Note:
The Teddy Award (which has just recently been acknowledged as
an "official" award of film in Germany) is given every
year to commemorate achievements in the area of gay/lesbian/transgender
films. In 1998 they presented Richard with a special award for
his contributions to the genre in the form of The
Rocky Horror Picture Show... and I think in no small
way also the culture it has created. The first question is a
reference to the award being called a "lifetime achievement"
award.
Interviewer: Isn't
it a little early for this award?
RO'B: Yeah
. . . yeah . . . this is-this is an award for still being alive,
actually. It's very nice.
Int: When
you made that very important show, did you really expect that
it would become one of the most famous musicals and films of
all times?
RO'B: Well,
next year we'll be celebrating 25 years of the movie, it's 25
years of the stage show this year- Silver Anniversary. I thought
it would appeal to people for five weeks, it had a five week
run originally, and I thought at the end of that time, I thought
I'd be looking for work again . . . but it wasn't that way.
Int: Do you
have any explanation for the interactivity miracle of the Rocky
Horror Picture Show?
RO'B: It's
pretty unique, in that respect, yeah. And there are no explanations,
it started in America with the movie- late night screenings,
I first heard about it when it was in Austin, Texas, for some
reason or another, seems a very strange place for all that to
start, and also in Greenwich Village.
And the strange thing
was, when I was a kid, I used to go to the late-night movies
with- other- wastrels- young adolescent, spotty, white-faced
staring at the screen and shouting lines for each other- you
know, just to see how (?) and gauche we could be. And now it's
a kind of- it's almost a ritual, isn't it? It's almost church-like.
Int: Usually,
there's a barrier between us and the film, and in this case,
that barrier is thrown away. That's a great step forward into
film history.
RO'B: Uh,
yeah. I don't think that's- I don't think you could- you couldn't
PLAN that. It- it had to be organic, that growth, and uh, and
I think that if you'd tried to plan it, you'd probably have
fallen flat on your face. But there are fans, who think- when-when
I first watched that movie, I thought we'd-we'd lost somehow,
the-the energy of the stage show, and I was very disappointed
when I first saw it, because there seemed to be a gap between
dialogue.
But now the fans
say "Did you leave the gap in the dialogue so that we could
say lines at the screen?" Which works anyway. (laughter)
I deny it!
Int: Do you
have any contact with the other stars of Rocky?
RO'B: I um
. . . I run into Barry Bostwick occasionally, I see Meatloaf
on a fairly regular basis, and I see Pat Quinn on a very regular
basis. Uh, the others have gone their seperate ways, Little
Nell's in New York, she's got uh, clubs and restaurants there,
and uh, and as you say, Susan's gone on, and Tim lives in the
States now, and works from Los Angeles, so I don't see much
of him.
Int: (a long
prattle which basically asked) What were you thinking about
when you wrote RHS?
RO'B: Well,
it's a collection of kind of populist, um, things that I liked.
B-Movies, and Science Fiction, and Rock-n-Roll, and that kind
of stuff. And one of the things we thought we would have a lot
of trouble with was- because on stage, we were parodying- those
movies. But making a movie, of films which were already to some
extent parodies of themselves, we wondered if we would pull
it off. Well, apparently we did.
