The crowd that gathers outside the Rialto Theatre every Friday at midnight is different from every other group that gathers under the theatre’s marquee.
Last Friday, although the red letters in the marquee spelled “The Duchess,” the “goth/creepy/weird/sexy group” that was waiting to walk through the Rialto’s doors wasn’t going to see Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes.
These people were waiting to see Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick and Peter Hinwood as their characters in the 1975 cult classic “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
For those who haven’t heard of the movie, think sexual, neurotic and, as one of the lines goes, “fabulous.” But mostly, think sexual.
“Generally, you get a lot of loud, deviant personalities all in one large mob,” Riley Zeller-Townson, a senior in engineering, said. “When they’re waiting outside the theatre for people from the first show to leave — we call them ‘normals’ — we say, ‘Make way so the normals can pass through all us weirdos.'”
Kathryn Ogiba and Caitlin Cauley, both standing near doors through which those leaving “The Duchess” exited, were two members of this group.
Obiba, a sophomore in animal science, and Cauley, a junior in English, said they started coming to Rocky during their freshman year — Ogiba for the special Halloween screening, and Cauley a few screenings before that.
“It was definitely very different,” Cauley said. “It was unlike anything I’d been to before.”
Ogiba attributed the differences to the typical “Rocky crowd.”
“It’s a different culture, a different kind of people. The Rocky crowd is pretty distinguishable,” Ogiba said. “You can be a different person coming to Rocky.”
Zeller-Townson said he has been to more than 100 Rocky screenings, and not just as a member of the audience. This Rocky screening, like others in the country, is shadowcasted — a live cast plays the part of each main character in the movie, dressing the part and mouthing the lines of their characters.
Zeller-Townson got involved in the cast and crew one night after the final credits silently rolled across the screen and an announcer introduced each of the Rialto’s cast members.
“I started going to Rocky my freshman year, and my roommate had been going before that. He got onto the cast and started playing Brad, and then I kept on going,” Zeller-Townson said. “It gave me something to do on Friday nights. After a while, it made a lot more sense to get in for free and get involved.”
So he asked the staff if he could help pack up the show’s props.
“Most people generally start off doing crew,” he said. “I started showing up earlier, setting up, running props during the show.”
The first time he joined the main cast, he was filling in for the role of the criminologist, a man who narrates parts of the movie.
“He gave me the costume and I just kind of sat in the criminologist’s chair for the rest of the show and made faces at the audience,” Zeller-Townson said. “It was kind of fun. I started filling in as Rocky and then later as Brad and then later as Riff Raff.”
Zeller-Townson was working crew last Friday, a job that entails not only working with props but responding — in unison — to the movie’s lines or characters.
And they’ll let people in the audience know, either verbally or by throwing a pile of toilet paper, whether the audience is participating enough.
“A really good night would be when the audience is alive and wants to be there, and when a good chunk of the audience at least knows the call backs,” Zeller-Townson said. “Also, when there’s a good chunk of ‘virgins’ who haven’t seen it before, that gets people surprised by what’s going on.”
Theme nights, like the Halloween show, also lend themselves to a more entertaining night.
“The best night of the year is always Halloween,” Zeller-Townson said. “It has the largest crowd, a costume contest — everyone is set on making it the best possible show, and everyone puts everything they have into it.”
'Rocky' screenings rouse one Raleigh sub-culture
