Hello to all of you, unconventional conventions out there. Welcome to Rocky Talkie. It's the podcast where we talk about anything and everything related to Rocky Horror. I'm Aaron, I'm Meg and joining us on air this week. We've got Danny from the J C CPA K A mix universe. Hi, mix. Hi. It's super exciting to be here. All right. Mix. It's super awesome to have you here. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your time within the Rocky Horror community? Yeah. So I joined the J C C P in 2011, uh making this my 11th year doing Rocky Horror who and I been pretty active the whole time. I am now a leader of the J C C P in the form of an arbiter, which is actually more fun than it sounds. I do get to throw parties sometimes. So, and um let's see, I directed the production of Rocky Horror at 2018 S K in Pittsburgh. So some of you might know me from there. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're absolutely thrilled to have you on air. Oh, 100%. So, before we get started with the show. We do the thing. We want to take a moment. Ask each other, how was your week? Did you get up to anything fun? And it better not be about Rocky. So sweetie, what were you up to this week? What was I up to this, this week? I saw a musical. You were there? And it's not the one that you're about to say, it's the other one. We went and got tickets to a musical. Um, that was supposed to be a time travel show. It was like a time loop. It was kind of billed as a groundhog day in the eighties kind of thing. But the time loop had nothing to do with it and it was really just a bad rendition of rent except set in the eighties. Um It was fun. It was a good time. I, I enjoyed myself and I enjoyed myself even more in like the 4.5 hours that Aaron and I spent on our sofa when we got home, just like picking apart this musical. It was so good. Like, it was like a b movie musical. You know, it was like fun in a bad way. That's generous. That's, I don't know, I, I was entertained and the process of getting to sit at home and like, just talk about it for hours and hours was also a lot of fun. So that whole experience was, was a good time. For me, even though the musical maybe itself wasn't quite. So, anyway, it's called Rewind. It's an off Broadway show. And if you're in the New York City area and you want to talk about a musical for a lot of hours, get tickets or 12 bucks. Well, or don't it closes this weekend so, well, then don't do that. And, um, sorry, you didn't miss much. It was, it was weird. It was weird. But I want to talk about the other musical that we saw this week. Well, one of the other musicals we saw like five shows this week. It was ridiculous. Yeah, I know. Gotta love living in Manhattan. I was just gonna say that's like the point, right? So just the other day, Justin Bruen from, uh R K O came down and we all went to see into the woods. Uh, it was like a concert stage version of it with Neil Patrick Harris playing the Baker and just an all Star Broadway cast and, like, I love into the woods. It's one of my favorite shows of all time. I've seen it so many times because my parents teach theater, they've done it at a ton of different, you know, uh, colleges. So I've seen it like every single time that it comes up, love that show. And this was like the best version of it I have ever seen. It was so good. It was so much fun. Good luck getting tickets to that one too. It's all sold out for its whole run and I was just super excited to get to see it and, you know, share it with a bunch of awesome friends. So that's what I did. I am, I'm still riding that high from, uh, from CNN to the woods. What about you, Mick? You get up to anything fun this week? Well, yeah, uh, I, I'm getting married in two weeks So this is uh has been a week of many parties, you know, which is not the worst problem to have. I had my wedding shower today. It was wonderful. Uh It was we did, you know some of the like traditional, like we did vowels, mad Libs. So my sisters took like sheets with, you know, wedding vows on them. But everyone got to insert different words and it was uh unnecessarily sexual. I will say I would imagine so. Yeah. Fortunately my grandma didn't make it. So we were good there. But uh yeah, but it was really fun. We got presents, love present. Well, congratulations. That's a fucking amazing story. Thank you at the last R K O con actually Sean A K, a pony boy and I won the marriage Maze game show. So I feel like it. It's, that's our like crowning achievement as a couple. It's destined it. Yes, I mean, what else are you going to do after that? Right. Right. Exactly. All right guys. So with that all out of the way. Let's dive in to our first segment. It's a global news. So first up in global news this week, Lou Adler recently featured on Fat Mike's Fat Mike podcast where he talked about the early days of Rocky Horror. So if you haven't heard of Fat Mike, I don't blame you. Fat Mike is the lead singer of punk band, No Effects. And he hosts his own podcast where he chats with musicians, actors and I don't know professional sports ball players about their time and their successes within their respective industries. In the most recent episode, Mike's joined on air by Lou to talk about his ridiculously prolific career in the movie and music industries. During the Convo, Lou explains that his career started off as that of a songwriter where he partnered with legendary jazz musician, Herb Alpert, which led him into his work as a music producer. Once he started making producer, money, Liu was able to shift gears into film making. He talked about how film production back in the seventies was a lot more wild west than it is today for indie filmmakers especially studios would set a price for how much they pay for a film and then the producers would pay the rest out of pocket hoping to recoup their costs when the project released. However, even if a studio agreed to pick up a film's costs, they still had the option to turn it down if they didn't like the finished product and the producers would just be out the production costs until they found a studio who would buy it. For this reason, filmmakers often spent years making movies. For example, Lou's first film up in Smoke, which was a chi chi Chong movie took seven years to make seven years. That's crazy. Right. Fucking yikes. Mike went on and noted that in spite of needing to overcome this teeny little hurdle. Uh I think you did, OK, on Rocky Horror though, to which Liu replied, yeah, it really paid no shit. Lou. So Lou then goes on to talk about the most important line in the film. I think we all know it, don't dream it be it. And how the film was only a success because the majority of the people involved in its creation, especially the quote Australian actors were already living embodiments of that line aren't all that part was so cute because he like, clearly didn't want to name drop. But he was like, all the actors were especially um you know, the Australian one. He went on to talk about how likewise the audiences who received the movie the best were usually the outsiders who all got together every Friday and Saturday night to turn Rocky screenings into their own versions of the parties that they never got invited to speak for yourself. The showings became places for them to be fun. Popular people, they'd always wanted to be with the cool fun friends they'd always wanted to have. I feel like that's what I always say when I'm talking about my Rocky origin story. Oh, absolutely. So Lou then told the story of the first Rocky screenings and how the film struggled to find an audience at first primarily because quote, we were making this without any idea who we would appeal to. None of us knew. In fact, when Lou first showed the movie to a room full of Fox marketing team members, half of them got up and left during the screening. Yeah. Yeah. Yikes. So Rocky's first time in public was at a theater in Santa Barbara where was paired as the second film in a double feature. So once again, after the first movie was over, when Rocky started playing an overwhelming majority of the audience just got up and left such a bummer, right? I have to imagine that would have been Phantom of the Paradise, right? That's the thing they were trying to do it with. So I don't know if you just sat through that, that this is something that he talked about during the interview. Actually, he said, um they didn't know what to pair it with. So it got paired with. He said it was might have been on Golden Pond, but that movie didn't come out until 81. I I looked it up. So, but he said it was something with that flavor where it was like a lot of older people and they had just sat through like some kind of serious movie and then Rocky started happening. So it was just, it was a bad pairing and he did make note of that. Well, no wonder it wasn't that great. So after the screening totally flopped, lou sat outside on a curb with one of the 20th century Fox reps and I, they were just like dejected and kind of talking about how terribly it had gone. And a group of students came up to them and said, hey, we love the film. So that was like their aha moment where they realized that there was an audience for this movie. After all, they just needed to like, figure out exactly who it was. And as we've talked about the story before of the executives at 20th century Fox, this is probably Tim Deegan that he's talking about had the idea to run Rocky Horror as a midnight movie. Tim managed to get it playing in two theaters. A cinema in Austin, Texas, I believe that's, is that the River Oaks? I don't know, uh, a cinema in Austin, Texas and of course the eighth Street playhouse in New York City, both for weekly midnight screenings, which I feel like Austin Texas was a really weird choice for, uh, a place to, you know, screen this movie for the first time, although maybe it's just the theater that was willing to take it. Right. Yeah, he uh, he said they called around to a lot of theaters and after it had just done so badly, most of them weren't willing. So these were the two that agreed. Wow, that's crazy. So, ok, so almost immediately this team begins to notice a pattern. Right? Once a week, the 20th century Fox rep would call the manager at the eighth Street Playhouse and Lou would call the manager of the Austin theater to ask about how many tickets had sold to the screening. That weekend. The theaters continually reported back pretty mediocre numbers like 48 50 people per show, but started noting that it was pretty much the same 48 to 50 people attending every single week. And they were doing weird things like yelling at the screen and running up to the front of the theater to act out the parts together. Thus began the start of the hot mess of a show we all know and love to this day. Oh, a beautiful story, right? So Lou closed out the interview by mentioning that callbacks are still a thing who would have thought. And that last time he attended a rocky showing quote, maybe 7 to 10 years ago, the callbacks were much more erotic than they were at the start. They're much grittier and less funny than the originals, but they're still funny to the audience. I mean, shit's grittier now. Lou, I'm like, personally offended that he doesn't think our callbacks are funny, right. So uh before he ended the rocky portion of the interview, Lou touched on shocky stating that the end result of the film was a disappointment. The studio surprised the creative team with a massive budget cut just as they started filming. So they were forced to completely 1 80 their vision of the movie on the spot. Shock treatment was actually supposed to take place outside and at a theater in Texas. But due to the cuts, the team ended up needing to shoot the entire movie inside of a TV studio. So it became a satire of the studio, Liu comments that it quote wasn't as funny or as good as it was supposed to be. And Tim wasn't in it. That was a big sticking point with him too. He was like, uh it wasn't as funny and we didn't, we couldn't do what we want to do and Tim wasn't in it. I don't know if this is true, but I heard somewhere that uh Tim's reason for not doing it was that he couldn't do an American accent. I've heard that one. I'm, I, I, I, I don't know, like he said, a number of reasons, I have to imagine a lot of it came down to budget and like, Tim was also like trying to start up his rock career at the time. So he, he kind of didn't want to do Frank anymore and like was over it a bit, but there's a million reasons out there. But at the end of the day, I mean, where would you have even fit him into shock treatment? Well, I think he was supposed to play Farley. Ok. I could see that. Yeah, that's what I heard. I don't know that this is true. This is all, you know, scuttle button. Oh, sure. I would, I would see that you lose the whole double casting angle though. Like, I don't know, I'd still pay to see it. Although Clifty Young was an incredible Farley. We just watched Shocky last night. Yeah, he really, he does such a good job. So Lou still does talk to Tim every so often uh when they do like events and stuff together, probably less now. But he's always been a huge admirer of his work. Of course, he uh he spent quite a bit of time on this show talking about how he feels Tim should have won an Academy Award for his Frank, which right, we firmly agree here at Rocky talking and there was a lot of discussion of the idea of Tim as Frank winning the award retroactively and uh the possibility of that happening, which is zero before Mike moved the show on and they started talking about Lou's musical career. Hm hm. So all in all, I mean, this was a really fun interview and a really cool firsthand account of Rocky's early days from literally the guy who lab grew the B movie monstrosity that we all love, love. And of course, these are just our cliff notes if you want to check out the entire interview in full, which we highly recommend you do. We've got it linked for you in our show notes. Next up, we here at Rocky Talk, you would love to extend a huge congratulations to Laverne Cox. Our um first runner up for favorite sweet transvestite. Is that fair to say? Yeah, sure sounds good. I mean, I have an Excel spreadsheet that categorizes all of my favorite actors who have ever played Franken Furter ranked in descending order. Of course. So if you just give me a second to open up this doc, I can tell you exactly where Laverne Cox stands. No need. First runner up is right on the money. I adore Laverne Cox's Franken Furter and I especially want to celebrate her today the day that we congratulate Laverne for being named Webby Advocate of the year by the 26th annual Webby Awards. Yay Yay, the Webby are an annual international award given out for digital Excellence on the internet, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. The webby recognize innovation and achievement made in digital videos, social media podcasts, gaming, advertising, web and mobile websites, and virtual and remote technology. So all things tech, the Webby also have a bunch of special achievement categories like lifetime achievement awards, best artist, best actor, most notable social movement that sort of thing and included in their special achievement category is advocate of the year the webby bestowed this award on recipients who use their online platform to amplify their commitment to social justice advocacy. So this year Laverne Cox is being celebrated for her huge body of work that has been a form of advocacy in and of itself. She was actually the first black trans person to create and star in her own TV. Show, Transform Me. She was also the first trans person on the cover of Time magazine and the first trans person to be nominated for a primetime Emmy Laverne also collaborated with the AC L U to help amplify the history of the struggle for trans rights. And she was the executive producer for the documentary disclosure, Trans Lives on screen. Where does she find the time? And um let's not forget Laverne's huge social media presence where she's incredibly outspoken and candid about her own personal journey as a Black trans woman and all of the highs and lows that come with being a P O C in the LGBT Q community. We here at Rocky Talky would like to extend our warmest, congratulations to Laverne and to thank her for being such a zealous advocate for the queer community. She may have been a bit of a divisive choice to play Franken Furter and of course, we all love to shit on the 2016 remit, speak for yourself, but come on. We'd like to take a moment to acknowledge that no matter what you thought about her in that particular role. We as a community are very fortunate to have her as part of our Rocky family. She has done some very important work and helped a lot of people and she very much embodies the spirit of what our community exists for on just a fundamental level, helping to make safe spaces and give a voice to those who really do need it. The 2022 Webby Awards will be held on Monday, May 16th. So if you're interested in checking out the results, we've got all of that info linked for you in our show notes. And before we move on, Danny, I have to ask, did you love the remake? I loved the remake. Oh my God, somebody else, I've never met another one. Did you love the remake too? It was fun. A lot of the J C C P loved it. I was very tempted to come in uh and go on a whole tangent about how I love the remake, but I, I decided I would never stop. No, that's fair. I know it gets shit on and like it's not Rocky, of course, it's not Rocky, it's its own thing, but that's the point, right? It's a love letter to Rocky and I feel like that's what we do with shadow cast anyway. We all turn it into our own thing and we make it into something else and that's what they did. Yeah. I feel like that movie is what we would get if the Rocky Horror, Shadow Cast Community tried to make Rocky Horror again. Like, I just, I, I don't know, I feel like the, the people who played the roles really got it. Yeah. I mean, I, I, you know, I'm, I'm torn on this one. Like, I love it for what it is. It's not rocky. I don't agree with all the choices that are in it. But, you know, my fondest memories, like one of my fondest memories with our cast was all of us sitting down the night that it was airing to watch it all already. We've all got our beers. We're all so excited and like, just the, like, highs and lows and like the, the, the laughter and the absurdity and profanity around like bedroom scenes and, and just like, it, it was a real journey for everybody that watched it and I, I mean, whether it was a good or bad journey, it was still a whole thing and it was super fun. I, I really do. You know, I think that, uh, the, the cast really pulled it out. I was shocked that Victoria Justice seemed to really, like, get the role. I'm like, I didn't expect her to pull out a Janet that I liked, but I was like, you, you get this slut, you understand her? I really really liked her as Janet and fucking Annalee Ashford is, I don't want to say like, you know, Sacrilege, but I liked her as much as I liked Little Nell in Colombia. It was different but she had the same, like sparkly, like disco ball vibe, right? That's just her personality. She plays that really well and I thought she was really fun to watch. I don't know they all were and why haven't we mentioned the choreography because all the choreography is so fucking good. The dance numbers were good. Shadow casters don't like it because it's too hard for us to do. I got to say that blue Lollipop put in a lot of work. I did. It really did and I did love the lollipop. It was a good touch. I have a whole um cosplay of her and I have like a bag of those blues around my pocket. You have to wear it at con, please. Thank you. I'll be looking too. Yeah. All right. Didn't we didn't we wear, are Eddie Columbia remake costumes for one con. What was it? We were of the flesh. Yeah. Yeah, because I've got, I've got the whole Adam Lambert thing. It was such a mess to make those costumes. Fortunately, there's tons of youtube videos that they did back when they did them. That was like breakdowns of the costumes. So it was like this is what I want. If Rocky was made today, please give me Give me Sue Blane sitting here doing it. But I'll take the next big thing, I'll, I'll, I'll get him. So it was so much fun. All right enough about the remake. I know we could all go on and on and on and disagree and agree and whatever. Let's kick it on over to some community news. Right. So, first up we got another spicy bulletin from the R K O K four runners. This week, the photos of the official Con enamel pin were released and they're every bit as gorgeous as we'd hoped. The pins are heart shapes and they're designed to look like the middle lace up. Bit of Frank's Sweet Transvestite Corset with the R K O Con insignia in green lettering. They've got lots of texture to mimic the look of the sequence and the glitter with the number four woven as part of the course at lazing. So it's actually really clever and I was very impressed when I saw them. These pins are of course designed by the always talented, always awesome Harley Bean and will be perfect. Although not totally screen accurate additions to any Frank jacket. If you'd like to pick one up, they're currently available for purchase through the ticket link, the same event bright page that you went to buy your early Bird Con tickets. Remember remember when you did that, you bought your tickets already, right? You're gonna come party and have an amazing time with us Right. Right. Oh, fuck you. I actually did get my tickets already. I was very impressed with myself. So anyway, you can get back to that ticket link you already visited by going to R K O con dot com slash attend and hitting get a ticket. And then if you scroll down, you'll see all the merch that's up for pre sale, including this adorable pin which will be available to order until July 31st. All right, got to do that. So of course, we've got all of that link for you in our show notes. So go grab yours today. These are awesome. They're hot and they are gonna go fast. Yes. And with that um guys, I think it's snack time, snack time. What have we got today? We've got a Mac snack today. Good evening. I'd like to thank you all for braving the weather and coming out tonight. Yeah. Over the years, the Rocky Talkie podcast has been home to numerous functions. Interviews, for example, our own Christmas pantomime. Special John's much lauded presentation of follow me on Twitch at Hi John, I'm dad, but no purpose this podcast has ever served is more important than the one which brings us together this evening for you. Dear listeners are the designated targets of a deadly assassin, an assassin of youth, a new shadow cast show destroying our Children in alarmingly increasing numbers. Reefer madness is that show an unspeakable scourge, the real public enemy number one. Um So uh M M I, I take it you want to talk about reefer madness being like a communist? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ready for madness. Let's do it. It's knocking at our doors, turning all our Children into hooligans and whores me from my me for which um point of order, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Support child. Who uh well, hold on that is, that is not what I meant. If you are already a hooligan being a whore, isn't all that different. Um Speak for yourself. He speaks for me. I didn't mean Children. Children are our future future whores. Sure. But yeah. No, let me just stop this right here before this gets any weirder. Uh You guys have talked about Reefer Madness so many times on this show, but you've never done a good old fashioned snack about it. And I want to fix that right now in today's Mac snack. I'm the guest I decide and we are doing reefer. Yeah. Amazing. Uh Let me just get the bong. I don't think that's what mix means too late. Well, while Meg takes a trip to the reefer den, let's break it down. Reefer Madness. The movie musical. So I'm pretty sure all of our listeners have heard about it. It's been an absolute favorite of the shadow casting community for like over a decade now. Hell yeah, it is one of our favorite shows at the J C C P it is a huge production. It's crazy fun. The music is so damn catchy. It's got awesome choreography and it's all the things that make a perfect shadow casting movie. It makes absolute sense, doesn't it? Just like Rocky Reefer Madness started as a stage show. It eventually made its way as an off Broadway show and then it was turned into a film adaptation, sound familiar to anyone. It should. Reefer Madness started off as the brainchild of writing partners, Kevin Murphy and Dan Stud, who had met while studying at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. In 1998 the duo were driving from Oakland to Los Angeles and they were listening to Frank Zappa's Joe's Raj and that's where they started talking about how they might stage a Frank Zappa musical and as Dan puts it, quote, it just hit me. I turned to Kevin and I said, what about doing Reefer Madness as a musical? By the time they reached Los Angeles, they had already written the first song. Yo Far Out, man. Totally. Um Let, let's unpack that for a second. I'm not super familiar with Frank Zappa. What was it about that album, Joe's Garage that got them thinking about a 1936 morality film that many have called one of the worst movies ever. So Frank Zappa was a weird fucking guy. Uh He had an absolutely incredible career that spanned over three decades and if you aren't familiar with his work. There's probably something in his massive catalog that will be worth your time. So that album that Dan and Kevin were listening to 1970 nine's Joe Garage is a three part rock opera and it's a weird one. I need to look it up immediately. Well, just cribbing from Wikipedia here. Um Joe's Garage is told by the central scrutinize a narrator telling the story of Joe. Joe is your average Californian kid who forms a garage rock band has unsatisfying relationships with women, gives all of his money to a government assisted and insincere religion explores sexual activities with appliances and is imprisoned maybe for exploring sexual activities with appliances. After being released from prison, he finds himself in a dystopian society where music itself has been criminalized and he lapses into insanity. So I can already see the parallels. You've got a narrator telling the story of a troubled youth caught up in a whirlwind of absurdity leading eventually to prison. Sound familiar. I don't remember any sexual activities with appliances in reefer madness. That's a deleted ralph scene. Wait, really? No dude. Although there is a brief moment where Jimmy humps a couch. That's true. That's a shame though. I'd pay really good money to see John Cas. Fuck a vacuum. I'll fuck a vacuum if you pay me. All right, let's talk after the recording. Cheers. Cheers. So clearly something about Zappa's three part rock opera. Got Kevin and Dan thinking about Reefer madness. Which had seen a resurgence in the seventies on the midnight movie circuit. I'd always heard that Reefer Madness, like the original black and white film was created in total earnest. Is that actually true? Um Kind of the film was produced with financial backing by a church group and given the title Tell Your Children, the group had intended to show the film to parents to teach them about the dangers of cannabis use. But after the film was shot, it was purchased by producer Dwayne Esper who re cut the film for distribution on the exploitation film circuit, he added in a number of more risque shots to titillate the audience, right? And the Exploitation Circuit was big in the late thirties all the way up through the fifties. It was mostly just a way of circumventing censorship laws, particularly the 1934 revised Hollywood production codes that they could get around by labeling the films as moral guidance, right? So it's not like the producers didn't know what they were doing. It was just a ruse to show vulgar films to an eager audience without breaking any of the draconian in laws around what could be shown in cinemas. So to answer your question, was it created in earnest? I mean, I suppose the original filming was, but the version that everybody has seen or is familiar with is not that original, the black and white classic is more like an exploitive super cut. It was edited to be smutty and outrageous and like they added in additional footage. So it's far more self aware than people like to give it credit for. See, that makes a lot of sense. Well, it might have started out as a church group project. By the time anyone saw it, it had already been cut together to riff on the educational films of the thirties and forties. So, no wonder, it seems so ridiculous. It knew what it was spoofing, at least in the editing room. Sound familiar little bit. So that's what Dan and Kevin were talking about on their drive from Oakland to Los Angeles in 1998. You've got a Zappa esque rock opera and this already outrageous exploitation story and two guys itching to write a new stage show. So when they finished the script, they brought it to director Andy Fick Man who was immediately on board. Fick man said, quote, I would was a big fan of the original movie. It always made me laugh. Then I listened to Dan and Kevin Warbling away on the demo track which didn't make me laugh. It made me cry. Yikes. But the music was great. And I thought God, if real singers were singing that and then when I read the script, I fell in love with it. Reefer Madness. The musical opened at the Hudson Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard in 1998. It was a little 99 seat theater in Los Angeles and it was scheduled for what everyone thought was going to be a two week run. Instead, it played to packed houses for over a year and a half was the talk of the town and won over 20 awards. Many devoted fans came back time and time again, dressed in costumes and shouting out the lines sound familiar. Not even a little so in September of 2001, the show closed in Los Angeles and made the trek to New York City where it opened off Broadway, Christian Campbell, Robert Torty and John Cassar all reprised their roles from the original L A version. That's Jimmy Jesus and Ralph. For those of you who aren't intimate with Reefer, Jesus was originally a double role with Robert Torty also playing Jack, which I think is some fun trivia. And while I'm glad Torty got to play a role in the film, you do lose a little bit of the hilarity from the original stage show where Jack and Jesus were played by the same actor. Although I will say I would be so sad if I didn't get to see Stephen Weber's Jack because it is too good. Oh, so while the New York show only lasted less than a month, somehow it was for that production that the team discovered a completely unknown actress fresh out of N Y U to play Mary Lane, you might have heard of her. It's Kristen Bell. I am in love with her. No word, Sarah. Oh, she's amazing. There is actually a short seven minute super cut from the New York production up on youtube, including Shakespeare and Little Mary Sunshine. And it is adorable seeing how much of the original staging was maintained in the film adaptation, which I will say makes it really easy to shadow cast because it's like still blocked for the stage. Oh, 100%. And reefer madness actually getting turned into a direct to TV film was kind of a bit of serendipity. So in 2003, Showtime got a new top network exec named Robert Greenblatt. He spent his first year with Showtime running the network and revamping its lineup. He had hoped to compete with the Blockbuster content that was being put out by HBO and all of the other premium cable channels and he had green lit weeds, a Dave Chappelle comedy special and a whole host of new edgy content. Greenblatt was hoping to compete with the other major pay cable networks by producing less original programming but doing it better than the competitors. And Reefer Madness seemed like a great fit. Andy Fichman, the original director of Reefer happily agreed that Greenblatt's new approach to Showtime made it the perfect network to produce the campy musical film adaptation. He described as the Rocky Horror show meets Greece. Yes. Pander to me, daddy and the rest as they say is history. They assembled an absolutely star studded. Cast, securing Christian Campbell's sister Nev one of the biggest names in Hollywood following her breakout success on shows like Party of five and films like the craft and wild things in creating her role for the film. They gender swapped the role of Mr Poppy and leaned heavily on her extensive dance training for the five and Dime Tango, which is like the most gorgeous part of that. So, yeah. Um So most of the movie was filmed in Vancouver, Dan Stuy recalled a ton of onset antics, but this has to be one of my favorites in a 2015 article for play bill dot com. He said ever play that word game taboo. Well, we did night after night in my hotel room and let it be known. God forbid, should you play slightly incorrectly? Forget to hit the buzzer or in any way, not take the game seriously enough because Alan Cumming is a taboo nazi and you will be sorry. Alan Cumming, a Nazi. I don't think that tracks mine hair. What? Welcome cabaret. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that, that other little musical. Right. Right. Yeah. The one famous for there are tons of great stories out there about the film adaptation, the massive reworking of the songs and dialogue, the over 800 costumes that had to be created and then there were over 400 dancers auditioned before they found the 30 that they used in the film. And apparently at least two of the Angels and listened to Jesus Jimmy were actually genuine Las Vegas showgirls, but whole different cult movie, right? But in the interest of time, we'll keep this short. Gotta save some material for the next snack. The movie premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and aired on the Showtime Network shortly after on April 20th. They do a double feature film of the movie. Back to back with the original 1936 black and white film. The movie goes on to win the 2005 Emmy Award for Mary Jane Mary Lane, which was written specifically for the film and was later reincorporated into the stage show after the movie's release. It also received Emmy nominations for choreography and makeup effects, which can I actually say for a minute, like Mary Jane, Mary Lane is like one of my favorite songs, right? And to know that like it was only written so that they could be eligible for the Emmys, right? Because you can't, if you're doing an adaptation, you have to have a new song in order to be eligible for any of the music categories in the, I didn't know that. Yeah. So that's like the whole reason that song exists. And then it's like this stand out number in the musical, I've actually formed as Jimmy and it is so good to perform. It is so good. I have a really cute story. Can I do one second? Go ahead. So right after Aaron and I moved in together, he like, he went out with a friend of his and I stayed home for the night and I was like, ok, what am I going to do? So I open up a bottle of wine and I put on Reefer Madness and I just watched it by myself and he gets home and is like pretty fucking squiffy because he was just out with like his bros. And Mary Jane. Mary Lane is the song that's like currently playing in the movie as he walks in the door. So he comes in like throws his stuff on the floor and goes, no, no, no, you gotta restart it. I got to do it from the so fun fact, we've talked about this on the show before Aaron played Jimmy uh like 10 or 12 years ago in, in Reer for a con. Oh, nice. So he like walks in cold sees this happening and is like, no, no, no from the top then, you know, so I it and he just like, squiffy stood in front of the TV and shadow cast. Jimmy's part perfectly, perfectly screen accurately. Like the blocking was all there on point from like a decade ago. And he was like, all right, let's keep going. And I think we started it from the beginning and like, watched it all through. You can't forget that blocking. It's so much fun and it's one of those things you have to rehearse it so much that it just, like, never leaves your little head. Right. That and that, and the truth, it's just like I will never get that blocking out of my head. It's five and nine for me. Actually, that's the one that I, I could do in my sleep. But yeah, I mean, getting us back on track like that was really it for the movie. Uh, the film received a very, very small limited theatrical release overseas. It grossed a whopping $8972. Uh, that was from its release in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Well, there's like four people in those two countries collectively though, right? Like, well, at $10 a ticket, they must have seen it a good 2000 times. They really like it and they dressed up and I mean, I remember when the film was released, like Showtime sent my local Rocky theater a bunch of promotional lobby cards and posters. I still have a whole set of the lobby cards. They're super cute. Um, but they were like, clearly leaning into promoting it to the Rocky crowd. But like that was the last I heard of it for the better part of a decade before it came up and like, we want to shadow cast it for a con and that was, you know, even 10 years, you know, back at this point. So I didn't hear a lot about it, but then the shadow casting community got its dirty little mits on it. So when did Yin at J C C P first start shadow casting Reefer? What was that like to take on a whole new movie for all intents and purposes? Um Probably far, far more complicated than just shadow casting. Rocky Horror for the millionth time. Right. Right. So, uh obviously, I probably don't need to mention that it was a big undertaking for us. I imagine that maybe a professional theater company uh would have less trouble with that, you know, with adapting a movie. Um But we in the Rocky Horror, shadow cast community are not professionals necessarily, we're just little gay trying to do our best. Uh And so, uh so I think there was a lot of discourse uh in the cast about whether or not we could even pull it off. There were matters not only of choreography which is really daunting if you look at it and have no dance training whatsoever. Um And there's, you know, the issue of props, uh there's the issue of there are I believe something to the, and it, this is not counting like all of the different, like dancers as different characters. But I think there's something to the tune of like 30 named or at least featured speaking characters in, in the show. So, uh it was daunting is the word I'm gonna use. But in 2012, the J C C P's Home theater lost the rights to do Rocky Horror. Uh because copyright laws changed to where uh it was no longer legal to screen the movie using a DVD. It had to be either 35 millimeter projection of which there are very few copies of Rocky Horror or digital projection. Which one of those projectors cost at the time, something around $300,000 which our little nonprofit theater could not by any means afford. So there we were a cast without Rocky Horror. What to do what to do. We went around, we shadow casted clue. We shadow cast, cry, baby, we shadow casted um grease. We did a little sing along, we did the musical numbers. Uh and then somebody said, you know what guys, this is the time. And I believe actually, I believe the theater reached out to us and was like, do you guys want to do Reefer Madness? Now, I wasn't as involved in cast leadership at the time and I didn't do my homework. So uh some of my details are a little bit fuzzy, but if I'm remembering this correctly, we essentially got word from the theater. Hey, we would like to do this for 4 20 I believe at the time it was like beginning mid March. Oh Shit. Right. So we actually put together our first production of Reefer Madness in uh three weeks. Oh my God. Yeah. So I was not technically one of the directors. We put together a directing team of three and then a dance team of 21 of whom was me. So I was on, you know, the Dance Captain side, I think they called me co dance captain. So it took five of us to stick this show together. Um And it was, I have to be honest, it felt like a little bit of a nightmare. But then we got up on the stage and we were like, what we know the steps to this. This is crazy. Uh I remember I was living at home at the time and I didn't have, you know, space in the house. So I invited everyone over and we rehearsed in my mom's garage because that was where we had the space. Honestly, in our three week rehearsal process, I think we put together a damn good show. Actually, some of it might still exist on youtube. Um Yeah, I don't know if we have the production value there that we do now, but it was impressive given the amount of time we had and I think at the time our cast was like maybe like 15 people big. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah. Wow. It must have been so cool to see that come together after fucking three weeks of rehearsal for something like that. Jesus, like professional people doing a stage show with dance training, rehearsed for so much longer than Absolutely. I literally lost like a lot of weight in that time period. Just because of all the physical activity I was doing. Yeah, I remember that year I had, and of course, our cast was stretched so thin. I had 11 costume changes that year. Oh, shit. Yeah. Sometimes back and forth into the same costume. Right. Because, like, I was Joan a park and she shows up three times for, you know, four minutes each. Mhm. Man. Good for you. That sounds bananas. But shit, I bet it was really cool at the end. It was so cool honestly. And I, I was very, very proud of us. Like it's the kind of strength that has brought us to feeling like we really can kind of do pretty much whatever we want if we decide to do it in the years since, you know, we started doing Reefer madness. Um One of the biggest struggles has been, you know, keeping the institution knowledge because as I mentioned, I was on, I was not technically on the directing team that first year and I believe uh the second year, I was also just, you know, dance captain. So I didn't necessarily have, I wasn't in the room for the blocking discussions and that kind of stuff, right? So when I did take over as sort of a full on director, none of the folks who had directed it before, you know, were able to step up at the time. Uh So it was me and somebody brand new and definitely one of the lessons I learned that year was to keep copious amounts of notes because while we do reefer madness regularly, it's only once a year. Um, and I myself have never had, uh, somebody direct. I'm the only person who's directed reefer madness more than once other than I believe those first two years were the same people. And then since then it's, it's just been me. So there's a struggle there to where I have, you know, at this 0.6 shows worth of practice doing all the minutia and learning the movie and not to go too far into any other questions, but, you know, dealing with scheduling rehearsals and all that stuff. And I have what I keep calling institutional knowledge. Um and it's been hard, a lot of the time for uh another director to sort of catch up. They have a lot of learning to do. So that's been kind of uh one of the biggest struggles I would say is, is keeping like knowledge from year to year. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you even see that with the easy movies, like easy air quotes, movies like Rocky, right? It's like, oh, do you remember how we did this when the last time we were in this space? I don't know. You know. So, yeah, I mean, you've got all that institutional law, you've got to keep it going. It's such a dance heavy show and like, you're dealing with triple the number of performers of something like Rocky. How do you evolve that into what you guys are doing now? Like, what are the logistics like for blocking all that? Do you break down the scenes to rehearse with small groups? I mean, there's the huge dance numbers. So you've got to still get them together somehow in some way. Like, how does all that go? Yeah. So it's really rough. Um We have sort of tried different things throughout the years. A lot of the time Facebook group is sort of the way to go. We have to make sure to make a separate one from our normal Rocky Facebook group because, you know, information gets so difficult to find in the past. We have, you know, sort of scheduled all the rehearsals right there up front and that actually doesn't work out as well as you might think because for some reason, people don't barely know what their work schedule is going to be like a month from now. Rude. I know. Uh, and so, you know, things like that, it turned out that planning them in advance actually turned out with fewer people being able to make it than I would ever have thought. So this past year we did, a lot of the bigger rehearsals were scheduled, we scheduled one tech rehearsal and one dress rehearsal. So that is the grand total of times that we were able to rehearse in our space with all of our humans. Was two times. Sure. And then you do like one on ones, we do a lot of one on ones. So uh something that has been a little bit of a frustration in years past is that because we have to adapt so much of the movie for reasons like that dance move is way too hard or there's no shot of what's happening with this dancer in this moment. Um There's a lot of, there's a lot more teaching from director to cast member involved in Reefer Madness than there is in Rocky Horror because in Rocky Horror, everything is more or less very simple. You see it every other week, every week, however often you do your show and you know, people have a little bit more of an opportunity to watch the movie on their own and you can learn that way. But Reefer Madness is much more difficult to learn that way, especially if you're not one of the principal characters that the camera is always on. So something that I sort of did this year was I focused more of the director attention on the dancers and folks who weren't necessarily gonna be on the screen or folks who, whose, you know, shtick was not represented on the screen, it was like a gag. Um And I have to say the people in our principal roles really, really pulled it out. They were very much able to sort of get on the director's level and um work it out a little bit more or less on their own to where there were just small questions at the, at the rehearsals for those. I mean, that's great. Right. Like, that's so much of the crazy energy that is reefer comes from like having the 20 people on stage that are doing the choreography and stuff and like, really, that's, that sounds like the tough part to like, you know, break that down and be like, well, no, you don't see them do that. But this is what it is and I, I can't teach that to you without you being there in the room. Right. For sure. It's very, it's very logistically difficult when everyone's, you know, an adult and none of us are getting paid for this, that, you know, with the dancers specifically. This year, we used Facebook Group chats, which I think never again, it was kind of a nightmare. Uh But it was, it was the best thing we could think of, you know, to make sure that the people who needed information were getting it, but we weren't clogging the whole group page all 41 members of it, you know, needing to know about this one rehearsal that five people need to be at. Absolutely. It's striking that balance. Right. Right. So, I don't know, I don't know what we're going to do next year. We're talking about maybe Discord uh because it's very thread friendly. We, yeah, we recently swapped over to Discord and I got to say it sounds like it would be really good for those purposes. I really liked it for individual shows and talking to individual. This is off track. But yeah, it's, it's been really nice because like, we have channels for every show. So the main threads are all, you know, uh, whatever, but nobody has to be clogged up with. I need a, I need a Janet dress for the show on the 12th, you know, kind of stuff. And the other part of I think the logistics is very much making references for people to look at. So I made 100 and 23 blocking scripts. Wow. Yeah. And I've been working on them for many years. But this year, I, I think I might have actually had some that I can not have to change. Next year, I went into Photoshop. I drew our stage, I drew little circles where all the people should be. I named the dancers. I named the dancers. I, I named all the uh the people who listen to Jesus Jimmy. We're all named feminine versions of angel names. Fun fact, there are no women angels really, really? It's terrible. Uh Yeah, I went, I went all out with it but making those references, you know, it really, really cuts down on the time commitment of just answering small questions because those small questions they need to be answered. But I sometimes I'm tired and is that, is that some of the stuff that you, you guys are repurposing for R K O this year? I know that Reefer is happening at R K O con. So yes. Um I am very, very excited. I am nervous about adapting it to a new stage because our stage, anybody who has seen the J C C P would know. But obviously if you haven't, there's two large wooden boxes, they're like chest height on my 53 self. And we use them as, you know, the tank for Rocky and all that stuff. We use them heavily in our, in our production of Reefer. So it's gonna be really fun and challenging for, for, I think me specifically having so much of this like baked into my brain uh making the changes necessary to move it to a new space. I cannot fucking wait to see it. I know Meg and I are talking about putting in for it. It's gonna be so much fun. I love Reefer Madness and it's, it's see seeing what the shadow casting community does with it and just it's, it, it really, you know, if you thought if you were ever impressed by Rocky, oh boy. Do we have a show for you? And um just pivoting a little bit, makes, can we talk for a moment about the marketing side of things? I know that Rocky kind of sells itself because it's an institution and it's a relatively well known pop culture phenomenon. But Reefer is a 2005 made for TV musical. It's got to present its own sort of sets of challenges as far as getting the word out there and getting butts and seats. Right. Yeah. So I actually was loving our conversation earlier in the show about Lou Adler and struggling with finding the audience for Rocky Horror. I think that might be something that we are struggling with as well because definitely the people who come to see Rocky Horror do not inherently want to see the same show cast do Reaper Madness. That is a hard learned lesson. But and even, right? So and our, our audience is fairly regular. Like there are people who are fans of us as a cast and not necessarily just Rocky Horror, which just makes me feel very fuzzy inside. But even, you know, a lot of those folks, you know, just for some reason, just aren't interested in Reefer madness. So it's, I think a matter of finding the demographic it appeals to, which is very much stoners. Yeah, very much like stoners and, and your um your niche obscure movie loving crowd I think is more so. So it's a little bit difficult, especially with social media to find your new demographic. The people who want Rocky Horror are searching Rocky Horror, the people who want Reefer madness are not searching for madness, right? They're, they're searching how I almost want to say the people who want reefer madness don't know. They want reefer madness, you know. Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. And so I think it's a matter of really getting the word out to some different crowds and that's something I want to try to focus on next year. Um, marketing is not my personal strong suit, but, you know, I've also said that Rocky helped me develop my life skills. So, here's a new one we've had that too with. I mean, some of the weirder Rocky shows that we've done that, our average cinema going crowd isn't gonna, like, jump at. It's like, do we do Facebook or Instagram targeted ads? Do we, like, promote it in college, you know, kind of newsletters and things? It, it's weird finding that demographic that, that's interested in your thing, you know? Right. Absolutely. Uh, and it's been a struggle, you know, we never really have a very big crowd for Reefer Madness. Admittedly it's been getting better, you know, the first couple of years it was really like, like 20 people, but now we're creeping up, you know, much closer to 50 and again, it's, it's that 48 50 people who are, like, really into it. Well, hey, if it's good enough for Lou Adler. Exactly. I would flyer head shops if I were doing this, I would put flyers in head shops. That's smart. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm going to write that down. Head shops are always have that, that little, like that thing by the door. Right. That's just got piles of flyers on it for like, crummy little bands and things. They were, they already are in that market of like, as long as you make it colorful and splashy and I don't know, probably have boobs on. Oh, yeah. Well, that's a whole, that's a whole avenue is a lot of places are, you know, legalizing and opening up. You've got all these shops that are literally selling the things you want to talk about. So, and you know, if one of your states out there isn't quite on the legal bandwagon yet, maybe you hit up your local guy, you know, he's walking around all these places selling his wares, uh throwing some extra flyers. Who knows? Well, you heard it here first folks when dangers near exploit their fear, the ends will justify the means. As long as the ends are putting on a Reefer Madness shadow cast. Yeah, that is not at all what I said. And that's our show. We want to thank m for being awesome and joining us on the air this week and mix before we head out today. I got to ask, is there anything that you or your cast are working on that? We'd like to plug on the show? What should we tell the listeners about if you are jealous that you weren't able to come and see our production of Reefer Madness? This year. Fear not because the J C ce P through R H P S Live will be screening a recording of our most recent production of Reefer Madness. That is May 22nd at R H P S live dot com. I cannot fucking wait. I'm so excited to show you all. Oh Yes, I, I, I loved getting to do the last one uh to broadcast the last one that you guys did and I'm just, I'm so here for it again. It's, it was one of the biggest turnouts we've had uh on the site and I can't wait for everybody to get to see it again. It was such a breath of fresh air during the times. Indeed. And you said you're doing something else too, right? Uh So I am on the planning committee for uh this year's Pittsburgh Pride Revolution. Uh And we are going to be actually doing a, a virtual show this year. So if you want to tune into that, find Pittsburgh Pride Revolution on Facebook and go ahead and follow the page so that you can be updated the moment that we have an official date for that event. You're gonna have to check that out. Yeah, that sounds like a great time. We can't wait to see. I'm hyped and thank you so much for having me and us. We'd like to thank our writer Jacob and our editor Aaron from Tennessee. We appreciate all your work. If anyone has a question. They'd like us to answer on air for our ask a question segment or maybe some community news they'd like us to talk about or just a cool story to share with the community. You know, we'd love to include it in our show. Just go to our website that's rocky talky podcast dot com and fill out the contact form to tell us all about it. If you're enjoying Rocky Talkie, please help us out by rating, reviewing and subscribing to the show. It really does help make the podcast more accessible to newer listeners, which helps us to grow the show. And if you want even more Rocky talky content, check out the show on Facebook, youtube, Instagram and tiktok, all at Rocky Talkie Podcast. We'll talk to you next week. Bye bye bye. Bye. Here I go. Yeah. Ok. I actually choked on water there. Sounded awesome. I didn't even take a real hit. Sorry, you can actually right though, lost the rights to Rocky horror, Fox God, that guy's dick is so big. I know it's so big. I could tell from here. He's always riding around here and I'm like this is a suburb. Please get on the highway like seriously, he has to let all his neighbors know he has the biggest dick of all we know we've seen it. Uh You heard it here first, folks when danger nears exploit their fears. Can you retake that with the correct? When dangers, near, exploit their fear. I know. Well.