Hello to all of you, unconventional conventions. Welcome to Rocky Talk. You. We're a Rocky horror podcast. Talks about anything and everything Rocky Horror related. I'm John, I'm Aaron and joining us on air this week, we've got Jamie Nalo, the director of the Francis Bacon Experiment in Buffalo, New York. Hi guys. Now, Jamie, everyone from the Rocky Horror community who has ever ever stepped foot on any social media platform ever already knows exactly who you are because obviously they've seen and loved all the fabulous content. You and your cast produce on youtube, tiktok, Instagram, I mean, and Facebook can't forget Facebook because we all know that they've attended the virtual performances. Your cast is very graciously hosted for us throughout the Panera bread. But for those of our listeners who may be living under a rock. Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? Well, I'm Jamie, I'm the current cast leader for the Francis Bacon Experiment R H P S Buffalo in Buffalo, New York. I've been a member of the cast since 2014 and I officially took over the leadership position in 2020 right in the middle of that Panini. Uh We're super excited to start building our community in Buffalo and making sure that Rocky Horror is accessible to everybody, whether they have a cast in their area or not and whether they have a budget to do it or not, Jamie. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are super excited to have you here on air. Now, before we get started with the show, we'd like to take a moment to ask each other. How was your week? Did you get up to anything fun? I found out this week that I have a vitamin D deficiency and like not in the sexy way. I was gonna say I can give you some extra D if you know what I am penis. It's, it's penis. Oh It's a dick joke. Oh Yeah. I found I have like a really severe vitamin D deficiency. So I'm on like medicine for it now, which is really fucking cool. Gorgeous, gorgeous girls are on vitamin D medication. All right. Wow. That was literally the only thing that happened. I'm getting old and sad. So, Jimmy, what about you? How was your week? I wasn't too bad in the most uh 1 80 from Rocky. I got to go hang out with my four year old niece today and she wanted to go play in the mud. So we went on a nature walk where she found every mud puddle possible and decided to trounce through it and make me chase her through it. So it was a squishy day. It's squishy day. I love it. I love it. My week was also a little squishy now. Uh It was a little squiffy. He just went out a bunch. Uh Got to hang out with some people from our cast. We had some rehearsals for doing characters and things, but that's all rocky related. Uh No, it was mostly low key here as well. So, uh yeah, had a good week. Had a good week. Great. Now that that's out of the way. Let's get started with our first segment. Uh Global News. You're a global news this week, we're starting off global news on a down note. We're sad to announce the passing of Alan Ladd Junior or lady as his friends knew him. He passed away on March 2nd 2022 peacefully at home, surrounded by his family. A lot of you might not know Alan's name but you really should. He's a major part of the reason that we're all listening to this show. Now, Allen was a Fox executive originally assigned to work on Rocky Horror as it was distributed to theaters. He greenlit the project that was taken on by Tim Deegan who found Rocky a home on the midnight movie circuit alongside the Rocky Horror picture show. Allen was responsible for such Hollywood classics as Star Wars Braveheart, Alien Blade Runner, the Omen, all that Jazz Norma Ray Chariot of Fire Thelma and Louise and Young Frankenstein. You may have heard of some of them all told the films Allen worked on earned more than 50 Academy Awards including two best picture wins and received more than 100 and 50 nominations. Allen was born in 1937 and grew up as the son of industry star Alan Ladd S, his dad also worked on quite a few big movies including Shane and the Great Gatsby Allen junior started his career as a motion picture talent agent at Creative Management Associates where he worked with Luminary actors like Judy Garland, Warren Beatty and Robert Redford Allen then relocated to London where he produced nine features in four years, but returned to L A in 1973 to serve as Head of Creative Affairs at 20th century Fox. This move ended up being very fortunate for everyone here because it was in his role at Fox that he green lit a little film called the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Never heard of it. The decision worked out pretty well for Allen too in 1976 only a year after Rocky's premiere, Allen was promoted to studio president, but contrary to popular belief, Rocky Horror is in everything. Why did you have me say that? And to say that Allen had an expansive career at Fox would be a major understatement. He worked with George Lucas on American graffiti and he even commissioned him to write what ended up becoming Star Wars. Never heard of it. Yeah, same during his tenure at 20th century Fox though Lad appointed the first ever black president of a studio division, Ashley Boone, Ashley's sister who was named Cheryl Boone Isaacs later became the first black president of the Academy of Motion picture Arts and Sciences. Allen left Fox in 1979 to start his own production company. The lad company, the company went on to win Best picture for chariots of Fire and the Can award Palme D'or for Akira K's Kausha. It was under the lad company that Allen produced a slew of massive hits such as Blade Runner, the right stuff. Once upon a time in America and the Police Academy movies, those are all very different movies I love. Once upon a time in America. Same in 1985 the production company dissolved and Allen moved on to become chairman and CEO of M G M United Artists where he shepherded classics like spaceballs, Thoman and Louise and Rocky Four. Oh, is that the Fox remake? No, I think Rocky Four would be the Fox remake or the glee episode. No, you guys Rocky Four, you know, with like all the wrestling we're boxing. So Allen eventually quit M G M and revived the Lad Company at Paramount Pictures here. He made the Brady Bunch films, The Man In The Iron Mask and Braveheart. Holy shit. What a career this guy had and he is survived by his three daughters, Kelly Anne, who is also a film producer, Tracy and Amanda and six grandchildren. His daughter who directed the 2017 feature documentary Lady. The Man behind the movies made a heartfelt post to Facebook just a few days ago. She said with the heaviest of hearts. We announced that on March 2nd, 2022 Alan Ladd Junior died peacefully at home, surrounded by his family, words cannot express how deeply he will be missed. His impact on films and film making will live on in his absence. We wish Allen's family all the best during this difficult time. And we'd like to thank Allen for all his phenomenally hard work and for his major role in making the Rocky Horror picture show what it is today. We appreciate everything you've done for us and we'll see you on the other side. Let's move on to something a little later, shall we next up? We have a shadow cast review. That's right. This week, the Valley Ledger wrote a fantastic review about the Spaced out sensations cast from Eastern Pennsylvania near Allentown. So spaced out sensations is a newer cast. Their first show ever was July 8th 2017, making them young and new bio as far as casts go and we are so excited to talk about them today. Their cast is led by Nicky Banana, Lacy and Clint William. When the group first started out, they performed at the Angela Triplex Theater, but have since moved to the Frank Banco Ale House Cinema in Bethlehem P A huh. They are surprisingly nearby and I'm kind of shocked that we haven't visited them before. I mean, too bad, Nicky isn't around to call for one of those road trips. Oh, I can try guys. Do you think? I have what it takes? Road trip, road trip, road trip. How is that? Hey, we got there. Yes. Well, now that we know a little bit about this cast, let's hear what the review says. Ok, so about two weeks ago, the Valley Ledgers, Janelle Spiegel went to see spaced out sensations at their home at the Frank Bongo Ale House on 2 25 where they perform on the last Friday of every month, Janelle attended the performance with her friend Roxanne, whose husband Dave Free has been the cast photographer for many of their shows over the years, their show of course, started out with a tribute to Meat Loaf where the cast and audience sang along to Paradise by the dashboard light at the performance. Janelle who is a Rocky virgin seemed to really love her first experience with an audience participation movie. She wrote the cast had prop bags for sale for $2. So we got prop bags because as Roxanne said, it's an experience and you need to just embrace the experience. The prop bags are filled with various items that go along with the movie. A glow stick cards, toast. Don't eat the toast. I figured I would add that just to be safe after being told a toast eating story. Uh This is a sidebar but weak confetti rice for the wedding. Of course and more the audience participated from start to finish from quoting the movie, singing the callback lines that people shout back at the cast. Don't eat the toast bullshit. Always eat the toast. Don't be weak for this show. Matt Kay portrayed Doctor Franken Furter and Janelle said he took his role to the next level. He was matched with Tim Curry's movements, his full on attitude, the fun he has in the film. The cast was incredible. The age range and audience members varied. It was such a fun crowd. People were polite as always and the staff at Steel Stacks is always wonderful. Janelle ends her review saying I would recommend checking out Space do sensations Rocky horror picture show with the shadow cast. They did an incredible job. They were vibrant, fun, enthusiastic. I cannot say enough about everyone. Have we ever gotten reviews for N Y C? Yeah, I mean, they, they come up occasionally, usually around Halloween, we'll do them but a lot of the time it's like, you know, students doing it for their college newspapers and stuff. I think I'm gonna add that to hosting when we start talking about social media. I'll tell them to write reviews for us on Yelp. Can we make a Yelp account? Oh boy, you, you, you hate to see it. I want to see all the great things that they say about me and my beard. I remember when the old theater still had their yelp up. People would go in there and write reviews of the movie theater that were about the cast. And, like, they would, there was this one extremely angry person who went in and wrote all about how, like, oh, they're so anti Semitic and everything's so horrible because there was like, the people in the audience decided to scream out like holocaust jokes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't like that. They didn't like that. Uh Jamie, do you have any experience about like reviews with uh Francis Bacon? So we've never gotten any like reviews like spaced out sensation, Scott, we have reviewers in Buffalo, but I don't have anything nice to say about them to be honest. Um But we do get people commenting on our, our long standing home theater that we have our annual show at the Riviera Theater in North Tonawanda. And they always talk about how much they love the show. But when we were at the Almira Drive in the one that everybody just got to watch a couple of weeks ago, somebody actually commented on one of their posts that they thought preshow was stupid and a waste of time and I'm pretty sure one of us clapped back at it. Like, what did you expect? You were coming to like sit, sit the fuck down. It's 15 minutes. If you can't like sit down and enjoy 15 minutes of non rocky content. I don't know what take a pee. Yeah. Right. The concession stands over there, man. So yeah, they can set the fuck down. Well spaced out sensations. Sounds absolutely fantastic. We'll definitely have to catch a show, especially seeing how close they are. Honestly, us up in Buffalo, we don't mind driving and we have a lot of friends in P A. So I'm thinking a Pennsylvania tour is gonna be in order soon. So if any listeners are interested in checking them out too, you can get show tickets on the steel stacks dot org website. You can also check them out on Facebook at S Os Rocky or on their website S OS rocky dot com. Plus, if you live in the Bethel area and are interested in joining a Rocky cast yourself, these spaced out sensations are currently looking for a stage crew coordinator. So if you're local and haor in for some backstage cast action, give the spaced out sensations. A call. You can contact them again via Facebook or through their website. As usual, all of these links will be available in our show notes. Now, speaking of S OS, are you guys ready to take on the High Seas last up in community news? We're dishing about a massive South African Rocky horror themed boat party. You heard that correctly? The Mirage presents the rocky horror yacht party pulled right from the event site. The Mirage says, quote, let's do the time warp again. We know you shivered with anti patient and now the wait is over. Allow yourself to be delighted and shocked beyond any measure, with a sensuous experience out on South Africa's biggest luxury yacht. The Mirage bringing you all the raunchiness, humor, outrageousness, and horror book. Today, it will be a night you'll remember for a very long time. It's time to give yourself over to absolute pleasure and book a ticket. Now, fancy dress is a must with a prize for the best dressed Jesus Christ. Tickets for this absolute banger of an event include 3.5 hours at sea, live entertainment. A welcome cocktail and a special interactive pack which looks to be a fancy term for prop bags and a gin tasting experience. Side note, I recently changed my name to Gin. Goddamn it. Gin. This show is strictly 18 plus and a ticket will run you 950 South African rand. So about $50 or 1/60 of a frank jacket, the cruise is taking off from Cape Town Africa. So if you're in or around South Africa, Africa and our antsy in the pansy for some rocky at sea action, we hope you check it out and tell us all about it. It sounds like some splish splash fun where maybe you can do the swim or not. It's on a yacht. You don't want that. That sounds dangerous. You know how easy it is to die when you fall overboard on a yacht. Like, haven't you ever seen Titanic Info? And tickets are all available at stay happening dot com, which will be linked for you in our show notes. So, while we're on the subject, Jamie, we've got to ask what is the most absurd venue that you've performed Rocky in? Have you done it anywhere? That's just like, really out there? So, have you guys heard of a little defunct store called Kmart? I don't like where this is going. Sure. So in the middle of the Panera bread, we had a pop up drive in, get founded in Buffalo to give people some entertainment and of all places, they chose an abandoned Kmart parking lot in the middle of the city. And when I say abandoned, I mean, like broken glass and garbage and trash on the ground. And they, they wanted us to come out and do Rocky and originally they wanted us to do it on the roof of the abandoned Kmart. Oh, wow, this gets better and better. And something about the roof seemed really unsafe. So we chose the parking lot and we sold out the abandoned Kmart parking lot and now it sits abandoned because no one's using it for anything else. Dystopian Rocky. God. That's fantastic. I don't think we've done anything quite that crazy. We've had some weird shows in really weird places. I think the weirdest that I think I've ever done Rocky or something related to Rocky. It was my first outside gig when I became leadership. I booked us at a dog rescue fundraiser. It was like a flea market and we performed for free, obviously, because it was a dog rescue. Like we're not going to charge a dog rescue, but we were allowed to sell merch and we actually sell like a good, we, we, we got, we sold a lot of merch at that show and we performed with like an Elvis impersonator and like it was, it was like this, it was a line up right. There was like a really shitty comedian and Elvis impersonator and then us. Yeah, that's right where we belong. It was, it was fucking wild. It was a random street in Brooklyn. I like went out to them, we got dinner and like met over the event and stuff and I came back to Meg and was like, listen, they want to book us at a dog rescue fundraiser flea market. They are not going to pay us, but we do get the pet the dogs that's payment enough for me. Agreed. At least it wasn't on the roof of a Kmart. Yeah, exactly. That's crazy. We do have something in the works and if you know the rocky community at large wants to help us manifest this, we do, we do have this idea for a Rocky horror roller rink party. So, if everyone wants to send some uh skating vibes our way, we're hoping to make it happen. So maybe that can be our, our next craziest place to do. Rocky, man. I, I haven't, I haven't gone to a roller skating rink since I was probably in elementary school. That's, that's some flashbacks. I can, I can barely ride a bike. So you will not catch me on roller skates. Oh, man. Now, I really want to see it. Oh, shut the hell up. Who is the most uncoordinated Rocky character? Probably Rocky. Um Rocky. Maybe with a brad close second. Yeah. Yeah. The only reason I'm saying this is because like, when you watch floor show and like, Rocky is very much offbeat with everybody. You know, he was so cold. I know poor guy. His nipples could have cut sheet rock, you know, she is actually not that difficult, you know. You know, never mind. Er, like I've cut sheet rock with my nipples before. Goddamn. It. Don't reveal all of my homemaking tips. Good housekeeping with Aaron Tidwell. Oh God. Step one. Don't buy a house. All right. Then. Gents. I think it's time to move on over to some community news. First. Up in community news. We're going to get literary this week we found out about a couple of pretty major community members who have got some books in the works that I think will be of interest to our listeners. The first nugget that we've received this week came from Tim Deegan Tim was the V P of advertising at 20th century Fox from 1973 through 1979 and was in charge of marketing for Rocky when it was first released. Back then, the idea of midnight movies existed but was still pretty new. According to his Rocky wiki, Tim noticed weird movies that played on midnight film circuits and had a habit of sometimes developing cult followings specifically John waters' film Pink Flamingos, which played as a midnight movie at the new art theater in L A. Tim had the brilliant idea to try and recreate Pink Flamingos success with Rocky Horror and pushed Fox to continue the trend by releasing Rocky as a midnight film at the Waverly theater here in New York City as we now know this went really fucking well for Tim. Back in 2019, Tim started working on a book about his experiences with marketing film, including his wildly successful campaign with Rocky. Anyway, as we discussed earlier in global news, Alan Ladd passed away this week and Tim wrote a very sweet and heartfelt tribute to his friend that he posted to the Rocky Horror Picture Show Fan Club Facebook group. Towards the end of the post, Tim dished some info about his upcoming work stating several weeks ago, I asked if Alan would mind if I dedicated my book about saving Rocky Horror from the depths of the studio vaults to him and he smiled and said, yes, he, he would like that. So fans, you will see lady's name one day in the front piece of my book which will be published for the upcoming 50th anniversary. Oh, that is sweet. Which, how much of a flop Rocky was slated to be when it was first released? I'm sure it'll be great to read a firsthand account of the people who took risks on the film to make it as successful as it is today. Hell, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm super here for this. Like you, you read about Rocky history and, and about the, the, the period where they were trying to figure out what to do with this failed film and it always the same story is what you always hear. Oh Tim Deegan got it and he put it in the Waverly and these other, you know, midnight movie houses and, and that's kind of the whole story. I'm glad to know that there's like enough material there that we're going to get a whole book out of it and I'm super excited to read it. Sign me up for that book release, man. I'm here for it. I can't read so well, we'll, we'll tell you what it, what it says and you can look at all the pictures. Yeah, if you can summarize it for me, I'd really appreciate it. And Tim isn't the only one gearing up for the 50th anniversary in a big way. Just this past Friday, Jim Hetzer or Cosmo, as many of us know him, dropped some exciting news too. Yeah, he did for those who might not know Cosmo was the leader of the Cincinnati cast for many, many, many, many, many years and has done an absolute ton for the wider Rocky community back in the nineties, Cosmo created one of the first ever Rocky horror websites, Cosmos Factory, a place for fans with access to the world wide Web to learn all about the film, the actors and the community. The site hosts tons of information and fun facts about the film's history and its creation. Plus all sorts of community centric stuff like how the Boss Awards work, the list of different casts around the world, the screen, accurate steps to the Columbia tap dance, you know, film and A P scripts list of places where Rocky is referenced in other media. I mean, just so much information about Rocky Horror and this was one of the first places on the web that anyone was able to see it seriously. This place was a gold mine for anyone looking for fandom levels of information about Rocky back when the internet was new. And I mean, it's still a gold mine to this day. Cosmo was also a co-founder of Rocky Radio, a Rocky horror podcast that launched back in 1998 and was hosted by Cosmo Nathan Summers from the Denton affair and later by Kev. Yeah. Imagine thinking a 90 minute long movie would generate enough content to be a regular podcast. Must be nice. Rocky Radio ran 61 episodes which we all know is no small feat. The show brought on lots of big name community members as guests such as Larry Vill, Bill Brennan and Sean Stutler. They even got to interview some actual real world celebrities including Perry Beton, Kimmy Wong and Adam Sagas. Not to mention their 25th episode was an interview with Richard o'brien. You know, I suddenly feel a little like we might be slacking over here. That's not very nice of you to say Jamie is sitting right here and she's doing fantastic, but like imagine trying to compete with Cosmo, like we're not even running the same race anyway, just a few days ago, Cosmo made a really exciting Facebook post stating quote, I just signed a contract with asylum publishing to write a book detailing the last 50 years of a specific cult movies fan following. It's due out in 2024 25. Not too bad for someone who never passed English class. Well, boy, I'm real excited for his Star Wars book. Not too shabby at all. Cosmo, again, the insights we're going to get from someone who has been such an integral part of the formation of our community. Literally, right from the beginning is going to be insane. Yeah, I absolutely shit myself. When I saw this announcement, I mean, Cosmo has contributed to a lot of works over the last forever of the Rocky community. He did a bunch of the uh merchandise guides that appear in like the redone audience participation book that came out, I don't know, around the 30th or so. Um He's also contributed to several other things. He's a fountain of information and I can't wait to see what his take is on the 50 year retrospective. It's wild that 50 years ago this movie came out, right. I'm so pumped 50th is gonna be great. It seems like it's so far away, but like we're already planning stuff for the 50th. I'm sure other casts are. It's, yeah, we're definitely planning things for the 50th man. The 50th anniversary is gonna be nuts getting to see all this big stuff take shape for it in real time is really cool and very exciting. Well, in the interest of piling onto the hype, don't forget. Little Nell also has a book deal in the works for the 50th. So John Buddy, I hate to say it, but now might be a good time to start learning to read because we've got a ton of great stuff in the pipeline that you're not gonna want to miss out on just because of your silly little illiteracy. Listen, if Cosmo can write a book without passing English, I think I'll be able to figure it out guys. Let's stop shitting on John for a second because we got more community news. All right. Next up, Rocky Talkie is absolutely thrilled to announce the return of one of our major community staples. The Berlin cast is back in action. Yeah, that's right. Over the past couple of months we've been watching them gear up to resume performances. They've been heavily recruiting and training new cast members, scheduling performances in some of their established venues as well as booking cool new places to perform. So say we all nothing's cooler than the uh the parking lot of a Kmart in my opinion. But I mean, this week, they went live on their social media with the big announcement that they're going to be back to doing live performances starting on April 1st at the historic Kno Babylon Cinema just outside of Berlin. The Kino Babylon Theater was built back in 1928 and was renovated 20 years later to serve as a specialty theater for East Germany. It was restored again from 1999 to 2001 and has since been granted landmark status since 2001. It's been used as an art house cinema and is home to lots of cultural events including the Berlin Film Festival and a monthly shadow cast performance of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Two events that are completely to each other. The Berlin Cast is incredibly excited to be back to performing and have just gone live with the ticket link for their first show fittingly on April fool's performance. If you are in or around my mouth or the Berlin area, and we know that we've got at least a couple of listeners who are, well, I probably should have read that in. We get the country metrics on soundcloud. You can get your tickets now at Babylon Berlin dot eu, we'll have that link for you in our show notes too. Believe it or not, Berlin dropped some even more exciting community news for us this week by announcing the return of the international Berlin Show, which will be held on September 3rd 2022 at the re open Air cinema. The Ray is an enormous 1500 seat outdoor amphitheater located inside of a state park. Now, we're sure most of our listeners are probably at least somehow aware of this show. But for those of you who may not be super familiar, this is a fantastic yearly performance that brings together shadow cast members from all over Europe and they perform this huge outdoor event uh at this giant amphitheater in the middle of the woods. And it's just a big giant inflatable screen that's like at the bottom of this huge theater. And you can just imagine what it sounds like to hear. Hundreds of callbacks in German and English just resonating and bouncing all around this space while you've got literally the best of the best from all over Europe running around on stage in front of you. It is a fantastic event. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend one of these several years ago and it was just one of my most favorite international Rocky Horror Experiences flights from the US to Berlin for that weekend are available for the low, low price of 1/6 of a frank jacket. And tickets to the movie are only 1 2/100 of a Frank jacket. So if you want to attend the show, factoring in a hotel room and transportation to and from the park, you could probably swing it for around one third of a Frank jacket and who needs a Frank jacket. That's screen accurate. Anyway, I'm sorry, what, what were those numbers? Oh, sorry. I thought you guys were fluent in Frank jacket. Currency flights from the US to Berlin for that weekend are available for the low, low price of $500. And tickets for the movie are only €14 or just over 15 freedom bucks. So if you wanted to attend the show, you could probably swing it for around $1000 or roughly one third of a frank jacket. Does that help? Yes, thank, thank you. So we're just gonna ignore the fact that Jamie just topped both of us on a podcast or for any of our listeners who happen to live in or around my mouth or Berlin. It looks like this legendary cast is still in the thick of recruiting new members. They're looking for both cast and crew. No experience necessary for either. If you're interested in finding out more, just go over to their website at R H P S Germany dot com and shoot them an email. We've got their cast linked for you in our show notes. And speaking of recruiting last up in community news, we've got another casting call for any of our state side listeners down South who might be interested in joining a Rocky cast. The Hot Patuti are a cast based in Green North Carolina and they've just restarted monthly performances at their home theater, Red Cinema. And at the moment are very actively looking to recruit new cast members again. So say we all their casting call to the community reads. Have you ever wanted to be on stage? How about even just working behind the scenes to make sure a show runs smoothly? Now's your chance. The Ho Patuti shadow cast will be doing rehearsals March 5th and March 12th and we are welcoming everyone interested in joining us. The only requirement is proof of the COVID vaccine. If you are 18 plus teens under this age, do not need the vaccine but will be required to wear a mask. Come join us at eight PM at the Odom Brewing Company in Greensboro, North Carolina. They also state that no experience whatsoever is necessary and costumes and props for each character can be provided. So if any of our listeners are interested in getting involved, you can reach out to the Hot Patuti. We're linking their Facebook page in our show notes or you can join them at their open casting call on Saturday, March 12th, which is in three days. If you are listening to this the day that it drops, just, just out of curiosity, Jamie, how does your cast handle recruiting? Do you guys take people on a rolling basis or do you like put out casting calls like this when you're in the market for getting some new blood in? So at the moment, since we don't really have a regular show schedule, I would hate to put out like a mass cattle call type casting listing just because I wouldn't want to bring somebody on to cast and not be able to offer them stage time. So, what we've really been doing in the past was it's always been more of an interview process. Uh We know somebody who we think might be a good fit in the cast. So we send him a message and say, hey, what are you guys doing on this date? We, we have a show coming up and we're looking for this character. Do you think you might be interested? And then they come on and they get to stay as long as they want and whenever anybody is ready to bow out, they can just kind of head out. So over the last year, we've actually brought on an alumni member who was on our cast back in 2014 and got to come back this year and he's going to be playing Farley Flavors. We brought on three brand new cast members who have never shadow casted before for shock treatment and they're all invited to come and work on Rocky with us. So as we start getting more shows and, and there's more of a need for some, a wider range of casting due to people's conflicts and scheduling, we'll probably put some calls out. But as of right now, it's more of like an interview process of if you know someone who you think might be interested, send them our way, which is kind of weird, but because we have so few shows, it's just been working so far. No, it makes perfect sense. What do you guys do if somebody applies for N Y C R H P S, uh we just look at their social media and if they're hot, we take them that, that's why everyone says that N Y C R H P s is the hottest cast period because that's, that's our, that's our recruitment plan. I mean, I don't know, my Buffalo cast is pretty fucking attractive if you're sexy and you know it apply for N Y C R H P S or if you're sexy and you know it apply for N Y C R H P S or Buffalo if you're sexy and you know it and you really want to show it if you're sexy and you know it, apply for N Y C R H P S and Buffalo. Yeah. So we have an application on our website at N Y C R H P S dot org that people can download and fill out and they can either email it to our cast email or they can bring it to us at one of the shows. You'll get in touch with either Meg or myself or you'll get in touch with a cast member who will then get Meg or myself. We'll look over the application if we feel like, you know, there is at least some level of competency. We will ask you in to interview previously. We used to meet before a show and just go through a, a list of a few questions that we had to know about them, their, their work style, their work ethic, uh their personality, um, all that stuff. Uh Nowadays, Meg usually meets with them separately because Meg has way more of an open schedule than I do. And if they pass that round, we will do like a quick zoom call with me just to give my stamp of approval and then they start from there and we also do it on a rolling basis. So, you know, people can apply at any time and we'll pull them in at any time. Yeah. And, and, and despite what John says about having, having a good gram presence to uh to get on really uh we, we go with what uh I, I heard this from J C C P from one of their cast members where they said that uh the test that they apply is uh we're gonna meet somebody and just make sure that they're not going to want to skin us and wear their skin. So that's really all we're looking for. No, no serial killer is allowed, which you'd be surprised how many people we have turned down because of those exact vibes. Yeah, it's New York. There's a lot of people. But yeah, it's, it's mostly a rolling kind of thing. And I, I think it's helpful to have that kind of information out there. Like we found it's very useful to have it on our website, even if you're not actively recruiting. So you can at least point somebody there and be like, oh, yeah, go fill it out and it's a nice way to either get the people you want or, you know, something to shuffle off on the ones that you think might not quite know what Rocky is all about. Well, fellas fair is fair. You got to pick my brain about recruiting and I think that means I've earned a Jack off session. No, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing Jacob's thing this week. Jacob's not the only person on the planet whose name starts with AJ. And, oh, Jamie asks a question. Yeah, I, I got there. Heck yeah, let's jack it up off. I think I can take it from here. We can skip the dirty talk this week. Oh, but it's my favorite part. My favorite part is this Dick. Sorry listeners. I tried. All right. What, what, what you got for us JB. So I absolutely love all the technical parts of Rocky. I love the props and the costumes. I love finding new and creative solutions to add that extra umph into our show. And I know that Rocky, both the stage show and modern shadow casts have undergone a huge transformation over the years as productions have gotten bigger and more involved. Hell, for our show with Sweet Translucent Dreams that we just broadcast on R H P S live. They had an entire trailer of props for the Drive In show. That was quite an impressive array of set pieces. Were those all S C DS or was it like a mash up of both of your casts? They're traveling casts, right? Do they bring their stuff to all their shows? So Sweet. Translucent Dreams is wild and all of those props minus the crims jump to the left step to the right time warp thing. We're all theirs. They have this really cool trailer and they have an insane way that they pack it and unpack it to get everything to fit and that's what they, they drag all around to do these traveling shows. It's insane. So for that particular show that was all of their props, Brian. And I, when we went down to guest perform, for that one actually were coming from the Adirondack mountains. So we had only brought our costumes and our other two cast members who were guest performing came from Buffalo and I actually own almost everything that our cast uses. So I also brought all of Frank's costumes, so we just had that. But when we do this with them in September, we're actually going to try to bring some of our own stuff so we can do like a double feature show. So it's gonna be fun, but we're still figuring that one out. That's awesome. Their, their stuff is so crazy and just seeing how much stuff came out of that trailer, it was lined up at that drive in. It was super cool. If you guys haven't gotten a chance to meet uh Kyle and Missy Defina and Mama who is one of their directors, definitely go and check out one of their shows. They're the kindest people like so sweet. You'd absolutely love them. Hell, yeah, definitely gonna have to do that. So anyway, that's what I want to talk about this week. All things technical, let's talk about lights, props or really sets because that's the stuff like the transducer wall and the coffin and all those pieces, shadow casts. Have evolved to the point where our collections rival, even that of the original stage shows, sets that Brian Thompson designed for the theater upstairs. How did we get here? What are the tips and tricks that we have accumulated over the years that some of our listeners might be able to use for their own local shadow cast. Love it. I mean, I, I think part of the charm, you know, part of the reason that modern shadow cast work so well is that as a whole, the way that the show is presented in movie theaters now is actually pretty darn close to Brian Thompson's original stage show designs. If you go all the way back to the first transfer of Rocky from the theater upstairs to the Chelsea Classic, you can actually see a lot of similarities in how shadow cast present their shows. Now this was back before the big Broadway vacation of the stage shows designs. It was that initial like dilapidated movie theater look, they were scaffolding all around the auditorium, flanking the stage, everything was draped with Acme Demolition Company drop canvas on the second level of the left scaffold which is accessible by steps or a ladder sat an old chest style coca-cola fridge on the second level of the right side, scaffold also accessible by ladder was a hospital bed and behind it neon tubes, test tubes and chemical flasks filled with colored liquids arranged in front of the neon until the show gets to the lab scene. It's hidden behind a shabby stained curtain. And that was really it like you had the stage in the center with the movie screen behind it, a catwalk blocking the center aisle for Frank's entrance from the back of the house. Uh The narrator had a little corner off to the side and in later productions, he gets a chair or a wall of books, but early on he was just hanging. And those couple of core pieces that make up the set for the lab is what a lot of shadow casts focus on for their big props. One of the first things a lot of casts will invest in is the transducer and the tank. They're the most impressive biggest bang for your buck kind of thing. And our what actors interact with the most. Yeah, over here in New York for the longest time, we had a big heavy wooden tank that had been put together over the years. Uh And we had a big PV C pipe frame that we, you know, hung our transducer print on. Uh That was super cool. Um At one point, we had had a like a wooden transducer that had like plexi glass in it and like had a lot of like stenciled on stuff that thing broke after about two shows, somebody put their foot through the plexiglas. So yeah, since we've moved theaters, like we just don't have the space for all of that big stuff on our stage. Like we can't have the giant transducer and like our stage is so small it can't even fit a tank. So, I mean, we've, we've fallen back to like, we just have a couple of lighting sands that we drape a red cloth over for our tank. Uh And we don't even bother with the transducer anymore. Is the tank and the transducer, like the first pieces that you guys did up in Buffalo, like you have to transport everything for your shows. Was there a lot of planning to make sure that everything fits in a car and it isn't too heavy, you know, all that jazz. So the first thing that I actually purchased for our cast was not the tank or the transducer, but it was just four black stools that I think I got from Target. When I first came on, I was just a cast member doing nice things for my guest. So we ended up using those four stools as our tank and our throne and our bed for different bedroom scenes. And they definitely, you could see that they've been loved. They're in some desperate need of some duct tape at this point. But we actually got our transducer before we got our tank and we got that society six shower curtain that you see a lot of casts have. It's super easy to toss up. You can either grab yourself like a rolling costume. Rack or some PV C pipe and everything breaks down. And PV C pipe has been our best friend up in Buffalo because as you guys have talked about before we put out a youtube video showing how we were able to make a tank out of PV C pipe and a shower curtain, everything breaks down so that it can sit flat on the bottom of a trunk so that we can fit everything else for the show into the car. That's a great solution. I love that video. You guys did it. It looks really great and it's just a cheap solution with like easy, you know, things that you could just find at Home Depot or your local hardware store. Big bang for that buck. And I love that tank. It looks so good on stage. If you look close up, you might question it. But 15 ft rule. Yeah, exactly. What about some of the other pieces? There isn't a Coke machine in the movie. So obviously no one uses that. But I know some casts have the jukebox for Colombia. Ah, yes. The good old model. 14 52 Rola jukebox. Yeah, they're, uh, those are pretty hard to find these days. Any time you see one come up, it's gonna go for a couple of $1000 right now. There's a couple of owners manuals up on ebay. Those are only around 50 bucks. So that's about as close as most of us out. There will ever get. I think I know that, uh, Larry Viel has a original 14 52 rock Cola jukebox, the one that home of happiness used to use. But most casts, if they do anything for it that I've seen, they just go with kind of a cut out. Uh, if, if at all the original screen used one actually popped up about 20 years ago. The owner took it to a company to have it restored and there's at least one picture that was floating around the internet from the company that did the restoration. It's a fantastic reference photo. If you're looking like to make a cut out or something and you don't want to have to sit there and go frame by frame in the movie. Uh I'll make sure to toss that photo up into our show notes for anyone that wants to take a look. Yeah, we've never bothered with the jukebox like we have Columbia on a chair or like a step ladder. It's nice to get her some height to stand out during time warp, especially because the audience is like usually standing at that point. Do you do anything for the jukebox? We just use those trusty old black stools, they're easy to move so we can move Colombia's jukebox wherever we want. But for that drive in show, we did with Sweet Translucent Dreams, they actually had a painted kids dresser, it almost looked like so that jukebox had a cute little place for Colombia to sit, but there were also drawers in it that they could put other props in to help with their storage and transportation of it, which is super cool. Oh, I love that. That's a great double function for that kind of a prop. Yeah, they're so smart. I mean, it's, it's a shame that they chose not to use the Coke machine in the movie though. This is, this is speaking for myself. Did you guys know that the early stage show versions lined the entire inside of the lid of the Coke machine in Cheetah print? So when it opens up, Eddie pops out and he's on a backdrop of print that matches the print that's on his jacket I thought was super cool. Doesn't he get killed in the freezer too? Like Frank doesn't use a pick ax in the original stage show. He forces him back into the Coke machine and stabs him to death with a microphone stand. Then later after Eddie's Teddy Frank runs back over to the Coke machine and pulls out a clear plastic bag filled with gore and dismembered body parts and says, say a prayer for Eddie. I just defrosted him. His destiny is in the bag. And then Magenta gets one of her very few lines in the show when she says, I'll put him down the waste disposal, which like come on. Everyone knows you've got to use a bathtub of acid if you want to dissolve a body. Exactly. Like watch breaking bad for once in your life, but Aaron don't give our secrets away. That's a little creepy. Everyone doesn't know that if maybe I should ask Ryan if we should change our room for R K O. What floor are you guys staying on again? I mean, come on. It's way darker. Magenta's way. Can you like just imagine her standing over the sink, like shoving piece by piece of Eddie into the garbage disposal? I mean, honestly cooking him for dinner in the movie was just far more humane. I mean, you're not wrong, but it's still really creepy that you're saying this guys, I'm getting some real Hannibal Lecter vibes over here. Oh, that come on. I have not eaten, you know, whatever back on topic. I was just pointing out that the Coke machine was super cool. I mean, in, in several productions, they also used it as the table that like Rocky gets up off of, you know, during lab scene during his creation. So it, it really was one of those like multifunctional props. I'd love to see shadow cast reincorporate it. But I mean, it doesn't match the film and it's such a large and cumbersome thing. Like it probably wouldn't play to most audiences. I'm just wishful thinking. I, I think it, it does work better the way that most casts do. Eddie's entrance, right? He comes from the back of the theater up the aisles or from off stage in the past, some casts have, like, actually built the full red wall or like they set up fake ice bricks for Eddie to bust through. I know that, uh, F F O down in Vegas did that at one point in time. But, I mean, that's a lot of work for something that's only going to be used for a few seconds. Oh, don't give me ideas, guys. That sounds amazing. But speaking of Rocky's birth, what about the Starship Honeycomb? You know that big red thing that comes from the ceiling that Frank turns all the dials on. Why is it even called Starship Honeycomb? So, the community calls it that because like everything we do, it's some weird obscure dumb old reference way back when there was an old honeycomb cereal commercial. And they used to have an alien that would compare the size of their cereal to other cereals and they traveled in the Starship Honeycomb in the first shot during creation in the movie where you see the contraption descending from the ceiling, it's hexagonal. So it looks like the honeycomb cereal. It's a really, really dumb reference. Yeah. I, I was amazed, I found uh a commercial for this on youtube the other day when I was like, just screwing around looking for stuff as I do. Um, and I, I was just like, oh, ok, I get it. This is really dumb. So I, I know, some casts have actually recreated this thing. Like, usually I've seen it out of lightweight plastic and then they, like, hang it off of a pole or a fishing reel or something like that. I know R K O did that for the last R K O con. Um, I know back in the nineties, midnight insanity out of California even got to hang their Starship honeycomb from the ceiling in their theater. And that, that thing was like a huge full size recreation of the one in the film. It was like six ft tall. Absolutely nutty. We've never decided to build it in New York. At least not that I'm aware of over, you know, the past 50 years. Is that something you guys have considered up in Buffalo? Like a full size starship honeycomb or something for that. So, we actually do have a starship honeycomb. Buffalo. Yeah, I built it, I think back in 2016 or 2017 out of an old TV box. I had happened to have gotten a new TV and I thought that the cardboard was like sturdy enough to build props out of. So I use the same cardboard to build a coffin. So I just, I didn't actually measure anything. I just took a kitchen pairing knife to the cardboard and went at it, but it's got its two little layers that used to have string on it and it has a lot of duct tape and a push light in the middle of it, which doesn't work anymore. We did use to hang it off of a pole and have it come down, which has just always been really wonky. And we found that this past year just having a stage hand hold it and do something stupid as they bring it over to Frank makes it a lot easier. So that way Frank has it, they just stand there with their arms up, holding it until Rocky grabs it and then Rocky can kind of y it backwards and the stage hand catches it. Oh, that's clever. I like that. And our, one of our new co tech directors actually wants to take it and he wants to put on all of the, the colored knobs because it bothers him that it doesn't have colored knobs. That sounds about right as I am not that crazy to put those on. I will probably be handing our starship honeycomb over to him to do that with the letting him know that it does have to be stored and those things need to be on their sturdy to fit in our singular Rocky closet where, where our entire show lives. So yeah, I mean, that's, that's always like one of the biggest difficulties is like, where do you trade off from? Like how accurate you want to get it to just like how quickly will it take actors to destroy it. But speaking of big dumb props in the lab. We can't forget the pommel horse and the weight rack. I personally always felt that the pale horse was like a little unnecessary. It is so much more entertaining to just grab an audience member to sit on or to get up in someone's face when you're frank. Yeah, the audience's props thing is a great gimmick that has a long history in Rocky shadow casting. I know over on F N s in New Jersey, that's Nicky's cast. Instead of like having a full transducer wall, they have a light up switch panel that they just like grab an audience member and hang it around their neck. It's pretty clever and another great way to get some added audience interaction. I mean, for the weights, like we used to have a full weight rack, but we've completely condensed that down. We just use like a pair of plastic kid weights that are painted red and white. Just the two that Frank hands over to Rocky so that he doesn't have to completely pantomime the, the weight lifts. Do you guys have a full weight rack? Like, I know that's another piece that with some clever assembly can be made lightweight and like pretty easy to break down. So what we actually do is we don't have the full weight rack. We just have the two small weights that Rocky holds, which are made out of paper towel rolls and plastic bowls that were painted red and covered in gift wrap it. But the Pale Horse, we actually just started using audience members or a stage hand to do that as well this year because it's fun. And as long as somebody doesn't mind and they're down for it, it just, it, it really does make it so much fun. But we have seen casts use Riff raff for a lot of those things too. Oh, don't, don't give John any ideas. I don't need more stuff to do on stage. But when we were down in Pittsburgh J C C P is one of those casts that uses Riff and, and depending on the Frank Riff does get tossed around a lot. So Riff becomes the weight rack and they'll hold just those two things and they'll end up getting tossed as the pel horse and if you really don't want to make them, he was a cast member. They're right there. That's a pretty good idea. I mean, Riff is doing nothing during lab scene. I was just doing Riff last night and I was just kind of standing there the whole time being like, all right. I, I, I feel like I've got to be here. But what am I doing? You know? Yeah, it makes it a lot of fun and I think it's something we're probably gonna implement in our cast. We've had so much fun seeing what other casts do and seeing what might work up here in Buffalo to, to just make things more fun. So we're gonna have a few fun changes as we get back into shows. But the Rocky Horror stage show didn't even have any of these props. It wasn't until after the movie that the show started to take inspiration from the cinematic version that you started seeing stuff like weights and the palm horse making appearances in the stage version. They've really taken a lot of inspiration from the movie. You've even got a full car on stage for the driving scene. Now, that's another one where the shadow cast version is actually closer to the original staging. They didn't even use chairs at first and like Brad didn't have a steering wheel. They just mined the entire thing with the two of them, like Brad and Janet waving their arm back and forth to simulate windshield wipers. They later had phantoms doing that and whatever. But in the original show, it was just Brad and Janet sitting there flailing around. Wait. Is that where it really comes from? Like one hand on the wheel, one hand making the wipers. Like I've seen some casts block it that way. Yeah. I'm not sure if it was an intentional crib from the stage show or just kind of like a product of independent evolution, right? It's a pretty intuitive way to do it. You know, if you don't have the West End budget for a full size car cut out to roll on and off stage. The set up the stage show uses for bedroom scenes is also a really modern innovation. Like you, you've probably seen this, the stand up bed that they use, that kind of gives you that impression of like a top down view on Brad and Janet and Frank, as they're like getting their freak on most shadow casts I've seen do the backlit sheet thing. It's a pretty close match to the movie and it's such a great opportunity for some visual gags. I know my cast absolutely loves the back lit thing. And for a lot of years we've just been doing it screen accurate. It's the one part of the show where if you're behind the screen, you could watch the screen and get it shot for shot. Perfect. But just this year as we've been visiting casts, we've actually learned that you can do all of these visual gags and kind of spice it up for audiences. So, while we haven't been able to do too, too many of these bedroom gag scenes, we'd love to know what your favorite bedroom gags are. So I think one of my favorites is just kind of the whole class of gags that's like the, the infinite uh kind of clown car kind of gag, right where like Brad is just constantly pulling different things out of Frank's butt, right? Like it's, oh, it's a chicken. It's a saxophone. There's a whole silk scarf, you know, routine that's coming out kind of thing and like, I always think that those are super funny. Um They're a great way to like, reuse some of the other props that you have and that are just sitting around and like, everyone gets a good laugh out of them, but it is a little difficult if somebody's not familiar with how, you know what the angles are like and what, you know how, where the light's being held to make sure that you get that otherwise it doesn't quite play so well. But you have to, you have to have watched Austin Powers many times to be able to get that. Right. Yeah, exactly. And, uh, and luckily, or perhaps, unfortunately, depending on who you talk to, I have seen the Austin Powers trilogy many times. So I consider myself a professional at those jokes. It, it really is fun. I mean, and even just doing the classic kind of like, oh, yeah. No. Well, pantomime some sex acts, you know, going down on Brad flipping them around all this kind of stuff. It really plays, the audience just goes so wild for it, which is, is really fun considering it's a part of the movie that usually is just super dead, you know. So also last night, so in the N Y C R H P S theater that we're using right now, we are not able to do the, the back wit sheet that we used to do and that a lot of casts use. So we're literally just like, sometimes we have a table that we would just like get on and do. Sometimes we don't like last night I walked out as Frank to our Janet Greg who was just standing center stage had no idea what to do. We didn't even talk about it. We were just like, let's fucking go with it and he ended up tea bagging me on the floor. Uh Goddamn it. I I think that that may have been my favorite bedroom scene gagged specifically because of the fact that it was not planned, it was not articulated and we didn't know what to do. So it was like, when in doubt, put your balls in my face, I guess that's my life mantra. I, I mean, I've got to say I'm a pretty huge fan of the sheet mostly because I only have a very low ball to face tolerance. But it also just so happens to match how it was originally done in the stage show. The giant movie screen was also a scrim and all of bedroom scene was done behind it in shadow play with Frank and Brad and Janet, you know, behind the screen. It's pretty neat that the original stage show blocking lives on within shadow casts while the modern stage show has taken it in an entirely different direction. But I've got to say we don't even do that anymore here in New York. Now, we're just boning on people's laps. And let me tell you, they love every single second of it. Last night, when I was doing bedroom scene with our brad, I literally took them and threw them onto their very small brad. And I'm a very weak man. So you can imagine how, like, like that is how light this person is. Like, I literally took them and just tossed them on top of an audience member and began to, you know, simulate the bond and the person loves it obviously. And and of course, you only do this for an audience member that is obviously very into the show and very willing and all of that stuff. But like I literally took them, put them on top of an audience member started simulating it, they loved it. The audience members loved it. The people that were sitting next to them, loved it. The people that were across the aisle, you can tell her like, man, I wish I sat there, you know, I also love doing as much as I possibly can on or with an audience member because that's why they came to the show. So every single possible chance I get, I do it. I have been especially in this venue because we are all so tightly packed and so close together. I regularly break character now and will talk directly to the audience if there's like a long period of time where I'm not doing anything and there's action happening on stage. Like when Dr Scott is doing his fucking speech during planet man, it, I literally walked off stage and like went over to an aisle of an area that had not been hit by, like by a cast member and I started shooting the shit with them for a little bit before I came back in. That's great. I love that stuff. I love you. So, what other props have we missed? Have we left any out that are super important? Are there any that are just particularly interesting? Like, what, what else do we got here for props? It seems like a lot of guests have different ways to do the riff window. Some people have cardboard cut outs. Some people just do a spotlight or a flashlight, but I don't think there's any wrong way to do that. It seems like if you climb on to an audience member and, you know, stick your dick in their face, they're happy about it. We've had cast members do that a few times. Yeah, we, we've never had a window or anything like that, but I know like J C C P has a full, like they rift just holds it up for them, you know, kind of thing and they just peek through it. That's pretty cool. But here's the thing, all these props are great, but they accomplished very little if your audience can't see them at all and that's where the other side of Rocky Tech comes in lighting and this one is where a lot of casts differ because we're not all matching the movie and there's a lot of constraints based on your performance space and your budget. Yeah, it was during the transfer from the theater upstairs to the Chelsea Classic that the original stage show like really stepped up their lighting game. They brought in a small fledgling company called White Lights to do the install in the new space at the classic. It was actually the company's first theater job. Almost 50 years later, they still provide lighting for big West end productions and they still provide lights for the Rocky Horror stage show. And the stage show had a lot of changes over the years. There was that whole debacle in the eighties where they added lasers and crazy effects to the show. And then in the nineties, when the stage show started putting a whole castle set on stage, they went to some very realistic gothic moody lighting replicating a lot of the film's look. And then there was that one version where Frank wrote a giant penis on stage for the start of floor show. The one that had like crazy bright and colorful lights all throughout, it was more like concert lighting than for a stage show. And we've kind of hit on all of those different levels over the years here at New York, Aaron always loves to talk about the setup that we used to use when we were over in our last theater. Oh, yeah, that was, that was such a great lighting setup. I mean, it was big. It was ridiculous. Like we had six ellipsoidal on three different, you know, tripod stands. Like we had a bunch of color changing parts and some specially lights. We had a wireless battery operated D M X controlled color changing light that we were able to use for back lighting, bedroom scenes. I mean, everything was wireless, it was run off of D M X, it was controlled from a laptop. It was quite insane. We also had like a single spotlight that we used in addition to it. But space constraints just like, don't allow us to do that in our new theater. So you know, that stuff is uh sitting in storage waiting for its opportunity to return. But now we are totally on the flip side of that. Our current setup is like this really dinky small T bar. There are two lights on it that have a little bit of aluminum foil around the front of the light so we can direct it a little bit more because if we let it just kind of go, it definitely washes out the screen. And our first show, we used a light bar in the front that did absolutely nothing because there was nowhere for us to put it safely without like inhibiting access to seats for the audience members. And then most recently we bought two led battery operated work lights that we put in the front so that when people stand up during time warp, they can still see us because when people stand up, they block the T bar and that's it. The main issue with our new space is that there is only one power outlet. Yeah. And to use that power outlet, we have to run an extension cord to begin with. So there is not a lot of electricity and not a lot of that in our space. So unfortunately, until we realize that, you know, we've been here for a while and we can have this conversation with the theater about keeping more of our stuff there rather than having to ship it back and forth. Uh We're gonna be running with this. A really, really dinky rudimentary light set for now. So we've really flipped from one end of the spectrum to the other. A huge multi $1000 set up back to the bare necessities. What have you been doing for lighting up in Buffalo? So what's crazy up here in Buffalo is that when we were still an annual cast, our theater didn't light us until 2017. So 10 years after we started doing the show with them, we were literally performing in the shadows. It was that year that I had asked one of the technicians and had my co-director at the time, John talk to them and say, hey, we're here and we're putting in more and more work and we're perfecting our show to give you guys a better event. We need you guys to light us. So we are so lucky that we are working at a venue that typically is putting on big concerts. So they actually light the entire front of the stage for us for that annual show. However, when we are doing shows anywhere, that is not the rive that story changes a little bit. So we did have one performance where the drive in that we were at, rented a stage and they had about six rock star lights that were able to light the stage just fine for us. Whereas the abandoned Kmart parking lot, we only had what we could bring and what we have since Ryan is a musician was one tea bar of rock star lighting and it did the job. But now going into shock treatment, we are worried because we're in a very small space directly in front of the screen. So I started looking into ideas for spots because our friends and a lot of casts do use spotlights. And I was able to find tactical flashlights for $30 apiece. The brand is called a Alone Fire and the model is X 37 and there are tactical spotlights that actually have a scope on them where you can open and close them like you would a a large spotlight and they change four different colors. You have to click through all of them to use them. But we have three of them that are going to be held on mic stands with Universal Night clips and these suckers are pretty bright. We're actually looking to maybe get 1/4 1, but they're a great option for casts that have, you know, a smaller space or just need lighting and we're going to do a whole youtube video about it so we can show you guys what they look like there in a couple of weeks. But it ended up being a really great hack that we found and we're really excited to use them for shock treatment and, and hopefully shows as we go forward as we figure out our lighting game. No, that's a great solution. I, I, I love that. I know a lot of casts have kind of tried to do the flashlight game before, but it's always right. You got to find the right ones and all this. I'm really looking forward to that video. I think, uh, we might have to look into those as well for us. Yeah. And I mean, a lot of it, it's what works for your cast out there and it really comes down to budget. I was able to spend about 100 and $50 to get the proline universal night clips and the tactical flashlights. And if any guests are really looking for it, there's a website called musician's friend and they have something called The Stupid Deal of the day. And every once in a while they have mic stands or speaker stands on sale and they really are a stupid deal because they're cheap. So I'll definitely put that in our youtube video for you guys to follow if it's something that you want. But I really got this spotlight idea from our friends at the J PC C P. I know over in Pittsburgh, the J C C P runs their entire show at their home theater with two big spotlights and those are positioned up in the balcony. But those big spotlights are gonna be a little unwieldy and expensive for a lot of casts. So hopefully these little ones will give someone some options. Yeah, I mean, those sound like an absolutely fantastic budget option. I mean, back 17 years ago, you know, when I first started in the Midwest, uh our cast setup was literally, you know, two like painters drop lights, you know, just clipped onto the front seats running to a small little like electrical box that somebody sat there and flicked on and off and, you know, a couple of flashlights that, you know, were, were shining from the back of the audience. So, I mean, as you guys always say up there in Buffalo, there's no wrong way to Rocky and that comes, you know, all the way full circle to lighting too. Like as long as you can get your actors seen. That's what's really important. Yes. I mean, hell at our driving in shows and even some of the ones now you can do a lot with just the flashlight on your phone. If you only need to light a single relatively stationary actor. Like there are a few moments, even though we have, you know, our little tea bar and the floodlights up in front, there are still points in the movie where you can't just straight up see people, for example, Columbia's verse and time warp still really hard to see her. So our lighting wizard Chloe will literally just run down the aisle, squat down and just shine her phone flashlight directly on her face and boom, we can see them when Frank walks up the aisle at the end. If I'm going home, I got a flashlight in my face. Sometimes you just got to do it. And honestly, like I know, yes, there are gonna be some people who are like this is impro professionals, but the added chaos of having somebody completely break the fourth wall to shine a light on a cast members face is so funny that you should love it. Yeah, I mean, it, it, it, it's, it's chaotic, it's fun. It's, you know, it's what Rocky is about. Right. Exactly. Rocky is about fun. If you wanted to see like a really pristine theater piece, you shouldn't become into Rocky for real though. I have a bunch of friends on the west coast who have never seen a live showing of Rocky. And if all goes well and hopefully all does go well, I'm actually going to be taking them to their first show when I go out there in October for Twitch Con. So it's in San Diego. We're going to be going out there and visiting the San Diego cast and I've already asked guests with them. So fingers crossed that they are back performing because if they, if they are, I'm gonna be doing that and I'm gonna be able to give them like that their first Rocky horror experience. And I've told them like, because, you know, they hear me talk about it all the time and they're like, wow, like this is so cool. Like John's part of this like big, like national theater thing and I'm like, it's not as cool as it sounds. You're giving me way too much credit. All right. It's exactly as cool as it sounds, which is not that cool. No. Uh but yeah, I mean, do we, do we miss anything? Do we miss any props? Do we miss any lighting things that we really should be going over? I mean, I know that there's, you can, we can just go on about this stuff for days and days. I think we really hit all the big ones, especially the ones that might help any people that are looking to start casts or, or gussy up some old props that maybe, you know, need a little polish. That's awesome. So, we've talked a lot about what everyone is doing now, but I'm, I'm curious, what are your guys' biggest? Like, I wish we could when it comes to props and lighting, like budget and space limitations be damned. Like, what kind of things would you love to see that? Maybe are completely unrealistic for your weekly shadow cast but might be possible for like a bigger event like, I don't know, R K O K four Roy. Oh gosh, just so many motion lights, like the programmable ones that have the cool gobo in them and you could just like completely rock out and program them to the sounds of the film. So you don't have to touch it and it just goes where it's supposed to maybe like the really fancy ones that can follow an actor if they like go rogue. This is like some like Star Trek bullshit. But that, that limitless lighting. Oh I always wanted to pick up moving lights for, for us, you know, up here when we still had everything D M X controlled and it was like, uh I just, I could never justify the budget. They're so expensive. A single one of those things is like 67 to 800 bucks, even if you're getting the cheap Chinese knockoff version. Like uh but I, I got to say the, the moment when we switched to having programmable queues for a creation scene. And no, and somebody didn't have to sit there and flick the lights on and off, you know, to kind of like, match up with it. They, they had gotten so used to it that just the other week at one of our shows, our lighting, uh, our wonderful lighting tech Chloe comes up and he's like, check out what I've done. I have, I have figured out the timing so I can flick these back on and off again and it will match. And I'm like, oh honey, it's, it's such a throwback. You didn't even realize that's how we used to do it. Well, back in mind, hey, you know, but uh yeah, it, I'm, I geek over light so hard. Like I'm always there for that. I also really like, um, what I've seen a couple of casts do where they're doing more backdrops, right. Doing more like I've seen the castle, I've seen, you know, the car or putting the, the gate um with the enter at your own risk as like a, a backdrop that comes off of the same thing that the transducer's on more and more pieces like that. Like you get a little close to the stage show um with how much are you like putting sets and things on. But I, I love that, especially for big productions where you see pieces like that that like you don't expect at a, at a weekly shadow cast. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we love our, our castle backdrop. My co-director Allie was able to paint the entire Oakley Court and they just killed it now to be fair. It's painted on a shower curtain and it's a little crunchy and a tiny pinch difficult to store, but I wouldn't have it any other way. They were just incredible and I am so happy that they gave us that piece and it covers the the transducer during the whole first chunk of the film that we don't need it. So works out John. What about you? What is your dream Rocky setup? What I know my place. Well, you heard it here first, John knows his place and doesn't care. And that's our show. We just absolutely love to thank Jamie for joining us on air today. Thank you so much. It was so fantastic. Well, thanks for having me. I was so excited to get to chat with you guys. The pleasure is all ours, Jamie before we head out. Is there any anything special that you or your cast has on the horizon that you would like to share with our listeners? Well, you can guys can find everything that the cast is up to on all of our social media. We had that little little snippet of, of preview that you guys can go back and listen to. But if you tend to see me, maybe not as much involved with my cast during the month of June, like mid June, July. It's because I'm actually going to be performing with Shakespeare in Delaware Park in Buffalo, which is the second oldest and one of the largest Shakespeare festivals in the country. For as you like it. I know a lot of Rocky people tend to be Shakespeare fans. I've actually met a few of them probably because Shakespeare is all dick jokes to be honest. But I have as you like it going on from June 23rd to July 17th. So it's right before Rocky. So if anybody wants to come visit me for that, the show is free and I will show you around Buffalo. Hell yeah. And of course, if any of our listeners are interested in checking out any of our H P S Buffalo's upcoming performances, we'll have them all linked for you in our show notes. And as always, we'd like to thank our writer Jacob and our editor Aaron from Tennessee. We appreciate all of your work. If any of our listeners has a question that they'd like to have answered on air for our next snack or our jack off sesh or whatever, weird, whatever fits with your name or maybe some community news that they'd like to promote or even have a cool story to share with the community. Rocky talky would love to include it, just go to the Rocky talkie podcast dot com and fill out the contact form to share And if you're enjoying Rocky talkie, please help us out by reading, reviewing and subscribing to the show. It makes the podcast more accessible to listeners, which really helps us grow the show. And if you want even more Rocky talky content, check us out on Facebook, youtube, Instagram and tiktok all at Rocky Talkie podcast. We'll talk to you all next week. Bye bye bye. I mean, why you, oh sorry. Yeah. Fuck you, Aaron. I have literally no time to eat. So I'm eating in, in uh between my lines at the Frank Boco. Nope, we call Bo Bo. I was, I would, I would say Frank Bongo. Sorry, I just saw, I decided to choke on my own spit. Yeah, there's some, you know what? I'm not gonna throw it back. Spitters are great as everyone. OK? Not too shabby at all. Oh my God, my voice is shuttering. Um Fuck that brought a tear to my eye. Not too, I eat food again. Hold on. I'm so hungry. And uh and of course you only do this for uh an audience member that is very much into the boo classy. I finished eating everybody. You have my full attention again. My apologies. I can eat my now. Yeah, exactly. Aaron has the meats.