Uh Get up, get up, get up. Hello to all you. Unconventional convention is welcome to Rocky Talkie. I'm Jacob. I'm John and I'm Aaron. All right guys. How have your weeks been? I'm tired and want to die. Jacob. How are you? Oh, man, I mean, I feel the same way, but also I'm happy I just gave blood yesterday and other than that, everything's, everything's pretty chill. Uh I stole some cheese and some sausage and some artichoke carts from Wegmans. That was pretty fun. Um Yeah, Aaron. Wow. We got, we got all the dicks up in here today. I hate to see it. I do. I really, I truly hate to see it. I don't hate to see is Jacob stealing? Goddamn it. You guys, it's not cool to steal, sees the means of production. It's so cool to steal from like regular, like regular people don't steal but from fucking wig MS fucking steal everything. Yeah, I agree. Rocky Talkie does not endorse the theft of property from commercial or other ventures. Although fuck the companies, the views expressed by the hosts of Rocky Talkie podcast are merely opinion and in no way reflect the values of the show or network as a whole rocky talkie podcast wholeheartedly endorses and encourages listeners to fight the corporate overlords be gay and do crimes. Yes, we do. We endorse this shit. Oh, Aaron, what did you do this week? Aside from obviously not steal, like the loser you are, you know, I wasn't cool enough to do that. Uh, no, I had a bunch of fun just the other day. Uh, Meg and I went to check out a new venue uh that we're taking a look at. We went and got to see uh this really cool old timey burlesque show there with a fantastic jazz band. Uh There was some live music, some vintage burlesque uh and it was really, really fucking fun and uh maybe, maybe New York is gonna get to perform in that location. It's gonna be, it's gonna be really exciting the entire city of New York, all of New York. But yeah, that was super fun. So what about you, John? What the fuck were you up to this week aside from dying at work and uh dying in real life and dying virtually. I did get to see one of my best friends get married this weekend. Oh, yeah, that was super fun. So uh my friend Emily who is on the N Y C R H P S cast recently was wedded, married to her fiance of like 69 million years this past weekend. Uh super small wedding. It literally happened, like, in an air B N B there was only, like, I don't know, it was like less than a dozen people who were actively like there because obviously it was a small air and B or B we couldn't fit everybody. Uh, but it was, it was really good. Uh, I've known Emily for a very long time. She was actually a student of mine when I started working in New York City in the field that I'm in. So it's been really cool to watch her finally marry the, uh, the person of their dreams and the same person that they have been dating since I knew them back in 2014. Congratulations. Em. It was a great wedding. I had a great time and I'm still very tired from it. Oh, congratulations. Um, that's congratulations with that. Let's get into today's show. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Watching stars of middling fame. Dance with professionals has long been a pastime available on broadcast television this week. Those among us that were watching dancing on ice. Got a similar and rocky themed treat when famed English drummer Bez or Mark Barry, as his parents call him skated to meet Los Bat out of hell and a truly glorious tribute to the deceased rocker and his next level. Theatrics. Bez is an English rocker known as a member of the band's Happy Mondays and Black Grape particularly. He is known as the mascot for Happy Mondays, as well as for dancing in bizarre styles with his moca most interestingly. And what really makes Bez a Rocky man is one of his early experiences in rock and roll that he writes about in his autobiography, Freaky dancing in the opening chapter, which I assume is the only chapter Jacob read. Bez details an incident during a Happy Mondays gig at Manchester's Hacienda Nightclub in 1986. In the middle of the set, he fell off the stage and cut his forehead in the book. He writes the doc tells me to take it easy and put my feet up. I thought I'm not fucking having that. I got some of Moose's acid. That's their lead guitarist dripped it in the cut and ran back out with me. Shakers. Fucking Raz. Fucking Raz. Indeed. Bez Rocky Talkie would like to let all of our listeners know that we do not promote the use of acid for treating medical wounds. The views expressed by the hosts of Rocky Talkie podcast are merely opinion and in no way reflect the values of the show or network as a whole Rocky Talky podcast does however, concur with the prior statement and does not condone the use of acid for treatment of medical wounds only as a cure for being bored on a Tuesday. Ok. Well, maybe you don't. Yeah, sometimes desperate times, desperate measures, ok? Uh Dancing on ice. Meanwhile is a British competition show, featuring celebrities and their professional partners, figure skating in front of a panel of judges who then vote to send someone home. Originally produced from 2006 to 2011. It was picked back up in 2017 and has been presenting on ITV. That's a British television network regularly since 2018. This year, aside from Drummer Bez, there is a love island contestant, a rugby player, Paralympic athlete, an Olympic BMX racer and many other mid-level stars performing intricate ice skating performances each week. It is a wonder why none of us were invited to do this. Right? God, we're on a podcast, Bez actually made record history for the competition show when his tribute performance for Meatloaf performed to the song Bad NFL ended up being the most expensive routine for the show ever. And this performance was reminiscent of everything. Meat loaf. It was loaded out to the tits with motorcycles, fire and giant bat wings all mixed up somehow with figure skating, be started riding onto the ice in a motorcycle. And as he and his partner performed others skated around the rink with flame throwers. They were shooting fire into the air and various pyrotechnic displays went off. It was highlighting particular tricks that Bez and his partner attempted. And at the end of it all a swing with a pair of giant bat wings descended onto Bez. Bez got on and exited the rink like a bat out of hell for the routine. Everyone was dressed very uh meat loaf style in leathery black colors. And Bez himself was in a leather jacket without sleeves and a motorcycle helmet. It seems like he really got into the role, but it didn't say baby on the back of it though. Right? I didn't see the leopard print. Yeah. Well, unfortunately England is a really fucky country and they didn't get the memo that meat is back in because Bez got a lot of Sny internet remarks for his performance. Yeah, his performance was very divisive because a lot of people felt as though the spectacle he made of the show goes beyond what ice skating should be and that it's ridiculous to compare what he did to everyone else because everyone else did not have flame throwers, motorcycles, giant bat wings and of course, pyrotechnic displays, which honestly seems like an oversight on their part. Yeah. Right. If it's in the fucking rules, right. You did you not read the assignment? Unfortunately, Bez got hated on online and the judges at the show seemed to agree because this performance got the worst grade of the week and Bez was kicked off the show. But who could imagine a better note to go out on flying with the wings of a bat on a swing away from an ice skating rink, pretty bowler. I'm sure somehow Meat appreciated this tribute performance. I mean, we sure did and we wish Bez the absolute best with any of his future meat loaf themed plans. None of his other plans though. Just his meat loaf themed ones. And that includes any dinners he might have that include meat loaf. Yes. Yeah. Or steam. But for now I hear we have some poster news. I can hear the strain in Aaron's jeans as we speak. It's very loud. Yeah. It's like, that's what it sounds like. You know, the coffin when it opens. Yeah, it's like that. It's just like that. Yeah, that's right. There's a new Rocky poster this time from Mondo. Mondo is an American company that typically releases limited edition screen printed posters for films, television shows and comics. This time they've made something for Rocky horror picture show fans. Yeah. In the past, they've had a few portraits up for sale including posters of Frank and Columbia Riff Magenta. This time though, they have another poster up featuring a very gray faced Frank laying back in the mouth of some very glossy lips. Frank is wearing a very glittery corset and garters with ripped stockings. He has an anklet on his left leg which is stretched up and large sparkly heels on his feet. The art comes from artist John Cavi and he's actually made two versions that are in slightly different colors. One has an all red background with red lips and the other features a black background with purplish lips and a hazy purple outline surrounding Frank. Unfortunately, it seems like us. The internet is absolutely crazy for Rocky horror merch and both posters have already been sold out. You know, the internet might be crazy for Rocky horror merch, but I'm not so sure about Rocky Horror fans specifically. I mean, these are great looking posters but a lot of the comments I saw about them are kind of critical. If you take a closer look on there, you might notice that uh Frank's garters don't come from his garter belt, they come out of his underwear. Uh and there's a number of little problems that the community has had with this mostly stemming from the fact that it kind of doesn't even really look like Tim curry. But that's not the reason that these sold out so fast. The reason that these sold out so fast is because there's a bunch of assholes out there who love to scalp Mondo merch. Now, this is not just about Mondo products, there's a lot of products out there that are like this, but Mondo in particular does very limited runs of all of their merchandise, including these. There was only I think a couple 100 between the two different posters that were made and they sold out almost instantly. The thing is not an hour after they sold out, there was over 50 listings on ebay for these things jacked up twice the price that Mondo had them listed at. So I'm not so sure that the fans rushed over this one as the scalpers rushed over this one. Well, if you manage to get your hands on one of these pieces and you aren't a complete douche. Congratulations. You've got some very limited edition Rocky Merch and I'm sure Aaron will want to talk to you about it. Yeah, I couldn't get one. We'll be on the lookout for any more Rocky related merch from Mondo or anyone else and we'll be sure to tell you all about it. But for now, let's head on over to community news. First up in community news, we've got an update from our fully nude brethren down in Land O Lakes Florida. Like the butter, like the butter in the flesh. Florida's renowned fully nude Rocky horror cast has recently announced that they're going to be moving historically. Their show has taken place at Land of Id Nudist Resort, a clothing optional campground resort with a pool, hot tub, clubhouse, performance, stage art studio on site galleries, sculpture garden and a gift shop, a gift shop. Uh That, that actually sounds kind of nice. They're also home to the infamous naked alien foam parties that we love chatting about here on the show. That sounds so bomb. Hashtag Congo, am I right? I'll take ways to forfeit your security deposit for 100 Bob. Anyway, it sounds like in the flesh. We'll be no it up at a different location starting soon. Their cast recently announced their next performance with the social media blurb. Join us for our last damn show in the flesh is moving, come party with us one last time at the resort. As far as going out with a bang, it looks like you'd be hard pressed to top this show. It's a fully nude cast performing at a pool party that promises burlesque fire spinning a bonfire and of course that infamous naked alien foam pit. The show will be held on March 19th at 10 30 PM and somehow completely unbeknownst to us, tickets for this amazing event are only 20 bucks. That's like what I pay to eat at fucking Olive Garden. Imagine Olive Garden being equal to naked Rocky. That's fucking crazy. The event is also B Y O B and you can even choose to camp on site for an additional fee. So if you're in the land of lakes area, definitely do everything you can to catch this show. It sounds like it's gonna be the end of an era with this venue. And if you want tickets, you can get them on event bright. We've linked the page for you in our show notes. Although a cast like this isn't gonna have any trouble landing on their feet. I mean, they don't have any clothes to weigh them down. We are excited to see where their next home is and how they end up moving forward because we all know with a cast this awesome whatever happens next won't be boring. And next up in community news, we want to give a huge shout out to our friends at the Francis Bacon Experiment for hosting their virtual show last Friday. That's right in case we didn't do a good enough job of promoting the ever living shit out of it. Just yesterday. R P S Buffalo together with Sweet translucent dreams. Put on an absolutely fantastic virtual performance. It was a rebroadcast of a driving show that they did together last summer and it was incredibly fun to watch. Not to get too meaty, but as the best Eddie in the room, I really enjoyed their tribute to Meat loaf. I thought it was really sweet. And I've got to say I got a little bit choked up when his picture came on screen after all the Eddies because he's like the O G. I don't know if either of you felt any kind of way about it. I mean, yeah, I got a little choked up too at the end. It was, it was a very touching tribute. It was well edited. It was set to Paradise by the dashboard lights. And uh yeah, it was, it was a really good send up to meat loaf and a, a great showing from all of the uh Eddie's in the community who uh sent in clips and pictures and all kinds of stuff that they were able to put together. Personally, I was super into the Wizard of Oz free show. It had big low energy and you all know how I feel about my magnum opus. Does anyone know what music that was from though? Like, it was a damn bop. I, I had no idea but I just went and googled. It, it is a song called The Wizard of Oz A H HHS. Uh, it's sung by, uh Todrick Hall and it features the Pentatonic. Yeah. As much as I don't like Pentatonic, I think I want to add that shit to my Spotify playlist. Well, don't worry, we got some pretty fun little moments during the actual show itself too. I don't remember if I've spoken about this before, but for me, Doctor Scott absolutely stole the whole entire show for me with the absolute best prop implementation I have ever seen. I think I'm gonna have to steal this thing. What they do for Doctor Scott is they have two like pool inner tubes. They're the, they're the ones that have D's nuts. D's nuts. There it is. Yeah, they're like inflatable inner tubes that look like wheels, like car wheels or any kind of wheels. So they just tie two of them to the sides of Doctor Scott. So no matter where they're running around, they got their wheels with them. It's fucking adorable. And like, I totally want to steal it for all of our venues where we don't have a real wheelchair. What stole the whole show for me was watching the cat just have to sprint all over the place to make their cues. There were such champs about it. That shit is so simultaneously difficult to pull off as a performer and hilarious to watch as an audience member. They were great and total pros, ah, memories. Does it even count as a drive-in show if you're not hurling yourself on and off stage to try and get your quick changes in. So with N Y C R H P S, we performed recently quite regularly at the Skyline Drive In which is in Green Point, wonderful location. It is right on the East River and you have the skyline of New York City right behind it just like a venue to die for. But since it is a drive in, it's pretty damn big and there's a lot of ground to cover. So the first show that we had there, we actually had the option to change behind a shipping crate that was a couple of yards away. And for all of you who are listening, who are part of the Rocky Horr community, you know that a couple of yards away to change is just not fucking possible. So we actually had to park one of our castmates cars next to the projection booth and then kind of block off the other entrances as best as we could so that our people had some level of privacy when it came to changing. But as the show went on and we realized that privacy took time. We just started changing in front of them. Fuck it. Who cares? They're gonna see our tits. Anyway, it's not Rocky unless you're naked in a parking lot. Correct. Anyway, thank you so much to both F B E and STD for giving us such a wonderful night full of a ton of great entertainment. We had a blast tuning in and we can't wait to see you perform in person really soon. All right, their shocky performance is coming up soon, isn't it? Yep. It's gonna be on Friday, April first at the screening room, cinema cafe up in Buffalo, New York. Uh Meg and I just booked our travel up there last night and we are both super excited. We've never got to see their cast perform, but we're uh very sure it's going to be fantastic. They've been working so super hard on this show. Must be nice. Meg literally messaged me today and made sure that I could be daddy on our show last week. And speaking of performing at drive-ins and cinema cafes next up, we've got a write in from our friend Rowan. Hi, Rowan and Rowan has some thoughts on our conversation last week. Why do I have to be the one to read Rowan's stuff? Well, you do it most nights of the week anyway. So that's true. Uh God Rowan is one of my mods on Twitch for nobody who got that joke. They write, I had a fun time listening to your last episode. Thought I'd chime in being someone who has been a part of a handful of different casts that run very differently. R K O which is my first and main cast runs. Quite oddly, we currently have three home venues that we perform at every month. Two of those three are traditional movie cinemas and the third is a small black box. Funny enough, our loudest and most interactive audiences tend to always be at the black box. Perhaps it's because it's a little more intimate or on the other hand, our cinema crowds tend to remain more or less tame unless it's October. I'm never sure why that is. As we do actively encourage the A P in our hosting intro, the cinema audiences always tend to remain on the quiet side. It's really interesting having to move from venue to venue and adapt to each space. And I think that's one of the best things about this cast. Every performer has just been able to seamlessly understand the blocking and how to adapt to it. Granted, that's how we were taught to perform the show since that's how this cast is more or less always run. Sometimes we perform in places with no stage, sometimes it's on tiny 10 ft stages, other times stages that could fit a Broadway size show. Well, thanks for writing in Rowan. That is some definitely good insight about our topic. Last week, I, I, I guess that because we here in New York as a cast have always been so rooted in the way that we operate as a single venue show. Make Eat. The transition has been quite a bit of a challenge for us. I'd definitely be curious to pick your brain sometime about how R K O trains newbies for all of these kinds of shows. I imagine it's a ton of prep. Yeah, we're just starting to bring our first crop of brand new performers in now since the Panda Express and figuring out how to best on board them. It's definitely been a different experience than we're used to. I would be curious to hear about how all of you prep your new performers to go on stage. Right now. We've kind of been doing a mix of bringing people over to rehearse roles just in our living room and hoping that they pick up enough blocking during our shows every couple of weeks to be able to make it work. But I know it can't be easy for them, especially the ones who are completely new to the material. It would be great to hear what's worked for you out there with your cast. If you found a better way or if you guys are just doing the same thing and you know, we all just have to refine our process. I think learning is the same, you know, wherever you are, like there's different things. Like there's tiny things you have to acclimate yourself to from one theater to another. Right? Being at the, the new place we're at on like eighth street, it's very tiny. And so like you lose certain aspects of your performance. You can't be as big and like rampage on the stage, um which was something I loved about CLOS, but it's like the performance is still the same and you're still doing the same thing. So I don't think it's that weird or different per, on a personal level. I love the uniformity of, of having one performing space. Um But I also love performing as much as I can. So I will take the trade off of being at five places in one month for more time on stage and speaking of trying to get as much time on stage as possible, you know what time it is where jacking it. Yep. No, Nicky means it's jerking it with Jacob time. This time, all the time, every week, we're gonna jerk off about whatever I want. It's going to be amazing. I hate to break it to you, buddy, but that's, that's not how this is gonna work. We, we did an episode with Meg last week and uh next week we're gonna have someone on from the community who's gonna join us. But, but I, I have all these thoughts and ideas and topics but um but we know you do, buddy. Well, well, fuck you, I'm gonna give all the listeners out there a taste of what they're missing because of your horrible decision making skills. Lay it on us. So, there's this book, it was written by Scott Miller and published in 2011. It's called a Sex drugs rock and roll and musicals. That's a bit of a sloppy title. Yeah. Just kind of tacking musicals on the end. There. You're sloppy. The book is a mashup of history, sociology and psychology. It goes through Grease and Hair and Hedwig and a bunch of other musicals including Yes, Rocky and it puts them in context both with the periods of their release and their actual settings while doing some humanity style academic analysis. Like for Greece, they talk about how it was released into an early seventies audience and was a nostalgia trip for the fifties and they analyze the characters and the story, like the symbolism and sociology and psychology, the, the critical response, all that stuff. Yeah, I've read through the Rocky section of this book before that chapter is actually one of the more well cited pieces when you look at some of the more academic works in books like fan phenomenon and reading Rocky Horror, you know, the other kind of academic Rocky horror books, this is a pretty good section. The history is very high level. So if you've done a lot of research about Rocky, there's not really anything new there, but it also doesn't commit any sins. So that's great. The, the analysis does raise some more interesting and unique points for sure. I fucking hate everything about this. We've done this before where Jacob's all like, let's talk about some academic article and then you two literally sit here and jerk each other off for 30 minutes and somehow it turns out Rocky is actually all about Star Wars or Magic the Gathering or Shakespeare or some other stupid shit. Uh This essay actually goes through a lot of that. The various classic double feature horror films that were an inspiration for Rocky, like the Hammer horror pictures. We talked about a few weeks ago, similarities to classics like mutiny on the bounty and even throwbacks to the tempest. So, yes, Shakespeare. Oh, come on. Don't worry. I don't want to talk about all that or really even talk about this essay much at all. I just want to use it to tie to a different topic that I wanted to talk about today. A discussion topic if you will. Oh, so you did listen to last week's episode, a discussion topic? Yes, I have no idea what you're talking about. This is obviously my own unique idea out of my big throbbing brain. So here's the question, how should Rocky casts treat screen accuracy going forward? I feel like the gold standard has been 100% screen accuracy. And in my opinion, wow, you really didn't listen to last week's episode that is literally what we discussed last week. Well, I may not, I may have not seriously, dude, you write this damn show. It's OK. I've got lots of questions. I'm a writer. They don't call me million ideas a minute, Jacob for nothing. OK. How about this? Then? They don't call you that. You're right. They call me billion ideas a minute. Jacob should cast offer premium tickets or experiences. We're talking ways to get Rocky over that movie theater price tag, you know, in areas that can support it. Would Rocky benefit from specialty tickets that come not only with a Rocky show but also a unique experience. You're talking about increasing cast income and about how casts can expand into different markets. You talked about this a lot last week. Hell Rowan just told us more about R K Os experience with it a little bit ago with the nature of modern Rocky, both in movie theaters and other venues is the experience of Rocky complete. Dude. I can't keep track if you actually listened to last week's episode or not. Yes. Is the siren call of Rocky? That it is a great equalizer for cast and audience alike? Or could a Rocky show be more professional or put together or more premium than that? Would the market allow it or is it a cross? We must bear. Would it come at the cost of traditional values that draw people to Rocky in the first place? Ok. But hold on. What do you mean by a Premium Rocky Experience? You play the movie, you run around in your underwear, the audience screams and throws things at you. You go home sad and sticky. So I think what most comes to my mind when I think Premium Rocky experience is any of the specialty shows we've done where we've had a routine beforehand. A preshow. Um Just like a few weekends ago, I was at an ordinary kids show and one of their cast members did like a strip dance um in a full Harley Quinn costume to some song. And that was really cool. And I, and we've done specialty things for like Valentine's Day shows. I remember there was one show we had where three of us danced to like um one of the songs from five nights at Freddy's. And I thought that was really cool. And if we did something with like the whole cast, right, like a tiny little dance mixed with stripping routine, that's like very, very much Rocky, but it's also a step beyond what the typical Rocky experience is. So that's like, that's just a stepping stone. That's just like one idea, right? On the fringes. That's somewhere we could start. So you mean like expanding preshow into kind of a full fledged double feature, right? Because I mean, a preshow is not something that I think is a premium experience, but if you tack two or three or four pre shows together, right? You've got a whole second show kind of, is that what audiences would really crave? Is that a thing that you could promote as like a double feature with Rocky, maybe, maybe. Um That's one idea and we can talk about that more. Another thing I was thinking of to make this a premium experience. This isn't uh good enough to just up a ticket price. Definitely. But we have prop bags for people to throw things each item in the prop bag at one point, you know, was not something regularly thrown. So we can just make a new thing and be like this is now part of Rocky, throw it at the stage at a certain time specifically. I'm thinking people love Rocky Horror and they love the characters. Why not make items to throw that correlate to particular characters. Why not make a separate prop bag for Janet or Brad or Riff? And people who like those particular characters can get a regular prop bag and this specialty prop bag and that has like three or four items that you throw at that character at the various times. They're on screen. Meg Did you hear that Jacob is volunteering to make individual prop bags for each time? Yeah. Yeah. As I I, yeah, the, the biggest issue, I think that's a great idea. It's my favorite one I've thought of so far. The biggest issue is like our prop bags now are hard enough to make and they cost money. Um And that's only after like years of finding the cheapest, most useless thing to put in a bag to sell. Right. We have tiny little toast squares that are like 500 to a box and we get newspaper three out of the fucking broken stalls uh all around Manhattan. So I don't know what items it would be difficult to figure out what items we could get cheaply that we would inherently correspond to the Rocky characters. But once we figured that out, once we got past that first hurdle and we were able to cheaply produce a specialty prop bag for the characters. I think that's like an extra, I don't know, 40 plus dollars each show. I, I don't think you necessarily have to go so far as, you know, one for each character kind of thing. I mean, you can kind of crib off the stage show on this one, right. There's plenty of things that they sell that are like disposable items that people love to pick up stuff like feather boas. You can pick those up on Amazon for cheap, sell them for five bucks a pop. You can do stuff like, you know, uh glow in the dark, like rave style, like light up bracelets and things like that. You know, any kind of this crap that puts people in a party mood. I'm there for that. Actually, I'm hearing from our producer Meg that your claim that feather boas are on the cheap on Amazon is wild bullshit. And actually they cost quite a lot. Um, any comment. Um, well, I would have to say that's sort by price low down. Those are, those are feathers, those are one boa. Why is there a light up boa for $12? Who wants that, man? I mean, I mean, you can, you can get like six of them for 20 bucks, right? All right. Maybe you have to sell these things for 10 bucks a pop. But uh even at five, you're making a profit. I I'm finding, I just found six for $14. That's pretty good. Sell one for five. That's a great return. Yeah, I mean, it's not necessarily that right? And this is obviously the difficulty with things like this is there's you gotta make your spreadsheet, you gotta dump stuff into it, you gotta look at prices, you gotta figure this stuff out. But if you're just looking to make more money to create a more premium rocky experience or to offer those kinds of things for people to buy, I mean, just straight up merch is a great opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. Just taking, just finding other things, right? If we can't, it would be a very hard to do individual things for characters but making one extra specialty prop bag, right? The promo prop bag, the creme de la creme prop bag that comes with a boa and stuff is something that I think is manageable and a good way to like, test this idea out. I dig it. You throw a reprint poster in there, a uh uh a boa and something else. Yeah. Somebody will pick that up for 20 bucks. Somebody named Aaron. Are you kidding me? I don't buy prop bags at shows. I know what's in there. I, I'm here to make fun of your performers not to engage. What are you talking about for me? I think the premium Rocky Horror experience is something that is outside of the traditional movie theater in a place like a, like a bar or a club or like a cabaret venue. OK. So in these venues, I feel like people are more comfortable paying more money because it's a non theater space first off that's fair. Um I also think that venues are going to be a little bit more reasonable with they split because of alcohol and drinks for sure. Yeah, I think that cabarets bars clubs present a more unique show than what people are used to due to blocking improv. So like the one that always comes to my mind is the performance that we did recently at the standard hotel. We were performing outside, there was literally no stage. So we had to actually perform interwoven between the tables and while that not might be everybody's cup of tea, it allows for so much more audience interaction, which is ultimately why I think people come to Rocky Horror in and of itself. I think that something like that is a premium Rocky experience that people can't get if they just go see it in a movie theater. Well, and it certainly changes their expectations too. Right. Like at a cabaret theater you're kind of expecting somebody to come up to you beforehand and like, offer you raffle tickets or try and sell you some merch or like just, you know, stand there and have a quick chat with you at your table about the show and all this kind of stuff which like, if you're in a movie theater, a lot of people just kind of plop down and you're just like waiting for the, the room to go dark and the screen to start flickering. You know, you definitely have a different expectation from the audience in those kind of venues. Yeah, I could see in a specialty, like setting, not, not, not a movie theater. It's more realistic to have what I call it. The Trixie lady, a Trixie lady going around with, uh, like selling things. I forget that, that item that they wear and they have concessions but not concessions. They would sell other freaky stuff just going around tables and I think people would be more open to buying that stuff than they usually are just in a movie theater. Yeah, because I feel like a lot of times movie theaters because they are so because like that idea obviously came to mind because of old school theaters. But a lot of times I feel like Rocky shows are not in old school theaters anymore. They're in AM CS, they're in, they're in Regal, they're in big commercialized area. And somebody who goes around and actively sells that stuff doesn't fit that vibe. But like cabaret clubs, dive bars clubs, like they have that like rough gruff, grungy aesthetic to them that, that leads to and it's all about creating that brand. It's all about leaning into that aesthetic. And that's why as much as there's kind of like, I think that I would say the Village East has uh mixed opinions amongst the castt. Some of us love it. Some of us don't like it. All we know is that the aesthetic of the Village East leans into Rocky and people are more likely to buy into something for an aesthetic rather than for the professionalism of it, especially when it comes to amateur theater like Rocky. Oh, absolutely. And I, I, I think you hit on a really good point there about how creating a premium experience with your show is about making your show unique, right? It's about the venue that you're in that lends itself so well. It's about the, the type of performers that you're able to put on stage. It's about the, you know, how you're choosing to interpret the film and how you're choosing to interact with the audience, right? I mean, we talked about this earlier in the show that in the flesh cast, right? That does nude shows at a nude resort, like that's a completely unique experience to Rocky. And I'd certainly qualify it as a premium experience even if it doesn't have a premium price tag attached to it. Uh Places like chocolate covered Rocky and theater coven, right? They're doing completely different kind of interpretations of Rocky that honestly absolutely qualify as premium experiences. Uh I mean, we mentioned this before drive-ins, right? That's a whole different place. There's a whole different kind of aesthetic there. And while I think that you probably aren't gonna be able to attach premium price tag to it, it definitely qualifies as something unique. But also, and this is probably one of the better examples for how to just kind of expand your casts profile uh or expand like the expectations of your audience is doing not and Rocky content, things like Rio and Hedwig and Shock treatment and Reefer Madness. You know, the stuff that J C C P and R K O and a lot of the cast in the community have started adding into their repertoire. Those are the kind of shows where there isn't a rocky expectation with them where people are not averse to paying a non movie theater price tag to see those just because it's a unique experience, you know, but, and you guys are going to love this. It's so big brained I'm going to tie all of this back to both my rejected question and that book, I was talking about one of the best ways to make Rocky a different experience. And John mentioned this earlier is that screen accuracy question I asked, we did this at caveat. We still block stuff like the opening of Floor Show or, or damage Janet, but it wasn't screen accurate. It was more of an interpretation, it was unique and felt more like a rehearsed show that wasn't just a copy of the film. And with the costuming especially that was all much more modern again variation. But how far is too far with that? The book talks a lot about the 2000 Broadway revival and why a lot of critics felt that it really didn't feel quite like Rocky. Is that a risk? I mean, I, I think it's certainly a fine line to tread what you're talking about here is that Rocky is so tied to the time period that it was created. It's that seventies glam and punk rock attitude that's in the face of the fifties kind of American values. You know, it's that whole result from the sixties sexual and social revolutions. Frank is a gender bent glam rocker. And if in creating your premium experience, you remove that part of the character, it's gonna feel incomplete. And I mean, this was the problem with the two thousands revival, like when they updated the costumes, they had a lot of leather and a lot of S and M costumes and that does fly in the face of Rocky, at least as intended by Richard o'brien. Rocky isn't soft core porn. It's a campy goofy satire of American sexuality. The seventies, looking back at the fifties and the director of the 2000 revival admitted that the core part of the Rocky experience that juxtaposition between setting and scenario was something he didn't value in a time out New York article. He said I decided to take the seventies out of it. It's probably one of the reasons why it wasn't so successful, right? So I guess the question is, can you take the specific period out of the piece and still maintain the balance without talking about doing the state show? Right? You'd be expanding the sets and complex lighting and no, no, we're doing shadow cast. What we've got to work with is that costume and characterization element. Can you do something like more modern updated costumes and play your character in a different way that doesn't completely take the seventies out of it or? I guess what I think most critics actually meant by that phrase. They felt that it took Richard o'brien's intent out of it because you've got to do something about the actual show. I know Meg thought about this. A ton for producing our caveat show. How do you update something like costumes and a character's personality and still keep the role that they fill in the show. She sent out little character bios and costume ideas that are totally in line with exactly what we're talking about because otherwise you're just gonna kind of end up doing a theme show and nothing against theme shows. I love them. I don't, but dressing the characters up as Pokemon isn't what we're talking about for a premium experience. Right. How do you make premium experience characterizations? But make sure that they still keep that sex, drugs and rock and roll and musicals. Can't forget the musical. You really can't. It's musical and everything has to be theatrical. So let's just run the characters down. There's only 10 of them anyway. 11. If you count Trixie, I wish I would never, what are the core parts of the character that you need to preserve? If you are creating some kind of premium version, we can start with the easy ones, Trixie. I mean, I think Trixie is the most cut and dry. Like anything that is burlesque adjacent seems to work that could be stripping, that could be burlesque. That could be just anything you would see on like an old tiny burlesque stage. I think the key to whatever it is in order to make it feel premium is having a clear plan of what you're doing and rehearsing the crap out of it. Yeah. Whenever I have done Trixie for a themed show, I always themed the Trixie to be that themed show and I know we're not talking about theme nights, but depending on how much work you put into a theme night, it could be considered a premium show. Oh, exactly. So usually when I do Trixie, I either do my, my dad Trixie or I do my awesome powers, Trixie. Uh, aside from that, I've done a few themed ones before and one of my favorite ones that I did, I did a caroling Trixie for our holiday themed one where myself and two of our castmates had uh we, we were pretending like the tricky was that we were caroling uh for the first song and we would like, go up to audience members and like stick a hat in their face so that they would like pay us money for singing in their faces and stuff. And then, uh eventually I just got like enraged and I just started naturally what you do when you get really, really mad is you start taking off all your clothes, you know. Uh And then I, like, I frightened the other two carols away and then I did the remainder of the, the Trixie, you know, by myself. And it went into a tricky scenario. Uh I've done Trixie where I was the co-host for a Halloween show and I hid underneath a white sheet that had uh eyes drawn on it like, you know, like the really shitty ghost costume. And I was actually like an anime wife who underneath it. Uh, you know, like I, I've done so many pre uh, you know, in this discussion, Premium Trixie before and it really is the easiest one to do. Yeah, I, I definitely think so. I think that, um, as long as you're doing something that looks planned out that looks rehearsed and looks well done, you could be doing a full magic show on stage or you could be doing a, a sideshow blockhead routine or you could be just, you know, wearing a horse mask and getting yourself dressed for bed. But it, as long as it looks premium, I, I think you, you can get away with anything. Yeah, it just can't be somebody that is like thrown together. You know, if Trixie is the easiest who's the next easiest, it's gotta be crim, right? Yeah, Krim is like your wild card. He's disconnected from the events. So you have a lot of leeway with what you do with the character. You just need to portray that expert or master of ceremonies. Vine. Yeah. And I, I think you can even expand that to anybody who kind of is not even an authority figure, just like they're leading the audience through the proceedings, right? That's what the stage show has done with it. Like they use politicians and comedians and actors and as long as they're the one that is kind of there for the breaks and the interlude and they're kind of telling the audience. What's happening. As long as you're confident in that character, you can get away with anything there too, I think. Yeah, I think there's something very nice about looking at a fully dressed crim, like it's the most aesthetically pleasing character to me. But I also think you can do a crim in any sort of outfit. So, what about Rocky, the creature? What, what's his Ark and core to him? He's a blonde muscle fuck boy created by Frank. And I think that's why you can just use a blow up doll as Rocky if you're short staffed. Like when I do my fuck boy, Rocky, I'm basically a blow up doll that can talk. I stand very still. I don't usually move unless I am told to or unless I am being drug around stage. Uh And all I do is flirt with the audience and people on stage. I think Rocky is a really easy character that can break the mold because he doesn't fucking do anything. Even though he is like the namesake of the show. Technically not even technically he is the namesake of the show. He has delightfully little impact. He's, he's less of a character and more of an item in the show. And that's why I think you can take a lot of premium liberties with him and create something really interesting and really different with Rocky because he does so little for the plot as a character but is so important as an item? Yeah, I think that that's um that's a great point where a lot of portraying Rocky in a quote unquote premium way, meaning like a non perfectly screen accurate way is about your characterization of the role, right? Like who do you think Rocky is? Are you gonna play him as a fuck boy? Are you gonna play him as a ditz or are you gonna play him as a, you know, a big titted Bimbo? Like you have so many different options and the way that you choose to interact with the other characters on stage and the way that you choose to interact with the audience is what's gonna make it feel like you are performing that role, right? Because once you're off of screen accuracy, you really have to like start thinking about the theatrical part of it, right? And like what is your role? Is it to just be that, you know, Ditz that's wandering around on stage or is there something more there about your performance as Rocky? Yeah, I think the only thing that's really core to Rocky is that he is like uh visually dazzling he is pleasing to look at and I think you can get away with doing like achieving that through any means. It doesn't just have to be that he's incredibly muscular. Like you can just do someone whose costume is like very, very intricate and that becomes the like thing of appeal that everyone is like, oh my God, Rocky is so sexy because he looks like a Victorian queen or some shit Rocky, the pruning peacock kind of thing. Yeah. And like the things about him you highlight or you look at or that Janet Lust After or whatever are just like the various cool things going on in the costume. So I'd argue. Is there a way to play Rocky in an unappealing way? Could you do Frankenstein's Monster Rocky and still have that feel like premium and not like just a theme show? And I think that'd be tough because yeah, you're saying that the first thing that comes to my head is a gimmick, right? Because you're, you're going 100% against the grain, like almost make like almost making a spoof of typical Rocky. And when you spoof it, you're obviously doing like a gimmick show. I think it depends on how, how heavy you lean into the gimmick that would determine whether or not it, it, it would be considered premium. You know, like for example, I'm not even gonna say my fuck boy Rocky because I think that that falls into not necessarily premium because it's literally just a dressed up version. But for example, when Savannah plays Rocky, they play it as what they call Maryland. Mon Rocky and it is a completely different character, you know, they come out, yes, of course, the, the gold and blonde standard is there, but Savannah dresses in a completely different way. Like they have period appropriate gold lingerie and stuff like that. They have a Marilyn Monroe wig, they do their face like very pale with like the dark eyes and the red luscious lips. And I think that that is a premium version and a premium reanimation of what Rocky as a character can be. Uh I think that's a great example. Yeah, but something like fuck boy Rocky, like I'm literally like the only difference is that I have a gold snap back, you know, that's just a gimmick. But I think leaning into something that is inspired like that, I think that I would consider something like that like a premium Rocky, right on. Um So from the least speaking to the shortest, what about Eddie? He's basically just a rocker according to sex, drugs, rock and roll and musicals. T M in the stage shows context, the wider thematic context. Eddie and Ho Patuti are all about the lament of the old fifties era type of rock and roll sexuality, the simple jump to the back seat and really had a good time, James Dean to the new complicated seventies, androgynous and ambiguous sexual rock and roll. Well, I don't know about any of that boy stuff, but really, I think that any kind of metal or just rock aesthetic works. I mean, I, I feel like it really helps to have something I conically vintage about it. John mentioned this when we were talking about Rocky, right? Just a second ago. You gotta keep that temporal juxtaposition. It may not be like fifties vintage like it was for Rocky set in the seventies. But if you're trying to update the show or do something different, I mean, there's no reason that it can't be eighties vintage in the 20 twenties. I mean, that's a far bigger time gap. And let me tell you the difference between Deaf Leopard singing. Pour some Sugar on me and their aesthetic and everything that comes out of Cardi B's mouth is leaps and bounds enough for the eighties to resonate as a simpler time. What ass pussy? It's OK. Aaron, you can say it kindergartner. Sing it kindergarten. Really? Yeah, I think something like grungy and angry and punchy is, is core to Eddie and I think if you take that away like the threat of, oh this dude's gonna punch someone, I think you lose him, but I think you can achieve that through a lot of things. Yeah, definitely. I don't think it's tied to the fifties. I don't even think it's necessarily tied to that biker rock aesthetic, right? That just so happens to kind of be that fifties aesthetic. Yeah, you see it in theme shows a lot, right? Where the the the most bad ass person you know, or character that you are replicating for a theme show is always placed as Eddie. But I think that in order to create kind of a premium version that is still like contextually correct with the show. I kind of think that there has to be an element of vintage to it. I think you just couldn't dress up as Billy Eilish and get away with calling that your Eddie costume, you know, kind of thing. Now, I feel like we are going to be starting to get into the characters that like if you try really, really hard, you can. But otherwise it, they, they're too iconic, I guess. Yeah, certainly. Yeah, after, you know, Trixie and Crim, the things get a little more concrete in terms of what you have to hold on to, to keep the character intact. Who's next? Uh, Doctor Scott. Sure. I've got a lot of opinions about Doctor Scott but sex drugs and rock and roll does not. And musicals and musicals in reading Rocky Horror, a different book. Whoa, change a rule. They talk about how Dr Scott is a quote guardian of morality from the real everyday world, I suppose. That's true. He's Brad and Janet's teacher, he's Eddie's uncle, he's a government scientist that is a threat to Frank Riff and Magenta. He's probably a crackpot and an audio vibratory physio molecular transport device capable of someone cut me off, breaking down solid matter. Yeah. No, he's, he's totally a crackpot. Absolutely. But I, I think this is actually a good example of kind of the opposite of what we just said about Eddie, whereas, like, Eddie is a very clear characterization. You can play Doctor Scott as anything that kind of still imbues those qualities. Right. Like Guardian for morality and, like, someone who would be a teacher or, you know, whatever kind of thing. There's a lot of leeway in there. I mean, we, we just did, uh, the caveat show where our, our Doctor Scott was played as like a sexy school teacher. Doctor Scott. And you could totally get the like. Oh, yeah. No, that's a teacher. Could be Eddie's relative and oh yeah, they're probably dumb enough to have some like crazy, you know, Q and A kind of science I thoughts kind of thing. So I think that one of the reasons why it can be pretty easy for Doctor Scott to have like a premium vibe to him is because he comes in so late in the movie and he has absolutely no bearing on the plot. That's fair. You know, and I think that that's kind of one of the reasons why a lot of people will take creative liberties and doing different things with Scott because at that point in the movie, everyone has already been introduced, all the characters are then known and then Scott just kind of shows up and provides absolutely nothing to the story whatsoever aside from a little song during dinner and that's really it like he, he doesn't really provide anything. He's just kind of there and I feel like that's why a lot of times where, uh, you see these themed Scots rather than just like the old guy with the gray, the gray suit and the little maroon colored tie. I, I feel like a lot of times you're gonna see a, a vastly different Scots just because he's such a basic character when it comes to the shadow casting portion of the, of, uh Rocky, he's just kind of there. And I feel like a lot of times when you have the characters that are just kind of there, they're, they're so much easier to spice up. I think Scott is unique because he's so like he feels very uninvolved, at least to me, like he just stands around and gets moved around a few times. But for most of it, he's sort of like a little bit like Rocky. I feel like he's just kind of there. So I don't know how I feel about changing him or not changing him because I feel like he's very much just an item and he has to look a certain way because he's the same all the time and he's not like, don't, don't mess with it because who cares? Don't mess with it because who cares man? As a, as someone who really loves doing doctor Scott, you're completely right. Uh Nobody, nobody really, really cares. But I, I, like John said, I think that opens up a lot of opportunities for you. I mean, let me tell you about the most premium Doctor Scott in the world. And that is Sam's Doctor Scott. Sam's Charlie Chaplin. Doctor Scott, for those of you who may not have ever seen it before over at J C C P. Sam does a wonderful, wonderful version of Doctor Scott that is not Doctor Scott at all. They are just fully doing a Charlie Chaplin impersonation on stage complete with Pratt Falls and you know that chaplain walk and like the kinds of mannerisms and interactions that Chaplin has. It's like watching Chaplin, there is no Doctor Scott in the show when they are performing and it still fucking works and it works completely as a premium experience because the way that they portray Chaplin taking on the role of Scott is what we have talked about as being a disruptor of the action as not really being essential to the piece, but as coming in as kind of like a bit of chaos as like the macguffin that moves the plot along. And it doesn't really matter that the way that they're accomplishing that is by putting everybody off guard and being this really weird character on stage. It's still accomplishing the same thing. And I think that's a great example of taking a character and completely flipping it. But keeping it as still serving the same purpose that the character has so are faithful handyman and his domestic sister. What are the core parts of Riff and Magenta's characterization. They aren't as locked in time more in form and function. I feel like with Riff and Magenta the way to, at least for me, I feel like the way to premium the characters of Riff and Magenta are more in how they act on stage and less how they are perceived. Uh I feel like a lot of times Riff and Magenta, the people who play Riff and Magenta have that, you know, the same color palettes going on, you know, it's the black and white and then the gold at the end, they have the maid dress, iconic maid dress, they have the iconic butler outfit. And more often than not, you find people who portray these characters wearing, you know, the same thing, they're kind of, I feel like these characters can be kind of difficult to think outside the box for because even if you try to think outside the box of how to like glam up Riff, it still kind of ends up being the same thing, you know, like, ok, we get rid of this thing, but instead of wearing the, the tail coat, it ends up being like a like a long leather jacket. Ok, great. But that still has the essence of Riff. You know what I mean? I feel like the most important thing about Riff and Magenta to kind of give a premium taste of those characters is how you portray them. Absolutely. And I think that this is something you see a lot with stage show interpretations too where they wanna update the costumes so badly, they want to do something completely different with it. But at the end of the day, the character is a butler and a maid that flip the entire show on their head and are, you know, space aliens at the end. So you really, in order to get that arc in the character, you really have to start out with some kind of subservient kind of position, a butler, a maid, you know, something like that, that's, you know, a Frank's underling and what better way to do that than to go with the classic kind of look. I mean, even when the Japanese show, right, the Japanese stage show does a completely glam version of everything. You still end up with a Magenta in like a vinyl maids dress or you end up with Riff still with his spat and his, you know, his tail coat on in the European tour. It's a long gothic coat that, that uh Riff is wearing. And yes, they, they throw on the like the two toned tinted glasses and the hair is completely different, but you still get that same feeling from the character and it really still plays as that. So there's no problem updating it. In my opinion. You just really have to pay attention to the arc. You can't play Riff as you know, a, a disco ball. That's somebody else's role. That's what Columbia is supposed to be doing and you need to, it's like I said before, it's not in how the character presents, it's how the character acts. I think the way that I played Magenta specifically could be considered premium because I play her as an absolute maniac. And a lot of times when people play Magenta, they play like this, like, sexy sultry drunk woman and I play her like, fucking Rake Yan from Jackass. Yeah. I, I mean, that's a great, great example of like, if you can't completely, you know, be divorced from the arc of the character, you can flip the portrayal of the character, you can, you know, make them crazy, make Riff depressed, make Magenta insane. You know, like all of these different ways that you can do this, there's ways to do it, high energy ways to do it, low energy. I think that's where you got to look when you're going premium. Yeah, especially for these characters. Yeah, I think they're very restricted um as we've been saying because they're so wild and weird and particular in everything they are to the show. Um Like, particularly when I think of Magenta, she's like, like everything about Magenta looks wise and in the show wise, it's so weird and unique that to change any part of it takes away from like Magenta herself and makes it less magenta. All right. And for that matter, Colombia is similarly defined by her attitude and her arc, she's a disco ball as Aaron said of energy. Is that her core character identity? I mean, it can't just be that she is basically an emo kid for the entire second half of the show. Yeah, I feel like Columbia can be a really difficult character to uh give a premium experience for uh because of how loud she is and how in your face she is for the entire show. Even when she is a, like you said, an emo kid for the second half of it, I would go as far to say that Columbia's costume is the most iconic in the show next to Frank's just because of how big it is and it can be really difficult. And I feel like a lot of times when you go to see a shadow cast of Rocky Horror, there are some characters that liberties are taken out of like Rocky, uh like Eddie, for example, I know there's a lot of times that, you know, people don't wear it, the correct vest that Riff would wear. But you can always always almost always bet that your Columbia has a gold sequin tail coat that um that really, really, really rare design on the, on the Boer, the ribbon striped shorts. Like I feel like every time I see a Columbia, they are always in the Columbia costume. Yeah, again, just like Riff and Magenta. Although I think a little bit more uh diversify. Colombia has got a lot of stuff that's very particular to her, as you said, John, taking away that golden tail coat. It's like that, that is like the most enigmatic thing. That's the most particular thing about a Colombia. If she's not wearing like a gold sequin tail coat is it, it's not, it's no longer, you know, Rocky. I don't know where you would take from Colombia to change her up. I, I think I'm gonna, I'm, I'm gonna throw some dissent on this one. Like I, I definitely agree that the aesthetic is important and central to the character, right? Like she doesn't have a lot of lines. She doesn't have a lot really going on with her. So that big boisterous ball of, you know, everything that she is is kind of what she's got going. But I think that you don't necessarily have to prescribe strictly to the exact, you know, oh, it's got to be a gold sequin tail coat and, you know, the ribbon line shorts. Now, I've seen people take this completely too far, right where you line the cast up and I couldn't pick the Columbia out of the lineup. That's where the problem happens, right? If, if you're trying to do a premium Columbia and they're not a Disco ball, if they aren't sparkly, if they aren't, you know, like glam as glam can be, you're, you're really not doing the character much justice. Similarly, if you try to play Columbia as like emo the whole show. She has an arc. She goes from, you know, this big crazy ball of energy to this, like, sad, depressed person after Eddie's killed who's just kind of lamenting her situation and yeah, she's still, you know, enjoying herself with Magenta and this kind of stuff, but she's been toned down. Right. That's part of her character that Richard very specifically put into the show. So I think that you have to keep that transformation in mind when you're deciding what to do with the character. You can't just say I'm gonna do this visual thing and have not have any thought to like how that visual thing can be transformed in the second half. Um That's, I think a big part of it, but I think you can get away with, you know, a green sequenced tail coat and, you know, something as long as it still outshines all the rest of the costumes as being clearly the most sparkly of them all. I, I think you get, I think you get there. I would love to see more people take Colombia that direction because I feel like I agree with you. I think that they can. It's just, I feel like I don't see it enough. Yeah, exactly. All right. Time for the good ones, Brad and Janet. Let's do Brad first. As I think his journey is probably the less complicated of the two. He goes from the preppy cookie cutter all American conservative family values guy. At the start of the movie, he proposes to Janet claiming his white picket fence and 2.5 kids kind of thing. And by the end he is a totally destroyed shell. He can't go back and undo the sexual experiences. He had his relationship with Janet is going, who knows where and as sex, drugs, rock and roll and musicals puts it once in a while, is his big reveal number that he still just wants everything to go back the way it was that Janet can just apologize and he will still love her, but they can't go back. Brad's role in their relationship has completely changed. Can you communicate that change effectively without using the classic clean cut fifties teenager as the basis for his character? This one I think is a little, uh a little easier. I think that's a resounding. Yes. I think you, you can communicate that journey without having to address Brad in fifties attire and have him act like he is in the fifties. It's just easier to communicate that I think that you can play him as a meat head if you wanted to. That is, you know, conservative meat head who just complete like the, the arc is still there. Um I think that you just have to do a lot more characterization work if you're not going to use the kind of classic model for him. Yeah. The big thing with Brad for me is that he's the straight man. You know, he is the, he is the, the voice of reason that is centered around all of the chaos that's happening. And at the beginning of the movie, it's him and Janet, but the Janet slowly gets swept away into the chaos and he's still there t posing confused about what is about everything that's going on around him. I think that the character can be portrayed because there are so many iconic Straight men. Uh I, I, I wanna to double back by saying, I don't mean like straight men because we don't, we don't stand the straight men. But you know what I mean? When I say Straight Man, like the character that everything happens to, you know, in the classic comedian style, the comedians. Yeah, I don't want everyone to, to fucking cancel me for saying there are so many great straight men because there aren't Brad must be a straight man. You heard it here first? But like Brad is such an iconic straight man, but he could be that role could be filled by anybody. I agree too. I think Brad is very variable. Um And he can shoehorn a lot different people and archetypes and designs into as John said, the straight man, like the, the normal guy um where everyone else is very like fluffy and has a lot of stuff going on, right? Columbia's got her golden tailcoat and Riff is a butler. Brad is just very basic. He's like mild. So that's a good way of putting it. I think that one of my favorite portrayals of how people can pre like can give like a premium Brad performance are people who don't look anything like Brad. And I feel like that there are some characters that that is not inherently true about, but I find Brad always more entertaining when somebody who is fan presenting plays Brad. Oh, sure. Always like my partner Savannah. The non-binary is heavily fan presenting and when they play Brad, Savannah is my favorite Brad Bar. None. Uh I'm not just saying that because they're in the other room. They are for, in my opinion, the silliest, dumbest Brad and I feel like playing up that, like, childlike, naivety that he has throughout the show as a primarily film presenting person just hits so much funnier than if I were to do it. Oh, yeah. I mean, I, I've only got to play Brad a couple of times and I, you know, I defaulted straight to the, like, the screen accurate. All right. I don't look like him, but I'm gonna play him like I'm on screen kind of thing. But I think if I was trying to prem Brad for like me personally to do, I might fall back to something like a, like a frat boy kind of guy who like, is clearly just like the dumb conservative but like jockey overconfident kind of thing because that's what I think Brad has right at the beginning of the film. He is like this. Oh, does anybody know how to do the Madison kind of get, you know, right. Like who the fuck are you to be like trying to like normalize this space that you just walked into kind of thing? And I think as long as you give that air off, you're gonna be good with whatever you do with, with the character. I think we can all agree that Brad thinks missionary is uh spicy. Oh Yeah. Yeah, he won't spank his uh his wife's ass because he thinks it's abuse. You know, that kind of stuff. You want me to what? Honey? But that, that would hurt. OK? You don't want me to hurt you get a grip on yourself. Janet. I never uh All right. And what about Janet? Then Janet undergoes a massive sexual awakening and more than that, a massive sense of empowerment. It's a very iconic throwback to the social movements of the sixties women power bra burning, ra ra ra. You get the drill. Is it the same as Brad is going on is just going on that journey regardless of anchoring Janet in time. The important part of her character, Janet is one of those characters that when we have this kind of conversation, I kind of come up blank with. I'll be honest, I it's, it's weird because she doesn't have I don't think that she has, she has a more powerful and more prominent character arc in the movie and in the State show than Brad does. Um It, it's, it's kind of like a because with, when, when you have Brad Jane, you have the positive and negative of, you know, giving yourself over an absolute pleasure, Brad is the negative. Janet is the positive. Um But, and with that idea, you would think that she would be able to be played a little bit differently. But I feel like Janet is one of those characters that like, I will get very confused if the person who is playing Janet does not, uh you know, have the, the Janet costume on, you know, she's got so many points to hit in the show, right? She's got to start off as that like ditzy all American girl, the girl next door kind of thing. And then she has to like immediately become a scared, you know, uh uh frightened of what's going on and then quickly flip into this, like fully empowered sexual being, you know, after, after sleeping with Frank and once, once starts, like it's a whole character shift, but the entire time you're stuck in the same costume, right? You can't use that to kind of communicate the arc if you're trying to play the character different because you really can't change during any of it. So you're really kind of forced into it into playing Janet closer to the way that the character is written than I think you are with some of these other people. I think your best bet there is to just kind of modernize her. Let her wear something a little bit nicer. Let her wear something a little more modern. Put her in sexier lingerie if you really want to because it still works. Uh I think that's kind of the angle and uh the way to kind of portray her. Yeah, I feel like now it's more of like, it's less about making Janet your own and more of like the ification of Janet. What's, what's the ossification? Uh um All right. It's like justifying is like to beautify something that is some that is, that would be considered uh like heteronormative or like otherwise unappealing. Ok. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that's all that Janet could take. Yeah. Honestly, I, I feel like if you get anything too far then it's just a different character. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we all know where that brings us last, but certainly not least Frank, what are the absolute most important parts of Frank's character changes, costume changes, makeup. But you've got to keep what Frank is my least favorite character to be casted as for theme nights. For exactly this reason, for exactly this reason I have played Frank the past three or four lingerie nights because every single time I say you can cast me as whoever and then every single person on our cast who plays Frank is like, cast me for whoever except Frank. So then Meg's like, well, I guess John's gonna play Frank again. It's not, it's, it's not fun to put together a premium version of Frank. Yeah, I would imagine from like a logistics standpoint, it's not fun because Frank has so many costume pieces and you'd have to update each one which is just gonna be expensive um as a basic cost. But also because he's got so many costume pieces and he's on screen the whole time. I feel like he's gonna be one of the hardest if impossible to update in any way because every part of him works in conjunction with every other part. It's like a giant interlocked web and modifying one part affects all the others. So how can you justifiably change any little bit of him? Um Because it's impossible to like make a uniform change across all these aspects of such a large character? Yeah, I mean, let's take a couple of examples of actually people trying to do this, right? Um The Fox remake, right? With Laverne Cox. Fantastic Frank costumes, amazing costumes. I, I look at that and I go great. Yes, those are all Frank costumes. I would see Frank wearing those things. That is the costumes that a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania would wear, but the characterization missed the mark on that one and that's the problem that everybody has with it. You can't just update the costumes. You also have to take that into account the same reason that when you see like a drag version of Frank, right? I think that plays incredibly well. Um You can, you know, Queeny Frank into this more like drag kind of look instead of this glam rock look. Uh Does it work? Yes. Does it necessarily enhance the character? I don't know, I, I same thing with like S and M, you know, Frank. Does that enhance the character? Well, no, I think it actually makes Frank more cookie cutter than what Frank is it, it makes it more identifiable, especially to a modern audience, right? That like, oh, he's just into B DS M OK. Explained there's no ambivalence and ambiguity there about the character. I think you really have to keep a lot of that glam look and a lot of that Androgyny in it agreed. I don't think I've ever been able to see a premium version of Frank that hasn't just kind of like minorly updated a costume piece. You know, like when Savannah plays Frank, Savannah does like a V Frank where instead of the black weird curly hair that Tim Curry dons Savannah does like Aditi's hair and usually does like this like really soft goth makeup, but like it still reads as Frank. You know, I wouldn't call that a premium Frank. It still reads as Frank. Um Adam likes to do this, like sexy, dragged out Frank makeup and like it's still Frank. Uh I've seen plenty of times where Harley from R K O has used their natural hair but has still worn the Frank costume. So it's like, yeah, you can do and I feel like that that's kind of the the most premium that Frank can really get is by just like doing, doing one thing here or there. But like it still obviously reads as Frank and there's, I, I feel like this is the character that there is like a full stop on of, you can change one or two things to be able to do that. But if you try to drastically change this, you lose the essence of Frank. I mean, as, as the posters say he's the hero. Yes, the hero, right? Like it's the core part of the whole show is Frank fucking with all of these people and the character only works so much. But I, I I think costumes aside, I think there are different ways to play Frank. Certainly certainly are on the stage show where like some people play Frank as a very angry, kind of, you know, Frank, some play him as a, you know, a more uh force of chaos, light jovial, you know, fooling around kind of Frank. I think that's where you can uh you know, spend the extra D L C dollars on the roll and get the premium version. I think that's something that N Y C does really well because I think all of the people that we have who play Frank regularly play him vastly different. And that's what I do really like about our group of Franks personally because I think that all of us have our own little pigeon hole as to what kind of Frank we portray and we are all very different. And I think that having that with our cast makes it so that everyone, no matter which Frank they get is going to be excited because of how committed we are to portraying Frank, the way that we want to, as long as it obviously fits in the realm of the character, you know, like you can't play Frank like you would play Rocky, that doesn't make any sense. There's no possible way for you to be able to spin that appropriately. But you know, if you are a extremely dominant person and you play Frank very loud and in your face and walking with your penis kind of thing, then you play him that way. If you play him silly goofy it like he's in a silly goofy mood, you play him like that. If you play him like a chaos grumbling, you play him like that. Uh As long as it makes sense for the character and the the actions that he takes that is where your premium Frank can come into. All I can think like across all the uh specialty shows I've seen and theme nights and everything. The, the one memorable Frank change that I have in my head is one night uh we did a switch around night, whatever that's called where you pull names out of a hat to see in a hat. Night cast in a hat night we did cast the hat night John was Frank and John, you pulled Eddie and as Frank you did Eddie and when you came down um in Eddie's opening and you start the song, you had like all of Frank's costume pieces on. So right before the song started, you took off 30 costume pieces and I laughed my ass off and I thought that was hilarious. Um But that's, that's Frank doing another role. Um And I definitely think that's the best like Frank change I've seen, which I think speaks to it's really hard or not impossible to like get a really different actual Frank that's still Frank. And I mean, I think we beat this one to death at this point. So how would we call it if you take all this stuff into account? Can more casts create premium Rocky Experiences? Is it actually a thing? What's our verdict? So as we've been talking more about this, like before we had this conversation, I was thinking it would be rather easy to like update or make things, make things different for a shadow cast and the characters in a way that you could a, you know, up ticket sales. But as we talked more and more about the characters, it struck me that like a lot of these characters are very closely tied to principles of their character, like immutable things about them, you can't change or you lose everything. Um Which just makes me think that if this is something a cast does, if a cast tries to premium i their characters, I think it's gonna be something we're gonna learn more about as we do it more. So while it may not be obvious right now, how to do a changed version of Frank or Columbia or Riff or Magenta. I think that'll become more obvious to us as we do that more as we have more shows where we experiment and poke and prod the characters and see how we can change them and still make it an enjoyable experience. Yeah, I think that's a great point and I think that it is something that as a larger community, we're, we're kind of only toying with in the last few years. I think my big takeaway on this one is that in order to create what would be deemed a fully premium experience specifically for the actors, you need to have everybody buying into that, right? If you just have Frank doing his own thing, and Brad is being portrayed as this other thing, it's not gonna create a cohesive, full kind of experience in order to really make it feel like something completely different. Something that people will pay an extra price for or something that they will go out of their way to a different venue to see you. Really, if that is what your goal is, is to create a different kind of rocky experience. You got to have everybody buy in on it because you can't have, you know, uh, Jock Brad and, you know, weird leather magenta and then have Doctor Scott roll out in the screen match costume. Yeah. And I think that that's kind of where a lot of casts may falter because, you know, we are in New York. Rocky is a big thing here. Clearly, it is the, the birthplace of it. Uh So naturally it is easier for us to find folks who would want to buy into something like this because we're also in one of the most artistic cities in the country, neither world. But for the casts that are out in the Midwest and the casts that are out in like areas that to them are metropolitan, but to us are dinky and small. It's probably way more difficult to find people who are gonna actively want to buy into that. And even if they have those people, where are they gonna do it? There's so much intersectionality between theater and community theater and the types of the demographics of people that you are around the, the geographic location that you're around there. There's so many other nuances to being able to put on a premium Rocky horror experience that while I think places that are on the coasts are going to be way more likely to be able to put something like this together successfully. You find a lot of places either here or, or like in the Midwest in the South and abroad, they're gonna have a way harder time doing that because of the fact that like people just aren't interested in doing that. Rocky just isn't that big of a thing in other parts of the world and other parts of the country. I think that we can flourish and that we can set a really great example on how to do a premium Rocky horror experience moving forward. But the amount of people and work that people are gonna have to put in for this and negative amounts of money that can, that can shy a lot of people away. Yeah, I, I, I think for a lot of the, the cast out there that might be listening to this and going well, it's all great when you got 10 people who are willing to go spend $300 to buy new costumes. That's not, you know, the kind of premium experience we're talking about for those kinds of shows. I think that focusing on the stuff we talked about earlier, things like actual revenue, you know, opportunities for expanding your merch selection or, you know, figuring out the price point on your prop bags to really get them right. And that kind of thing is what you're gonna be able to do to kind of, you know, bring in the extra dollars that a kind of premium experience would justify. And that could just be, you know, tightening up your hosting routine, making it feel, you know, like they're there for a fully baked show, make it not feel like, you know, quite such the, you know, the, the, the monkeys running the circus kind of thing or lean completely into that and figure out a way to, you know, turn that into the kind of D L C that you're giving them kind of thing. And that's our show. We want to thank Rowan for writing in Francis Bacon Experiment and Sweet Translucent Dreams for putting on a great show and to all of our listeners for sticking with us throughout this two fucking hour long show. And as always, we'd like to thank our editor Aaron from Tennessee. We appreciate all your work, especially this week for editing a two fucking hour long show. If anyone has a question, they'd like us to answer on air 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 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 next week. Bye, Jesus Christ. Wow. I think I didn't hit record. No, I'm good. 66. All right with that. Let's get into it. Watching star. I'll just go fuck myself. You told us I asked you and you were like, I hate myself and I wanna kill and die. And I thought that was the whole thing to you. As far as going out with a bang, it looks like you'd be hard pressed to goddamn it. Mhm But as the best Eddie in the room, which I gotta say, I, I must have a lot of fucking balls calling myself the best Eddie when Aaron has like a multi $100 Eddie costume. But uh moving on, it's not a, it's not about the price, it's about what you do with it. Yeah. And I've got a fucking scooter. So each shit as the best Eddie in the room. Oh Right. Their shocky performance is coming up soon, isn't it? Yep. I answer myself. It's gonna be on Friday, April first, Billy Irish and Eilish. What, what the fuck did she just say? Billy Irish? I don't know her fucking name, I don't think. Is it Eish? Eish? Yeah. Eish.