The Rocky Horror Picture Show is 50 years old, and still going strong in midnight theaters. We're listening back to Terry's 2005 interview with Tim Curry, who starred on stage and in the film as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the "sweet transvestite" from Transylvania. Also, we remember the prolific sportswriter, NPR commentator, and best-selling author John Feinstein.And film critic Justin Chang reviews The Alto Knights. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get special behind-the-scenes content, producer recommendations, and gems from the archive. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Why is 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' still popular?
And so I saw you, I guess it was probably like the late 80s, in Wiseguy, the TV series.
Yes.
And you played a kind of Phil Spector-ish, brilliant but crazy record producer.
That's right.
And a great, really terrific performance. And I think that's when I really got the picture. Wow, he's really good at doing all kinds of things. Yeah.
That's so nice. I mean, it's sort of important for me because, you know, that first performance that sort of introduced me to everybody was so out there and so... I'll say, yeah. So kind of outrageous that, you know, I was a very quiet boy for a while, you know, just to make sure that people got it, that, you know, that wasn't necessarily who I was.
Was that because of... It was my first movie, you know.
That was your first movie? Yeah. How did you get the part?
I got the part because I used to work a great deal at a theater in London called the Royal Court. And I guess they have a little theater upstairs which seats about 60 people and I did Brecht there and I did a sort of Rudyard Kipling show there and...
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Chapter 2: What challenges did 'The Rocky Horror Show' face during its early years?
That's funny. You'd be wearing it for like this transgressive playwright, Jeanne, and then this parody of everything Rocky Horror.
Absolutely.
Well, there's probably nothing that can get you into character quickly like black bikini briefs, fishnet stockings, the garter belt, the corset, the whole thing.
Well, absolutely. And that was a fairly late development. I mean, I had no idea it was going to be like that.
You didn't when you accepted the part?
No, no, no, no. I thought I'd be in a white lab coat, you know.
So how did the whole thing... It was a bit of a shock, actually. ...how did it all evolve then?
Yeah.
It's just what everybody wears in Transylvania. They just get over it, you know. It's truck driver drag. It's not about going boop, boop, a-doop. It's just what they happen to wear.
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Chapter 3: Who were the key actors in 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show'?
I want to talk with a basic staple of sports reporting, and that's the locker room interview after the game when guys gather around athletes. And I want to just call on my limited experience here. Back in the 1980s, NPR relied on its member stations for a lot of its sports reporting. And although I mostly covered politicians and elected officials, I did cover some big sporting events.
And what I noticed in the athletes' locker rooms was how relatively timid the sports reporters seemed to be about asking a tough question. And it occurred to me that elected officials and politicians need the media. They have some obligation to talk. Athletes really don't need sports journalists, do they?
No, it's a very good point. And they behave that way a lot of the time because they're not trying to get elected to anything. They're not trying to sell a program to anything. They just have to perform on the field, on the court, wherever they might happen to be, the And there is a great disdain for the media among many, if not most, in sports. And the locker room is their domain.
Now, things have changed since the 80s in that for the most part, we're pretty much banned from locker rooms nowadays. The creation of the interview room, I think, is one of the worst things that's ever happened to sports journalism. Because if you think the answers in a locker room are rehearsed and canned and cliched,
stepping up, giving 110%, wanting to win for my teammates, it's 50 times worse in an interview room. At least in a locker room, if you have the time and or the patience and kind of outweigh the hordes and can get with a guy one-on-one, especially if you know him a little bit, you might be able to get a little better answer than that.
But more and more now, teams on the college level, certainly, and more and more on the professional level, are banning the media from the locker rooms after games and saying, go to an interview room and we'll bring you somebody and put them behind a microphone.
Right. And a lot of your book is about the business of getting meaningful access to players and coaches, moments in which they may be candid. How did you learn that?
Well, I think it goes back to my first days as a reporter when I was still in college.
It became apparent to me that the more you could see what was real as opposed to what was served up to you, whether it was in a locker room or in a practice or if you could get somebody to let you into a team meeting or if you could get an athlete away from their domain and put them in a restaurant for lunch or dinner or anything –
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