This post, originally intended to go live on All Saints’ Day, got shifted when my exploration of zero proof cocktails ballooned into a three-part series. It was at least written closer to the time when the veil is thin between worlds.
When a beloved celebrity leaves us (as has happened all too often this year), it can be a strange thing to process. It’s typically not someone we knew personally or ever even met (unless we were really lucky); our daily life doesn’t change at all, but the world does. When that happens, many people take to social media, sharing details about favorite performances or just awe at the sheer breadth of work someone was able to achieve during their time on this planet. Sometimes, when someone has brought so much joy to so many people through so many roles on stage and screen, it can be difficult to know where to start – but not for me, not in this case.
“I Wanna Go…”
It’s safe to say that no celebrity has had more of an influence in shaping who I am as a person today than Tim Curry. I have waxed poetic about Patrick Stewart and how Jean Luc Picard has served as a role model in my development as a leader (especially since being entrusted with responsibility for a whole organization and all of its staff), [1] but the cult status of Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter and the resulting community that grew up around him at midnight showings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show were a significant factor in my development as a person at a very impressionable age.
When I was in middle school, several of my friends and I wanted to go see The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the local movie theater. [2] Showings were every weekend at midnight, and the cast that pantomimed the movie in front of the screen was the longest-running Rocky Horror cast in the country at that point. I had seen parts of the strange movie on TV, allured by the bizarre world it depicted; at least one of my friends owned the soundtrack on CD, so we were familiar with the music; but we wanted the real experience, which would require a parent, since none of us was yet old enough to drive.
Several of the parents talked about the request and decided that it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to go to the theater, but that we could all meet at a friend’s house to watch it together. That happened, but my mom also apparently never got the memo about what was “appropriate” because a couple months later (after I had organized, directed, and performed in a rendition of the “Time Warp” for our eighth grade talent show), she drove a minivan full of teenagers to the theater. We all dressed up – and so did she.
Image credit: [3]
She chose Frank’s most modest outfit from the movie (the lab coat), but that still cemented her coolness in the minds of my friends for the rest of time. We went almost weekly for several years until the movie theatre closed. The members of the shadow cast, as well as my friends who went with us on the regular, knew her as “Frank-N-Mom,” and to this day, I have friends who still call her Frank. When she died, some of those friends told me how much her actions meant to them – not specifically that she complied with our plea when no one else did, but that she was willing to be there with us, to be silly with us, to show us that it was OK to be ourselves.
My mom’s “yes, and” approach to parenting was based on her theory that if I wanted to do something, I’d find a way to do it with or without her blessing, so if she was involved, she could make sure I was safe, and then we could talk about it afterward. Since I grew up with that attitude in a parent, I absolutely took it for granted, but I had friends for whom that was not the case, and many of them felt so comfortable talking to her about their problems as we navigated adolescence, that some of them went to her before they even went to me.
“By RKO…”
Another thing I never really considered was how revolutionary Rocky Horror truly was. It had been around as a movie for two decades by the time I saw it, and it was so much a part of the zeitgeist that people I knew were dancing the Time Warp at wedding receptions. But when the Rocky Horror Show opened on stage in London in 1973, it pushed some significant boundaries. Homosexuality was partially decriminalized in the UK only six years prior, in 1967, and the UK’s first pride march had only happened the year before, in 1972; full legal equality for same-sex couples was still to come in far-off 2001. [4]
Tim Curry’s confidence and creativity in developing the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter – a “garishly Bowiesque … ambisextrous doctor,” according to one review [5] – determined the tone for the whole show (and the film to follow), which in turn supported its atmosphere of openness and acceptance. Frank was not some outcast, hiding in the shadows or apologizing for anything; he was cocky and charismatic, playful and posh – and that aura of confidence expanded beyond stage and screen, outward to the audience, as ticket holders became participants in this counter-culture experience. Tim himself even described going to the show as “a chance for people to try on a few roles for size, you know? Figure out, help them maybe figure out their own sexuality.” [6]
Image credit: [7]
And while weekends at Rocky certainly exposed us teenagers to new concepts (and language), the most important one was the inclusivity of a truly safe space. Whether it was men strutting around in fishnets and heels, or plus-sized women dancing inhibition-free in corsets, everyone was welcome, no one was judged. And while I grew up with all the life experiences of a significantly un-oppressed, cis-het, white woman, when I was a teenager, it was a balm for the soul to have a place where I was allowed to figure out who I was – and that, whoever that was, it was OK. It’s easy to forget that not everyone has had that experience.
When Tim Curry died this year, I was very sad but not entirely surprised. He was 80 (born less than a week after my mom, actually), and while he continued to work after his stroke in 2012 (mostly voice acting and an appearance as the Criminologist on a TV broadcast of Rocky), he said he had no fear of death and would probably welcome it when it came. [8] While I know everything changes and ends, [9] and people age and die, his death – a loss in its own right – felt like losing another tether to my mom, too.
On Halloween, I went with friends to see the Rocky Horror Show – only the second time I’ve seen the stage production (the first being – good God – 25 years ago). While the plot, script, and music all track pretty closely between stage and movie, the experiences are distinctly different. I’ve seen the movie easily over 100 times. The timing of every beat, every breath, every glance is etched into my brain, along with so many audience participation lines (called “call-backs” here in Western Pennsylvania) that I often have to choose between multiple options to gleefully shout at the top of my lungs.
“In the Back Row…”
The stage production is distinct in that it is live, and each performance is unique – especially when you get the audience involved, and the cast has the freedom to respond to them. Of the two, I will say that the stage production is hands-down more fun. The static nature of the movie, even with the fun of watching friends act it out in front of the screen, transforms the evening into more of a social occasion than a performance. But, while I always love the spark of a live performance, familiarity counts for a lot, especially for a movie that meant so much to me during such a tumultuous time in my life, and especially given Tim Curry’s iconic and magnetic performance.
…pation.
Consequently, when I realized that the plan was to go see the Rocky Horror Show (not Picture Show), I have to admit feeling a little disappointed not to be watching Tim Curry on Halloween night. It’s a time when the veil is thin between worlds – and it would be the first Halloween since he died, as well as my first time seeing the movie since my mom died. The loss of traditions and familiar comforts have been more pronounced for me these last few years (as it was largely my mom who kept them going for the benefit of our whole family) … and this year has been admittedly tough with the deaths of so many beloved faces of stage and screen – true icons, many of whom my mom and I both loved.
Given that seemingly relentless string of celebrity departures this year, I’ve frequently returned to an apt quote from writer and “generalized anxiety Wunderkind,” Jonathan Edward Durham [10]:
I know it’s hard to watch all these beautiful things be carried away by time and see the wrong things growing in their place. But listen. Listen. We have to be the beautiful things now. It has to be us. It has to be us. Courage.
The actor playing Frank on Halloween night was very talented and was clearly having fun on stage. In any other role, in any other show, I would have described his performance as great, but he had one major thing working against him: he wasn’t Tim Curry.
But toward the end of Act II, the most heartfelt song of the show, “I’m Going Home,” broke my heart, possibly for the first time. Audience members pulled out their phones, flashlights on, and slowly waved them back and forth while Frank sang about the pain of youthful independence and his yearning to return to community. In that moment of fellowship between audience and stage, late on the night when spirits return, I looked behind me at the sea of tiny lights swaying in the darkness, then back to this Frank-N-Furter who wasn’t Tim Curry, and I remembered that it’s our turn now. I remembered that life has sorrow and pain, that people die, that good things end, and that if we want to make sure there are still good things in the world, it’s up to us to make that happen.
We mourn many people who have left the world better than they found it. May we be such forces for good, in our own ways, in their memory.
Happy (belated) Halloween. And thank you for reading.
[1] https://radicalmoderate.online/all-good-things/
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073629/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/jun/23/rocky-horror-show-opens-in-london-archive-1973
[6] https://www.npr.org/2005/06/03/4679116/star-of-spamalot-actor-tim-curry
[7] https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tim-curry-tangles-accusations-rocky-152548817.html
[8] https://ew.com/tim-curry-didnt-fear-death-in-one-of-his-final-interviews-12068893
[9] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/555253.The_Five_Things_We_Cannot_Change
[10] https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21791156.Jonathan_Edward_Durham
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