This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
When the leaves first started falling off the trees, I knew she would be calling.
Sure enough, a couple of weeks ago she left a message on my office voice mail: "Sean, this is Susan. You know why I'm calling."
Yes, I did know. Susan was calling me back to my past, back to acting like an idiot in front of a few hundred people, back to my irresponsible days before kids and a mortgage and thinning hair.
Susan was calling me back to do the Time Warp again.
I have known Susan Steffee off-and-on for 15 years, ever since I first attended a midnight screening of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" at the Tower Theatre.
It wasn't my first time at "Rocky" - that was in high school, in 1981 at the Magic Lantern Theatre in Spokane, Wash. (I've also seen the show in Seattle, Las Vegas and New York, but you never forget your first time.) But seeing it at the Tower, with Susan on the microphone leading the audience-participation part of the show, was something to behold.
In her leather jacket and close-cropped hair, Susan prowls the stage like a panther. She knows the film so well that she knows exactly what lines to say, where to stand, when to leave (the song "The Sword of Damocles," sung by the monster Rocky, is the designated "smoke break") and how to get the crowd rolling. Rock stars could take lessons in commanding a stage from Susan.
I didn't get up onstage at first. I was content to sit in the audience, dodging the rice and the toast, throwing in an audience line that Susan didn't know - occasionally one I thought up, but more often one I picked up in Spokane or Seattle. (Though many "Rocky Horror" audience responses feel like they came from a kit, regional differences abound. The Utah show is among the most idiosyncratic, with loving digs at the local culture.)
When I made Susan laugh, it gave me the confidence to go up onstage. Besides, I was getting tired of getting soaked by the squirt guns.
For several years, I was one of Susan's collaborators. I performed the roles of the biker Eddie (Meat Loaf's short-lived character) and the wheelchair-bound Dr. Scott for a little while. I was a back-up emcee, and subbed for her on the few occasions she missed the show. (This is back when the Tower played "Rocky" one weekend a month, rather than just around Halloween.)
But "Rocky Horror" is a young person's game, and I couldn't keep up with the teenage cast members. So I stopped going a few years ago.
This may seem like a lot of midlife angst for a "cult" movie, which is usually a movie critic's euphemism for "weird and crappy thing that inexplicably has a following." But I will defend "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" not only as a fun time at Halloween, but as an outstanding and historically important movie.
"Rocky Horror" looks like cheesy camp on the surface, but writers Richard O'Brien (who played the manservant Riff Raff) and Jim Sharman (who directed) in fact devised a twisted and fond send-up of '50s monster movies and rock 'n' roll musicals. The twisted part is that the mad scientist was an over-the-top drag queen, Dr. Frank N. Furter (played by Tim Curry).
But it was the way "Rocky Horror" entered the minds and hearts of its fans that made it truly significant. The movie didn't invent the concept of the "midnight movie" ("El Topo" and "Pink Flamingos," among others, paved that path first), but the element of audience participation - shouting back at the screen, bringing props and costumes, re-enacting the movie on stage - was a revolution. One might trace our current reality-TV mania, the "everybody can be a star" mantra of "American Idol" and a thousand imitators, to the urge to get up and dance at "Rocky Horror."
More importantly, "Rocky Horror" was a breakthrough for gay culture. If you are between the ages of 35 and 50, it's quite likely "Rocky Horror" was the first movie you ever saw that centered on an openly gay character, or made mention of transvestites or bisexuality. Without "Rocky," there might not be a "Will & Grace" or "Brokeback Mountain" or Ellen DeGeneres' talk show or discussions on the sexual orientation of Harry Potter's mentor, Prof. Dumbledore.
So this Halloween, as Susan marks her 20th anniversary, I'll be there to celebrate, too. "Don't dream it - be it," Frank sings in the climactic number. For one night, I can be it, too.
At the Tower
* "THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW" screens Wednesday at 8 p.m. and midnight at the Tower Theatre, 876 E. 900 South, Salt Lake City. Admission is $10. Outside props are not allowed, although the theater will sell prop bags, containing rice, toast and other throwable items, for $3. For more information, call 801-321-0310 or visit www.saltlakefilm society.org.