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Time is fleeting! But we’re taking it back to 1975…
On Friday, the “Rocky Picture Horror Show” celebrated 50 years since the horror musical was first released. Barry Bostwick, 80, portrayed Brad Majors alongside Susan Sarandon, 78, who played Janet Weiss.
The co-stars opened up about joining the cult classic film in the documentary “Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror.” Some of the other featured players in the project had already performed the show in London and Los Angeles.
Bostwick said he first found out about the movie from casting director Joel Thurm.
“[He] asked me if I would be interested in maybe coming to L.A. and doing a production at the Roxy and I said, ‘Eh,’” reflected the star.
“I didn’t really want to do stage at that point, but [I said], ‘If there’s ever a movie, please come to me and talk to me about playing a character in it.’ “
In Thurm’s eyes, Brad Majors was “custom-made for Barry.”
“I mean, you need a good singer. You need a great-looking guy. You need someone who is very all-American,” he reflected. “He was perfect for it in every possible way. And Susan became the belle of the ball indirectly because I knew that Susan wanted to do the project.”
Bostwick and Sarandon were already friends when casting was happening.
Thurm admitted that while the actress wanted to audition, her agents had a different opinion.
“Her agents did not want her to audition for the piece, so I found a way to get around it. It was very simple,” recalled Thurm. “When Barry was coming in for his audition, I said, ‘Just bring Susan.’”
“I went by just to say hi, and they were like, ‘Oh my God, this is such a good idea. Would you read Janet?’” Sarandon chimed in.
Thurm teased, “She wasn’t auditioning. She was helping me read an actor.”
Sarandon said Janet felt “like a satire of every ingénue I’d ever played — somebody whose kind of wide-eyed and sweet but underneath is a bitch and is just waiting to be liberated. So I read it.”
“I remember standing up on this little stage and I thought the focus was going to be on me, and apparently, who they were really looking at is Susan, as I am, in their minds, and I didn’t know it, already had the job,” Bostwick said. “And Joel was just sort of suckering me in.”
“Rocky Horror” started out as the 1973 London stage musical at the Royal Court Theatre, written by Richard O’Brien and directed by Jim Sharman. Tim Curry and O’Brien played Frank-N-Furter and Riff Raff, respectively.
The movie follows “sweethearts Brad and Janet,” who are “stuck with a flat tire during a storm, and discover the eerie mansion of Dr. Frank-N-Furter,” a mad scientist.
Dr. Frank-N-Furter had just brought his newest creation, Rocky, to life as the couple arrives.
Bostwick reminisced, “I think it was perfect for the film because we were strangers in a strange land.”
O’Brien noted: “One of the nicest things about that is Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick came across from America and into a world which we already inhabited, which was fantastic because that was exactly what was supposed to happen.”
“It couldn’t have been more truthful and more obvious and rehearsing was a dream because we all knew what we were doing, and they came in, the green virgins, and it was perfect.”
Patricia Quinn (Magenta), Nell Campbell (Columbia) and Christopher Malcolm (Brad) all reprised their stage roles for the on-screen project.
“Rocky Horror” became one of the best-selling movie musicals of all time — grossing $115 million off a $1 million budget.
50 years ago, the movie was set to open in New York on Halloween, but the studio scrapped that plan. Tim Deegan, from Fox, came up with his after-dark idea.
Midnight screenings weren’t anything new, but this was the first time one of the midnight showings would be held for a Fox musical.
Deegan admitted to The Post at the time that there was “no pressure within the company to release this picture.”
“Rocky Horror” then opened at the Waverly on April Fool’s Day, 1976.
“It’s the first time a major studio has ever opened a film here on such a small and eccentric scale,” penned Post movie critic Frank Rich that July.
The movie’s director and co-writer, Sharman, first experienced a “Rocky Horror” screening in New York in 1978, when he visited from Australia.
“I rolled up to the Waverly at midnight and bought a ticket, like any punter,” Sharman told The Post.
“The ritual was well established by then and the interplay between the movie, the audience, the cosplay and the party seemed fun. I was relieved that the movie had found its audience,” he continued. “A surreal homage to late-night movies was already on its way to becoming an ultimate late-night movie.”
Sharman said both the musical and movie were never meant to ride the traditional path.
“The show began in abandoned cinemas and rock clubs,” he added. “It only faltered once, when it went mainstream, on Broadway. And the movie didn’t catch fire in mainstream release either. But it did in late night. Why?”
Sharman noted that a main reason was how they shot the film.
“A mainstream version would have had celebrity rock stars and a big budget. We honored ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’s’ B-movie premise. We confused A-and-B-movie tropes. We shot it fast and loose on low budgets, with tight schedules, in chilly studios, with iconic visuals. And we kept faith with a virtually unknown but brilliant, sexy cast that a cult audience could embrace and make their own,” he explained.
“I feel that’s at least part of the reason why ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ is celebrating its 50th Anniversary.”