On Sunday night, Evan and I saw a documentary as part of the Aspen Film Festival. It was an encore showing of a movie shown earlier in the week, this time in Evan’s new town of residence, Carbondale (population 6,762), forty minutes down the road from Aspen, Colorado. The film was called Time Warp, which focused on efforts to bring the movie Rocky Horror Picture Show to the town of Rock Springs, Wyoming (population 22,936). Showing over two nights in 2022, the movie would also feature a shadow cast that would lip-synch and reenact the film on a stage in front of the screen.
While the movie premiered to little fanfare in 1975, it has become a cult favourite, especially during midnight showings. Its popularity arises from the audience participation element that developed over time. When I first saw the film at the age of fifteen in 1980 in Longview, Texas, I knew the content was definitely “out there,” with Tim Curry stealing the show as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite alien scientist who creates his own Frankenstein incarnation in the form of a studly muscle man named Rocky Horror who wears skimpy gold shorts. Rocky is supposed to be Frank-N-Furter’s ideal man, his own plaything. There are a lot of sexual shenanigans, with Frank disguising himself to have sex in his castle separately with stranded couple Brad and Janet and Janet then fooling around with Frank’s beloved Rocky. I’ve never thought about it, but the film was probably my first exposure to anything on the queer spectrum. At the time, it didn’t have much influence because it was so campy and because my neighbour with whom I saw the movie and I kept laughing and trying to make sense of the audience participation. (“What did they say?!”) It barely represented a movie much less life. To me, it had its own category: a spectacle. And, yes, it seemed very risqué to play in my steadfastly conservative East Texas town (population then about 50,000).
Sadly, I suspect not much has changed in Longview, Texas in the past forty-six years although it’s grown in size to 83,000 people. I haven’t been back in more than thirty years, but my parents live less than an hour down the road in Tyler (115,000), a city of Trumpers, pickup trucks and many, many Southern Baptist churches.
The fact that Rocky Horror would play with a shadow cast in an even smaller town and even more red-entrenched state (Trump won Wyoming by the largest margin of any state in 2016, 2020 and 2024) makes for a compelling documentary. Imagine not just a viewing of the film but the fact that a guy in Rock Springs would play the live-action version of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, dressed in a black corset, fishnet stockings and heels.
The director and star of the shadow cast is Kenny Starling who leads a shadow cast through two months of rehearsals and frequently referred to the production as an ode to queer joy. Its viability is challenged at a packed city council meeting, one in which the main challenger contends the production is intended to recruit children based on the tired, ignorant go-to conservative depiction of queers as pedophiles.
SPOILER ALERT: The production does go forward and is a success. In the process, we see townspeople in the shadow cast who identify as gay, lesbian, bi and trans gain confidence and find camaraderie in a town where residents are described as friendly but also homophobic.
It’s an uplifting documentary that features compelling storylines for the young, dynamic force that is Kenny Starling but also for many others who are tentatively finding comfort in their own identities. The whole time I was watching the movie, I felt a sense of hope.
Wow…if it can happen in a place like Rock Springs…
As Evan and I walked home after the movie, we were abuzz with positive impressions of the documentary and the follow-up question-and-answer session with director Allison Berg.
But in the middle of the night, my regular time for a stint of insomnia, I kept thinking about a young, apparently gay man (he never officially comes out) and the other queer members of the shadow cast. They dealt with regular harassment in school and faced rejection, ridicule and silence by family members. I realized that part of why Evan and I each connected with it so much is that Rock Springs, Wyoming in 2022 mirrored the environments where we grew up as teens. Evan fled Fort Collins, Colorado for Denver and then New York City while I left Longview, Texas for Fort Worth and then Los Angeles.
Basically, the current Rock Springs is stuck in its own time warp, still in the awkward stages of resistance and discomfort that we experienced forty years ago. We were cheering a sort of progress that also felt very much behind the times. How much “progress” is it when it remains in such a time lag? My sense of celebration became laced with sadness. While openness and acceptance are greater in many places, that is still not the case in smaller communities. I want to say “especially in red states” but I think things are just as backward or entrenched in many smaller towns and rural areas in blue states as well. Young people may find connection and information about their identities online but they continue to live their days in hostile and/or ignorant environments. The struggles remain. As noted in the film, Wyoming has a high suicide rate. In fact, it places as third highest in the U.S. after Alaska and Montana.
I got to thinking about the annual Pride celebrations all over the United States, Canada and the rest of the world. So many people who identify as LGBTQIA+ travel to places like NYC, London and Toronto to have their spirits lifted by all the enthusiasm that stems from huge crowds gathered for parades and parties. Yes, I see value in that. But, more than that, it seems we should be putting our support and numbers behind the smaller Pride events in places like Longview, Texas and Rock Spring, Wyoming. Shouldn’t we consider a day trip to a town farther afield, in places that couldn’t even consider residents performing in a Rocky Horror shadow cast? In the current political climate, the “little” things seem truly bigger. Higher stakes, yes, and also higher impacts on helping small-town and rural queers feel affirmed and connected. Pint-sized Pride events deserve our support.
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