You know you’re iconic when not one, but two documentaries are coming out about you at around the same time. It’s safe to say, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is deserving of that iconography.
A film called “Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror,” played at the Plaza Theatre this week. But “Sane Inside Insanity – The Phenomenon of Rocky Horror,” is playing at the Out on Film Festival on Oct. 4.
“The Rocky Horror Show,” a musical created by Richard O’Brien, started playing the West End in 1973. The 1975 film adaptation, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” was originally a flop. But as the years went by, the film became a midnight movie cult classic, starting the journey toward full-fledged global phenomenon. Directed by Andreas Zerr, “Sane Inside Insanity” dives into the story of “Rocky Horror,” starting with its beginnings as a humble stage show.
The documentary takes a look at everything from the business deals going on behind the scenes to the community, particularly among LGBTQ+ people, that has formed around the film.
“It provides a space for them, where they can find friends, where they can overcome social struggles or whatever they are dealing with, and be accepted just the way they are, without having to conform to a certain social group or to a certain community,” Zerr said. “A lot of people struggle with that, and that’s where ‘Rocky Horror’ steps in.”
Rough Draft Atlanta spoke with Zerr about the making of the film ahead of the screening. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I kind of came to “Rocky Horror” later in life, so it was interesting learning all of this stuff as sort of a noob. I read that you were never really a huge fan of “Rocky Horror,” so I’m curious why you decided to take on this documentary.
Andreas Zerr: I’m an independent filmmaker, and the one thing you’re looking for when you are a filmmaker is amazing stories. I think “Rocky Horror” is an amazing story. We’re not talking about the movie or the script of the movie, which isn’t so amazing [laughs]. I think it’s an amazing story because it started very small, and by pure incident, it became a global phenomenon, which is quite rarely happening in our days. That was the main reason we took it on.
As a non-fan, there is an objective lens to this documentary. Do you think your position as someone who is not so close to the subject at hand helped you as a filmmaker?
Zerr: We had a lot of very good reviews, and some of the reviews said “It’s a love letter to Rocky Horror” – which it never really meant to be. As a filmmaker, it’s very important – or almost vital, at least from my ethos as a filmmaker – to keep an objective eye. “Rocky Horror,” it’s an amazing story, and it’s a very good thing which has happened to our world. But it’s not all peaches and cream, and there are darker sides to “Rocky Horror.” I think if you are telling a comprehensive story about a phenomenon like that, you should also shed light on the things which are not regularly talked about, and are not so public.
Our goal as a team and my goal as a filmmaker was to be as objective as possible on the whole subject. That’s also one of the reasons why we chose not to have a narrator, so we don’t have this voice of God guiding you through the story. The one thing that I never wanted to do was express my own opinion. Of course, I have an opinion, but I don’t think, as a filmmaker, you should really express an opinion, but let the people who are actually involved in the making of “Rocky Horror,” or the people who are part of the fan clubs or the shadow cast community express their opinions about it. Nobody knows what I think about “Rocky Horror,” and I think as a filmmaker, this is vital to my job.
Speaking of the amount of people who worked on this, you were able to get interviews with quite a lot of them. I know you worked on this for 10 years, so I’m sure a lot of that came about organically. But what was it like getting in touch with the right people and making sure that you had the conversations you needed to have on such a mass scale?
Zerr: Well, it started very small. When we set out to do the documentary, it wasn’t meant to be a 90 or 100-minute documentary of the whole “Rocky Horror” phenomenon. We were aiming for like, 30-40 minutes. Once we did the first interview, with the costume designer Sue Blane – we found her through, I don’t know, her agent, I think – it appeared to us that it’s an amazing story from the genesis, when the first concept was written in 1973 up until today. This whole story was worthwhile to make a very, very comprehensive and full scale documentary.
Getting in touch with people involved wasn’t that hard, because once you’ve gained the trust of the community and people who are involved, they’re willing to share their contacts. After we did our first interview, we came back with a handful of phone numbers, and we called them up, and they gave us new numbers, and so on. Once you’ve presented or proven yourself as a serious filmmaker and a serious film team, it wasn’t that hard to get in touch with everybody. Because people love to talk about it. From the 80 plus interviews we did, I think we got three or four rejections from people who said, no, I don’t want to talk about it.
It’s interesting you talk about gaining the trust of this community – one of the things I find interesting about “Rocky Horror,” and the documentary kind of touches on this, is this very small, close-knit community versus how large and commercial it has become. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on that dichotomy.
Zerr: You mean in terms of why people are joining the community, or how the community evolves?
How it evolves, I guess. What I’m thinking about specifically is towards the end where you talk about the big musical production in the UK – there are a bunch of people who are like, that’s not how “Rocky Horror” should be. It’s this small, intimate, gritty thing. On the other hand, there are people who are more interested in it reaching a larger audience. I found the tension between those two things very interesting.
Zerr: Well, I think everybody who has seen the Rolling Stones in 1967 will say it was better than in Wembley Stadium [laughs]. Of course, there are different opinions about “Rocky Horror,” and it also depends when you actually get in touch with “Rocky Horror” the first time. If you just know the stage show how it is today, and how people feel about the stage show today – if you experience that as, let’s say, a first time “Rocky Horror” audience member, it’s a completely different thing than when you’ve seen it in a 200-seat, 500-seat theater in London in the 70s. The interesting thing is it still captures the imagination and the love and the feelings of the audience, whether it was an early production, whether it’s a film, or whether it’s the current stage production, which is touring regularly.
Richard O’Brien did decline to be involved, which you mention at the end of the film. He’s a huge part of this, and it’s funny, because watching the documentary as the story unfolds, I can kind of see why he might have been a little hesitant. Since he was such a large part of the story, how did you go about considering his perspective when he chose not to be there to represent himself?
Zerr: It was his own choice. When we first approached him – I mean, we were working for 10 years on the production – he was very respectful, but he said, no, he doesn’t want to be involved in the documentary. He had his own reasons. So we started to build the documentary without him. It was the same, for example, Tim Curry, who we didn’t get … and Susan Sarandon, you know, these A-listers.
In the end, I wouldn’t say I’m happy that we didn’t get him, but I don’t feel sorry about not getting him, or any of the big stars, because the documentary would have been completely different. Because if you have these A-list stars – Tim Curry, and Susan Sarandon, and of course, Richard O’Brien, you want to give them screentime. So if you would think in terms of editing, or from a filmmaker’s perspective, they would have gotten like, 15-20 minutes out of the whole documentary. Therefore, we have to cut out 15-20 minutes.
So not having the stars in the documentary actually gives people who are more on the fringe of the production, who haven’t told their stories so often or never before, the space and the platform. That makes the documentary even more objective and more interesting, because you get insight from people who have never spoken about it before. Our documentary became what it is, because we didn’t get the A-list stars. From our point of view, it makes it a little bit more interesting. On the other hand, if you go on YouTube and you Google “interview Richard O’Brien,” and Google “interview Tim Curry,” or “Susan Sarandon,” most of the things about “Rocky Horror” which are to be said have been said. There’s only a limited amount of words or things you can talk about when talking about “Rocky Horror.” Why repeat it with the same [people] talking about the same topic?
And you’ve got a tremendous amount of archival footage, which I’m sure kind of helps fill that out with those voices.
Zerr: Definitely. One of the things I’m very proud of is the experience of doing it, because we met so many interesting people who have never told their stories before. The makeup artist, for example, Peter Robb-King – he worked on the “Rocky Horror [Picture] Show,” and later was the makeup artist for “The Matrix” [sequels] and for “Star Wars.” They also had amazing careers. Seeing their perspective on how it was filming “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” it’s a very interesting part, which you haven’t seen before and which, probably, you will never see again.
You directed, produced, wrote, and edited this film. Was that difficult taking on all of that at once? I speak to a lot of directors who edit their own films, and I am kind of fascinated by that process.
Zerr: I’m an editor by heart, and I’m an editor by trade. So I started off my career in the film industry in editing. So I know about editing. It was quite difficult, because we had so much material. The first edit of the documentary was, I think if I remember correctly, five hours long. [Laughs] I mean, the way we told the story was clear from the beginning, because we had to go in a chronological way. We start at the beginning and we end at the present. There are no big twists in the documentary. So that was fairly easy.
The hard part for every editor, or for every filmmaker is, what do I leave in and what do I cut out? Because there’s so much interesting stuff in the interviews, but apparently we cannot publish a documentary with the length of five hours [laughs].
Was there anything that was left on the cutting room floor that you really wish could have made it in?
Zerr: Oh, a lot, a lot. A lot. On one hand, we have so many insights from the filming. Little snippets, funny stuff that happens, bloopers – all that stuff we had to leave out. We had to leave out a lot of things that the shadow cast members, the younger people, said, which were quite emotional. But in the end, you have to make a decision. There’s a phrase we use: you have to kill your darlings.
The title of this film is a lyric from the song “Eddie’s Teddy.” How did that come up as the title you wanted to use? Did you always want to pick a lyric?
Zerr: The working title was “The Rocky Horror Phenomenon.” But that doesn’t sound really catchy, does it? [Laughs] It sounds more like the doctoral thesis than the film title. “Sane Inside Insanity” came to mind because it’s – how do you call it? – ambivalent? Because there’s so much insanity happening in our world at the moment, and “Rocky Horror” is a safe space for a lot of people, as we express in our documentary. I think giving people the chance to be in a sane safe environment, while everything around them is going kind of insane is a very, very good title for the documentary.
On the other hand, you have the business aspect. You have “Sane Inside Insanity” – everybody’s going insane with “Rocky Horror,” and a bunch of people are sane enough to earn a lot of money out of it. That’s what I meant with ambivalent. That’s the reason we wanted it.
Coming at this for you from an outside perspective – and I know you said you didn’t want the doc to show your feelings on “Rocky Horror” – but how do you think working on this documentary changed how you think about the phenomenon? Was there anything you learned that surprised you about the making of this?
Zerr: Oh, yeah, there are a lot of things that surprised me. The two things that stand out which surprised me the most about the production or digging into the history of “Rocky Horror,” was first when it was developed in the early 70s in London, how interconnected it was at that time with pop culture – how many influences went into “Rocky Horror” and came out of “Rocky Horror.” There are countless people who saw the show, countless famous artists who saw the show and got inspiration from it. Also, what inspired Richard O’Brien, [director] Jim Sharman, and the team to actually create “Rocky Horror.” That was very surprising for me. I mean, people like David Bowie, Steve Strange, Mick Jagger and so on, they also saw the show at the beginning. Malcolm McLaren, who later created punk out of that influence – that was a very surprising thing.
The other thing that surprised me, actually, was the dedication of fans. We’ve met people who have been doing shadow cast performances for 25,30, 40, years, and that’s an amazing thing. I mean, if you run it through your mind, you’re doing the same thing every weekend, or every second weekend, or once a month. It’s the same movie. It’s the same performance you do. You really have to love something deeply to continue to do it for the longevity of 30-40 years.