This Hallowe’en I have been given a ticket to a 7 PM screening of 1975’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Coolidge. It is reminding me of screenings from earlier times in my life.
Thanksgiving, 1981. School made the unwise decision to close the dormitories. I was not going to be able to fly home for both Thanksgiving and Christmas; thankfully a classmate persuaded her parents to welcome me and another classmate into their home in or near Detroit. (I think we must’ve taken the bus down; I honestly don’t remember now how we got there and back.)
It must’ve been the Saturday after Thanksgiving that we went to some cinema on the outskirts of Detroit to lose my virginity; I was going to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time. One friend was already an Old Hand at All This, whereas I had no idea what I was getting myself into, really. I at least knew there was audience participation. She may have tried to explain the plot. We got there. I’d never been to a cinema where they confiscated switchblades at the door. There was another group of classmates from high school there, too, including the Only Boy in the World (at that time). They were sitting elsewhere.
The film began. Chaos. I could not hear what was going on on screen. I had no idea why people in maid’s costumes were running up and down the aisle. All I knew was that you were supposed to scream ASSHOLE after Brad’s name and SLUT after Janet’s name. Every time the white-haired man with the cravat came on screen a woman behind me screamed “WHERE’S YA NECK?! WHERE’S YA FUCKIN’ NECK?!” and all I wanted was to understand what he was saying!
Needless to say, they did not make a social success of me in Detroit. I haven’t returned since.
One year later, only marginally more sophisticated, I had arrived in the Big City, Boston, for college. One night I went the decaying Exeter Street Theatre* with a girl from high school and a friend of hers to the midnight screening of RHPS. This time I wore a black-and-gold paisley acetate smoking jacket had been a hand-me-down from someone to my dad (which was clearly not his style). We had seats on the aisle in the center of the house, and 20 minutes into the movie the girls went to the ladies room and never returned. I mean, they were gone over 30 minutes, and I was deeply uncomfortable just sitting there on the aisle next to two empty seats in the middle of all that crazy. So, in an age before cell phones, I assumed they’d abandoned me and I just left.
I will never forget waiting in line one time and the theatre manager was asking everyone if they wanted to be Frank in the floor show.
There were a few other screenings in those first two years of college, and the best thing to do was to walk back from the Exeter Street to the dorm on Commonwealth Avenue (a loong walk) via Greek restaurant in Kenmore Square that was open until 4AM to get avgolemono soup and a gyro or something. Every city needs some good unpretentious late-night restaurants.
After the Exeter Street closed the RHPS moved over to Harvard Square Cinema, and after that was acquired by a Great Big Cinema Chain they kept the midnight screening. I went a few times over the years - not very often, but it was always fun. I can’t remember the last time; it couldn’t be later than the mid-1990s.
The last time I saw RHPS in public was about ten years ago in P’town as part of its International Film Festival. They screened it in Town Hall, Glinda the Good Witch appeared to introduce it, and there was a floor show. I was with the Much Younger Boyfriend of a friend, and a couple other friends. The former was perhaps seeing it for the first time, and he had done a lot of research about the audience participation. He even brought a deck of cards to scatter for the “cards for pain” lyric in Frank’s last song.
After all these years, my favorite audience participation line remains one of the most obscure: “I’d like to see something in green, please!” And while I’m definitely going to what amounts to the Early Bird Special screening, at this stage in my life, that feels exactly right.
Does anybody here know how to Madison?
*I miss the Exeter Street Theatre! Based in an old church, the Spiritual Temple at the corner of Exeter and Newbury, it was just a rundown moviehouse of the most magical kind. In 1985 it was turned into a Conran’s, and then Waterstone’s, and now it’s offices.