ATLANTA — For Barry Bostwick in 1975, playing dorky Brad Majors in a weird low-budget film called “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was just an opportunity to do a musical and get a leading role on his resumé.
Little did he or anybody know that this would become his defining career move courtesy of a group of “Rocky Horror” acolytes in New York City turning the movie into an interactive midnight phenomenon in the late 1970s. Troupes of “shadow” actors replicating the movie in front of the movie screen itself popped up all over the United States.
In Atlanta, different groups have done so over 40-plus years but the most enduring one to date has been LDOD, which was originally called Lips Down on Dixie until the word “Dixie” became politically incorrect.
A purely volunteer group, LDOD began doing weekly shows at the Plaza Theatre in 2000. Plaza owner Christopher Escobar, who has a knack for finding interesting marketing tie-ins for his theater, made some calculations and figured LDOD has generated $1 million in revenue for the theater courtesy of about 1,000-plus performances there.
Escobar reached out to Bostwick’s agent, and the 78-year-old actor showed up Friday night to celebrate LDOD’s longevity and financial achievement. Bostwick himself happily hosts several “Rocky Horror”-related events every year, usually around Halloween.
“It’s part of my DNA,” Bostwick said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal Constitution before the weekly event Friday night. “I’ve gotten my life and my career and other things. Then there’s ‘Rocky Horror.’ It’s going to be the lead line in my obituary. They’ll say (expletive) died, and my family will have to live with it.”
For anyone who goes to the live interactive show, audience members yell out a very particular expletive any time the very straight-laced Brad says anything.
“He isn’t even my favorite character!” Bostwick said on stage Friday night.
The movie, for the uninitiated, is about a recently engaged couple Brad (Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon) whose car breaks down near the castle of self-described transvestite scientist Dr. Frank-n-Furter (a deliciously over-the-top Tim Curry). They stop to make a call but end up in a wild, wooly world of bizarre characters and new sexual partnerships.
“This is not a Disney movie,” Bostwick told the audience Friday night, lovingly calling everyone there “sluts” and “perverts.” (The Plaza now runs the movie at 11 p.m. instead of midnight, an adjustment made after the pandemic let up.)
The audience, besides yelling nasty names at the characters, will dance the “Time Warp,” throw rice during the wedding scene and open up umbrellas or hide under newspapers when it’s raining.
Connor Schmeckpeper, the current director of LDOD, got to meet Bostwick Friday night on the same night he played Brad.
“It was such a great experience talking to him,” Schmeckpeper said after the event. “We always emphasize strict accuracy to elevate our performances. We pay attention to all the small details in the movie.”
At age 32, Schmeckpeper was not even close to alive when the film originally came out. He discovered LDOD at age 20 and joined the cast soon after, eventually meeting his current wife Angela Moore. “She was Janet. I was Rocky,” he said, Dr. Frank-n-Furter’s studly human creation who dressed in a gold speedo.
Having done the show hundreds of times since 2011, “I’m always amazed there is still such a huge turnout,” Schmeckpeper said. “You see people ages 18 to 75. You see people who have seen it 100 times and people coming for the first time,” dubbed “virgins,” of course.
He previously met Bostwick at the DragonCon convention in 2015 where LDOD performed at a downtown hotel. But this event was at their home turf at the Plaza Theatre and felt more special, he said.
The movie itself is not exactly on par with a film made by Orson Welles or Francis Ford Coppola.
“It’s pure camp,” said Aron Siegel, a film producer and sound mixer who has been with LDOD since the beginning and participated in these “Rocky Horror” shadow casting shows since the late 1970s. “It isn’t an Oscar-winning movie, but it does include an Oscar winner,” referencing Sarandon.
Shmeckpeper said “it’s still something that strikes a chord with people, even in 2023. A lot of the same messages and themes are still relevant. I think our interpretation of it has evolved. We aren’t so much into the sex, drugs and rock and roll but more about trying to create spaces where we can be ourselves without fear or reservation or persecution. You can be a new version of yourself. One of the major messages is, ‘Don’t dream it, be it.’”
As for himself, he said LDOD and the movie itself have allowed him to develop into “a person I like being. I love this community with all my heart.”
Bostwick, too, has fully embraced his role in “Rocky Horror.” His 28-year-old son Brian was in Cambridge, England, last Halloween when “Rocky Horror” showed up on a TV.
“He called me so I could talk to his friends,” Bostwick said. “He was very proud of the fact his dad was on TV in mesh stockings, high heels and a bustier. The British get that. I was a big hero in his eyes in that moment!”
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“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” LDOD performance, 11 p.m. Fridays. $15; $12.75 children/seniors/military. The Plaza Theatre, 1049 Ponce De Leon Ave. NE, Atlanta. plazaatlanta.com
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