Episode 91 - Transcript
High Fidelity
Hello to all you unconventional conventions. Welcome to Rocky Talkie. I'm Jacob.
I'm Aaron and I'm me
now
before we get started with the show. How was your week? Did you guys get up to anything
fun? Oh my God. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's been a crazy, crazy week. You know, it's the uh start of October and we all know what that means. It is uh Rocky Horror Season. So we have been just balls to the walls on everything for our shows here in New York. Uh We have a shitload of them. They're selling out like crazy. We are so excited for the season. Um But outside of that, you know, we've also been getting up to a bit of fun. We went out to house the other night, the uh club that's out in Brooklyn, had a great time partying and dancing and uh going in the hot tub. That was super fun. Uh And yeah, you know, been, been taking a break here and there from Rocky stuff. Uh trying not to get too overwhelmed. What
did, did you go into the naked hot tub? That house of? Yes, I
did. I did indeed. It was nice. It was so much surprise too. Yeah, they gave us free champagne and everything. It was wonderful.
How was your week?
My week was good. I was equally surprised that Aaron went in the naked hot tub, um, and they did give us free. It wasn't champagne. I think it was Prosecco because it, it came from the Prosecco region of California or
whatever. Well, listen, there were a lot of bubbles. Ok? There were so many bubbles happening. I can be excused if I missed that. There weren't bubbles in the glass.
There were a lot of bubbles and yeah, what else did I do this week? We went out to a dueling piano bar which was supposed to be like a treat and a relaxation from doing fucking rocky bullshit. But then we all ended up getting shit faced and booking another show with their bar manager. Uh So now we have an extra Halloween show. So I inadvertently gave myself way more work, but the whole cast is into it and I think it'll be a good opportunity for us. It was a good time. What else? I, me and my friend Marty Jacob's cousin got matching tattoos yesterday. Oh, wow. Yeah, that was fun.
Matching tattoos of what
you'll see them in like an hour.
Yeah, that's fair. That's
fair. Listeners would love to see them too.
You know, I'll post pictures on my Instagram. You can follow me at F off Meg E F F O F F M E G and you can see pictures of my stupid tattoos and my stupid pets and my stupid friends
love it.
So, we got another show at the dueling pianos. Did you say
we do? Yeah. Uh, I've already put you down for it as Brad. So I hope that you're available.
I, I, I'm doing absolutely nothing but getting mad at my computer. So.
Amazing. Perfect. What about New York City casts itself? Yeah. What about you, Jacob?
What about me, Jacob? Um Oh my goodness. Ok. So boring, boring, boring computer stuff. But I found this game series. Holy fucking shit. Total war is, the bet is great. It's so good. It's, you know, it's a video game series, so I'm gonna enjoy it for a little bit and then, you know, forget about it and it's never gonna fill the emptiness in my life. But right now it's so good. I, they like six months ago or something and they released Warhammer Three, which is the third installment in the Warhammer series of the Total War Umbrella. And, oh God, I, I was, have been having a ball playing that game. It's like fantasy um army command. It's commanding big troops on big battlefields to do shit. Is that I love
in that, is that actually like in the Warhammer 40 K universe, like Tyrannis and space marines. And
um I think some of the gods that are in the Warhammer like uh like medieval because this is a medieval setting. Some of the gods are shared across because I, I know I heard one of the gods from like 30,000 or 40,000 are also one of the gods that are in this series of game
Warhammer classic. OK. OK.
Yeah. Yeah. This is like medieval themed and 70,000 are like future for
40 K. I don't think there's a Warhammer 30 K. It's, it's just 40 K.
Oh Yeah. You wanna bet. You wanna bet right now against the dude who's been investing too much of his time and energy over the past two weeks into this entire series of game. You wanna, you wanna play that game? Aaron? Yes. OK. Wait, no. OK. It looks like I, I there is a video why you would choose Warhammer 30 K over 40 K on youtube. Warhammer 30 K on Amazon. What
is it? So thir 30 K is a supplemental expansion but it's in, it's in the 40 K universe. So,
so he's technically wrong.
Who, who I, I think I'm technically right?
Technically wrong. OK. I
appreciate. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ma Aaron's like a dick who?
Well with that, I think it's time we move on over.
Wait, I got a shout out. Um I wanted to shout out my father, Patrick. I love you. He's an avid listener of the show and we were just talking about it yesterday. So I wanted to make sure I said something. He also said he loved the uh Callback Origins um piece you did last week, Aaron. So good job
Pat is an avid listener.
That was a fun segment. I'm glad we did that one.
Yeah. That's sweet. That's nice. Good for you being a supportive dad.
Yeah. Good job. You didn't go for milk and walk out. So you win better
than my dad.
Well, that got dark. So on that note. So
now that that's out of the way, let's dive into our first segment.
So first up in global news, we've got some spicy hot tea from our favorite fucking slut. Uh This week, Susan Sarandon went public with some decades old drama surrounding the production of the 1987 film, The Witches of Eastwick
Witches of Eastwick tells the story of three hot witches, Susan Michelle Pfeiffer and Cher, all of whom Pork Jack Nicholson,
Jacob, there is so much more to it than just porking Jack Nicholson. Also spoilers. The
movie is almost 40 years old. Next, you're gonna tell me I shouldn't tell our listeners that Darth is Luke Stat or that Kevin Spacey is Kaiser. So if you don't know that shit by now, you don't care enough to know
it. Moving on in this recent interview with Vanity Fair, Susan told reporters that when she was initially offered a role in the movie, the director offered her the part of Alexandra, the witch that has the most interaction with Jack Nicholson character, Lucky Bitch. A couple of weeks later, the director called her to ask how she would feel of playing the role of Jane. Instead,
Susan was vehemently against the swap as she thought that Alexandra had all the best scenes. Plus she didn't know how to play the cello, which she needed to do for that part. She declined the offer for the role swap. Yeah.
But when she got to L A to start filming, she found out that the casting directors had just gone ahead with the old Switcharoo without telling her, which is kind of fucked up if you ask me. And on top of that, the movie, people wouldn't let her out of her contract. So Susan had to go ahead with making the film in order to avoid getting sued by the production company. It's kind of fucked up that her contract allowed the company to put Susan in an entirely different role without her agreeing to it. I bet she had a very stern talk with her agent after that one.
I bet she fucking did. Although she did say that the silver lining of the whole ordeal was that she made some wonderful friends on set, including Cher who loaned her a bunch of wigs and clothes to help her get into character, which is pretty cool. I'll
take Cher's hand me downs. Right.
Absolutely. Honestly, I'd learned to play the cello. If it meant I got to be besties with Cher and borrow her dresses, she'd get the zippers that I couldn't reach and tell me how pretty I looked. We paint each other fingernails and, and get coffee and, and boba tea. It'd be great
as cool as that sounds. I would imagine the real silver lining here were the big fat fucking royalty checks. Witches of Eastwick cleaned up at the box office grossing $63 million. And I mean, the movie is still really popular to this day.
So if you want to get into the swing of Spooky season, you can check it out this time with that little nugget of info and see what you think, you know, would Susan have made a better Alexandra than Cher did the casting directors make the wrong call. Is Hollywood a fucked up place. You know, let us know what you think. Give
us the detail, text your answers. Now where 877588, 800 Empire today,
we are not sponsored by them, but we
could be if you're listening, give us a call, we
are not at that number, do not call. But if you want to call and you've got some news that's time for our next segment. Let's move it on over to
come in news first up in community news. We'd like to take you guys on a journey down to Oklahoma City, a place best known for that musical Oklahoma.
That's fair. Well, the lyric theater, the quote official theater of the state of Oklahoma is going to be putting on a production of no, not Oklahoma, the Rocky Horror show this Halloween season and this production is described as having quote a twist, the size of Texas
with an accent, a
twist, the size of Texas.
Now do it with a Finnish accent
or the size of Jamaican,
Jamaican.
And this is a Texas man.
The lyric theater show is gonna be western theme. Think um the best little whorehouse in Texas. But make it goth. In fact, their costume designer stated, quote, I took the Texas chainsaw massacre outfit and we're making it a bedazzled, sexy dress. So it's sexy, bedazzled leather face. They don't teach you things like that in design
school. You went to a design school in Texas. I don't think they teach you much of anything. Oklahoma. Apparently they don't know the difference.
Wow. What an on brand idea for a theme night.
Yeah. Uh, apparently Rocky Horror is one of this theater's favorites for the spooky season. So they're always looking for ways to mix it up and make it even crazier than normal. The first time they put on the show, the director went with a sixties drive in sci-fi theme. You know, you're kind of pretty standard Rocky horror stuff. Then the team got a little more creative for their next go back in 2013. Their resident Rocky director did a haunted traveling circus sideshow. Huh?
Definitely more creative but still pretty rocky. Rocky people love a circus theme and vertical, black and white
stripes. Better than the horizontal stripes that make you wear down there in Texas.
Yikes. Ok. Jacob, uh, what about their 2019 version that was set in the French quarter during Mardi Gras?
Fun. But still kind of a Rocky staple. Becky just did that one too. Remember?
Well, ok, I mean, I guess that's why this year's edition is so noteworthy. Have you ever heard of a cast? Doing a Southern Bell Texas theme night? It's like the antithesis of everything Rocky stands for. I mean, you might as well do like fuck a football theme night or some shit. Yeah.
No. Fuck a football theme night, Aaron, it's not football. It's, oh look at this football like, you know, in my
ass, ok? Uh But if you take a look at these pictures that the theater has posted, I mean, it, it does look like the team is doing an absolutely fantastic job of tying this all together. Uh There's some super cute photos here. We've got Janet as a church girl with like really big hair. She's being seduced by Rocky, the shirtless cowboy and then we've got sexy, scary bondage y cowboy, Frank. He looks like he's gonna kick through those double saloon door thingies and tell you his asshole ain't big enough for the two of you
two of who
I, I don't know whoever the two guys are that are competing for asshole space.
Anyway, the lyric theater in Oklahoma City will be putting on this crazy production starting right now, October the fifth and running through the end of the month, we strongly urge any of our listeners who live in the area to go check it out if you're looking for a flavor of Rocky that you maybe haven't ever seen before. Plus if you want to check out these gorgeous fucking costumes and can't make it to Oklahoma City, we've got all the pictures linked for you in our show notes.
Next up, we've got something fun for all our east coast people. The Skippy will be performing in a couple of weeks at Joe's Pub.
That's right. Joe's Pub in the middle of Manhattan. The Skibby are a musical duo Lauren Molina and Nick Searle who play strip down acoustic cover arrangements of electric and highly produced pop music while also stripping down themselves what they play in their underwear.
A adorable,
right? And as a Halloween treat to all of their fans, they do a special seasonal edition of their show titled The Rocky Horror Skivvy Show where they invite a whole bunch of extremely talented broadway actors to join them on stage to perform covers of Rocky horror songs mixed in with hop music. This
thing's fucking amazing. So for example, their Hot Patuti cover is mixed with Elton John Saturday nights. All right. For fighting. And Britney Spears cover of, I love rock and roll. They smash these three songs together and it just sounds fucking amazing. Here. You guys have to listen to this. Let's, let's play a little bit.
The duo played Bride and Janet together in a stage show production of the Rocky Horror Show out in Pennsylvania, which helped them realize how much they loved the music from Rocky. And they ended up turning it into their annual Halloween show and it's been a huge success.
So, Jacob, what's the best part about their upcoming show? It's like
so close to my house. I could walk there and walk back
and why is that relevant to you?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Wow. Hell yeah, we do. So, the Skibby are coming to perform at Joe's Pub at nine PM here in New York City on October 22nd. Plus they've got a little tour set up all across the country performing both their standard show and their Rocky Horror show. Oh
Boy Syrup,
tickets are only 35 bucks and it looks like there's quite a few still left. So, like, I don't know if any of our friends out there are interested in attending our cast is going to be there and we love to watch the show with you, get some drinks and gush about how just fucking outrageously talented Nick and Lauren are because they really, really do put on a great show. So like if you wanna come hit us up, have your people call our people just saying, you know, and
if you can't make the trip in the middle of October, which is totally fair. It's a busy month. The Skibby have also released an album so you can give your ear holes a treat at your own convenience. We'll link it for you in our show notes so you can check it out. We'll also have the dates for their cross country tour dates too. And speaking of filling your ear holes and, ok, guys, I found something the other day that is going to blow your fucking minds. Go on. What if I told you there's a song sung by Little Nell that you've never even heard of. And, and what if I told you the video for it also has boobies.
I wouldn't be surprised at
all. I would be blown away. Tell me more. Ok?
Ok. Now, just because my lawyer says so gotta dot The, I's and Nestle the T si need to make it clear that it's not, it's not Little Nell's boobs in this one. They're animated boobies.
But,
but what if I then told you that Richard O Berigan and Richard Hartley wrote the song. Wouldn't that blow your fucking mind,
Jacob? And,
and what if I told you that only recently was it made accessible to the world even though it was created in the seventies and through the magic of computer wizardry. It's been made pretty for all our viewing
pleasure. Jacob.
And the name of this song. Well, well, my dear friends, it
is called High Fidelity.
Wow, you couldn't, you, you couldn't even just let me have one. You get to do this every week. I, you couldn't just let me. That's nice. Aaron. That's cool.
Where did you find this buddy
on youtube? It was posted by some guy user name is uh Zuzu 40 7-Eleven. And he said that
Jacob, I think that's Tony Zuzu. Like the huge rocky horror collector historian guy. He's the one who runs Oz Rocky hard dot com. We mentioned him like once every other episode
but, but this is so cool. It's something new and fresh and has a magical computer magic involved. I'm surprised Aaron that you didn't know about this seeing how you talk to Tony a lot and any kind of computer thing would be right up. Your uh
did you just get there,
buddy? Did you already know about this? I did. How much, how much did you did? Did you do the A I upscale of this? Yes, I did, buddy. So you made the thing I found? Yeah, that's right. So I didn't find it. I
mean, you did
not really, I guess I'll just go kick rocks like a kid in a movie. Well, fuck me for trying to find something cool for the show.
Are you sure you weren't just searching for little Nell's boobs on the internet again.
Don't be stupid. I have Google alerts for nails boobs as if I would need to search for little nails boobs. Goodness.
Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it, but maybe for all our listeners out there, um, let's start at the beginning and let's kind of explain what the heck this thing is. Where came from, who did it all of that crap.
So high fidelity is just a short animated film by the artist Antoinette Starkovich. It's just under four minutes long and it's really fucking neat. It's all ink and watercolor and at first glance, it appears to be like this nod to traditional Hollywood dance imagery. It's got a really sort of feminist edge and it takes this visual inspiration from high society glamour icons like Marilyn and Shirley Temple. It's gorgeous, but don't let the animation technique simplicity, deceive you. The dancing figures are occasionally reduced to plain lines, but those lines do just a gorgeous job of storytelling. Sarvis focused intently on sexual impulses underlying formalized dance. The female dancers wayward nipples frequently pop out of her costume as she attempts to snare assorted male partners and continues to do so. Even after she's donned a masculine tuxedo, it's very vogue, very Madonna.
So what's of particular interest here is that the song that the character is singing during this short was written as Jacob said by Richard o'brien and composed by Richard Hartley. This was done just after Rocky Horror. And I mean, it was really successful. The short was nominated for a Palme D'or as best short film at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.
So enough talking about it, if you guys want to watch it and we highly recommend you do take a quick pause and watch the video. The link is our show notes. It's only a few minutes long and it's really neat to hear a, just another little nail song and B one that's penned by the two Richards. There's nothing else short of Rocky and Shocky that features this trio.
So we'll give you a second pause, go check it out, come back. Awesome. So that's all well and good. But what's particularly interesting for our purposes about this piece isn't so much the animation itself. I mean, it's super cool. Don't get me wrong. But the story behind how little Nell and Starkovich met and what it reveals to us about the truth behind Nell's eventual casting in the Rocky horror show. That's what's really at play here. So
let's start simple. Who is Antoinette Starkovich? She's an animator, an artist. What's her story?
STAIC was born in Poland in 1950 in 1960. She was part of the wave of Jewish immigrants, a fellow Jew of Jewish immigrants that moved to Australia. We'll get back to her in a second. Around that same time. There was an up and coming artist named Martin Sharp who just had a smash success creating Oz magazine. Oz was hugely influential in the international counterculture of the 19 sixties. While it was first published in Sydney in 1963 a parallel version of Oz was published in London. In 1967 the Australian magazine was published until 1969 and the British version until 1973.
And I mean, we could go off on this magazine forever. Like it was hugely influential in counterculture. It was one of the first magazines that really brought obscenity cases in printed media to the UK that like they, they had countless legal battles over the content that they were printing. They were very critical of the government and police and just all these kind of things that are still relevant to us today. But these were some of the founding footsteps of people like putting out content and fighting those legal battles with the government and other organizations saying you can't criticize us. Well, it turns out they could and they did and they were hugely hugely rewarded for it with a massive readership. So in late 1969 Martin Sharp was frustrated by the traditional gallery scene in Australia. He'd gone back there after he'd worked uh on the Oz magazine in London. So he convinced the owner of a house in Sydney to rent him the property to create a workspace and a exhibit space in this house. Sharp put on his first two exhibits in late 1969. Both of these centered around conception
art. In the late sixties, conceptual art had emerged as a major new movement. Often, it used novel combinations of music, theater, film slides, light shows and live performances of music or dance. This was the dawn of total environment, installations or happenings or as we might call them today. Immersive Experiences.
The second exhibit was titled The Incredible Shrinking Exhibition, My Penis After Cold Shower, which comprised photographs of the first show re exhibited in small gem like mirror frames. It was these two shows that laid the foundations for what the house would become the Yellow House.
The Yellow House is of course a reference to the unrealized dream of Vincent Van Gogh who had mentioned the idea in a letter to his brother Theo Van Gogh envisioned setting up his house as a center for artists to live work and exhibit and sharps installation was the 19 sixties realization of Van Gogh's late 19th century museum.
Think you mean Van Gogh,
whatever you know, I think you're right. Yeah.
Thank you. These opening exhibits were as the Sunday mirror reported the wildest most way out scene of the week where the guests were really wild gear and many looked as though they had come from a performance of hair. In fact, the producer of hair had some so highly of the exhibition that he sent a memo to his staff, directing them to see the exhibition as quote it will help you understand what life in this year and in the next year is and will
be far out indeed. But of particular interest in that quote is, uh, let's think about who was working on the Australian production of hair at this point. Right. Right. All right. For those of you who aren't quite so up on it, it was directed by none other than Rocky horror director Jim Sharman and designed by Rocky Horror designer Brian Thompson.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Antoinette Starkovich was also one of the many students that flocked to Sharp's new space. She rapidly began contributing along with many other artists to create the first exhibits in the Yellow House. The incredible shrinking exhibition was the second installation in the Yellow House launching on April Fool's Day 1971. The walls of the house are painted blue with clouds giving an otherworldly appearance at opening night, a tap dancer performed throughout the space. Her ruby slipper is decorated with sequins and emphasizing the fantastic nature of the event.
And that tap dancer you guessed it. Albert Einstein. No, it was little now, obviously, it was little now. Uh Some reports say that she was dating Martin Sharp around that same time. Don't do the math on that. So there might be a bit of nepotism there undoubtedly. Uh but she was also a core member of the artist that made the Yellow House quite the attraction.
See the Yellow house wasn't just a gallery, it was a family, it was an immersive performance space upstairs. There was a small puppet theater. It featured live performances by Julian, but it spelled Jo Ellen if you get confused while you're googling this. But it is Julian spelled Jew Ellen. Remember a clown and a character named Columbine originally played Little Nell. In fact, there's footage of the pair that was recently found last year and Nell often speaks of her friend jewels in interviews.
The idea of Little Nell, like sitting on her knees being like, oh, I'm a puppet. You know, in her little voice is really cute.
I don't think she, they just performed in the puppet theater. They didn't necessarily perform puppets in this puppet theater. You know, it's not important.
That's ridiculous. What they just did regular shows in the puppet
theater. Well, I mean, on the days that the puppet guy wasn't there, they'd had to put something else in the space. So
like that's like I played, I played games on the ice rink. It was basketball. Like why would you know, you're like wasting, you could be playing ice hockey.
You know what, I'll let Martin sharp know of your criticisms.
Anyway, my idea is cuter. And if you think of Little Nell with her little boobies out just talking to some puppets, like on Sesame Street, that's adorable. I
want to see Little Nell's puppet of herself that has the puppet has their boobs out or like or like has a, has a thing that you can pull on to like, you know, and
you straighten out the puppets and like nipples,
poke. We, we can make this happen, we can make a little mel puppet. She could be the mascot of Rocky Talk. Oh,
yeah, I'm here for that.
Anyway, so to put a bow on this game of Kevin Bacon, when Nell decided to leave Australia and moved to London, it was Antoinette Starkovich who took over the role of Columbine and the performances at the Puppet Theater in the Yellow House. So wait, so was, was Columbine a puppet?
I don't know, sweetie. None of this is explained.
Columbine is the one who fell in love with Harley Quinn, right? Harlequin at Columbine. That's a thing.
Are you telling me the joker is Columbine?
No, Columbine is the girl I think, I
think Jacob's having trouble discerning from um let's call it DC Cannon and um the Real World, it's
like a trope. It's like a theatrical trope like Quinn and Columbine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Red. So that explains the connection between Nell and Starkovich and to remind listeners this is probably gonna help us figure out why Nell most definitely wasn't just discovered bus on the street in order to be cast in Rocky Horror. You see in 1971 Jim Sharman and Brian Thompson had the preview for their first film that's Shirley Thompson versus the aliens. At the Yellow House.
So you've heard us saying before on the show that Nell was active in the Australian art scene. And that's how she first became acquainted with Jim Sherman and Brian Thompson, who would later tap her for Columbia and Rocky Horror. This is the place where it happened. The Yellow
House and the whole thing would come full circle after Rocky Horror. Little Nell would again work with Starch in voicing her animated short, high fidelity. And Nell tapped the Richards o'brien and Hartley, who she had just worked with on Rocky to write and orchestrate the music for this short film. After
1971 the Yellow House suffered a decline due to financial problems and artistic tensions. It continued on as a performance space for several years but never recaptured the same lightning in a bottle as the earlier years. The Yellow House was a milestone in the history of contemporary art in Australia and its importance was recognized by a retrospective exposition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1990. Today, it is a private boarding house and restaurant.
Starkovich would go on to direct several other really well known films including Pussy Pumps Up and Putting on the Ritz. And she actively worked creating short films well into the nineties.
So if she's so prolific, why did you end up having to do computer magic on her film? Well, what's that all about?
Ok. So I had never really heard about this thing. Um I didn't know that it existed and Tony Zuzu came to me one day and said, hey, have you seen this? And he sent me an incredibly low resolution version of it. We're talking like it's 240 pixels wide, something like that. My best guess after looking up, you know, a lot about this is that it probably comes from a V H S transfer of a compendium of her couple of short films. Um she's widely regarded as a very influential and like well known animator. But her work is surprisingly difficult to find probably because it was almost exclusively showed at like exhibitions and galleries and things like that. It never like this was, this was long before like short films would, you know, have a life on a streaming service or, or you know youtube or any other real way, you know, that people would consume these things. So one of the sources that exists and high fidelity is on this is, is a V H S, you know, copy and that's probably where this, this came from. So I took a look at it and it was very low quality. Like you could, you could tell what was going on, you could see the characters, you could see the really cool animation style in it, but you're just really limited, right? Like by the resolution that was at, it was so small. Well, I've been playing with techniques for doing A I video enhancement. Recently. This is like you take a piece of video and you plug it through some, let's call it a magic A I algorithm and it figures out and guesses what it would have to do to kind of fill in the pieces to increase the resolution of the video. So this is like incredibly useful um If you're taking old footage and you want to use it like in a high resolution, new context and you don't really want to like, have it look blocky and grainy and you aren't super concerned about uh maintaining perfect accuracy to what was there before. Well, this doesn't work great for things like faces or like, you know, things like that, but it does work extremely well for animation. This is a tool that like a lot of the anime community uses to do high resolution ups, scales of old, like eighties nineties, you know, anime uh that may not have ever gotten a remastered. They use this kind of a thing to do that. Um And the results results for it are really, really impressive. So I spent an evening playing with it, like, just, you know, figuring out what the best settings would be and how to, like, you know, plug things into the A I in order to get it to spit out a version that was really nice. Um And I did and I ran it, ran it overnight and it, it spat this version out and I sent it over to Tony and he was just like, this is fantastic. I, I've wanted to see this in a high resolution and like, this is a great, you know, kind of version of it, obviously, you know, there's a little bit of a fine line here when it's something like this that is so artsy, that's like you're recreating, kind of the intent that the artist had, but not exactly what they had put on film in the first place. Uh So it's a bit like doing an art restoration on it, but a very, very, very sloppy. I'll say job um where you're not super concerned with the maintaining what the artist originally had. It's just kind of trying to upscale and sharpen and you know, create a new version of it that is shows what it was. So you're not as distracted by just the terrible resolution on it. So I anyway, ran through all of that. Did the A I up scale gave it over to Tony. Tony was like, hey, I'd love to get this out there in the world and he did posted it on youtube and uh yeah, it's out there for everybody to go and check out. It's super cool. It's a really fun song. Um If you do some searching, you can find more of Sty's other animations. Uh Pussy Pumps Up is also really good done in the same kind of style as high fidelity. So uh definitely go check those out.
So an absolutely massive. Thank you to Tony Zuzu for making this available to the community. It really is a significant missing piece in the little Nell Rocky horror connection and one
that I really hope Nell talks about in her stage show tour. I mean, we're not gonna ever make it to Australia, but Nell bring them boobies all over to the US. We'd love to listen to all your tall tales
and that's our show. As always, we want to thank our editor Aaron from Tennessee. Dude. We appreciate all your work and we can't wait to meet you in a couple of
weeks. Hell yeah, man. Can't wait to party it up. If anyone has any questions that they'd like us to answer on air for our, ask us a question segment or some community news they'd like us to talk about. Maybe just a cool story you want to share with the community. You know it, 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 there 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 makes the podcast more accessible to new listeners, which really helps us grow the show. And if you want even more Rocky talkie content, check us out on Facebook, youtube, Instagram and tiktok all at Rocky Talkie Podcast.
We'll talk to you next week. Bye.
I, who? Pork, who they all pork. Jack Nicholson in this movie. They do. Yeah. Wow. OK. All I remember Jack Nicholson from, is the shining and I just like that crazy face in the snow. Just imagine like, I don't know, like a freezing cold penis and which is hopping on and off.
I feel like that's what his old face would look like too.
No. Absolutely. Well,
it brings a whole new definition to here's Johnny.
First up in community news, can
you uh can you do a segue?
Come here news? OK. First up in community news, we'd like to take you guys on a journey down to Oklahoma City, a place probably best known for having everything up to date in their capital city, Kansas. Wait shit is I miss referencing something out. Where is Kansas? Oh Fuck. Oh That doesn't even in
two states. Neither of which is OK.
I put this in here for a reason.
Damn it. Oh Well, down to Oklahoma City, a place probably best known for having everything up to date in Oklahoma City. That, that doesn't work. And I don't know Aaron if you're gonna cut this out or not, but we just had a whole fucking thing about how that doesn't work, but that's what came to my head and that's what the script says to say, whatever comes to Jacob's head. So that's what you get, eat it up, listen to it, put it on repeat like a fucking tiktok. You like it?
What is that from Jacob? Oh my
God, that's from um fuck, what's it called? It's the movie with the, the cowboys. And we actually funnily enough. This a segment we're about to do is about cowboys and the south and shit. I was in this, in middle school and I watched movies of it as a young child because my mother loves it. What the fuck is that musical? Don't say it. I'm looking it up so I'll know in a few seconds.
Ok?
Oh my God, I'm a fucking moron shit. God fuck up. I knew there was some reason that Oklahoma City struck that memory in my head and now Jesus Christ, I am so special. You should be fucking jealous. How special I am
amazing. If you didn't like that, you could have gone with cowboys. Oklahoma is known for cowboy culture. Oklahoma is one of the cheapest cities to live in, in the, in, in the US.
Um I feel like you looked up a list of Oklahoma. If
you want to be edgy, you could go with the bombings. Like if you were feeling full edge. Lord, did you
Google a list? Did you Google things that happened in Oklahoma? I
did not.
No,
but I did. And I can tell our listeners, Oklahoma is famous for its booming, agriculture and energy industries and Native American industries, heritage, native American heritage. First up in community news, we'd like to take you guys on a journey down to Oklahoma City, a place, a place most known for its booming agriculture and a place best known for that musical Oklahoma. That's fair Meg. I have Google alerts from at what point is Aaron just talking through me. Always,
buddy. Always
don't be stupid. Meg. I have Google alerts for Nell's boobs.
The Yellow House is of course a reference to the unrealized dream of Vincent Van Gogh who had mentioned the idea in a letter to his brother Theo Van Gogh envisioned setting up his house as a center for artists to live work and exhibit. And Sharp's installation was the 19 sixties realization of Van Gogh's late 19th century musing.
Are you calling him Van Gogh? Go? It's Van Gogh. You swine.
No, Aaron's doing that thing where he says it like um how do they say that that Spanish city in Spain a bar but with a different word
or go says who cares?
It featured live performance? Chill Ellen. That's fuck.
It's Julianne.
No, no, it's not. Not for this episode. It's not. Aaron
Starkovich would then go on to direct several other well known films including Pussy Pumps Up and Putting on the, what is that two or is that one?
I'm Aaron and I'm me
now
before we get started with the show. How was your week? Did you guys get up to anything
fun? Oh my God. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's been a crazy, crazy week. You know, it's the uh start of October and we all know what that means. It is uh Rocky Horror Season. So we have been just balls to the walls on everything for our shows here in New York. Uh We have a shitload of them. They're selling out like crazy. We are so excited for the season. Um But outside of that, you know, we've also been getting up to a bit of fun. We went out to house the other night, the uh club that's out in Brooklyn, had a great time partying and dancing and uh going in the hot tub. That was super fun. Uh And yeah, you know, been, been taking a break here and there from Rocky stuff. Uh trying not to get too overwhelmed. What
did, did you go into the naked hot tub? That house of? Yes, I
did. I did indeed. It was nice. It was so much surprise too. Yeah, they gave us free champagne and everything. It was wonderful.
How was your week?
My week was good. I was equally surprised that Aaron went in the naked hot tub, um, and they did give us free. It wasn't champagne. I think it was Prosecco because it, it came from the Prosecco region of California or
whatever. Well, listen, there were a lot of bubbles. Ok? There were so many bubbles happening. I can be excused if I missed that. There weren't bubbles in the glass.
There were a lot of bubbles and yeah, what else did I do this week? We went out to a dueling piano bar which was supposed to be like a treat and a relaxation from doing fucking rocky bullshit. But then we all ended up getting shit faced and booking another show with their bar manager. Uh So now we have an extra Halloween show. So I inadvertently gave myself way more work, but the whole cast is into it and I think it'll be a good opportunity for us. It was a good time. What else? I, me and my friend Marty Jacob's cousin got matching tattoos yesterday. Oh, wow. Yeah, that was fun.
Matching tattoos of what
you'll see them in like an hour.
Yeah, that's fair. That's
fair. Listeners would love to see them too.
You know, I'll post pictures on my Instagram. You can follow me at F off Meg E F F O F F M E G and you can see pictures of my stupid tattoos and my stupid pets and my stupid friends
love it.
So, we got another show at the dueling pianos. Did you say
we do? Yeah. Uh, I've already put you down for it as Brad. So I hope that you're available.
I, I, I'm doing absolutely nothing but getting mad at my computer. So.
Amazing. Perfect. What about New York City casts itself? Yeah. What about you, Jacob?
What about me, Jacob? Um Oh my goodness. Ok. So boring, boring, boring computer stuff. But I found this game series. Holy fucking shit. Total war is, the bet is great. It's so good. It's, you know, it's a video game series, so I'm gonna enjoy it for a little bit and then, you know, forget about it and it's never gonna fill the emptiness in my life. But right now it's so good. I, they like six months ago or something and they released Warhammer Three, which is the third installment in the Warhammer series of the Total War Umbrella. And, oh God, I, I was, have been having a ball playing that game. It's like fantasy um army command. It's commanding big troops on big battlefields to do shit. Is that I love
in that, is that actually like in the Warhammer 40 K universe, like Tyrannis and space marines. And
um I think some of the gods that are in the Warhammer like uh like medieval because this is a medieval setting. Some of the gods are shared across because I, I know I heard one of the gods from like 30,000 or 40,000 are also one of the gods that are in this series of game
Warhammer classic. OK. OK.
Yeah. Yeah. This is like medieval themed and 70,000 are like future for
40 K. I don't think there's a Warhammer 30 K. It's, it's just 40 K.
Oh Yeah. You wanna bet. You wanna bet right now against the dude who's been investing too much of his time and energy over the past two weeks into this entire series of game. You wanna, you wanna play that game? Aaron? Yes. OK. Wait, no. OK. It looks like I, I there is a video why you would choose Warhammer 30 K over 40 K on youtube. Warhammer 30 K on Amazon. What
is it? So thir 30 K is a supplemental expansion but it's in, it's in the 40 K universe. So,
so he's technically wrong.
Who, who I, I think I'm technically right?
Technically wrong. OK. I
appreciate. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ma Aaron's like a dick who?
Well with that, I think it's time we move on over.
Wait, I got a shout out. Um I wanted to shout out my father, Patrick. I love you. He's an avid listener of the show and we were just talking about it yesterday. So I wanted to make sure I said something. He also said he loved the uh Callback Origins um piece you did last week, Aaron. So good job
Pat is an avid listener.
That was a fun segment. I'm glad we did that one.
Yeah. That's sweet. That's nice. Good for you being a supportive dad.
Yeah. Good job. You didn't go for milk and walk out. So you win better
than my dad.
Well, that got dark. So on that note. So
now that that's out of the way, let's dive into our first segment.
So first up in global news, we've got some spicy hot tea from our favorite fucking slut. Uh This week, Susan Sarandon went public with some decades old drama surrounding the production of the 1987 film, The Witches of Eastwick
Witches of Eastwick tells the story of three hot witches, Susan Michelle Pfeiffer and Cher, all of whom Pork Jack Nicholson,
Jacob, there is so much more to it than just porking Jack Nicholson. Also spoilers. The
movie is almost 40 years old. Next, you're gonna tell me I shouldn't tell our listeners that Darth is Luke Stat or that Kevin Spacey is Kaiser. So if you don't know that shit by now, you don't care enough to know
it. Moving on in this recent interview with Vanity Fair, Susan told reporters that when she was initially offered a role in the movie, the director offered her the part of Alexandra, the witch that has the most interaction with Jack Nicholson character, Lucky Bitch. A couple of weeks later, the director called her to ask how she would feel of playing the role of Jane. Instead,
Susan was vehemently against the swap as she thought that Alexandra had all the best scenes. Plus she didn't know how to play the cello, which she needed to do for that part. She declined the offer for the role swap. Yeah.
But when she got to L A to start filming, she found out that the casting directors had just gone ahead with the old Switcharoo without telling her, which is kind of fucked up if you ask me. And on top of that, the movie, people wouldn't let her out of her contract. So Susan had to go ahead with making the film in order to avoid getting sued by the production company. It's kind of fucked up that her contract allowed the company to put Susan in an entirely different role without her agreeing to it. I bet she had a very stern talk with her agent after that one.
I bet she fucking did. Although she did say that the silver lining of the whole ordeal was that she made some wonderful friends on set, including Cher who loaned her a bunch of wigs and clothes to help her get into character, which is pretty cool. I'll
take Cher's hand me downs. Right.
Absolutely. Honestly, I'd learned to play the cello. If it meant I got to be besties with Cher and borrow her dresses, she'd get the zippers that I couldn't reach and tell me how pretty I looked. We paint each other fingernails and, and get coffee and, and boba tea. It'd be great
as cool as that sounds. I would imagine the real silver lining here were the big fat fucking royalty checks. Witches of Eastwick cleaned up at the box office grossing $63 million. And I mean, the movie is still really popular to this day.
So if you want to get into the swing of Spooky season, you can check it out this time with that little nugget of info and see what you think, you know, would Susan have made a better Alexandra than Cher did the casting directors make the wrong call. Is Hollywood a fucked up place. You know, let us know what you think. Give
us the detail, text your answers. Now where 877588, 800 Empire today,
we are not sponsored by them, but we
could be if you're listening, give us a call, we
are not at that number, do not call. But if you want to call and you've got some news that's time for our next segment. Let's move it on over to
come in news first up in community news. We'd like to take you guys on a journey down to Oklahoma City, a place best known for that musical Oklahoma.
That's fair. Well, the lyric theater, the quote official theater of the state of Oklahoma is going to be putting on a production of no, not Oklahoma, the Rocky Horror show this Halloween season and this production is described as having quote a twist, the size of Texas
with an accent, a
twist, the size of Texas.
Now do it with a Finnish accent
or the size of Jamaican,
Jamaican.
And this is a Texas man.
The lyric theater show is gonna be western theme. Think um the best little whorehouse in Texas. But make it goth. In fact, their costume designer stated, quote, I took the Texas chainsaw massacre outfit and we're making it a bedazzled, sexy dress. So it's sexy, bedazzled leather face. They don't teach you things like that in design
school. You went to a design school in Texas. I don't think they teach you much of anything. Oklahoma. Apparently they don't know the difference.
Wow. What an on brand idea for a theme night.
Yeah. Uh, apparently Rocky Horror is one of this theater's favorites for the spooky season. So they're always looking for ways to mix it up and make it even crazier than normal. The first time they put on the show, the director went with a sixties drive in sci-fi theme. You know, you're kind of pretty standard Rocky horror stuff. Then the team got a little more creative for their next go back in 2013. Their resident Rocky director did a haunted traveling circus sideshow. Huh?
Definitely more creative but still pretty rocky. Rocky people love a circus theme and vertical, black and white
stripes. Better than the horizontal stripes that make you wear down there in Texas.
Yikes. Ok. Jacob, uh, what about their 2019 version that was set in the French quarter during Mardi Gras?
Fun. But still kind of a Rocky staple. Becky just did that one too. Remember?
Well, ok, I mean, I guess that's why this year's edition is so noteworthy. Have you ever heard of a cast? Doing a Southern Bell Texas theme night? It's like the antithesis of everything Rocky stands for. I mean, you might as well do like fuck a football theme night or some shit. Yeah.
No. Fuck a football theme night, Aaron, it's not football. It's, oh look at this football like, you know, in my
ass, ok? Uh But if you take a look at these pictures that the theater has posted, I mean, it, it does look like the team is doing an absolutely fantastic job of tying this all together. Uh There's some super cute photos here. We've got Janet as a church girl with like really big hair. She's being seduced by Rocky, the shirtless cowboy and then we've got sexy, scary bondage y cowboy, Frank. He looks like he's gonna kick through those double saloon door thingies and tell you his asshole ain't big enough for the two of you
two of who
I, I don't know whoever the two guys are that are competing for asshole space.
Anyway, the lyric theater in Oklahoma City will be putting on this crazy production starting right now, October the fifth and running through the end of the month, we strongly urge any of our listeners who live in the area to go check it out if you're looking for a flavor of Rocky that you maybe haven't ever seen before. Plus if you want to check out these gorgeous fucking costumes and can't make it to Oklahoma City, we've got all the pictures linked for you in our show notes.
Next up, we've got something fun for all our east coast people. The Skippy will be performing in a couple of weeks at Joe's Pub.
That's right. Joe's Pub in the middle of Manhattan. The Skibby are a musical duo Lauren Molina and Nick Searle who play strip down acoustic cover arrangements of electric and highly produced pop music while also stripping down themselves what they play in their underwear.
A adorable,
right? And as a Halloween treat to all of their fans, they do a special seasonal edition of their show titled The Rocky Horror Skivvy Show where they invite a whole bunch of extremely talented broadway actors to join them on stage to perform covers of Rocky horror songs mixed in with hop music. This
thing's fucking amazing. So for example, their Hot Patuti cover is mixed with Elton John Saturday nights. All right. For fighting. And Britney Spears cover of, I love rock and roll. They smash these three songs together and it just sounds fucking amazing. Here. You guys have to listen to this. Let's, let's play a little bit.
The duo played Bride and Janet together in a stage show production of the Rocky Horror Show out in Pennsylvania, which helped them realize how much they loved the music from Rocky. And they ended up turning it into their annual Halloween show and it's been a huge success.
So, Jacob, what's the best part about their upcoming show? It's like
so close to my house. I could walk there and walk back
and why is that relevant to you?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Wow. Hell yeah, we do. So, the Skibby are coming to perform at Joe's Pub at nine PM here in New York City on October 22nd. Plus they've got a little tour set up all across the country performing both their standard show and their Rocky Horror show. Oh
Boy Syrup,
tickets are only 35 bucks and it looks like there's quite a few still left. So, like, I don't know if any of our friends out there are interested in attending our cast is going to be there and we love to watch the show with you, get some drinks and gush about how just fucking outrageously talented Nick and Lauren are because they really, really do put on a great show. So like if you wanna come hit us up, have your people call our people just saying, you know, and
if you can't make the trip in the middle of October, which is totally fair. It's a busy month. The Skibby have also released an album so you can give your ear holes a treat at your own convenience. We'll link it for you in our show notes so you can check it out. We'll also have the dates for their cross country tour dates too. And speaking of filling your ear holes and, ok, guys, I found something the other day that is going to blow your fucking minds. Go on. What if I told you there's a song sung by Little Nell that you've never even heard of. And, and what if I told you the video for it also has boobies.
I wouldn't be surprised at
all. I would be blown away. Tell me more. Ok?
Ok. Now, just because my lawyer says so gotta dot The, I's and Nestle the T si need to make it clear that it's not, it's not Little Nell's boobs in this one. They're animated boobies.
But,
but what if I then told you that Richard O Berigan and Richard Hartley wrote the song. Wouldn't that blow your fucking mind,
Jacob? And,
and what if I told you that only recently was it made accessible to the world even though it was created in the seventies and through the magic of computer wizardry. It's been made pretty for all our viewing
pleasure. Jacob.
And the name of this song. Well, well, my dear friends, it
is called High Fidelity.
Wow, you couldn't, you, you couldn't even just let me have one. You get to do this every week. I, you couldn't just let me. That's nice. Aaron. That's cool.
Where did you find this buddy
on youtube? It was posted by some guy user name is uh Zuzu 40 7-Eleven. And he said that
Jacob, I think that's Tony Zuzu. Like the huge rocky horror collector historian guy. He's the one who runs Oz Rocky hard dot com. We mentioned him like once every other episode
but, but this is so cool. It's something new and fresh and has a magical computer magic involved. I'm surprised Aaron that you didn't know about this seeing how you talk to Tony a lot and any kind of computer thing would be right up. Your uh
did you just get there,
buddy? Did you already know about this? I did. How much, how much did you did? Did you do the A I upscale of this? Yes, I did, buddy. So you made the thing I found? Yeah, that's right. So I didn't find it. I
mean, you did
not really, I guess I'll just go kick rocks like a kid in a movie. Well, fuck me for trying to find something cool for the show.
Are you sure you weren't just searching for little Nell's boobs on the internet again.
Don't be stupid. I have Google alerts for nails boobs as if I would need to search for little nails boobs. Goodness.
Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it, but maybe for all our listeners out there, um, let's start at the beginning and let's kind of explain what the heck this thing is. Where came from, who did it all of that crap.
So high fidelity is just a short animated film by the artist Antoinette Starkovich. It's just under four minutes long and it's really fucking neat. It's all ink and watercolor and at first glance, it appears to be like this nod to traditional Hollywood dance imagery. It's got a really sort of feminist edge and it takes this visual inspiration from high society glamour icons like Marilyn and Shirley Temple. It's gorgeous, but don't let the animation technique simplicity, deceive you. The dancing figures are occasionally reduced to plain lines, but those lines do just a gorgeous job of storytelling. Sarvis focused intently on sexual impulses underlying formalized dance. The female dancers wayward nipples frequently pop out of her costume as she attempts to snare assorted male partners and continues to do so. Even after she's donned a masculine tuxedo, it's very vogue, very Madonna.
So what's of particular interest here is that the song that the character is singing during this short was written as Jacob said by Richard o'brien and composed by Richard Hartley. This was done just after Rocky Horror. And I mean, it was really successful. The short was nominated for a Palme D'or as best short film at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.
So enough talking about it, if you guys want to watch it and we highly recommend you do take a quick pause and watch the video. The link is our show notes. It's only a few minutes long and it's really neat to hear a, just another little nail song and B one that's penned by the two Richards. There's nothing else short of Rocky and Shocky that features this trio.
So we'll give you a second pause, go check it out, come back. Awesome. So that's all well and good. But what's particularly interesting for our purposes about this piece isn't so much the animation itself. I mean, it's super cool. Don't get me wrong. But the story behind how little Nell and Starkovich met and what it reveals to us about the truth behind Nell's eventual casting in the Rocky horror show. That's what's really at play here. So
let's start simple. Who is Antoinette Starkovich? She's an animator, an artist. What's her story?
STAIC was born in Poland in 1950 in 1960. She was part of the wave of Jewish immigrants, a fellow Jew of Jewish immigrants that moved to Australia. We'll get back to her in a second. Around that same time. There was an up and coming artist named Martin Sharp who just had a smash success creating Oz magazine. Oz was hugely influential in the international counterculture of the 19 sixties. While it was first published in Sydney in 1963 a parallel version of Oz was published in London. In 1967 the Australian magazine was published until 1969 and the British version until 1973.
And I mean, we could go off on this magazine forever. Like it was hugely influential in counterculture. It was one of the first magazines that really brought obscenity cases in printed media to the UK that like they, they had countless legal battles over the content that they were printing. They were very critical of the government and police and just all these kind of things that are still relevant to us today. But these were some of the founding footsteps of people like putting out content and fighting those legal battles with the government and other organizations saying you can't criticize us. Well, it turns out they could and they did and they were hugely hugely rewarded for it with a massive readership. So in late 1969 Martin Sharp was frustrated by the traditional gallery scene in Australia. He'd gone back there after he'd worked uh on the Oz magazine in London. So he convinced the owner of a house in Sydney to rent him the property to create a workspace and a exhibit space in this house. Sharp put on his first two exhibits in late 1969. Both of these centered around conception
art. In the late sixties, conceptual art had emerged as a major new movement. Often, it used novel combinations of music, theater, film slides, light shows and live performances of music or dance. This was the dawn of total environment, installations or happenings or as we might call them today. Immersive Experiences.
The second exhibit was titled The Incredible Shrinking Exhibition, My Penis After Cold Shower, which comprised photographs of the first show re exhibited in small gem like mirror frames. It was these two shows that laid the foundations for what the house would become the Yellow House.
The Yellow House is of course a reference to the unrealized dream of Vincent Van Gogh who had mentioned the idea in a letter to his brother Theo Van Gogh envisioned setting up his house as a center for artists to live work and exhibit and sharps installation was the 19 sixties realization of Van Gogh's late 19th century museum.
Think you mean Van Gogh,
whatever you know, I think you're right. Yeah.
Thank you. These opening exhibits were as the Sunday mirror reported the wildest most way out scene of the week where the guests were really wild gear and many looked as though they had come from a performance of hair. In fact, the producer of hair had some so highly of the exhibition that he sent a memo to his staff, directing them to see the exhibition as quote it will help you understand what life in this year and in the next year is and will
be far out indeed. But of particular interest in that quote is, uh, let's think about who was working on the Australian production of hair at this point. Right. Right. All right. For those of you who aren't quite so up on it, it was directed by none other than Rocky horror director Jim Sharman and designed by Rocky Horror designer Brian Thompson.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Antoinette Starkovich was also one of the many students that flocked to Sharp's new space. She rapidly began contributing along with many other artists to create the first exhibits in the Yellow House. The incredible shrinking exhibition was the second installation in the Yellow House launching on April Fool's Day 1971. The walls of the house are painted blue with clouds giving an otherworldly appearance at opening night, a tap dancer performed throughout the space. Her ruby slipper is decorated with sequins and emphasizing the fantastic nature of the event.
And that tap dancer you guessed it. Albert Einstein. No, it was little now, obviously, it was little now. Uh Some reports say that she was dating Martin Sharp around that same time. Don't do the math on that. So there might be a bit of nepotism there undoubtedly. Uh but she was also a core member of the artist that made the Yellow House quite the attraction.
See the Yellow house wasn't just a gallery, it was a family, it was an immersive performance space upstairs. There was a small puppet theater. It featured live performances by Julian, but it spelled Jo Ellen if you get confused while you're googling this. But it is Julian spelled Jew Ellen. Remember a clown and a character named Columbine originally played Little Nell. In fact, there's footage of the pair that was recently found last year and Nell often speaks of her friend jewels in interviews.
The idea of Little Nell, like sitting on her knees being like, oh, I'm a puppet. You know, in her little voice is really cute.
I don't think she, they just performed in the puppet theater. They didn't necessarily perform puppets in this puppet theater. You know, it's not important.
That's ridiculous. What they just did regular shows in the puppet
theater. Well, I mean, on the days that the puppet guy wasn't there, they'd had to put something else in the space. So
like that's like I played, I played games on the ice rink. It was basketball. Like why would you know, you're like wasting, you could be playing ice hockey.
You know what, I'll let Martin sharp know of your criticisms.
Anyway, my idea is cuter. And if you think of Little Nell with her little boobies out just talking to some puppets, like on Sesame Street, that's adorable. I
want to see Little Nell's puppet of herself that has the puppet has their boobs out or like or like has a, has a thing that you can pull on to like, you know, and
you straighten out the puppets and like nipples,
poke. We, we can make this happen, we can make a little mel puppet. She could be the mascot of Rocky Talk. Oh,
yeah, I'm here for that.
Anyway, so to put a bow on this game of Kevin Bacon, when Nell decided to leave Australia and moved to London, it was Antoinette Starkovich who took over the role of Columbine and the performances at the Puppet Theater in the Yellow House. So wait, so was, was Columbine a puppet?
I don't know, sweetie. None of this is explained.
Columbine is the one who fell in love with Harley Quinn, right? Harlequin at Columbine. That's a thing.
Are you telling me the joker is Columbine?
No, Columbine is the girl I think, I
think Jacob's having trouble discerning from um let's call it DC Cannon and um the Real World, it's
like a trope. It's like a theatrical trope like Quinn and Columbine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Red. So that explains the connection between Nell and Starkovich and to remind listeners this is probably gonna help us figure out why Nell most definitely wasn't just discovered bus on the street in order to be cast in Rocky Horror. You see in 1971 Jim Sharman and Brian Thompson had the preview for their first film that's Shirley Thompson versus the aliens. At the Yellow House.
So you've heard us saying before on the show that Nell was active in the Australian art scene. And that's how she first became acquainted with Jim Sherman and Brian Thompson, who would later tap her for Columbia and Rocky Horror. This is the place where it happened. The Yellow
House and the whole thing would come full circle after Rocky Horror. Little Nell would again work with Starch in voicing her animated short, high fidelity. And Nell tapped the Richards o'brien and Hartley, who she had just worked with on Rocky to write and orchestrate the music for this short film. After
1971 the Yellow House suffered a decline due to financial problems and artistic tensions. It continued on as a performance space for several years but never recaptured the same lightning in a bottle as the earlier years. The Yellow House was a milestone in the history of contemporary art in Australia and its importance was recognized by a retrospective exposition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1990. Today, it is a private boarding house and restaurant.
Starkovich would go on to direct several other really well known films including Pussy Pumps Up and Putting on the Ritz. And she actively worked creating short films well into the nineties.
So if she's so prolific, why did you end up having to do computer magic on her film? Well, what's that all about?
Ok. So I had never really heard about this thing. Um I didn't know that it existed and Tony Zuzu came to me one day and said, hey, have you seen this? And he sent me an incredibly low resolution version of it. We're talking like it's 240 pixels wide, something like that. My best guess after looking up, you know, a lot about this is that it probably comes from a V H S transfer of a compendium of her couple of short films. Um she's widely regarded as a very influential and like well known animator. But her work is surprisingly difficult to find probably because it was almost exclusively showed at like exhibitions and galleries and things like that. It never like this was, this was long before like short films would, you know, have a life on a streaming service or, or you know youtube or any other real way, you know, that people would consume these things. So one of the sources that exists and high fidelity is on this is, is a V H S, you know, copy and that's probably where this, this came from. So I took a look at it and it was very low quality. Like you could, you could tell what was going on, you could see the characters, you could see the really cool animation style in it, but you're just really limited, right? Like by the resolution that was at, it was so small. Well, I've been playing with techniques for doing A I video enhancement. Recently. This is like you take a piece of video and you plug it through some, let's call it a magic A I algorithm and it figures out and guesses what it would have to do to kind of fill in the pieces to increase the resolution of the video. So this is like incredibly useful um If you're taking old footage and you want to use it like in a high resolution, new context and you don't really want to like, have it look blocky and grainy and you aren't super concerned about uh maintaining perfect accuracy to what was there before. Well, this doesn't work great for things like faces or like, you know, things like that, but it does work extremely well for animation. This is a tool that like a lot of the anime community uses to do high resolution ups, scales of old, like eighties nineties, you know, anime uh that may not have ever gotten a remastered. They use this kind of a thing to do that. Um And the results results for it are really, really impressive. So I spent an evening playing with it, like, just, you know, figuring out what the best settings would be and how to, like, you know, plug things into the A I in order to get it to spit out a version that was really nice. Um And I did and I ran it, ran it overnight and it, it spat this version out and I sent it over to Tony and he was just like, this is fantastic. I, I've wanted to see this in a high resolution and like, this is a great, you know, kind of version of it, obviously, you know, there's a little bit of a fine line here when it's something like this that is so artsy, that's like you're recreating, kind of the intent that the artist had, but not exactly what they had put on film in the first place. Uh So it's a bit like doing an art restoration on it, but a very, very, very sloppy. I'll say job um where you're not super concerned with the maintaining what the artist originally had. It's just kind of trying to upscale and sharpen and you know, create a new version of it that is shows what it was. So you're not as distracted by just the terrible resolution on it. So I anyway, ran through all of that. Did the A I up scale gave it over to Tony. Tony was like, hey, I'd love to get this out there in the world and he did posted it on youtube and uh yeah, it's out there for everybody to go and check out. It's super cool. It's a really fun song. Um If you do some searching, you can find more of Sty's other animations. Uh Pussy Pumps Up is also really good done in the same kind of style as high fidelity. So uh definitely go check those out.
So an absolutely massive. Thank you to Tony Zuzu for making this available to the community. It really is a significant missing piece in the little Nell Rocky horror connection and one
that I really hope Nell talks about in her stage show tour. I mean, we're not gonna ever make it to Australia, but Nell bring them boobies all over to the US. We'd love to listen to all your tall tales
and that's our show. As always, we want to thank our editor Aaron from Tennessee. Dude. We appreciate all your work and we can't wait to meet you in a couple of
weeks. Hell yeah, man. Can't wait to party it up. If anyone has any questions that they'd like us to answer on air for our, ask us a question segment or some community news they'd like us to talk about. Maybe just a cool story you want to share with the community. You know it, 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 there 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 makes the podcast more accessible to new listeners, which really helps us grow the show. And if you want even more Rocky talkie content, check us out on Facebook, youtube, Instagram and tiktok all at Rocky Talkie Podcast.
We'll talk to you next week. Bye.
I, who? Pork, who they all pork. Jack Nicholson in this movie. They do. Yeah. Wow. OK. All I remember Jack Nicholson from, is the shining and I just like that crazy face in the snow. Just imagine like, I don't know, like a freezing cold penis and which is hopping on and off.
I feel like that's what his old face would look like too.
No. Absolutely. Well,
it brings a whole new definition to here's Johnny.
First up in community news, can
you uh can you do a segue?
Come here news? OK. First up in community news, we'd like to take you guys on a journey down to Oklahoma City, a place probably best known for having everything up to date in their capital city, Kansas. Wait shit is I miss referencing something out. Where is Kansas? Oh Fuck. Oh That doesn't even in
two states. Neither of which is OK.
I put this in here for a reason.
Damn it. Oh Well, down to Oklahoma City, a place probably best known for having everything up to date in Oklahoma City. That, that doesn't work. And I don't know Aaron if you're gonna cut this out or not, but we just had a whole fucking thing about how that doesn't work, but that's what came to my head and that's what the script says to say, whatever comes to Jacob's head. So that's what you get, eat it up, listen to it, put it on repeat like a fucking tiktok. You like it?
What is that from Jacob? Oh my
God, that's from um fuck, what's it called? It's the movie with the, the cowboys. And we actually funnily enough. This a segment we're about to do is about cowboys and the south and shit. I was in this, in middle school and I watched movies of it as a young child because my mother loves it. What the fuck is that musical? Don't say it. I'm looking it up so I'll know in a few seconds.
Ok?
Oh my God, I'm a fucking moron shit. God fuck up. I knew there was some reason that Oklahoma City struck that memory in my head and now Jesus Christ, I am so special. You should be fucking jealous. How special I am
amazing. If you didn't like that, you could have gone with cowboys. Oklahoma is known for cowboy culture. Oklahoma is one of the cheapest cities to live in, in the, in, in the US.
Um I feel like you looked up a list of Oklahoma. If
you want to be edgy, you could go with the bombings. Like if you were feeling full edge. Lord, did you
Google a list? Did you Google things that happened in Oklahoma? I
did not.
No,
but I did. And I can tell our listeners, Oklahoma is famous for its booming, agriculture and energy industries and Native American industries, heritage, native American heritage. First up in community news, we'd like to take you guys on a journey down to Oklahoma City, a place, a place most known for its booming agriculture and a place best known for that musical Oklahoma. That's fair Meg. I have Google alerts from at what point is Aaron just talking through me. Always,
buddy. Always
don't be stupid. Meg. I have Google alerts for Nell's boobs.
The Yellow House is of course a reference to the unrealized dream of Vincent Van Gogh who had mentioned the idea in a letter to his brother Theo Van Gogh envisioned setting up his house as a center for artists to live work and exhibit. And Sharp's installation was the 19 sixties realization of Van Gogh's late 19th century musing.
Are you calling him Van Gogh? Go? It's Van Gogh. You swine.
No, Aaron's doing that thing where he says it like um how do they say that that Spanish city in Spain a bar but with a different word
or go says who cares?
It featured live performance? Chill Ellen. That's fuck.
It's Julianne.
No, no, it's not. Not for this episode. It's not. Aaron
Starkovich would then go on to direct several other well known films including Pussy Pumps Up and Putting on the, what is that two or is that one?