‘It’s Always Midnight Somewhere’ – Live Screenings of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ Are Where Only the Loud and the Proud Survive

A roll of toilet paper. A deck of playing cards. A newspaper. A glow stick. An engagement ring. A party hat. A squirt gun. Another. A fistful of rice. Another. A rubber glove. Another. A noise maker — the old school, twisty, Happy New Year kind.

This is one version of a survival kit … but what kind of situation could it help anyone endure? A bachelorette party held in a brothel? A poker game played in an operating room? A rice fight fought in the dark? Good guesses all, but no — these items are one of many physical combinations that will get a viewer/participant through a live screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Lazy observers often describe the film as a cult classic, but, as evidenced by needing a survival kit to get to the end of an in-theater viewing, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is so much more than that.

At its fishnetted core, it’s the story of an uptight, straight-laced, just-plain-straight engaged couple who are forced to spend a rain-soaked night in a spooky castle where laces are loosened and the only taboo is uptightness. The castle is the locus of a weird party presided over by an even-weirder mad scientist, caped and pale-faced, named Doctor Frank-N-Furter. Aesthetically, the story is a confounding hybrid: at times, it’s a love letter to early science fiction and B-movies served with a burlesque twist; at other times, it indulges in 1950s bubble gum pop along with glam rock at its glammest and rockiest.

The tale, initially entitled “The Rocky Horror Show,” was first told in 1973 as a rock musical presented on a small London stage at the Royal Court Theatre (properly pronounced “thee-uh-tuh”). A huge hit, the play was turned into a film, re-christened “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and released in 1975 in the U.K., where it hit hard, then in the U.S., where it flopped hard and died … but like another caped, pale-faced legend, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” refused to stay dead.

In fact, the movie took on a life all its own once it began a long string of midnight showings at New York City’s rowdy, renowned Waverly Theatre. “Buy an umbrella, you cheap b—-!” one fan counseled a character using a newspaper as a parasol, and the tradition of so-called callbacks, a tradition for the untraditional, had begun. Other untraditional traditions coagulated around this tradition, and the midnight screenings abided, year by year, decade after decade, in the Big Apple and all over the world, (eventually) turning “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” into the longest theatrical release in cinema history.

The film owes its undead endurance to multiple factors, of course, but the most obvious of these is that “Rocky Horror” has offered to generations of nonconformists a place to celebrate the traits that society writ large tells them are not okay.

“If you’re one of the Other, you’re the ones who make this evening what it is,” Barry Bostwick proclaims during an exclusive Lavender Magazine interview. 

Bostwick would know: a mere five decades ago, he starred in the film as Brad Majors — “a hero,” according to the possibly-ironic opening credits and one-half of the aforementioned straight-laced straight couple. In recent weeks, he has been making evenings with Others all across North America, celebrating the 50th anniversary of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” during a movie screening tour put on by Scott Stander and the Stander Group.

The tour will manifest in Minneapolis’s Orpheum Theatre (properly pronounced “thee-uh-ter”) on Halloween, where Bostwick will be joined by co-stars and co-hosts Nell “Columbia” Campbell and Patricia “Magenta” Quinn.

“A lot of people want the 31st, and only one person gets it,” Bostwick observes regarding the tour dates and tour places. “It’s not just about the local queer community, it’s about total orientation, and ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ has transcended so many labels that — well, now we’re on our third generation: the grandmothers and grandfathers are bringing their grandchildren. Grandma will say, ‘You might have to be part of the virgin ceremony,’ and the kid will go, ‘Ew, I don’t know if I want to do that, Grandma.’”

The virgin ceremony, another untraditional tradition, is one of many happenings that precede the actual screening of the unedited, 4K film. Think “lipstick fraternity initiation meets vice squad pat-down performed with jazz hands,” and you’ve got the right idea.

“We do the costume contest and the virgin ceremony and the oaths,” Bostwick says. “It’s a whole evening of fun and games. We probably do a good half-hour of stuff before the shadow cast even comes out and does the movie.”

Yet another untraditional tradition, the shadow cast is a group of live, in-person performers, possessors of length, height, and even width, who act out the film’s scenes as it plays on screen behind them, catalyzing the interactive experience of the live, in-person audience. These duties will be realized locally by Transvestite Soup, a Twin Cities troupe of just such troupers.

Bostwick remembers his time on the actual, non-shadow cast. 

“To me, it was just an opportunity to sing a couple really cool songs and receive a free trip to London,” he reminisces. “I was drawn to it mainly because of the music and the slightly self-conscious over-the-top acting style that I was comfortable with … but the storylines were real. That worked for me.”

The young actor threw himself headlong into the character of Brad Majors … and into the character’s journey. 

“I wasn’t even slightly bothered by the shenanigans,” Bostwick recalls. “It was a time when I was glad to strip down to my underwear.”

That stripping away of inhibition has provided inspiration and succor for countless fans … but such liberation needs its limit. 

“You have to look at that character Frank-N-Furter and what he does to people — meanness, narcissistic behavior,” Bostwick advises. “Be the person you’ve been hesitating to be all your life. Don’t dream it, be it … to a point. Everything in moderation.”

Well, maybe not everything — the practice of repeating funny meta-insults has, over the decades, turned into a friendly, community-affirming competition. 

“The shout-outs outshout themselves,” Bostwick notes. “Someone will be sitting next to [an out-shouter] and think, ‘Man, that was great,’ and they’ll use it somewhere else. The people around you will always support someone who comes up with something funnier than the usual shout-outs.”

That makes sense … but what doesn’t make sense to Bostwick is the restless, relentless migration of such comments in the pre-digital age. 

“When this thing first started in the ‘70s, I went to a theater in Austin, Texas, or LA, or somewhere, and the same shout-outs had become categorized … but there was no Internet,” Bostwick recounts. “How did people know? It was like there was a Pony Express rider going to Boston and saying, ‘Okay, you’ve got to say, “Buy an umbrella, you cheap b—-!” because that’s what they’re doing at the Waverly.’”

But if one were to a-jump to the left and then step to the right, put her hands on her hips and time warp 50 years into the future, might such screenings, whether abetted by the Pony Express or the Internet, still endure for the 100th anniversary of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”? 

“I hope the politics aren’t still around,” Bostwick speculates, “but, after six generations, it will be a miracle if people are still entertained by what entertained their great, great, great, great grandmother.”

The politics Bostwick cites have made “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” to different people in different eras, an oasis of unapologetic joy in a world where queer expressions were (and sometimes still are) often met with violence. Such screenings can be spaces that provide literal survival.

Whichever fans will be thrilled at the Orpheum this Halloween won’t need to bring kits to survive the experience — the venue will be providing its own such kits, presumably approved by the janitorial staff and board members who openly and repeatedly and unironically use the term “Harrumph.”

However, it’s greeted by the carbon-based beings sitting in the seats, the film has plenty to say to grandma, grandpa, grandchild and everyone in between … including a message of unlikely subtlety. 

“Be sure we’re always kind to ourselves first,” Barry Bostwick encourages. “It will generate kindness all over the world.”

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” 50th Anniversary Spectacular Tour
The Orpheum Theatre, Minneapolis
October 31, 2025, 8 p.m.
hennepinarts.org/events/rocky-horror-picture-show-50th-anniversary-spectacular-tour