Nope, not the Balboa one, but the one from The Rocky Horror Picture Show (= RHPS)!!!
The Hamilton Film Society was screening the RHPS at this year’s Hamilton Gardens Festival and I thought, it would be cool watching that movie again after soooo many years. I saw it only once and I was still a teenager back then… You mean way back?? Yep, way back…
There were two things to organize: costume and people. The costume was organized within 15min. Just went to Tops n Tales and got me Frank-N-Furter’s outfit. Including 10cm high heels and wig!! Organizing people was more of a problem… I emailed some of my friends and I only got three replies (I got more replies to my email regarding the upcoming Shakespeare performance):
- Ummm, I dont think I’m ready to see you in fishnets
- No [a day later…]
- Yes [a day later…]
So, in the end, it was just four of us and 75% dressed up. Oh well, could have been worse… 😉 Oh, did I mention that I shaved my goatie off and wore make-up?? Photos might appear in my photo gallery at some stage…
I was surprised how well I was dealing with walking in those high-heels! Not being able to roll my foot properly, I ran the same awkward way women normally do. When we finally arrived (after walking from the car park over cobblestone and a dirt path – without spraining any ankle!!!), there were still heaps of seats available and we were trying to find a good spot. One guy took a photo of my ass??? and said he now only needed phone number and name with that! Hmm, maybe not…
While on the look-out, I saw a colleague of mine, Ian Witten. And I thought, hell, I’ll just go over say hello and have a quick chat with him. Boy, was that a disaster! He didn’t recognize me at all!!! He had this look on his face, which displayed only too good: “Why the f..k is this drag queen talking to me?? I don’t know her/him/whatever!!! Help!!!” Since the conversation didn’t really gained any momentum, not even after dropping quite a few hints (“colleague”, “Weka guy”), I said goodbye and went to look for a seat. Finally found four in a row, with quite a good view (screen was a bit small, unfortunately) and sat down. Geez, that guy next to me looked frightened, like I would jump him right away. Was holding on to his nibbles and beer all night long like they were weapons. Whenever I shifted my legs or hands, he threw me that worried look, that overly straight guys have when they see something that doesn’t fit into their black-n-white world, i.e., a world with only heterosexual men and heterosexual women (maybe lesbians, but only for men’s entertainment). Poor guy… 😉
I was a bit disappointed by how few people had dressed up for the show, but the ones dressed up were pretty good! Quite a few hard-core fans of the movie seemed to be positioned strategically around the place. You could always hear them singing along and shouting whore (= Susan Sarandon as Janet Weiss) or asshole (= Barry Bostwick as Brad Majors).
Really cool was also the interactive nature of the movie: throwing rice into the audience while rice was thrown at a wedding in the movie. Or using water pistols to simulate rain (and some people covered themselves with newspapers!). Even after all those stunts, flying toasts still came as a surprise!
All in all, awesome fun! And I got told this morning, that Ian finally put 2 and 2 together and realized who he was talking to that night. Though it took him a few hours to work that one out. 😉