Confessions of a Transylvanian (16 page)

“You think tha
t’
s going to teach him a lesson, Andy? Hell, tha
t’
s just what he wants,” said Donny in his calm way. He knew he was basically talking her off a ledge so he spoke as evenly as he could. “He
wants
us to give up. Tha
t’
s his plan. H
e’
s hoping that half of us just go home and never do Rocky again and that the other half head up to Deerfield, put on a crappy show and then, when the whole thing comes crashing down, that w
e’
ll come crawling back, begging him to let us back into his cast.”

A few ears pricked up at this. He
what
?

“If you really want to get back at this asshole, ther
e’
s only one thing to do.” Donny looked around at each of them. “We go up to Deerfield and we do the best goddamn Rocky show anyone has ever seen. We blow the fucking doors off this thing like we
know
we can and we show Marshall Fucking Douglas exactly what this show can look like if you put up a cast who knows what the hell the
y’
re doing.”

An electric charge was thrumming through the room. Donny knew he had their attention now and he pressed his advantage.

“We can do this. And i
t’
ll belong to
us
. And w
e’
ll never have to deal with that motherfucker ever again in our lives.”

They looked around at one another, wondering to themselves:
Can we really make this happen
?

“So,” said Donny at last. “Who wants to go?”

Turned out, all of them did. In fact, in addition to the group that Marshall had fired, they even managed to pick up two new guys at Denn
y’
s that night who had been watching the show from the audience for the past few weeks and had
n’
t yet gotten up the nerve to join the cast. The guy
s'
names: Tony and Tom.

Jackie said she was pretty sure she could convince her boyfriend Barry to join the cast as their Rocky and, looking around, this group of rejects suddenly realized that they had a fully formed Rocky cast sitting right in front of them. The decision was made. They would go to Deerfield and try to make history. Everyone was on board.

Within minutes, their new roles had been cemented, Donny was unanimously elected Cast Manager and they had given their new cast a name.

The Wild and Untamed Things was born.

Well, almost. Because, in truth, live Rocky shows do
n’
t just materialize out of thin air just because you have a cast of characters. Ther
e’
s a hell of a lot that goes into putting on a performance in front of a live audience and this newly formed cast had only had six days to make it happen. Time to get cracki
n’
.

Donny and Russ called in every favor they had and the mad scramble began. Everyone sprang into action and did what they could. While some people were busy gluing PVC pipe together to make a control panel, others were filching wheelchairs from hospital waiting rooms, commandeering motorcycle helmets or trying to scare up actual spotlights. It was a team effort and they were racing against the clock.

One lucky break they caught was that Bernie, the projectionist at the Hollywood Twin, had heard about their expulsion and invited Donny and Russ over to the theater one last time to commiserate and, not incidentally, to get really high with the two of them.

It turned out, after about the third joint or so, that Bernie the Projectionist was no fan of Marshal
l’
s either. Hated the guy, in fact, ever since Marshall banned his young, female cast members from the projection booth soon after catching Bernie handling some gir
l’
s second reel.

To stick a well-placed knife in Marshal
l’
s back, Bernie made a presentation to Donny and Russ to commemorate their departure: It was a film canister containing the previews they played at the Twin before the Rocky show began. They were all there: “Animal House,” “The Blues Brothers,” “Help!”...everything. Russ and Donny were very touched.

“And guess what?” said Bernie. “I even tossed in a little Lynyrd Skynyrd-tribute flick as a bonus. If you have
n’
t seen it yet, yo
u’
re gonna
love
it.” He wished the new cast well and sent Donny and Russ on their way, loaded with goodies.

Meanwhile, the rest of the cast were making sure they had the costume situation straightened out. Most of them seemed to be fine, as they already had the outfits they wore as understudies, but a lot of necessary costume pieces—like the Riff and Magenta space suits—had been owned outright by the Twin cast. Replacements either had to be located or constructed in time for that Frida
y’
s show.

Little things proved even more difficult to find, like Rif
f’
s feather duster (which he brandishes during his intro to “The Time Warp”), the oversized, four-foot-tall candelabra Riff uses to torture Rocky, the fishnets stockings for Dr. Scott (which, yo
u’
ll remember, had to somehow be big enough to fit
Donny
) and a laundry list of other items that had to be secured in the very little time they had left.

Couple this dilemma with the fact that Donny and Russ were attempting to pull off this stunt by mobilizing a bunch of people who had never organized anything in their lives. Most of them were still in high school, many of them did
n’
t even
drive
and, to make matters worse, the list of items to be collected was
totally bizarre
. It was
n’
t as if they were being asked to come up with a series of normal household items. Pitchfork-shaped laser guns and hinged-lid wooden coffins with skeletons inside do not exactly grow on trees.

But they persevered, if only out of a sense that if they were successful, Marshall would somehow suffer. This work ethic seemed to drive them all relentlessly and by Friday night, January 1, 1982, they were ready.

The big night had finally arrived. The cast gathered. Makeup was applied, the colored spotlight was in place, and props were placed strategically around the theater. It was showtime at the Ultravision. Everything appeared to be in place.

Despite their fears that no one would show up to see them, the place was packed for the Wild and Untamed Thing
s’
debut. The throng was admitted and Tony—chosen to run the Deerfield pre-show—proved to be the ideal greeter. Virgins were trotted up on stage, money was collected, announcements were made. The Rocky machine was humming along.

People kept filing in as the pre-show buzz continued to grow. With showtime only minutes away, it looked as if they would get about 300 people into the place, a gigantic turnout by any standard.

The electricity was palpable. They were ready.

Finally, at about ten after 12, Russ signaled the projectionist in the Ultravision booth, the lights dimmed and they were off and running. The audience cheered. It was all about to come together.

The first thing to hit the screen was the Lynyrd Skynyrd-tribute film that had been lovingly bequeathed to Donny and Russ the previous week. Within seconds, the entire cast knew...

....that they had made a terrible,
terrible
mistake.

For one thing, the story that was related in the film was incredibly depressing. It was all about the plane crash that had occurred five years earlier that had killed three of the band members. It was a tribute to these lost artists and the story of how, despite this terrible tragedy, the ban
d’
s legacy lived on. It was a tale of survival, friendship and endurance in the face of long odds.

And it was
awful
. Halfway into it, you began to wish you were on that plane too.

The audience began to get restless, then agitated. I mean, people are supposed to throw stuff at a Rocky show, but not
before
the movie. These people were pissed.

Another problem: It apparently had not occurred to anyone that there was
n’
t a single Lynyrd Skynyrd fan in the entire cast or, for that matter, in the audience. Southern rock and Rocky Horror, it turns out, did not mix. Not one little bit. So, in addition to the throwing of objects at the screen, the catcalls also starting raining down about thirty seconds into the film and did
n’
t let up. In fact, one could say that they
escalated
.

Worst of all, the video was
endless
. All told, the film lasted only about twenty minutes. But when yo
u’
re watching something you truly hate, every second is an eternity. By the time this cinematic abomination finally ground to a halt, half the Rocky cast members were so disheartened, they just wanted to pack up and go home. The rest were demanding to know why the hell Donny and Russ had
n’
t bothered to
watch
the fucking thing before allowing it to be shown. The response? “W
e’
ve been a little busy.”

At last, “Lynyrd Skynyrd, Forever in Our Hearts,” or whatever the hell it was called, finally, mercifully ended. The audience cheered derisively as the credits rolled. It was now 12:30 and, so far, things could not have gone worse.

Finally, the previews that had been pilfered from Marshal
l’
s theater kicked in. And for the first time that night, the audience saw something on screen that they could cheer about. During the brief few minutes that the previews ran, the audienc
e’
s mood appeared to shift back out of the red zone and some of them actually appeared to be happy that they had chosen to come to the show.

Then the previews petered out, the screen went black and the familiar chant began.

“
We want lips! We want lips! We want lips!
”

And when those cherry-red lips finally appeared on the screen, something very unusual happened:

On this night, for one night only, never seen before and never to be seen again, “Science Fiction / Double Feature” was performed—not by Sunday and Andrea alone—but by the entire cast of the Rocky Horror show. They sat, this cast of castaways, side by side, stretching across the entire length of the enormous Ultravision screen and, as one, they carefully, meticulously lip-synced along with the giant lips above them and performed the refashioned choreography that Sunday and Andrea had prepared for the opening number.

The rest, Russ told me, is history.

“There,” Russ said when he was done. “That was
n’
t so fucking bad, was it?”

By the time he had finished the story, Rus
s’
s bedroom was packed. Most of the people in the room knew the story already (having lived it) but it was news to us greenhorns. I just could
n’
t fathom how the Deerfield cast—these amazing people—had been benchwarmers at the Twin while Marshal
l’
s supposed “A-Team” went out and screwed up the show every night. It was beyond me.

Sunday weighed in: “I never said you could
n’
t tell a nice fucki
n’
story, Russ,” she said, in her matter-of-fact way, “I just do
n’
t like hearing that doucheba
g’
s name. Is that too much to ask?”