In the early 1980s, when I was 16, my friend, Martha, picked me up at 11 p.m. in her father’s enormous Buick, and we drove from our neighborhood in Minnetonka to the Uptown Theater for the midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I was brought up on an entertainment diet of The Carpenters, The Waltons, and films like The Goodbye Girl. And Rocky Horror was like nothing I’d ever seen: its black-lipsticked hero, wearing dominatrix garb and wielding an ax; colorfully-dressed Munchkin-like people doing the “Time Warp”; a bizarrely compelling hook-nosed butler who had an unorthodox relationship with his sister, the wild-haired maid.
Then there was the audience: kids chanting lines along with the characters and throwing things at the screen. Rice, toilet paper, toast. I didn’t remember much about the storyline (in fact, when I saw the film again, recently, I was amazed by its sci-fi ending); what made an impression was the experience. Raucous and sexually-charged, yet strangely wholesome.
That’s why, when my not-quite-13-year-old daughter came home from a sleepover last summer, proclaiming that she’d watched Rocky Horror twice and it was her new favorite film, I didn’t fret. Despite its themes of party sex, incest, murder, and cultishness, I believed it was pretty harmless. I’d known interesting people over the years who hadn’t fit in anywhere else but found a home in one Rocky troupe or another. I was all for it.
As an English professor, I realized Rocky Horror was informed by a wide range of classics: it’s a sexually-charged homage to Frankenstein, with a healthy dose of The Fall of the House of Usher, and a little bit of Hansel and Gretel thrown in. This is the story of two naïve kids who fall in love, then travel out into the world and become both wise and jaded. The protagonist, Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter, is sympathetic but deeply flawed — a character that turns from sinister to childlike but appears, in his twisted little heart, simply to want everyone who visits his castle to disrobe, dance, and have a good time. What’s so wrong with that?
Nothing, I decided. . . .even for my adolescent. And it struck me, too, how remarkable it was that Rocky Horror — which was made when I was seven — remains relevant today. The film has, indeed, time-warped.
I thought it would be interesting to sit down with an expert to find out why.
We meet at the Longfellow Grill at 9:30 on a rainy Saturday night. I’m in straight-leg jeans and a purple blouse. She’s wearing a leather corset, fishnet stockings, and four-inch heels. We start by talking about regular life.
Five days a week, Diana McCleery drives a school bus in the mornings and afternoons, spending the hours in between with her three-and-a-half-year-old, Morgan. She loves being a mom, and she’s grateful for the job that allows her so much time to parent. It’s only on weekends that she leaves her husband home with Morgan and goes to the Riverview Theater in Southeast Minneapolis, where she simulates sex on stage.
For the past couple years, McCleery has served as the director of Transvestite Soup, a troupe of fifteen local volunteers that puts on a live performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show while the 1975 cult classic film screens behind them. And she’s well qualified for the job. In addition to holding a psychology degree from the University of Memphis, the forty-one-year-old witch (McCleery is a third-degree leader in the Blue Star tradition of Wicca) has been performing in live renditions of Rocky Horror—here and in Tennessee—since 1990.
“I went to Rocky every so often in college,” she says. “Then one day my boyfriend and I were like, ‘Let’s dress up and get crazy.’ So I wore my sexiest underwear, and he put a leash on me. I found out I enjoy performing, and I love this movie. In fact, the more I see Rocky, the more I want to get up on stage and show it to people.”
McCleery points out that there are subtle, heartfelt relationships between the characters, such as Riff-Raff and Dr. Frank-N-Furter, which casual viewers often miss.
“Frank is beautiful, and Riff-Raff is ugly; Riff-Raff has no one but Magenta, while everyone adores Frank.” She ticks these things off on her long fingers. “And there’s a hint that Riff is in love with Frank-N-Furter. At the end, when he kills Frank, Magenta says, ‘I thought you liked him,’ and Riff answers, ‘But he never liked me.’ If you look closely, he has a little tear in his eye.”
Her college boyfriend didn’t enjoy their Rocky experience, she admits. As McCleery grew increasingly uninhibited, wearing less clothing for performances and experimenting with different roles, he became uncomfortable. She soon broke up with him and immersed herself fully in the show.
Luckily, her husband, Rob, an administrative assistant at Wells Fargo whom she met long after starting with Rocky, is a big fan. Before their daughter was born, he attended nearly all her shows.
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