Hello to all of you. Unconventional conventions. Welcome to a Rocky talkie. I'm Nicky. I'm John and I'm Aaron. Hi, John and Aaron. Hi. Hello, Nikki. How are you guys? I'm just chilling. Just chilling. Yeah, cool. I'm fantastic. I'm doing good. My week was good. I am exhausted currently because I recently did a 24 hour stream on Twitch this weekend in which I streamed for 24 straight hours. Well, 24 straight hours is kind of misleading because I did take two half hour breaks and I did nap for an hour. I thought you were going to say they were 24 gay hours. No, they weren't. Unfortunately. No, they were 24 ace hours. But I did, I did take about a total of two hour breaks. One hour. I did actually nap on stream with the camera on me. That was an adventure. Hashtag content. It is. I would like to ask about that. Yeah, because how did you like just successfully nap for an hour? I would do that. I would lay down to fall asleep like three hours into my 24 hour stream and wake up when the stream is over. Well, so the stream will never end unless you tell it to end. So if you fell asleep and woke up three hours later, then you just would have been on stream for three hours, three hours. Yeah, that um I set multiple alarms and I put the phone on my face so that when it went off, it was vibrating on my face and it woke me up. Uh I also, I also still wore my headphones so people were able to like spam, like voice, uh like, like audio cues and stuff while I was sleeping. So I didn't really like sleep sleep. It was just like a very restful sit there and not talk and not do anything hour. Basically a break from uh constantly keeping people entertained. Yeah, basically. But it was a great stream. I pulled over 100 new followers. About 70 new subscriptions. I made about 600 bucks in that 24 hours. Wow. And my viewer average was like 100 and 20 people. It was fucking wild. Turns out people like to watch other people suffer who would have guessed. Yep. And I slept basically all of Sunday and today I've been dragging like no other because I was up for 24 straight hours. Constantly talking, constantly making contact and engaging with people. Then I slept for 24 straight hours. So I am bad with a capital B right now. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. What about you? Aaron. How was your week? Oh, pretty good. Pretty good. Uh, mostly been ramping up for rocky stuff. Uh, we have a show tonight and then, uh, Meg and I are flying to Pittsburgh at the end of the week. But, uh, big thing that happened to me is my cat decided that, uh, today was the day that I was gonna have to go buy a new apple keyboard. What did the beetle juice Decided that uh my keyboard needed a helpful, helpful glass of diet Coke all over it late last night while I was writing this script and uh my dumb ass didn't unplug it fast enough. So uh it no longer has an S key or A T key. The D key gives you a capital F. That's interesting. Um So this morning, I had to run it. It was fine there, there's an apple store just like five blocks, not even, it's like three blocks away from our apartment. So I just ran over to the apple store and got a new $148 for a fucking apple keyboard. That's wild. I literally built my own keyboard for 100 and 40 dollars. Oh, yeah. I mean, if I, if I had time energy effort and any of those things, it would be on the table. But like I just needed a keyboard for work today and to finish writing the script and all these other things. So I was just like, you know what? I, I'm just gonna go do it. Uh, that was perfectly pleasant. It only took like 15 minutes. I was able to run over there, come back, you know, have my new keyboard in hand. But, uh, yeah, that was, that was my exciting morning. How about you, Nicky? What have you been up to this week? Um, it's been a good week in the middle of the week around. Like, I think it was Wednesday. I had my besties, Andrea and David over. We had a sleepover and we watched in Conto for the 100th time. It was awesome. Um, but now I've pretty much just been like, try harding and gearing up for this F N S ordinary kids joint show, which I'm very excited for. I, I love joint shows and I can't wait to, like, make a relationship with a fellow New Jersey cast. Love it. Yeah, it's going to be really fun. I'm very excited for it. But other than that, I've got, when's that show? You want to plug it? Yes. Hold on. Let me look at the calendar because I, that show is gonna be Friday, February 18th. It's in Red Bank and it's F N S and the ordinary kids, two casts one stage. Love it. Me too. Oh God, ok. I feel like a making a capital F All right with that. Let's get started with our first segment first up in Global News. We here at Rocky talkie are pleased to announce that we're about to receive our first ever appearance from Meat Loaf from beyond the grave. Ok, cool. So, he filmed something before he passed away. That's, that's being released, right. Yeah. Yes. Why are you doing a spooky voice? Because he filmed an incredibly ironic episode of ghost hunters. Oh. Oh, come on, Nicky. That's not news. Meat Loaf was super into good ghost hunting and just like the paranormal in general. In fact, he'd been making pretty regular appearances on ghost hunters since the first time. He teamed up with the crew for an investigation that was like back in 2009. In fact, he and the show's lead Jason Haws were buddies. In a recent interview with Loud Wire. Jason commented that a lot of people don't realize with meat loaf is that he's been investigating claims of the paranormal for a long time. That's actually what sparked our friendship and we've been hanging out ever since. Well, Meatloaf and his friend Jason are about to be reunited on screen for a final time. They filmed their last episode together back in September of 2021 where they investigated a farmhouse according to Loud Wire, terrifying rumors of otherworldly spookiness had been plaguing the property for decades and the farm's new owners wanted to make sure their new mortgage didn't also include any good, uh, as someone who has had a mortgage in the past, they'd have to be specified in the terms of the contract. Otherwise, those ghosts are just squatters and you'd have to call the ghost police to have them forcibly evicted. Will Meatloaf and Jason call for help from police to forcibly evict the spooky ghosts from the farmhouse. You'll have to tune in to discovery. Plus to find out Meatloaf's Ghost Hunters episode will premiere on February 12th 2022. The travel channel included in the show's description in memory of our friend and fellow paranormal investigator. We were blessed to have spent one last investigation with you and who knows? Maybe this is only Meat's last mortal episode. That's the nice thing about ghost hunters. He can always come back as an episode subject whenever he wants. Maybe he'll jump in sometimes to make sure his pal Jason gets extra good episodes from time to time. Nicky, we can only hope. Speaking of meat loaf, Little Mell recently gave an interview to the Sydney Morning Herald where she dished on some of the celebs that she's had the fortune to work with over the years, including meatloaf. We'll get to some of the others in a sec. But it did seem as though Nell and Meat were pretty close friends from the moment that they met on the set of Rocky Horror. Nell recalls. I had never heard of Meat loaf. When into the rehearsal room, sauntered a confident baby faced Texan Chubster when he opened his mouth and began singing hot Patuti, our hair stood on end. We were blown across the room and pinned to the wall. He had the voice of an angel with the power of a jet taking off. When asked if she'd ever had an on set love affair with me to match her on screen one. Now commented that no, she hadn't, but that one of the other Rocky cast members certainly had. Oh my God. Really? Who? Now the classy bitch that she is declined to name them stating that she feels it's their story to tell. But Meatloaf had an onset pickup line. I was voted the best kisser at my high school in Texas. My friend replied, well, I can't let that opportunity pass. Promptly kissed him and said it's true. You are the best kisser of your high school in Texas. Damn well, that's a pretty good comeback. Come on, we all know who that is. Nell and Meat stayed in pretty close contact ever since filming, often visiting each other and hanging out. Although it wasn't until after his passing that she found out he was such an outspoken anti-vaxxer and antimasker. A fact that she seemed really horrified to learn. She said I was lying on my sofa after a huge day when a friend texted me that meat was dead. I was so shocked. The first close member of our Rocky Horror family later, I was doubly shocked reading. He was a vocal anti vaxxer as he was asthmatic with dodgy health. He had a great wife and family was as sharp and fun as ever fantastic with his fans yet unvaccinated it beggars belief you can believe science or Facebook meat was so loved and now much missed. That's kind of a big slight to Jonathan Adams. I'm just saying no seriously, like forever ago he was in the stage show too, right? And he was in the like the sequel with her like that damn now, cold as ice. You didn't just include meat anecdotes. However, Nell also reminisced about being a student and selling vintage clothing at an antique market across the hall from an amusing young man named Freddie Mercury who would bang on and on about his band called Queen. Never heard of him. Same Nel said his trousers were always so tight. You could see exactly what he was packing. If I ever saw him tuck into a sticky bun, I'd warn him, darling one more bun and you're gonna burst out of those trousers. Imagine being able to give Freddie Mercury snarky opinions about fucking anything. Nell also had some fun anecdotes to share about her New York City nightclub, Nell's that was opened from 1986 through 2004. Everyone came Ty Mick Jagger, David Bowie Stevie Wonder Dolly Parton, Norman Mailer, Robert Hughes, Quincy Jones, Christopher Hitchens, Al Pacino. But it was the mix of uptown downtown that made it fun. Prince performed there after one of his Madison Square Gardens gigs. I worried that the floor was going to collapse at one point during their chat. Nell's interviewer, uh Peter Fitzsimmons commented that Nell should do her memoirs to tell all these cool stories at length to which Nell responded. That's exactly what I'm doing. Oh, damn. That's going to be a very juicy read. I feel like Nell has got to have been one of the craziest members of the Rocky cast with the coolest stories. That would be a great book to read though. Did you know it was on the horizon? Erin? No, I think this is probably one of the first times that Nell's really talked about it. At least in anything that I've seen. I for one certainly can't wait to get my hands on it whenever it comes out. Like the Nell Campbell behind the Music story is, yes, that's going to be pretty great. I am here for it. I just want to touch upon the fact that Nell remarked that it was a shame that meat didn't get vaccinated despite having such a loving wife and family. And I just want to say, I mean, I guess it's pretty evident that he would do anything for love, but he won't do that. Maybe you should write your own jokes. That's pretty good. I'm glad to see you. You caught up with buzzfeed from last week? What happened? Did they use that as their headline? I thought it was considering you didn't know I'm gonna, I'll give you a pass. That was original. Thank you. I'm very funny. Hi. Very funny. I'm John. For those of you who are interested in checking out the full interview. We've got it linked for you in our show notes and stay tuned. We'll have news from a new notebook coming out for you soon. And with that, we're gonna move on to everyone's favorite segment. Come mu mu News. First up in community news, we've got a cool little announcement from our stage show fan across the pond in particular, the sweet transvestite himself, Steven Webb on January 29th, Stephen went live with a video tweet where he shamelessly gushes about his favorite ever costume piece, his leather frank jacket that he's been decorating himself with all sorts of his favorite motorcycle pins. He noted being a Harley Davidson guy in particular. The frank jacket is one of my favorite costume pieces too. A shameless is the only way I ever gush to keep it in your pants. Gents don't tell me how to live my life. Anyway, Stephen goes on to state that he somehow ended up with an extra Harley Davidson motorcycle pin and wants to pair it with his shamelessly gushing urge to see his fans show off their favorite Rocky costumes, an extra pin I could never imagine. So, Steven has announced a costume contest. He's asked Rocky Horror fans to take photos of themselves in their favorite costume piece, send them his way and he'll pick a favorite. The winner will receive his extra Harley Davidson motorcycle pin, plus some souvenir 2021 2022 merch, signed by the entire cast and band. Those are some pretty spicy goodies, Aaron buddy. We know you can't say no to our Frank jacket pin. Are you entering? What piece would you use if you did? Well, quite frankly, I'm not sure that Stephen Webb's given out screen accurate Frank pen. So what would I have for a stage worn Frank pen that doesn't sound useful to me? No, of course, I am going to enter for this. I mean, what would I even send though? Uh It's got, it's got to be like my um probably my Eddie jacket. That's certainly like my favorite piece. It is hyper, hyper, hyper accurate and like I have put so much time into that and like, yeah, I think it would have to be that it would have to be my Eddie jacket. What about you, Nicky? I think I would enter just because I don't really have that many like stellar costume pieces. Mine are pretty run of the mill but I do really love my Rocky bra and like my Rocky costume as a whole because I feel like it emulates Rocky but still like shows true to my personality and I really like it. I think it's very cute, very sexy, very fun. Uh But I don't think I would, I don't think I would join the contest, but John, are you going to win for us, buddy? I feel like Aaron is probably the one that would be most likely to win this. But if I did have to enter, I'd probably say my perfectly screen accurate Columbia costume that I, that I was gifted to by Aaron and Meg for planning their wedding or probably my riff hair piece because I find a lot of people who play riff, particularly the ones who are bald. Don't go the extra mile to create a hair piece for themselves and they just kind of perform it bald. Uh And I think that that really sets me apart and my hair is really gross. It's super accurate. I actually don't even wash the wig to really get the, the stringy disgusting. That is Richard o'brien's Riff half hair to be fair. I do need to remake it because the lace is so caked with spirit gum, but I'm really bad at that. So that's going to be a job for Savannah. Now, I, I personally believe that Mata would win this whole thing. I remember the first time that I played Mata. Uh I, I sprayed my beard red and I put the in, in my beard. Those were good times. I, I don't know why you're selling yourself short, Nicky. I mean, if, if your Rocky bra is your favorite costume piece, I'm pretty sure he'd notice a picture that you sent him of that. I'm just saying, well, if any of our listeners are interested in entering, please let us know. We'd love to see the picture that you send in and cheer you on to enter the competition. All you've got to do is send in a photo of your lovely self dressed in your favorite costume piece to Stephen Webb whom you can find at Stephen Webb 1983 on Twitter was born in 1983. Man. I haven't done anything with my life. Make sure you get your entries in soon. He'll be choosing a winner on Saturday, February 5th. And speaking of sending in fun photos, the Francis Bacon experiment will be teaming up with sweet translucent dreams to co produce a virtual show on R H P S live. Yeah, they haven't dropped an official show announcement yet or you know, we'd be all over that, but they have out a community call to action as a tribute to everyone's favorite pizza delivery driver, STD and Buffalo will be putting together a preshow video and are asking the community to send in either their favorite pictures dressed as Eddie or your favorite pick as Columbia with Eddie or even a short Eddie performance video if you want to contribute, make sure to send in your name and cast affiliation. So they can of course be included in the video. You can send your stuff in to R B E dot R H P S Buffalo at gmail dot com or drop them in the comments of the Facebook post, all of which we'll be posting in our show notes and don't forget all submissions will be due by February 13th at the latest. So make sure you get them in before Valentine's Day. Oh, that's sweet. Those casts always come up with such great content. So I'm sure whatever preshow they come up with will absolutely be adorable and heartfelt. And last, but certainly not least in community news. We here at Rocky Talk, you would like to give a huge shout out to our friend and a massive supporter of our show, Rowan Kamo. Hi Rowan. Rowan. Rowan. Rowan Rowan, otherwise known as Larry Murphy, the dentist. That's from your uh D and D campaign that you did on your live stream, right? Yes, it was fucking hilarious. Rowan absolutely stole the show. Amazing. So, in addition to stealing that show, Rowan recently made a post on Facebook psyching themselves up about their upcoming audition for the Rocky Horror show, the auditions will be taking place this weekend and if the powers that be are good enough for their jobs to cast Rowan as whatever the part they want, you can look forward to us plugging the absolute shit out of that show in the coming weeks. I believe that Roan is gunning for Frank this year. I'm shocked, shocked. I'm John, I'm Nicky Rowan. We wish you no luck in all of the broken legs in the world. And if for some reason you are involved with casting for this show and you don't cast Rowan as Frank, we're gonna have to have a conversation. That's right. I'm threatening you. Ok. Our lawyers say that John is not threatening anyone. Um We wish everyone the best in their auditions and by no means wish to sway your vote cast Rowan. And when you're a rich, famous Broadway superstar, please hire us as your faithful handyman maids, sex slaves and pizza delivery boys. In whichever order you prefer Rowan. We love you, buddy, knock them dead. And with that, let's move on to everybody's favorite segment. That's right. It's time for your weekly dose of knack. I'm Nicky and this is where I get to ask all the hard burning questions all about our favorite movie. You said hard and burning. Not this week. Next week, maybe I was thinking about last week where we talked about all the auditions for the original stage show and just to have been there and seen the start of all of it. I mean, I love a good origin story. That's not an idea for a new Disney Plus show. Stop it. You stupid mouth shaped corporation. We don't need a Rocky origins TV series or do we? No, but maybe anyway, I don't want to talk about the stage show this week. I want to talk about the movie and I want a good origin story. Ok. What do you want to do the auditions for the movie? Because I mean, honestly, that's a lot of like random. No, no, no, not the making of the movie. You lost me of the movie of the midnight cult film. The Rocky Horror picture Show Jesus. Sometimes you people I am, I'm still lost. Rocky Horror is a midnight cult movie, right? Yes. Well, where does that come from? Then? A midnight cult movie? We've talked about this so many times. The movie was a commercial flop. It did. Ok. In L A and very few other places its release in New York was canceled. Tim Deegan A V P of advertising at Fox got Rocky shown as a midnight movie at the Waverly New York. It spread. Yeah, it continues to be the most successful midnight movie of all time. Well, where's that come from then? Midnight movies? Ok. Sure. I mean, it's not really about Rocky Horror though. I feel like going a little off the beaten path this week. Let's do a little general knowledge. I'm great at general knowledge, general knowledge. Really. I've got Wikipedia too, don't worry. So, yeah, Rocky is a midnight movie and midnight movies started with what I can name a bunch like the room showgirls. Any major Marvel drop. Yeah. But what was the first midnight movie? So the actual, what is the first midnight movie? Question is debated? The first few are probably more like art films, but they did play at midnight. Regardless. The first midnight movie that attracted a huge audience was Alejandro. I thought you were supposed to give the complicated names, the name. You know, I really, really tried to give this one to her but like why she couldn't know anything this week? So I couldn't, why would you give it to me? I don't know a word. And you all like audibly sigh and then you do it on purpose because it's fun. This is hateful. Regardless. The first midnight movie that attracted a huge audience was Alejandro Jodorowsky, El Topo, which opened in December 1970 at the Elgin Theater in New York. You saw the Elgin and other theaters that caught on showing films like freaks Night of the Living Dead Pink Flamingos where the theater would get repeat customers coming night after night or week after week to see the films. This is all in the late sixties and early seventies about when everyone who will work on Rocky Horror is polishing up their resumes. Connections are starting to be made. Yeah, it's when stuff like beyond the Valley of the dolls comes out, that's the midnight movie that Jim Sharman took the entire cast to go see as quote research material when they were rehearsing the stage show. Why are there all these theaters that are showing midnight movies? I mean, obviously they sell tickets, but where does that come? From then, a lot of the theaters were smaller, independently operated theaters, not big chains, they showed movies, third run or older films that were cheaper to get the rights for or more risque exploitation movies, you know, grindhouse theaters. I said we're not doing it this week, John, maybe next week. Not that kind of grid house theater. These spanned the late sixties through into the seventies and well sure, some of them showed adult content, but Grid House just kind of encompasses all those, you know, cheaper theaters. Yeah, those are the ones that show at midnight movies. It was cheap enough to get the staff. The rights weren't as expensive as the mainstream first run releases. And you had a dedicated audience that returned to see these films again and again, often regardless of the film as long as it was suitably weird. And that's still the same now for Rocky, most casts still perform at local theaters, not big chains, local movie theaters are one of the things that has held rocky together for so long, obviously support your local theater. There aren't that many left. And that's kind of my point, why were there so many of these grindhouse theaters back in the late sixties and seventies in the first place? I mean, obviously they sell tickets, but they aren't exactly like doing well. If you went into business as a movie theater, that's not where you would want to be. But there were tons of these back then. Where's that come from? Then? I think I see where this is going. I'm totally here for this. So a lot of those independent theaters, those grindhouse theaters existed because of a court case in 1948 the United States versus paramount Pictures inc so this is a landmark case. Many people out there will know it as the Hollywood antitrust case of 1948. Now, I'm no fancy legal scholar but T L D R it was ruled that the big Hollywood studios had gone way too overboard with vertical integration, owning the movie theaters, the distribution rights to production companies and having exclusive arrangements with what films could be shown. It broke up the big studios and resulted in having to sell off all their movie theaters. Now, that was in 1948 I think you can see how a lot of these newly independent theaters folded immediately. But for many, it took decades of decline to get to the state they were in by the early seventies. It's sad. All those pretty theaters with nice stages. They would have been just perfect for Rocky, slowly wasting away. That was a big part of it too in the fifties and sixties. In a push to compete with television. The big studios started doing a lot of improvements in filmmaking and just honestly weird novelties that all required the theaters to update their technologies and to renovate, they did more color films added cinemascope wide screen movies. There was 3d movies, not to mention the meteoric rise of drive in theaters coupled with television, I mean, it was in over two million households. By 1948 the movie theaters were in trouble and a lot of those theaters were the big ornate picture palaces that had been built by the studios in their heyday, grand affairs with stages, chandeliers and balconies now in independent hands and needing renovation, a lot of them slowly converted into what we really think as a modern movie theater, there's no stage, they are much less ornate. Many were destined to become the grindhouse theaters. By the early seventies, we've all seen these maybe a pretty facade but the Walmarts of movie theaters and it's this whole era where the big movie palaces are disappearing and being renovated into little boxes with seats and a screen all throughout the fifties and sixties. It's going on all over the world and this is what Richard o'brien is making reference to in science fiction double feature. It's what Brian Thompson uses his inspiration in making the original stage show set design a dilapidated movie theater. It's this whole upheaval of the iconic institution that was the big Hollywood Movie Palace. It was really the end of an era and one of the reasons I think Rocky Horror resonated so well with audiences when it was initially released, everyone had seen the decline of the ornate picture palace. But what were those places doing at midnight? I mean, the movie palaces, if they are the ancestor to the Grid houses that showed the midnight movies that eventually got Rocky, what comes before the midnight movies in the late sixties in the fifties? You've got these big movie palaces, they're showing films, but they've got full stages and are big grand performance spaces. They must have been doing shows too. What was the midnight movie? The Rocky Horror of the Movie Palace Age in 1965? There's a film released that you might say is the Hollywood mass market version of what had been going on in the movie palaces since the late twenties. And that's the spook show. One of the last dying gasps of the lost performance genre of the spook show is the short film, monsters crash the pajama party. This came out in 1965. Remember? And during the movie, a gorilla jumps out of the film while an actor in a gorilla suit comes from behind the screen grabs a member of the audience who is also an actor and drags her back into the screen. You see she was wearing the same clothes that the actress in the film had been dressed in. Wow, stop me. If you've heard this one much, some studio marketed audience participation in this economy. But what do you mean? It's the Hollywood mass market version of the Spook Show. What's the spook show? So a spook show is what was going on at the Picture Palaces at midnight from the thirties through the sixties. And they are pretty much what they sound like. They're scary live shows. They're like horror acts. They came to popularity in the thirties. Then obviously there was a little break, what with World War Two being scary enough for everybody on its own. But then after the war, they were the popular late night entertainment that often played at Picture Palaces. Well, up until the fifties and sixties, when all of those places started being demolished and renovated and they started removing their stage is right. But what were they, where does that come from then? So spook shows are a fascinating performance art that get their roots in the turn of the century rise in spiritualism and the idea of speaking to the dead. This is the boom era for self proclaimed clairvoyance, mystics, mediums, and spiritualists or as I like to call them Charlatans, whatever it was Americans at the turn of the 20th century, were fascinated by it. A lot of magicians famously, Harry Houdini had done research into the supposed psychics and mystics attending Seances and being dismayed at what he found. Spooky. Not so much spooky, what Houdini saw was just classic magicians tricks, very, very, very old tricks that no discerning magician would ever put on stage. From that point forward, Houdini made a second career of traveling the country and debunking these spiritual frauds one after the other. So how does Houdini connect to the spook shows? He died in like the twenties. You said these were a thing in the thirties? Well, it, it took another magician to use some of these techniques that Houdini had exposed and more importantly, changed the context that they were used in to create the spook show. In 1929 a stage magician named Elwyn Charles Peck, he performed as Elwyn debuted the El Wins midnight spook party. Say again? Nice. The show opened with Elwyn explaining to the audience that he was in contact with the spirit world and that they should be prepared to see some terrifying things over the course of the next hour, objects move mysteriously, eerie sounds came out of the darkness. And at the end, the show, the theater went completely dark as the spirits of the dead appeared and vanished on stage and flew over the heads of the audiences. That sounds a lot like a science, but it's not because he's not doing the cheesy. You can talk to your dead grandmother. It's just like a scary show. How did they make the spirits fly all over uh glow in the dark paint was a pretty new invention and in the dark with some fishing line and I think you can figure it out. It's probably a good thing that there are no photos or videos of most of these shows. For one. They were in the dark and two, it would probably look pretty cheesy to a modern audience. But I guess you've got to remember this was never before seen stuff, not just some glow in the dark skeletons you see at Halloween time, nobody had seen that before. And over the next 30 years, spook shows would evolve to become full fledged horror performance acts with a lot of audience participation and even some good old Hollywood tis. Eventually they would come to be known by other names as well. Midnight Spook shows, Midnight ghost shows or even later midnight monster shows. And that also shows you the evolution a little bit. There's a big leap from a magician doing a glorified sounds to a gorilla jumping out of a screen and pulling in an audience member. I mean, it's all just performance, right? So there's a continuous thread, but I'm intrigued about the Hollywood tie ins and audience participation. So I'll ask the question, where does that come from then? So what was initially a success for El Wyn quickly spawned imitators and other performers trying to do similar shows. And they were a big hit Toledo based Jack Baker, a K A doctor S Soini was the king of the Midnight Spook shows. He took what Elwin had established and innovated on the format. He took the basic magical routine and infused a lot more comedy. He added hypnosis into the act to get the audience more involved. He still had the big scary blackout at the end. That was pretty much the signature trait of the spook shows was the scary black out. And the blackouts happened often. Right at midnight you'd see this on like their advertisements. Like at midnight there's a blackout and the Hollywood tie ins. One of Baker's biggest successes that was quickly copied by other shows was the tempting allure of seeing real monsters live and in person, he'd bring out a mummy Frankenstein's monster or even the occasional vampire. They still had magic tricks. But the show was leaning a lot more towards a horror themed review. Is this where all of those crazy old timey posters and stuff come from, you know, see King Kong alive on stage and don't come alone girls separate the men from the boys with the shrieking and the weird fonts. You know which ones I'm talking about it is exactly. They're promotional flyers for these crazy spook shows. They're kind of like the National Enquirer version of Hollywood and Hammer horror movie posters. They will throw you, chill you and fulfill you. Well, maybe not that last one, which is, I mean, what they were ripping off by the way when they would include things like Frankenstein's monster in their a they were literally using the universal pictures version of Frankenstein uh-oh movie studio drama, but it turned out it was a good deal for the studio and for the spook shows after receiving a cease and desist letter from Universal Jack Baker worked out a deal to officially license the universal monsters. So now the spook show would go on with the official monsters. And after the blackout at the end, the Picture Palaces would show the now classic universal monster movie Frankenstein escapes during the spook show. And now let's all watch him up there on the screen. Oh, I get it. So it's basically a big elaborate preshow. I mean, kinda they started in the early thirties as these magical acts merged with Seances added in dashes of audience participation in comedy and other kinds of circus routines. And then the horror monsters came in through the fifties. It evolved and it got more extreme as it did how like scary near the tail end, they could often be pretty gory and exploitive early acts. Did things like having cast members run through the dark and grab your arm or they would throw fake snakes and spiders into the crowd. By the end of the era of the spook shows, though the acts were cutting people's limbs or heads off. And there were multiple blackouts throughout the whole show. In one reported instance, a gorilla ripped through the audience, tearing the limbs off of audience members who were obviously paid actors. I mean, it became pretty rambunctious in these theaters. One person screams out another one leaps and grabs their friend. Suddenly there's a whole cake of this audience driven like heart pumping scares and they also got a lot raunchier as they went on to like female assistants started wearing less and less and less and less. You can see the eventual decline as more and more theaters had to update and remove stages. More and more acts didn't have homes and just the performances became more and more extreme to try to keep up. And they were just all shock value. I can see how we eventually get something like monsters crash the pajama party in movie theaters, cut out the foreplay in the comedy. Get the monsters running into the audience. Oh, by the way, the movie is about a pajama party. Wonder how fully dressed those women are? And that's what came before the midnight movies, right? So Rocky was a midnight movie which played in grind houses which themselves were remnants from Picture Palaces where the midnight entertainment was the spook show. And this was the era that science fiction double feature is wistfully lamenting the days of going to an elaborate movie palace to see a line up of classic campy horror movies, live performances and apparently who knows what else? But what about before that? Where did the Picture Palaces come from? I did say we'd go pretty far off the beaten path today. Not a problem. That one is pretty straightforward. Wikipedia. I mean, research at the turn of the 20th century, you saw the invention of the first practical mass market movie camera shortly after saw films inclusion in vaudeville performances in the early 19 hundreds. And in 19 oh five, the first Nickelodeon opened, often housed in converted storefronts. Nickelodeons typically seated fewer than 200 people usually sat on hard wooden chairs with the screen just hung on the back of a wall, a piano and maybe a drum set would be placed to the side or below the screen. Some larger nickelodeons sometimes had the capacity for over 1000 people. Don't lie. Especially after the Panera bread. We've all performed in venues that could take a few tips from those early nickelodeons. I can't disagree there but out of these small theaters of the 19 hundreds and the 19 tens came, the movie palaces see these storefront theaters and Nickelodeons catered to the busy work lives and limited budgets of the lower and middle classes. Motion pictures were generally only thought to be for the lower classes at the time as they were simple, they were short and they cost only five cents to go attend. That's how you get the term Nickelodeon. The movies cost a nickel while the middle class regularly began to attend the Nickelodeons. By the early 19 tens, the upper class continued to attend stage theater performances, mostly things like opera and the big time vaudeville performances. However, as more sophisticated, complex and longer films came out, there were stronger upper class desires to go to the movies. Thus, was the demand for higher class theaters. The big movie studios who were so keen on the idea of a vertical integration, welcomed that demand. Yeah, we'll see how that works out for them in 1948 stupid big corporations. This is why you got theaters with names like the Regal or the Majestic. They were specifically built to put off an air of wealth and privilege and high culture. Among those who paid for the experience, Marcus Lowe, he's the American movie mogul. He was the founder of Lowe's Theaters and he bought M G M at one point, he purportedly said, quote, people buy tickets to theaters, not movies, right? Let's see how that works out when streaming becomes the thing. Yeah, many of these picture palaces were giant ornate affairs and to hedge their bets, the studios made sure to include stages and space for musical accompaniment. Vaudeville was still around, I mean, it was in its dying days but it was still around. It was slowly being smothered out by the newfangled mass market radio and now film, but there would always be traveling shows. And I mean, a nice stage really did make the space look pretty grand. Some were just renovated vaudeville theaters, minor alterations to add a film projector and a screen. It was actually a lot of these twenties vaudeville magicians and stage acts that became part of the spook shows in the thirties and the forties. So then I guess I had to ask just to, you know, round it out. Where did all those vaudeville theaters come from then? You know, just to be complete, did you know between the late 18 eighties through the 19 twenties, vaudeville was home to more than 25,000 performers and was the most popular form of entertainment in America. Now, why would I know that go on throughout the 18 fifties and sixties variety entertainment became popular among the frontier settlements in large urban areas. These shows intended for all male audiences were obscenely comical. There were usually a dozen or more acts and the shows went on for hours, musicians, dancers, contortionists, tumblers, actors, magicians. But the real focus of vaudeville was comedy. You saw all sorts on stage. Honestly, the history of vaudeville is just more than enough content to fill several episodes of a podcast. But as we hinted before, it was the rise of radio and, and a little bit of film that really just ushered in a new era and spelled the fall of vaudeville. Yeah, change my mind. I don't think we need to get into the history of vaudeville today. I think we can stop there. I mean, Rocky all the way back to vaudeville with stops in the middle for grind house spook shows and Picture Palaces. I think I'm pretty well full up with this knack snack. Where else could we possibly go? Well, vaudeville was a fusion of centuries old cultural traditions, including the English music hall, minstrel shows of the antebellum America and Yiddish theater. I said not this week, not to mention the whole history of B movies on late night television, how they tied to the midnight movie experience and how they are reminiscent of the spook show host with people like Vampira. She's the precursor to things like mystery science theater and Elvira. And we didn't even touch on burlesque. I said not this week, John, sorry, I got in a Wikipedia Hole and that's our show. We want to thank Rowan F B E STD and everyone else who wrote in your mom for Blowing me last night. Shut up, bitch. Thank you so much. And as always, we'd like to thank our writer Jacob, our producer, Meg and our editor Aaron from Tennessee. We appreciate all your work. If anyone has a question that they'd like us to answer on air for Nicky asks a question or some community news that they'd like us to talk about or even a cool story to share with the community. We'd love to include it on our show. Just go to our website rocky talky podcast dot com and fill out 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 helps us to really 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 talk to you all next week. Bye bye. Hi, Nicky. Have you ever listened to a CD before? C DS nuts in your mouth? Oh, fuck. Oh my God. Bye. 63. Hold on is drinking very loudly in the background. She do be, that's what happens when you're fixed. Oh God. Ok. I feel like a making a capital f, all right with that. Let's get started with our first segment. I did like that. That's funny as shit. Yeah, Nicky, you were funny for one. Good job. Women can be funny. They can but you're not. So we'll stop writing your jokes for you. Right? And I just want to say, I mean, I guess it's pretty evident that he would do anything for love, but he won't do that. Maybe you should write your own jokes. That's pretty good. I'm glad to see you. You caught up with buzzfeed from last week? What happened? Did they use that as their headlines? I thought it was considering you didn't know I'm gonna, I'll give you a pass. That was original. Thank you. I'm very funny. Very funny. I'm John. The winner will receive his extra Harley Davidson motorcycle pin plus a souvenir, 2021 2022. Tour signed. Tour signed. What is it a program? Is it a poster? The world may never know. What is it, honey. Maybe say program and poster and just hope for the best. They're gonna sign the whole tour or I do, but better be in my fucking mailbox and are asking the community to send in either a Thor. Thor dressed as Eddie. I'd watch it. Both my legs fell asleep. Good. I'm gonna get a Charlie horse and then I'm gonna pass out. Oh God, you deserve it. No, I don't like it. Oh, I can't feel any of my limbs. Nicky just came suffering. It hurts so bad, John. Are you color blind? I don't know you are you black and white color blind or like there's like 10 people in the world who are black and white color. I know I always see them on tiktok. That's why because I was like you said you could, I don't know. I never asked and over half of them are lying because there are literally so few of them. No, I uh I can't see color unless it's like bold and vivid. So colors that really like sit outside of like Roy GB. What is it a legacy? Uh Take a picture of something on for Instagram. Put it into a filter and pull the saturation down about a third of the way. Oh OK. That makes sense. All right. So yeah, colors that are not super bright and vivid are hard for me to tell apart. So that's why they bold my stuff. OK. But where does that come from then? Is this a reference? Why do I keep saying that, but where does that come from then? Yeah, it's not a reference. It's just your through line. Ok. That's fine. I was just like, what do I not get?