So we know that because I mean, like I started going to Rocky for the first time. I didn't know shit about Rocky Horror. I just heard that there was a Halloween show in the middle of June and I was like, that's something that I'm into. So I went and one thing that I think a lot of casts should try to like jump on right now, especially pulling a page out of R H P S Buffaloes book is tiktok because holy crap F N S posted a tiktok of me and a few of my cast mates at Rutgers on Sunday. It is currently at 100 and 30,000 views which is like, it's just a dumb amount of views and it's a dumb amount of people that are now clicking and it's everybody from New Jersey, they're interacting. Oh my God. I didn't realize there was Rocky Horror down here. If you can get the word out to that many people just by like dancing in your undies with your friends. Why the hell not? Like it takes five minutes at a show. And I think that that's something we should all try to do because tiktok is so easy to blow up on now, especially in Rocky Horror and especially on Halloween. So if you could get into that right now, you'll be golden. I mean, that's, that's fucking perfect. I mean, people say that tiktok is free marketing, I guess I hadn't really thought about it quite that much, but those numbers are insane. Nikki. And that's not even our most viewed video so crazy. Well, we hope this all helps a little bit Tavon. If any of our listeners want to write in and share your promotion tips with the community, we would love to read them on air. And if you're around L A on November 6th and are interested in checking out theater Coven's Rocky Horror Freak Show. We've got links to both theater Coven's Facebook page and the show's event bright page in our show notes. Next up, we've got a super cool announcement for all of our Franks Deadly Sting. N Y C has just launched a new line of 40 7-Eleven tattoos. You heard, right? The Deadly Sting N Y C Etsy Shop run by N Y C R H P S cast member Jen DiMaio. You might know her as the woman who makes the boss temporary tattoos you've got on your left arm from Friday until Tuesday every week because the goddamn thing is so good. It's possible to remove uh pro tip if you want to take it off fast, don't scrub it. Use one of the like oils that she recommends on the back of it or just use tape, get that fucker and like stick, stick, stick, stick, stick. Like you're trying to get like the the bad packaging off of a toy. Yeah, I mean that those things stick on forever, man. For all of our franks who are sick of drawing thousands of 40 7-Eleven dots on their like every week or making your cast members do it. Your days of trying to get all those little damn dots straight are a thing of the past just this week, Jen launched a new tattoo on her Etsy shop. It's a 40 7-Eleven tattoo and it's every bit as high quality as the boss tats, we all know and love. So just a little bit of behind the scenes here. I have known Jen for literally thousands of years and she is one of the most screen accurate obsessed people in the community. Now, you might not need to channel that kind of energy for your costumes. But when someone has already done the work for you, I mean, why settle for anything less than perfect? And boy, can I tell you when Jen works on a project, she's able to take all of her obsessive energy and channel it into making sure her end product is perfectly, perfectly perfect. I can personally attest that Jen thought about absolutely nothing else for the last 12 days while she was crafting this tattoo, there are hundreds of messages and mine and Meg's phones regarding these tattoos. We went through pictures of the 40 7-Eleven in slightly different sizes in containing or excluding minute details that are just imperceptible to the eyes of any human being. Aside from Jen herself. When she received the order, she quality assurance tested the product samples by sticking these tattoos onto every single last inch of her own skin. It was like watching a Benda Liechtenstein painting come together in real time in a human sense. This is terrifying, but from a buyer's perspective, this is fantastic news because it means that you can go ahead and make a bulk order for yourself or your cast or just any of the franks in your life and feel secure in the knowledge that this new tattoo line will be every bit as well crafted as the boss tattoos. If you'd like to check out the new tats, visit Jens Etsy shop at Etsy dot com slash shop slash deadly sting tattoos. You can also shop for them on Amazon as of last week. Oh, Jen, out here being fancy. So a single boss tattoo costs 8 75. But if you want to be economical, you can buy them in packs in quantities ranging from 2 to 50 and they get cheaper per price as you buy more. The same goes for the new 40 7-Eleven tattoos which start at 7 25 for a single. And right now, Jen is running a Halloween special combo pack of a boss and a 40 7-Eleven for the low low price of $12. They also come in 25 and 10 packs. If you want to check out the new line, we've got Jen's shop linked for you in our show notes. If you've got a Rocky, the project that you're working on. If you've got a cool show, your cast is working for on Halloween or an awesome story from your time in the community that you'd like us to read for Big Dick story time. You should write to us, just visit our website Rocky talky podcast dot com and fill out our contact form to share with us. And with that, let's head on over to everyone's favorite Nicky flavored segment. Nicky asked a question and I'm Nicky. Oh man. How are you guys feeling this week? Last week's 50th episode? Knack snack had me buzzing for days. I would use any excuse to mix one of our facts into the conversation. Did you guys know the castle is a hotel, ma'am? This is a Wendy's. Do you want fries or not? I mean I wasn't that bad but there was one thing that we didn't really include in our 50 fun facts from last week and that was anything really to do with the community. Now, I'm not saying we should do 50 more facts but no, sorry Nikki, 50 more facts ain't gonna happen today as soon as we're done recording, I've got people coming over so that we can assemble a few 100 prop bags. Like we've all got shows this week and that means we got to make those dollar dollar bills y'all. Wow. I hate that for you. Why isn't John helping? Because John isn't the kind of sucker that agrees to help assemble prop bags? Damn right. You should have heard one of the venues that we've got booked for Halloween. They didn't want us to make uh the props for them. So they had people do it in house and afterwards we heard that their response was like, all right guys next time we're hiring somebody that took forever and we did not have a good assembly line. Like no, never again. I fucking feel that it's a rite of passage to learn how horrible it is to sit assembling prop bags. I mean, I don't like, hate it, hate it. It's fun to sit and chill with your castmates and whatever. But at the end of the day, you're just assembly lining it. Like some Amazon warehouse worker, except you're making slightly less per hour than they are. As in you make literally nothing and they make it possible for Jeff Bezos to send Captain Kirk into space. Wow. What a lukewarm take, Nicky. So maybe this week we can talk about that instead. You know Jeff Bezos. Just kidding. Prop bags. One oh one, anything and everything about the bag of crap that every audience member interacts with and let's be real other than assembling them. Most cast members never do. Yeah. Honestly, the only time that I have ever purchased a prop bag is when I've brought friends to the show and they didn't have cash on them that this is the only time I've ever purchased prop bags for people or not, even when you were an audience member. Oh God, no, no, no, no. I, I, when I was an audience member before I joined cast, I think I paid maybe four or five times. And then after that, Savannah just kept sneaking me in. Yeah, I don't think I've ever really bought a prop bag. I mean, I'm sure I, I certainly have at one place or another, but I used to really like buying full decks of playing cards that I would just throw at the end of the show. So, like, as long as you get a big, huge, like loft when you throw them, it just showers the entire theater in cards and like, I don't know, it's well worth it for the like two bucks that you can get decks for. So where are you getting decks of cards for a buck each? We might need to talk. Oh, we'll get there, we'll get there. But, but first let's talk all about everyone's favorite Rocky Horror accessory, the prop bag, the virgin kit pack, shit bag. You're a shit bag. Yeah, I am. So let's kick it off. Nice and gentle Aaron. I know you're itching to give us some quotes from Creatures of the Night. Let's do it up. It was great when it all began and when it began, there was nothing so flash all the way back to April of 1977 at the Waverly theater in New York City just half a year earlier around Labor Day of 1976 is when Louis Faris is credited with beginning the phenomenon of callbacks by shouting out from the first row balcony. And at this point, I think we all know that audience participation developed relatively simultaneously. All across the country. But the narrative history that is documented for posterity is almost entirely New York focused not to brag. So we're going with what we have access to. I would love for us to be able to quote an account from L A or Texas or Chicago or Pittsburgh. But you fuckers never wrote any books. So, get on that. I'm sure Aaron could use a few more books on his shelf. Oh, damn. Right. I could. So anyway, April 1977 the callback phenomenon is only half a year old. And what started as a few funny lines being shouted from the balcony group at the Waverly has evolved into lines being shouted by regulars all over the audience. It's around this time that Amy Lazarus and her friend Teresa ripped up paper and threw it from the balcony during wedding scene to simulate confetti. The next night, two other balcony regulars, Bill and Laurie handed out rice to the balcony crew to throw over the side in creatures. Sal recalls that he missed that all important evening. But by the next weekend, regulars had already picked up the queue with rice being flung from all angles and causing quote pandemonium in the theater and a lot of welts on people's faces. My God. So remembers that it was that moment as he was pelted with rice that he realized the possibilities that lay in store. This was something new and exciting. Laurie Davis, one of the first to hand out rice was also the first to throw playing cards during I'm going home. She said, quote, the master said cards, I bring the cards. Yes, daddy. Give me those cards. Throw them right in my stupid fucking face. Love that. The uh the candles came next during there is a light. Uh Again, these were handed out by Bill and Laurie to the first row balcony group. Uh They dubbed it the candle ceremony. The entire group stood up and held their candles high. They never intended it to be like a reoccurring bit, but other audience members loved it. And thus there's a light now had light newspapers were the last item that we have historical documentation for this one. Not coming from the balcony but a lowly orchestra dweller by the name of Alan Rees. Apparently when he first put the newspaper on his head, he was mocked relentlessly, but through sheer determination, he continued wearing it for three solid weekends, determined that it would catch on and well, it obviously did. It's probably the most iconic prop. Even today, newspapers are easy to come by and there's the light feels kind of incomplete without it, the use of props would grow with every obvious prop that's called out during the film being used at one point or another. We're all familiar today with the things that can be found in most prop bags, confetti, rubber gloves, party hats, noise makers, toast, toilet paper and water pistols just to name a few in creatures. Sal credits the widespread implementation of props across the country to the news reports coming out of New York in newspapers and on TV. And Rocky fans traveling across the country spreading the gospel. There's even one account of John Mancia. Eagle eared listeners will recognize him as one of the producers of the first two Rocky conventions ever. That when he visited Florida on vacation, he brought props to the local theater. The management having no idea of the practice was upset at him throwing rice and cards during the show. But when he returned a year later, the story goes that they thanked him for starting it all and it wasn't long before reality stepped in and slapped down in the community's fund. Rightfully. So theater management at the Waverley started receiving warnings from the fire department about the use of candles during there's a light and rightfully so especially considering that everyone was wearing flammable newspapers on their head as they held their candles aloft. It was this request from the theater that spurred Sapiro into action and prompted him to call for a lull before the show to make his first ever preshow announcement. No prior organization, no formalized hosting ritual. Just the theater management asking sal if he could, please possibly say something in hopes that the audience would listen to him and not accidentally burn down the theater. So we really have prop bags to thank for the entire preshow ritual that has become so ingrained in the Rocky horror experience. If the audience hadn't been doing something stupid, Sal may have never started it at all. The audience obviously switched the lighters after the candles were banned, but those two were a bit too much of a hazard. Now, we all use our phone flashlights and many places across the country include glow sticks in their prop kits, which in my opinion are a great way to create that party atmosphere. Seeing all the different colors waved around during the show. That's what F N S does Plus and I can't state this enough as we've all probably forgotten what it was like to be sitting in a theater with a bag of crap. You had no idea what to do with something like a glow stick gives the audience a light to use while they fish around in their bag being like, oh, what's this? Where's the noise maker or the cards or what comes next? But for every prop that still makes it into bags today, we've got a whole theater full of rejected props from over the years. Many like the candles that were mixed because of potential damage to the theater and some that have just fallen by the wayside. Take hot dogs, for example, that one just sounds disgusting. And I think I could say I'm glad to have never been hit in the face with a cold shaft of congealed pork product or beef. You know, we don't judge. Oh, I'm so sorry, Nikki. You really should try it sometime. I think I won't. But who's to blame for that one? I wonder you can actually blame Sapiro directly? Well, he, he won't even take all the credit. He recounts that it was his good friend, Mark Shaman that first suggested the idea of flinging their meat. He, he does admit they were the first gross. Yeah, those didn't last long. Sal blames the cost but for obvious reasons, theater management nicks that one. They said it attracted rats and could stain the screen, but let's be real. It's also just disgusting. And that was the same problem that came up with the prunes prunes. Yeah. You know, like that during science fiction double feature, Dan Andrew said prunes gave him the ros you throw your prunes. You know, some props are best left in the past. I mean, some drops didn't last very long. Even back in the seventies in the Bill Hanken Rocky horror book which released in late 79 early 1980. There are plenty of accounts of theaters all over the country drawing a line in the sand or well a line in the rice as it as it were and banned all of the food props, rice toast. You know, all it took was one bad actor to ruin the fun in New Orleans. It was reported that one asshole filled his water gun with Coca Cola and squirted it all over the screen, literally destroying it and creating a giant sticky mess and getting water guns banned from the theater entirely. And you see similar issues today with confetti and rice and all the small stuff that when it gets wet, sticks to the seats and floor and well everything. I'm not sure modern audiences can imagine the sheer volume of mess that was created in the early days when people would bring literal £10 bags of rice into the theater and launch it fucking everywhere. At the biograph theater in Chicago, it got so out of hand that they had to hire a four person cleaning crew, a man, his wife and their two kids to arrive at four or five in the morning and clean well into the mid afternoon though the theater did admit they never ended up having to buy toilet paper for the theater ever again, which is kind of gross if you think about it. Yeah, we try not to think about it. I don't want to think about it at the Riverside Twin in Austin, Texas, which held the record for the longest running Rocky horror showing in the world for many, many years. The torch has since been passed. Uh They banned props entirely by 1980. The screen had been cut multiple times by errant flying objects and the mess was just too much for them to bear. But many theater owners are happy to put up with the mess or at least hire some high school students to clean it up. So in the Tiffany Theater, Facebook group, Lisa Sutton recalls her first appearance at the Tiffany in 1978. By that time she remembers there was pure insanity rice fights at the beginning of wedding scene were crazy and Bick lighters lit up the entire room during there's a light. Lisa remembers the preshow ritual as excited members would line up outside the Tiffany at 11 pm and the vibe would become a huge party. Folks would walk up and down the line selling merchandise. One star attraction was a gentleman named Stan who dressed up as Linda Ronstadt in satin baseball jacket, tight t shirt and short shorts and he'd walk up and down the line rhythmically chanting Rocky Rice. 25 Rocky matches 10. Apparently he would get the whole line to Chan along. I mean, that's probably one of the most successful examples of small scale gorilla marketing I've ever seen as he raked in quarters and dimes by the truck load. On one occasion, July 1st 1979 Lisa joined a few friends and was recruited for the next day cleaning crew as the regular employees had taken a few days off work. At that time, the Tiffany was doing double feature shows both at midnight and two AM screening on Saturday nights, a two AM screening, hold on a two AM screening a two AM screening a two AM screening. I can, I can get behind like a nine PM and a midnight. But if I was Janet at midnight to two AM and then I got off stage and got back on to play Janet again, I would simply pass away. I would opt to die just, just need to put that there. But anyway, no, literally that's, that's too much. I'm so sorry. Uh Lisa, I apologize on behalf of the entire community. But anyway, there were two whole shows worth of rice, toilet paper, hot dogs and all kinds of miscellaneous debris. It took hours to clean with the regular theater staff joining in as they arrived by all accounts, stan must have been making a killing, selling his 25 cent bags of rice if the mountains of trash were any indication. So I think it's pretty easy to see why theaters mixed a few of the messier props, especially if all that trash is sitting for an entire day before the cleaning crew can come in. You don't want hot dogs lingering on the floor for too long. Speak for yourself. Whoever wrote this script and while the leaf blower was invented in the early seventies, the first commercial models didn't hit streets until late 77 I doubt anyone realized how well that they would work to clear out a rocky theater full of use props until many years later on the trash heap of history. You have several other props that have fallen out of favor or have been used as replacements for those that are no longer allowed. Many theaters will substitute paper plates instead of toast during the dinner scene. Much less iconic but far more sanitary balloons were once fairly commonplace. They were blown up at the start of the film and popped during science fiction double feature when PNS was said in place of throwing the sticky sweet fruit balloons, prunes. Oh, I get it. I'm not sure if it's all that clever, but I bet it was a lot of fun to see balloons bouncing all over the theater before and at the start of the show, some casts used to also include small pieces of rope in their kits for the very end of the film during Frank's death and sponges. We can't forget sponges for when Colombia throws her tantrum right before the floor show and tells him that he's like a sponge up. Go the brillo pads. And of course, anything with fire has like been out of vogue for quite a while now. No candles, no lighters. I mean, we've all got flashlights in our pockets. No, I'm just happy to see you. And if prop kits don't contain glow sticks, most audience members are more than happy to whip them out and light up the theater. 21st century style. A damn. Right. I'll whip it out. Speaking of which there's also quite a few lesser used props. I know my cast, the Friday night specials includes party poppers in our kits in place of confetti. They're so much easier to clean up and leave the theater with that nice gunpowder smell for a few moments after the barrage as Frank and Rocky retire to their bridal suite. Also, I don't, I think I can like properly describe the feeling of euphoria one gets when cleaning the theater after the show, you find an unpopped party popper that is like gold. You are basically a Rocky horror millionaire at that point, like slap a hat on me and call me Sapiro. That's like when you're walking through central park and you find like the crunchiest leaf. Oh, yeah, it is like crunch leaf. Euphoria times 12. Uh But you know, on the topic of wonderful sounds. What's the deal with the bells? I see those listed on old school prop lists, but we certainly don't include them. They're supposed to be for during planet Sne when Frank would ask, you know, did you hear a bell ring? Right? But it's such a short interaction and it happens so late in the movie. And I mean, it's just after everybody threw toast around on top of that, like most people don't need to bring bells, they could just get out their keys and just jangle them a little bit instead. So they've pretty much completely fallen by the wayside over the years and can we just really quickly talk about the elephant in the room? I've heard that there are some casts that shall remain nameless that don't throw toilet paper when Dr Scott bursts through the wall, I'm told. And I'm going to be honest, I feel like I'm being gas lit on this one that they throw it when Rocky is being unwrapped. That just feels that is, that is wrong. That is objectively, morally and ethically wrong. You're correct. That is just wrong. Listen, we aren't going to gatekeep how you want to have your fun except on this one. If you throw toilet paper at any time, other than Dr Scott's entrance, you're just a bunch of bastards loos. So we've been going on and on about the props that everyone uses at the showings of the movie. But I also know that prop kits are every bit as commonplace at stage show productions of the Rocky Horror Show so much so that they became a real problem during tours in the eighties. What's the deal there? It started with the movie, right? It did as the Rocky Horror Cinema phenomenon gained ground in the late seventies and the early eighties, you saw a lot of theater goers in the UK and Europe wanting to join in on the fun and the production that started it all so to speak was the controversial Mesmeric laser production of the Rocky Horror show put on by the theater Royal and Hanley Stoke on Trent in the mid 19 eighties, not only responsible for bringing American style audience participation to the stage show, it also elevated Rocky Horror, which was previously viewed as like a low budget independent musical into the position of the second most successful touring show in the country. It was the tipping point that finally turned a cult curiosity into an interactive mainstream production. The Handley run also corresponded with another really big event that brought Rocky Horror antics to a global audience which was the release of the movie fame. In 1980. This showed firsthand the New York eighth street Playhouse experience with the crowd performing the time warp and props being flung around the theater in hope that a little of the fun enjoyed at the US screenings of the movie might cross over to the stage version. The Henleys Theater management made water pistols and small bags of rice available for purchase before the show. This decision would soon come back to haunt them as it quickly became obvious that audiences were already way ahead of the game as the tour progressed. And Rocky Horror became widely known as a full blown audience participation experience helped along by the release of the audience participation album. In late 1983 theatergoers became more and more brazen with their interactions, full bags of rice were flung, super soakers full of water were emptied onto the crowd and aimed at the cast. And as the tour progressed. More and more obscure references were turned into excuses to flink props around the theaters. You can imagine the dread theater owners must have had at every show when Frank Sings, make you a man just praying that this wasn't the show where they would be cleaning up raw eggs. And UK audiences love to integrate candy. The chocolate and coconut candy bar named Bounty was thrown during Frank's creation speech, not for an obvious connection, but because the confection had been advertised with an old commercial describing it as a quote taste of paradise. So of course, it was the perfect thing to throw at Frank when he exclaimed that paradise is to be mine. They loved throwing stuff during creation scene. The opening of Frank's creation speech that was heavily cut for the movie has three additional prop moments. Here's the whole speech, see if you can spot them. It was strange the way it happened. One of those quirks of fate. Really one of those moments when everything looks black, the chips are down, your back is against the wall. You panic, you trapped. There is no way out. And even if there was, it would probably be a one way ticket to the bottom of the bay and then suddenly you get a break, all the pieces seem to fit into place. What a sucker you've been. What a fool. The answer was there all the time. It took a small accident to make it happen. What do you think Nicky anything stick out there that makes you want to throw something? Yeah. Ok. So I took notes because I have very detailed theories. Ok. First one, I'm thinking chips all the way poker chips, regular chips, any kind of chips, we're throwing chips, maybe we'll crunch on some chips. Little, little A S M R moment. Thoughts. All right, we'll see about that one. That's a pretty good guess. Ok? This one's kind of out there. It's a little seedy but I want to roll with it trapped. We're throwing mouse traps. Is it a hazard? Yeah, but you signed up for it when you bought that ticket, you should have known better because if anything else that they were throwing and doing wasn't already a fucking trap. I mean, we have to be like loaded mouse traps, but we're throwing mouse traps and then the theater will be mouse, mouse free, you know, put a little cheese in there. Just see what happens. Ok. Ticket. You got your rocky horror ticket. Chuck it at the nearest guy named Ted. Fuck him up. Ruin his afternoon. I see. No problem with that. It's a bad name. Anyway, this is another one. It's a little out there. All right. Bottom of the bay. We got bags of old Bay. We're sprinkling, we're tossing, we're coating the theater. Everything tastes Cajun style. Wow. How did you know every single one of these? Ok. Ready sucker? Lollipops. Come on. Are you kidding me? Sucker? Right. Um, I think that would be it for me. I think that's it. I think that's all I got. How did I do? Alright. Well, uh pretty, pretty, pretty close, actually, pretty close. Uh, so just for all of our, our listeners out there, uh ignore everything that he just said and uh, we'll just move along with this. Yeah. No. So some of these, the real ones aren't gonna make a lot of sense. If you aren't familiar with like UK based products and advertising, we'll try our best to explain them. But like, let's start with an easy one right there at the top. You called it out. Nikki, you had Frank saying the chips are down. Oh, like French fries. But they're British. So they're chips. And Frank said, chips. Wow, that is so stupid. They get more obscure just a few lines later. Frank says, and you didn't quite clock this one suddenly you get a break. Break me off a piece of that kit Kat Bar. Fucking. Exactly. If you thought the one candy bar wasn't enough here. Add another one in the eighties. The Kit Kat slogan was have a break. Have a Kit Kat. But you know, same energy and audiences took the queue to fling the chocolate wafer bars moments later. Uh And you almost got this one. Nikki. Frank says, what a sucker you'd be. I was right. More candy. No, because in the UK. A sucker is a pacifier, you know, like for babies and for kinky people. So, you know, there you go, reach into the bag and fling that disgustingly used baby toy down into the stalls. Jesus. So just one single part of Frankie. And you're already being showered with kit cats, baby pacifiers and French fries. But I'm the crazy one for suggesting mouse traps. No, I think you're genius, honestly. But the candy isn't done there in the UK. There's a candy bar named Picnic. And, well, I, I, I think you can see where this one's gonna go. No picnic unless it's chocolate covered, wrapped in foil and aimed straight for the narrator's stupid smug face. I mean, this sounds like it got a little ridiculous and that's just the stuff that was thrown that made sense. I remember us talking about random nonsense. The audiences started throwing like flour or whatever else at some point. It's just a mess for mess's sake. And it was a big mess and it was a big part of what contributed to the eventual retirement of the original Rocky Horror show. Part of what spurred Richard to rebrand and recreate the experience to better accommodate the evolutions that had occurred for the theater owners to kind of get to reset audience expectations. By the nineties, you saw a lot more limitations placed on what fans could bring into the theater, the bags and bags of props that they had once brought, were being replaced with small theater approved prop kits available in the lobby. Generally with innocuous items like glow sticks and fish nets and boas. I mean, still plenty of fun to be had, but like, nobody's getting hit in the face with a candy bar. It's also around this time, like the late eighties into the nineties that Fox and everyone else seemed to finally get on board with the inclusion of props as part of the quintessential Rocky horror experience. What had been an incredibly outlandish joke in 1981 when Tim Curry and Meatloaf appeared on S N L on their skit for Tim and Meats one stop Rocky Horror Shop was like now becoming a reality on S N L. Tim and Meatloaf lampooned the early Rocky horror audiences by offering outrageously priced official prop kit materials, toast water guns and rice all overpriced and all featuring official Rocky horror branding a tongue in cheek attack at the Anything for a buck capitalist film studios. Only a decade later had finally proved too profitable to remain a joke. The 1991 French V H S release came bundled with a small bag of rice, a tiny newspaper, a single fish net gauntlet, a rubber glove and a small commemorative lips pin, which I know we've mentioned it before on the show. But what a weird idea that you might actually throw around rice and snap your rubber glove at home. It wasn't the last time Fox would bundle audience participation props with the release of the film. In 2006. They released a Rocky Horror gift set for the 25th anniversary this time including confetti, a squirt gun, rubber gloves, a party noisemaker and a guide to participation. Though even the back of the box was a little bit self-aware that they were kind of just milking the fan base. It reads in part quote, buy this special gift set for someone you love like you. Hm. Delicious Rocky Horror fan milk. I'll have mine on ice. I just don't know what to do with you, John. Well, maybe you could buy me the 2007 vital toys Rocky Horror picture show survival kit. This was another one that came out around the 25th anniversary. This time it was put out by the same people who made the little toy action figures that released at the same time. This is probably the best of these commercial kits that was released. It came in like a tin lunch box and it had a glow stick, a plastic hotdog and plastic toast rice, a large sheet of newsprint, a water pistol and a small roll of toilet paper. The tin lunch box alone was a relatively nice addition for collectors, but the quality wasn't great being made of lightweight materials to keep everything on the cheap and speaking of cheap, I think we should wrap up with a quick discussion for all the guests out there that are putting together prop bags. I know everyone has their own restrictions with their theaters. Some places allow rice confetti and toast. Others don't want to clean up toilet paper or ban water pistols. There's a lot of conditions that you need to be aware of, but let's talk about price real quick. Ok. Uh So, you know, full disclosure for a long time, the New York City cast has kept our prop bags at a very bare bones $2 price point. And in order to make that work, we limited the items to the absolute bare necessities, newspaper, playing cards, a rubber glove and toast through buying in bulk. We knocked the price all the way down to only 26 cents per bag in costs. So selling them at $2 that's a pretty healthy 600 plus percent return on investment and those are the numbers that you should be looking for or at least better than making a quarter on a bag. The amount of headache that it takes to accumulate prop bag materials. Be it ordering bulk on Amazon or driving to Costco or Sam's Club or the Dollar General. And then you take the sheer amount of work putting them together. You really want to make sure that something tangible comes out of it. It's all well and good to sell bags that pay for themselves. But like it's 2021 I think most casts could do to aim a little bit higher. Yeah, we really like the party poppers. I think they're one of my favorite things in the F N S prop bags. But you have to recognize the cost when you're including something like that in your bags. For F N S. We include a lot in our bags. We include gloves, newspapers, glow sticks, party poppers, noise makers playing cards. We used to have rice and sponges. Toilet, did I say toilet paper? If I didn't? I'm saying it again, toilet paper and one thing that we do to try to capitalize on that is salvage. I don't know if all casts do this. But after every single show, if you watch the cast, we go outside, we say good night and then we go back into that theater and we pick up every last thing that we can, we obviously don't reuse things like gloves or noise makers because that's kind of gross. But we save rolls of toilet paper. We will do that during the show. Once you're throwing them, look around, we might catch them. And it's just, it's way more efficient and it's very easy to try to make more prop bags when you have them already bagged, you know. Oh, for sure. That is absolutely one of the best ways I know that, uh, one of the casts that I used to be with did that. Uh, we don't do it in New York because we're fucking lazy and you know, we, we would much rather do some math than try and figure out the complexities of that. But that is 100% a great way to include a lot more and still be able to offer it to audiences for a lot less. We just included party poppers in our bags that we're doing for our Halloween shows this year and including those alone increase the cost per bag by like over 50 cents. They are by far the most expensive item in there. Second only to the party hats that come in at like a quarter each and those small little like Melba toast that we purchase. They're like 10 cents a slice. So fuck even even the little glow sticks were still like a nickel each. All told though. It, it puts our deluxe prop bags for Halloween at around a buck and a half for costs. Yeah. And if you think we're going to be selling those for two bucks, boy, do you have another fucking thing coming? I think what we just want to say here is be aware of your costs, salvage what you can and be aware of how much actual effort goes into assembling, transporting and actually selling prop bags if you can cut a dollar off your costs by not including the deluxe super cool items. Well, maybe it's worth considering maybe sell toilet paper separate from including it in the bag. I mean, that's what we do rolls sell by themselves for a few bucks or we bundle them with the bag for a slight cost reduction. And if not enough people buy them. Well, the cast can fly a few rolls through the air just to make sure that we're not left T P list. So, you know, keep it in mind. I know most casts have already sorted this out. But if you're gearing back up and maybe looking for new suppliers hit us up. We're more than happy to share our super secret prop bag hookups spoiler. It's Amazon. So with that going into this Halloween season, may your theaters be full of rice and the air full of toilet paper? Just try not to let your newspaper on fire. Otherwise, the entire audience might have to squirt all over you John Phrasing. And that's our show. We wanna thank Tavon from the theater cover and productions for the heads up about their upcoming shows in L A. Jen from Deadly Sting Tattoos for providing the community with another awesome costumed accessory and your mom for giving me a lovely pumpkin spice blumpkin last night. Oh my God. God. Damn it. If anyone has a question, they'd like us to answer on air for Nicky, ask a question or some community news they'd like us to talk about or even a cool story to share with the community, we'd love to include it in our show. Just go to our website rocky talky 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. It makes the podcast more accessible to new listeners, which really helps us to grow the show. And if you want even more Rocky talky content, check us out on Facebook, youtube, Instagram and tiktok all at Rocky Talkie podcast. We'll talk to you all next week. Bye. Happy Halloween. Who's the other one, sweetie? Who's the other one? It's F D R and I'm gonna pick up the other half of this later. All right, my dogs would like to contribute. Yeah, they're really passionate about shack treatment. Hi guys. All three of them. Am I I, I don't, can someone else say that? Let's get started? That's a lie. I hate it, hate it. I mean, I don't like, hate it, hate it. It's fun to sit and chill with your castmates and whatever should I say? Indications twice in one sentence? I think you should say it more. OK. Uh By all indications, Stan indicated. Got it. It is the season to do Rocky fa la la, la, la, la, la, la la. Thank you. I'm fucking incredible. Incredible. I'm John. Hi John, I'm dad. Mhm You can stop recording.