‘Time Why the Warp’ became timeless
Rocky Horror stars, in town for Fan Expo, marvel at how audiences keep finding and embracing their risqué cult classic
It was five or six weeks of work that turned into a lifetime engagement. Forty-two years after the release of The Rocky Hor
ror Picture Show, Barry Bostwick, Patricia Quinn and Nell Campbell are still interacting with fans of the musical-horror comedy. And it’s not just people who saw the cult movie in those early days.
“This train never stops, this circus never stops,” says Quinn, who has toured the world representing the film and seen a fan as young as 4 years old performing “The Time Warp.”
The circus in question is under the Fan Expo Canada big top in Toronto this weekend. There, Bostwick, Quinn and Campbell will appear along with co-stars Meat Loaf and — in a rare appearance — Tim Curry, the British actor who made his movie debut in Rocky
Horror as a sexually omnivorous “sweet transvestite.”
Rocky Horror fans know Bostwick as straitlaced Brad Majors, who stumbles on the castle of Frank-N-Furter (Curry) with his fiancée Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) after getting a flat tire. Brad and Janet rapidly evolve from prudes to hedonists under Frank’s tutelage, both of them embracing sexual relationships with the mad scientist from outer space.
Belfast-born Quinn played Magenta, a fellow alien and member of Frank’s household staff along with her brother Riff Raff (Richard O’Brien, creator of the original stage musical), with whom she has an incestuous relationship. And Australian Campbell was Columbia, the castle’s resident groupie, who’s involved with the doomed delivery boy Eddie, Meat Loaf’s character.
The movie certainly pushed erotic boundaries way back then, which Bostwick appreciates.
“What enamoured me about it was the energy and the sort of tonguein-cheek look at the sexual mores of the time,” says Bostwick, 72, who as a young actor in New York had done everything from juggling for tips in Central Park to originating the role of Danny Zuko in Grease on Broadway before heading to London to make Rocky in the fall of 1974.
Quinn, 73, and Campbell, 64, had been in the Rocky Horror Show onstage: a small workshop production upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre in 1973 that had to move to a bigger venue after just three weeks when audiences went wild for it (including, Quinn says, Mick and Bianca Jagger). All three actors describe the musical’s stage and film director, Jim Sharman, as a genius for taking the quirky B-movie spirit of the theatre work and its infectious rock ’n’ roll score, and turning it into a movie that was just as enjoyable.
“I think it’s a brilliantly made piece of film,” Bostwick says. “That’s why it’s in the Library of Congress. It’s not just a kitschy kind of one-off; it’s a well-conceived, well-edited, certainly well-designed piece of film history that will be around forever.”
He also praises Curry, 71 — who has made limited public appearances since a stroke in 2012 — for “his skill in terms of transferring a stage per- formance, which was so alive and over the top and campy and yet still dangerous, really dangerous, and (he) had the skills to really project it on film.”
Despite the enjoyment they got from making the low-budget (reportedly $1.4-million) film for 20th Century Fox, the cast didn’t envision its future as a cult classic, let alone one said to be the longest-running movie in history (it has never stopped screening, somewhere, after all these years).
“We were kicking up our heels doing sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll (onscreen). We weren’t out to change lives,” Quinn says.
Yet that’s a claim the performers say they’ve heard over and over again at the appearances they’ve made in support of Rocky Horror, particularly from people who’ve used the film’s “Don’t dream it, be it” message to come to terms with their sexual and gender identities.
“A 16-year-old girl recently told me that she had come out as transgender to her parents (who rejected her),” Campbell said. “She was going to kill herself and then she saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and she realized there are people like her out there and she wasn’t alone.”
Bostwick credits, in particular, the shadow casts — people all over the world who dress up as the characters and act out the movie as it screens — for keeping it alive.
“If it wasn’t for them, this thing would have died on the vine years ago,” he says.
Campbell notes that the movie’s fans form their own communities. And she’s met many people who met their spouses at Rocky Horror, had kids, then grandkids and now three generations of the family turn up at conventions.
“You very seldom get to be part of something that actually affects people rather than just entertains them for two hours,” Bostwick says.
“Whenever we’ve done a convention, myself and the girls . . . I’ve spent more time listening to the stories of the people that come up to us. I’m moved by how much this little film meant to them.”
The actors are looking forward to meeting fans in Toronto, a city Quinn describes as “Rocky Horror-minded.” But there is one person in particular whom Campbell “desperately” hopes will make it to Fan Expo.
“I have a massive crush, like the rest of the world, on your prime minister.” Tim Curry and Barry Bostwick are at Fan Expo Canada at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre Friday to Sunday. Patricia Quinn and Nell Campbell are there throughout the convention, which runs Thursday to Sunday. For tickets and information, visit fanexpocanada.com.
“I’ve spent more time listening to the stories of the people that come up to us. I’m moved by how much this little film meant to them.” BARRY BOSTWICK