And God Said, “Let There be Lips!”
As a film major, a musical theater fan, and a lover of Halloween, the movie “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” felt like it was made specifically for me.
My first watch of it was in the eighth grade, debatably too young to view this avant-garde story of sexual liberation. Soon after, I fell in love and watched it more times than I could count on two hands and quickly found out about the shadow cast performances that happen in movie theaters across the nation every month. When I moved to New Orleans, I heard about The Prytania Theater’s “Rocky Horror” shadow cast group known as The Well Hung Speakers. I had already gone once in August with a close friend of mine, also a film major, but now I wanted to expand my love of the experience to my new friends I had made in the past weeks at college. Always looking for something fun to do for their first semester here, I convinced thirteen of my closest friends at the time to venture all the way to The Prytania to view a midnight showing of a movie most of them knew nothing about.
As one of the few people that had actually been to the show before, I was put in charge of making sure everyone got to The Prytania in one piece. The show didn’t start till midnight and the journey there was only twenty-five minutes, split between streetcar and walking. That being said, I still told everyone in the groupchat to be ready by 10:30 p.m. since I knew none of them had the ability to be on time to save their lives. Sure enough, 11 o’clock rolled around and a third of the group strolled into my room asking if we were ready to go. Everyone else slowly filtered in while it took another fifteen minutes before the crew of Sonny, Austin, and Zach strutted in
with their matching outfits they had supposedly been secretly planning together for weeks. The word “outfits” is used loosely here since they only consisted of black trousers and matching black suspenders on these beaming bare chested men. With only a spare second for the room to erupt into laughter and delight at these bachelorette stripper wannabes, I pushed everyone out the door as we started our journey to The Prytania.
We had not even begun to consider the social graces of streetcar riding when we originally planned for our night out. I blame myself mostly since I was the “Rocky Horror” veteran of the group and simply described the dress code to them all as, “glam rock sex.” Not wanting to become any more of a nuisance to the passengers of the streetcar, all of us that could, began to strip off a layer of clothing in a mad dash to hand it to the closest half-naked guy we were with.
My friend Sam gave Austin her bright red sweater that he opted to tuck into his pants under his suspenders in what can best be described as a “lumberjack business casual.”
Yael offered up his leather jacket to Zach (aka “Gym Zach”), who was afraid his muscles were going to rip a seam if he moved them even slightly above his head. Finally, our good friend Montey, always one to share, took off his button up shirt and gave it to Sonny, leaving him with just a simple black under armor tank top for the ride to the movies. He was still more covered up then half the group we were with.
Through the residential area of uptown New Orleans, on the corner of Prytania and Leontine street, sits the historical Prytania Theater, a glorified brick box with a carved archway leading into the lobby of a grand cinema that belongs in the 1950s. Lined up around the block stood a hoard of “Rocky Horror” fanatics, some you could tell were bringing their friends along on the ride for the first time like I was. Some patrons came dressed in full costume of their favorite character you could tell probably took months to put together. Some decided to take a simpler route and come in their favorite loose band tee while others took the opportunity to use the night as their own personal Victoria’s Secret lingerie party–all of which the establishment considered as acceptable forms of dress for the night ahead.
Before we had time to sit down and breathe, the lights started to dim and the audience began to roar as the fans prepared for their favorite night of the month. The movie opened with the audience yelling, “And God said ‘Let there be lips!’” as those iconic bright red lips came into frame to sing the opening song. Members of the troupe took to the stage and began to strip down to barely-there lingerie. If any of my friends didn’t know what they were getting into before this moment, they did now.
Through each song we were dancing in our seats and sometimes even in the aisles with the rest of the audience. Each song raised the excitement in the room, climaxing during the performance “Touch-A-Touch-A-Touch-A-Touch Me.” Once the now sexually liberated Janet began to become a “creature of the night” with the titular Rocky character, girls from the “Rocky Horror” troupe began to come around and give a few lucky patrons a lap dance in their seats. Some of those lucky fans being half our group that came with us. The other half of us, feeling pitiful to have chosen the seats we did, looked in awe only a row behind us as seven of our closest friends, one after the other, received the first lap dance of their lives.
As the night came to a close, the theater troupe came out to a full standing ovation for their curtain call. My group of pals, who I was so worried would think the experience was too weird, began to clap and holler as the credits rolled. My friend Montey turned to me and said, “We have to come again next month!”
With the clock striking 2 a.m., the fourteen of us filed out of the theater and began our trek back home on foot, not wanting to wait thirty minutes for the only running streetcar this late, but not seeming to mind the walk anyways. As we journeyed back, I passed by each of my friends talking together in small groups raving about their favorite scenes and bits from the night. Some of them started listing off all the people they had to bring with them next month to experience it again. It was probably the biggest ego boost I had had in a few months just to know that I planned something that all of my friends had fun at. After a nearly thirty minute walk that felt like no time at all, we made it back to the towering brick campus of Loyola and climbed into our beds where we were ready to do the “Time Warp” all over again next month.
