Wild and outrageous ‘Rocky Horror’ to finally play at State Theatre

There’s still a light over at the Frankenstein place.

Forty-plus years after the release of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” the State Theatre finally is screening the cult classic (albeit outside), Modesto son Robert Ulrich has cast a Fox TV reboot coming in October, and leading lady Susan Sarandon swung by Modesto last week in support of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Yes, when Academy Award-winning actress Sarandon took the stage, some people no doubt had “Thelma & Louise” and “Dead Man Walking” come to mind. But across generations, many fans had to think of “Rocky Horror” and her role as Janet (dammit!).

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was born as a small stage production in London, and when the musical’s film adaptation was released in the United States in September 1975, it largely bombed. Within a few years, though, the tale of “sweet transvestite” Dr. Frank-N-Furter and his hunky creation, Rocky, had caught on as a midnight movie that encouraged audience participation.

Today, Modestans and former Modestans have fond memories of wild times seeing the movie here and in other places around the nation and world. (The official fan site has information on where “Rocky Horror” still is screened. The site isn’t up to date, though, listing regular showings at Modesto’s Fat Cat Music House & Lounge that no longer are held.)

Back in the early ’80s, she and a group of friends attended screenings every Friday night for about six months in her hometown of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, said Modesto resident Libby Wesley Cardozo. “We would dress up, because if you dressed up, you got in at a discounted rate,” she recalled. “I was out of high school and I must not have been working yet because the discounted rate mattered.”

Of course, dressing up also was great fun. She would sometimes go as the character Columbia, other times as Magenta. “I remember standing outside (the theater) waiting to get in and seeing people giving us strange looks,” Cardozo said. “I don’t know that they thought we were there for a movie.” Since she often was wearing Columbia’s getup of fishnet stockings, tight shorts and stiletto heels, “I’m sure they thought I was a hooker.”

Going in outrageous costumes isn’t for everyone, of course, and for many “Rocky Horror” fans, the interactive fun involves bringing props and learning the movie’s many cues: throw rice during a wedding scene, shout certain lines during dialogue pauses, squirt water bottles or hold a newspaper over your head during a rain scene, and at other times hold up a lighter, toss toast, fling playing cards, even hurl hot dogs.

In Modesto, the midnight showings had runs at the long-gone downtown Covell and Vintage Faire Mall theaters. More recent were the Fat Cat screenings, organized by Jen Allsup, who brought in a Bay Area troupe, Barely Legal, to perform as part of the show.

Allsup said she first saw “Rocky Horror” at age 15 in an underground lounge in San Francisco and “was caught hook, line and sinker.”

The showings at the Fat Cat created a lot of great memories, she said, including seeing a packed house of 250 people all dancing “The Time Warp,” and having Fee Waybill, frontman of The Tubes, stick around to dress up and attend the show while his band was playing in town. Waybill has played Frank-N-Furter in professional stage productions.

“I love it from start to finish,” Allsup said of the movie. “It was my favorite movie for years and still is among my favorites.” She still occasionally watches it on DVD. “My girlfriends and I sing it and get all silly.”

She still gets calls asking if “Rocky Horror” will return to the Fat Cat, Allsup said. Sadly, it won’t: The nightclub will close its doors at the end of June.

But, in a move that many people thought never would happen, it’s coming to J Street’s State Theatre.

“I’ve been here nine years as of March 1,” said Sue Richardson, the State’s executive director. “One of the first things Mike Zagaris (former president of the theater’s board of directors) said to me was, ‘You’ll never do “Rocky Horror” here’ ” because of the damage it could do. “... We had a new movie screen and the seats were just re-covered. Still to this day, it’s too clean and well-maintained and beautiful to mess up.”

So when the State screens the movie on July 16 and Aug. 13, it will be outside, projected on the theater’s south wall. The State’s website invites fans to “bring your lawn chair and park it for a drive-in experience like no other.”

Richardson said she’s attended “Rocky Horror” screenings a few times. The first, she recalled, “was such a case of shock and awe. I’d never seen anything like it. I was young, and too nice to throw something at somebody’s movie screen. But this time, I’ll probably be one of the first to hurl something at the screen.”

Showing “Rocky Horror” at the State, she said, is a “dream come true. We’ve wanted to do this for years. We’re going to do something we said we couldn’t.”

Recognizing that the original, whose cast includes Tim Curry, Sarandon, Barry Bostwick and Meat Loaf, is beloved, and its fans can be rabid, Hollywood casting director Robert Ulrich said that in developing the upcoming Fox TV adaptation, “all of us knew entering into it that we had to be very respectful.”

Everyone involved hopes the production, timed for release around Halloween, is accepted in the spirit it’s given – as a celebration of the original, Ulrich said. “So many people have seen it and remember when and where they saw it,” he said. “We immediately lucked out in that Lou Adler, who’s an amazingly interesting guy and was the executive producer of the original, loved this project right off the bat.”

When Adler agreed to come aboard as producer of the TV version, “we knew we would be dealing with someone who loved it probably more than anyone,” Ulrich said. The production scored again when Curry, who played Frank-N-Furter in the original, signed on to play the show’s narrator, The Criminologist, in the TV version. “That meant he gave his blessing,” Ulrich said, “and it’s so cool to have him on board.

“I really do think they (the cast and crew of the new production) have paid such an homage to the original. They haven’t changed things dramatically, by any means. It’s very much a re-creation, but things have a new spin on them.”

The cast is led by Laverne Cox, the transgender actress best known for “Orange is the New Black, as Frank-N-Furter. Others include Victoria Justice (TV’s “Victorious”) as Janet, Reeve Carney (TV’s “Penny Dreadful” and Broadway’s Spider-Man) as Riff Raff, “American Idol” alum Adam Lambert as Eddie and Ben Vereen (Broadway vet and actor/dancer/singer) as Dr. Scott.

Cox was the first person cast, Ulrich said, and could not have been a better choice. “If we had been trying to recast a duplicate version of Tim Curry, it would have been a failure. He was genius and everybody would have compared them. But going with Laverne, who is so different in every way, brings us into the now. ... She is so good and talented and beautiful, and she just puts a very contemporary and happening-now spin on it.”

This story was originally published June 9, 2016 at 4:49 PM with the headline "Wild and outrageous ‘Rocky Horror’ to finally play at State Theatre."