The Rocky Horror Picture Show is clearly one of the finest examples of cinema ever produced - but I'm sure I don't need to convince you of that, you Internet boffin you. I did happen to watch it on cable the other night though, and that got me on a ye olde trip down memory lane.
I have seen Rocky Horror many, many times. I have performed the soundtrack with Stuart in his lounge room after one too many Botany Christmas party drinks, to the combined horror of Sui and Lesleigh. It was my first purchased and most played DVD, and I have seen it on VHS, television, cable and even once at the Astor Theatre on New Years Eve with my cousin Lydia. In fact, Lydia was the lady in charge of showing my sister and I the movie when we were ten years old, and I remember the first time like it was yesterday.
Faced with the prospect of spending another day on the town in Edenhope with little else to do but eat chicken chips at the Top Cafe or watch that slow guy who always played the drums down at the lake, we took a trip to the video store (shelf of videos at the service station) to pick up something for an afternoon flicker show at grannies house.
Having told Lydia that we had been watching the movie ‘Clue’ constantly for months and that we thought that “Tim Curry was so totally cool”, she recommended we get Rocky Horror because Tim Curry was in it. I’ll never forget the
anticip……………ation of the first time Dr Frankenfurter walked out of that lift and into the hearts of Amy and Emma Lewis forever. As soon as we were home from our holiday, mum was given orders to pick up a copy of Rocky Horror from the video store whilst Amy and I busily continued with our Burke and Wills role playing game in the backyard. Soon, the Rocky Horror soundtrack was obtained in the only way that that two ten year olds in 1991 knew how – a cassette recording made with Amy’s tape deck as the movie played on the VHS. We watched it over and over, we forced mum and dad to play it in the car on long trips - Amy even rewrote one of the songs for a Primary school project, entitled ‘In just seven days, I can bake you a ham’. We begged our music teacher to let us sing Rocky Horror songs in class, and amazingly the only one deemed suitable for our age was ‘Hot Patootie’ as sung by Meatloaf. I may have only been ten years old, but I was pretty sure what ‘Hot Patootie’ was, and that we probably shouldn’t have been singing about it in grade four.
All of these experiences over a decade ago led to a decision I made whilst walking along West 44th between Broadway and 8th one Saturday afternoon last year. It was our last night in New York, and I had already spent hundreds of dollars on discounted Broadway tickets over the previous few days. The only two shows that were selling out and selling full price only tickets only were Wicked (starring everyones favourite Golden Girl, Blanche Devereux) and Spamalot, starring the one and only Dr. Frankenfurter. Standing in front of the Shubert theatre, I had to make a choice. With one hundred US dollars in my purse, I could either walk in and buy a ticket to Spamalot, or exchange the money for pounds and take it to London the next day so I could afford a small coffee at Starbucks.
It wasn’t hard to make my choice. To see Tim Curry in the flesh is to fulfil the prophecy handed down from cousin to cousin so many years ago. It was the opportunity to send text messages to Amy and Lydia and make them die of jealousy. I had to go in and see if there were any tickets left.
I asked at the ticket box if there were any seats available for that nights show, half expecting to walk out empty handed and empty hearted. Instead, I was informed that I had just reserved the last seat in town, and I was about to be empty pocketed in a big way.
But I didn’t care. It was Saturday night, and Emma Lewis had the hottest Broadway seat behind a pylon that New York City had to offer. As the great Dr. Frankenfurter himself once said himself, I was no longer dreaming it – I was
being it. I had given myself over to absolute pleasure, and despite sitting wedged between New Jersey’s Loudest Jewish Woman™ and The Worlds Fattest Man™, I nearly weed my pants with joy as the curtains went up.
There he was, the all singing, all dancing man of my dreams who once looked like this....
....and was now somehow trapped inside a man that looked like this.
Later that night when Anthony and I headed down to Nolita for a few drinks, I knew that I was the only woman in New York with a fully imported VB in her hands who still had a thing for Tim Curry and who had checked off another item on her 'Things to do before death' checklist.
Come to think of it, that night puts a lot of pressure on the other items on my checklist. I'm just not sure if Derryn Hinch will ever snort cocaine of Neil Mitchell's chest with me at 3AW headquarters, or if I will ever be asked to join The Travelling Wilburys for a once only Las Vegas show.
Perhaps I should be satisfied with what I have already achieved....
