The internet is freaking out about Rocky Horror Picture Show again

Earlier this year, prolific and beloved actor Tim Curry passed away, and of course, his loss was the perfect time to kick off some discourse about his most well-known role: Frank-N-Furter. While it's still spooky season, we've decided to answer the question everyone has been asking since: Is Rocky Horror Picture Show problematic, or is Gen Z just a bunch of weird little prudes? Chelsey Weber-Smith joins us to dissect the most iconic musical horror comedy film, looking back at its transgressive depictions of gender and sexuality, social commentary, how it holds up today, and obviously — what characters in RHPS Ryan, Grant, & Chelsey identify as. Our guest Chelsey Weber-Smith hosts American Hysteria, a kindred podcast about moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and all the freaky stuff that's shaped US culture since before it even was the US. Check it out here or wherever you get your podcasts. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonuses & exclusives, and access to our members-only Discord? Sign up for a membership for just $6.66 a month at https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Production Coordinator: Josh Fjelstad - Researcher: Adam Bumas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Ryan Broderick?

  This year, we lost beloved actor Tim Curry, and it kicked off a wave of discourse about what is likely his most famous role, Dr. Frankenfurter in Rocky Horror Picture Show. And today, we are going to dig deep into that discourse and answer once and for all, is Rocky Horror Picture Show problematic? Or are Gen Z just weird little prudes? Today's episode is dealing with like several decades worth of changing norms around how you talk about certain queer identity groups. And it's gonna get a little confusing and a little messy. But just like Rocky Horror Picture Show, you'll be okay, we'll make it out. But it's gonna be a little thorny there. Okay, just that's my disclaimer at the top.

• 1:13Ryan Broderick?

  So I want to kick things off with a really important question.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:17Ryan Broderick?

  Which is, which Rocky Horror Picture Show character do you identify as?

• 1:22Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh. Well, let's see.

• 1:24Ryan Broderick?

  Obviously, Grant is Rocky. But what would you?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  I know, and I was gonna say Rocky, but Grant's got that freaking bod.

• 1:32Ryan Broderick?

  We can all be Rockies. I'm not a Rocky. You can be Rocky too, if you want. Yeah.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think that I am a little bit of like a meathead in my heart. I think that that might be me. That's who I used to dress up as if I went to a Shadowcast show. So you can all imagine that, if you'd like.

• 1:54Ryan Broderick?

  That's very funny.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did a lot of like the mummy rap. You know what I mean? Like when he's kind of in the mummy outfit. But yeah, yeah. Well, who are you, Ryan?

• 2:11Ryan Broderick?

  Well, this is a complicated question because so right now, to peel back the curtain, I am creating, I'm building out the Garbage Day Live Halloween Show, which is an internet costume competition modeled after this old event series in New York called Hallow Meme. But we are also doing a Rocky Horror Picture Riff around it.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:32Ryan Broderick?

  Effectively, what we've done is made a musical about an old internet Halloween competition in New York.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, I love that.

• 2:41Ryan Broderick?

  And it is sort of a re-skin of Rocky Horror Picture Show. And in this scenario, I am playing Frankenfurter, and my stage manager, Alex, is Riff Raff. Because it kind of fit our dynamic on stage really well. And it kind of ties into the meta aspects of Riff Raff, you know, being played by the director and the creator of it. So, but I do not think I am very Frankenfurter in real life because he is an intergalactic sex criminal. And I do not.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  You don't identify that way?

• 3:16Ryan Broderick?

  That I am.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Okay, okay. Wow, you could have fooled me.

• 3:20Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I don't think I am that. I did feel very tied to Eddie.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:27Ryan Broderick?

  And Eddie's appearance in the movie made me kind of go, now there's a guy I can get into.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  I know, I know. And that was gonna be my kind of my second tier. And I did Eddie for Halloween this last year in New Orleans, and that was.

• 3:40Ryan Broderick?

  Fun.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  Very fun, yeah. So I do, I love Eddie as well. And he's, he's got a lot of depth. Like, there's a lot of kind of unspoken things there, I feel like, about him. And, and things that weren't like maybe properly explained in the movie, but we'll get into it.

• 3:56Ryan Broderick?

  Well, I think we'll get into it.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think we will.

• 3:58Ryan Broderick?

  So yeah, I think, I would say that maybe I'm a Frankenfurter, rising Eddie Moon sign.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, okay.

• 4:06Ryan Broderick?

  You know?

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Okay. You're emotionally half-brained.

• 4:10Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:11Ryan Broderick?

  My name is Ryan Broderick. Joining me as always is my gigantic muscly test tube baby, Grant Irving. And this is Panic! Roll the Show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And joining us from American Hysteria is Chelsea Weber-Smith. Is this, are you now in the third time club as well? Are you?

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:31Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Yes, we've done two frightening internet episodes. And now we are here doing something that's like closer to my heart, which is nice. Not that, you know, mobile game ads aren't in there too.

• 4:44Ryan Broderick?

  I like that. I, you are now, I think, the fourth person inducted into our third timers club.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  It's an honor. It's an honor, boys.

• 4:53Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, we're, we're, we're running through all of our favorites right now. Now that we're free and independent.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  I know, and congratulations. Welcome to the, the club. There are joy, there are highs and there are lows of this club. And, but I do love it. I prefer it.

• 5:08Ryan Broderick?

  Let me rephrase. We are not free. We cost money.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:12Ryan Broderick?

  But we are independent.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Yes, indeed.

• 5:15Ryan Broderick?

  So, you talked a little bit about going to Rocky Horror Picture Show productions or screenings. Tell me about your personal relationship with Rocky Horror Picture Show.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah. So my personal relationship with Jesus Christ starts back when I was probably about 10 or 11. My, my dad was a huge Rocky Horror person in the 70s when he was in high school. So he would go to like the drive-in movie versions of it. And he just, it was always his favorite movie. So one day in a hotel, he had VHS, popped it in. We watched it and, you know, I, I just felt changed, right? It was like, I didn't know why I loved this bizarre movie so much. I would later understand that it spoke to me on a queer level that I wasn't quite conscious of. But I just, I loved everything about it.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  I've always loved, since I was younger than 10, you know, I've loved schlocky horror. I love camp. I love all that stuff. And this is definitely honoring a lot of traditions and kind of riffing on and making fun of a lot of traditions that I love. And then in high school, I went to a couple showings. In college, I went to a few. I'm not that person that's like, I was there every weekend and it was like everything to me and it was my whole world and community. I love that for people. It wasn't my experience, but I really, I continue to love the movie so much. And I continue to listen to the soundtrack. Like, if I'm in a really bad state of mind,

• 6:52Speaker 02

  if I pop on that soundtrack, like it, it changes the whole chemistry of my life for that little amount of time there. And it's a lot of nostalgia, but I also think those songs are bangers. And I just think it's a wonderful thing. And I know there are a lot of criticisms that, some of which are totally fair. But for me, it's, it remains very important to my, my development.

• 7:18Ryan Broderick?

  We will get into those criticisms.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 7:19Ryan Broderick?

  Because I think they're, they're really interesting. I just saw it for the first time like a month ago.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  I know, I love this.

• 7:26Ryan Broderick?

  Which is crazy because it was like watching the source code for all of my interests. As someone who grew up in the punk and then later emo scenes, who loves camp, you know, I was part of that wave of people who watched Tommy Wiseau's The Room.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 7:44Ryan Broderick?

  And, you know, I am a connoisseur of both horror and transgressive art and camp. It is like all of the things for me. And I watched it for the first time with my girlfriend a couple of weeks ago, and she kept being like, oh, it's really bad, it's really bad. You know, again, in that way that you do. And I was like, no, this isn't bad at all. This is, this is, this is an extremely rich text.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Great. I wasn't sure what, I wasn't sure what I was walking into, Ryan. I wasn't sure, so this is nice.

• 8:11Ryan Broderick?

  I am very frustrated kind of by the state of culture when it comes to transgressive art right now. It's a lot of people sort of talking about like, what you consume and what you watch defines you and your politics. And a lot of what that boils down to are like, people being like, I'm racist on the internet. And then other people have been like, I'm not racist on the internet.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 8:32Ryan Broderick?

  And to me, seeing something like Rocky Horror Picture Show, it was like getting water in the desert after a very long time. Where I was like, this is a truly deranged piece of work from like a very unwell individual who apparently has only gotten more unwell in the decade since he made it. And to have that kind of personal experience with a piece of really insane art just felt great.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, that totally makes sense.

• 8:57Ryan Broderick?

  I want to make it easier for people who do not know Rocky Horror Picture Show to follow what we're talking about. So we're gonna go scene by scene, which my lovely producer, Grant, knows I hate doing in recap stuff. So we are gonna go through it. I'm gonna do my best to go through it in order. So it opens with the credits, science fiction double feature. It's good, it's great, it's iconic. But then we get to the wedding scene. The wedding scene is awesome. I think Damn it Janet is like one of the best songs in it.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:25Ryan Broderick?

  The thing that I wanted to open with, the question that like, I still don't really know how I feel about it is, what do you think about the double casting? And what do you think it means?

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, does it mean that they were kind of being like hunted, like up top? I don't know. Like, that's not necessarily my thinking, but that feels like one possibility is they were like being scouted. And perhaps the, the tire popping later on was somehow, you know, an intentional thing on the part of our, you know, our alien cast?

• 10:01Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, so let me explain. So Tim Curry and Richard O'Brien, Dr. Frankenfurter and Riff Raff later on in the musical are part of the church. They are, they are at the, they are the priests of the church. And they, and a bunch of the other aliens are in there too.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:18Ryan Broderick?

  And everything I've read is arguing that like, it is actually Frankenfurter and Riff Raff.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Okay, interesting.

• 10:26Ryan Broderick?

  Like you said, like hunting them.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:28Ryan Broderick?

  I have wondered if there's like a meta-textual thing that it's saying.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 10:34Ryan Broderick?

  About, I mean, the movie is like completely incoherent. Well, see, is the movie incoherent? I'm not sure.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  I don't know either.

• 10:41Ryan Broderick?

  I don't think so. There's something interesting, okay. Once again, I've already gone off, off the rails of a, of a linear.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  It's really hard not to, yeah.

• 10:50Ryan Broderick?

  Well, because this is what's so interesting about this thing. Is that like? To cast the murderous queer aliens who eventually have to execute one of their own for quote being too extreme at the end spoilers for a 75 year old movie.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  If we get hate mail about that though, that's so fucked up.

• 11:07Ryan Broderick?

  That's so on to you. He gets executed. So they execute him for quote being too extreme. And so there's something about kind of like how the film is talking about the predatory aspects of one of the queer aliens from Outer Space. And then to cast the same people as members of the church of the clergy is interesting and says something interesting whether it means to or not.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Is it this like omen or like a harbinger of something to come where it's like, it's not that they're actually being trapped, like all those things are happenstance that we'll get into. It's like as far as how they actually meet eventually, but it's like, is it the specter of sort of like the deviancy to come like haunting them already in this like traditional structure where you know, you would think you would be safe from such future depravity.

• 12:04Ryan Broderick?

  Right. Or is it like the church is another kind of institution that would violate Brad and Janet, the way that Frank and Ferder eventually violates them.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Okay. I like that too.

• 12:17Ryan Broderick?

  Cause like there's some like, yeah, the whole sort of loss of bodily autonomy in the final dance sequence is also really, okay.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. I know. I know.

• 12:26Speaker 03

  I'm shocking Ryan every time that he jumps.

• 12:30Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I'm trying my best. I'm trying to stay together.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Got a shot caller.

• 12:34Ryan Broderick?

  The thing about this, the thing that's really nice about watching like one person's very deranged vision is like there's stuff here, like there's like real meat on the bone.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:44Ryan Broderick?

  Um, which I just don't really get from like a lot of modern stuff anymore. Okay. After the wedding, so they sing Damn it Janet. It's a great song. One of my favorites. Then we get the drive. So it's over at Frankenstein place and they're gonna go visit their former teacher, Dr. Scott, and they got a flat tire during a storm and then they go to a nearby castle.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  As you do.

• 13:06Ryan Broderick?

  I think the castle rocks. Like it's so good. Like the, man, yeah, everything in this movie, it's so funny to like have people be like, oh yeah, it's a bad, poorly made movie. And it's like, everything looks good.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Fantastic. Oh, yeah.

• 13:19Ryan Broderick?

  It looks incredible.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  It's like you're in a William Castle movie that they just like turned the dial up to an 11 and everything is just so overblown. And it is, it's like being in a haunted house that people took a lot of care to design.

• 13:34Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. I also, I love like proto nerd stuff before they understood how the tropes fit together. Like you see this a lot, like I saw this a lot when I was like looking at like old, like pre-internet furry stuff where like the furries didn't like understand like what they were yet, or like, or like the earliest, the earliest like reports of comic conventions from like comic collectors, like they didn't really understand that like nerd world was one thing. So like even in the opening credits, you know, the science fiction double feature, like the closest thing that this movie can kind of do is be like, this is a B movie with horror elements.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:16Ryan Broderick?

  But it's like, it's clearly trying to be like all of what we would eventually call nerd culture. And it's kind of like hooking those cables together for the first time.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  And it's bringing nerd culture, like even earlier nerd culture back into the seventies because these are like homages to a lot of like 50s horror sci-fi schlock. So it's kind of, it's like both projecting itself into the future and pulling from the past. It's dynamic. It's very dynamic.

• 14:45Ryan Broderick?

  That's right.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:46Ryan Broderick?

  We also, we haven't mentioned the fact that there's a framing device to this play that makes no sense and is never fully explained. I get like, it sort of is explained that like.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  Is it the motorcycles?

• 14:59Ryan Broderick?

  No, no, no. It's, um, it's Charles Gray, the criminologist.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 15:05Ryan Broderick?

  He's sort of framing the whole story as like telling you the story. But he's also oftentimes cut in. That scared me. The door on Grant's camera just opened by itself. That was really scary. Um, no, but like there's a whole framing device where like you're being told effectively like a police report about what happened that night in the castle. But then also sometimes Charles Gray will start dancing or singing along with whatever musical number is happening and like commenting in a way like it's, it's all very loose.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  It's very loose. Yeah. Yeah. They're not playing by our rules.

• 15:43Ryan Broderick?

  And so obviously time warp is what comes next. It is the, I think it's probably the most famous song from.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. By far, for sure. That's the one that people who've never seen it still know, I feel like.

• 15:54Ryan Broderick?

  So this is where we're introduced to sort of the concepts, the major concepts as clear as they end up being. These are Transylvanians from, okay, wait, it's, hold on, it's, let me get this right.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  You got this.

• 16:10Ryan Broderick?

  This is a palace or a castle owned by Dr. Frank and Ferder, a mad scientist who is an alien transvestite from the planet transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Yes. You got it.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  What's confusing, what's hard about it?

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Obviously.

• 16:24Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, obviously. Well, I mean, as we will talk about later in this episode, that one sentence is probably like too much for like anyone born after nine 11 to like wrap their heads.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 16:36Ryan Broderick?

  There's just no, there's no concept of how that could work.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  I feel that there are probably many people who are like, yeah, and that's, that's my limit amount on this film.

• 16:45Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. And it's only gonna get more confusing from here, but basically I think the easiest way to understand this in a modern context is it's a bunch of queer, gender fluid aliens running around a haunted house.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:55Ryan Broderick?

  Which is awesome and great.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:58Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, we've got Riff Raff, Magenta and Columbia. They're all kind of part of the Transylvanians. And then you just have these like, kind of almost like Andy Warhol factory-esque like people hanging out, which may be ghosts.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  The unconventional conventionalists, I think is what they're called. Yeah. Like who are dancing during the time warp, you mean, who end up, they just have all these kind of like hyper hip outfits on. And yeah, you don't really see them again. They're kind of just there for that scene, I feel like.

• 17:30Ryan Broderick?

  They're there in the laboratory upstairs and they get chased by Eddie's bike. But then they're kind of shown as like maybe like the shining-esque ghosts of the manor house in the final dance sequence.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, but do you feel like those are them? I've always kind of felt like those are just like random people in the audience. Cause I don't feel like they're dressed the same, but now I'm not remembering, even though I've seen this movie so many times.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  How many extras could they afford is the other question behind all of this.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  It's a great, very, yeah, very good question.

• 18:01Ryan Broderick?

  Honestly, I've been to parties like this before. There's always just a bunch of other people around. That makes sense.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  You've been to parties like this before, huh?

• 18:07Ryan Broderick?

  I've been to parties. I've been to a couple of parties. Wait, who hasn't been to like a bunch of queer aliens haunted house parties? Like that's a normal thing, I think.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, where are they this year? Let us know. We're too old now to know where they are.

• 18:20Ryan Broderick?

  Then we get the proper introduction of Frank and Ferder, sweet transvestite. This clip I think went rightfully very viral again after Tim Curry's death this year because it is one of the greatest introductions to a character I have ever seen.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  I mean, it's unreal. It's tremendous. It's the word I'd use. Yeah.

• 18:39Ryan Broderick?

  He takes Brad and Janet are two squares and his assistant Riff Raff, they all go up to like a laboratory where Frank and Ferder puts on a smock that, um, is like super fascist. I'm gonna wear a modified version of it for our live show, but I have to figure out like something to cover up the pink triangle on it.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:02Ryan Broderick?

  Cause like, it just, but it just, it's gnarly.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  It's gnarly.

• 19:06Ryan Broderick?

  And, and like, you know, the aesthetics of sort of B movies and science fiction and horror and like Nazi Germany, like they're all kind of tied together in this weird 20th century kind of aesthetic that this movie is tapping very well into. Um, but yeah, it is a, it's a, it's an odd choice and one that is never fully explained.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. And so much of, I would imagine, and I think, you know, I know to be true about horror, but so much of like Cold War era horror is going to be pulling from the very recent world war for its imagery, just like we do now in our, you know, our films that, that are reflecting back culture, especially in some overblown like schlocky way, you know? And then you get the transgressive aspect of it and you throw that in and the seventies were wild. Let's just say that.

• 19:56Ryan Broderick?

  Seventies were crazy. Yeah. Um, this is where in the laboratory, we get the song, the Sword of Damocles, uh, which is the reveal of Rocky and Rocky is the titular Rocky Horror Picture Show. And he's basically a muscle man with the mind of a child, sort of like a sexy Frankenstein.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 20:16Ryan Broderick?

  Essentially.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Half a brain is what's going on in there.

• 20:20Ryan Broderick?

  Half a brain.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:21Ryan Broderick?

  It's also implied that like Rocky is not the first attempt at a Rocky.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:26Ryan Broderick?

  Frank and Ferder's just been cooking up muscly twinks in his laboratory.

• 20:31Speaker 03

  Kind of weird that we, that all Frankenstein's weren't set up this way. It's kind of weird that honestly, that somebody would go through all that work of putting all those bodies together without the idea of making their perfect twink. I think that's actually the most magical version.

• 20:45Ryan Broderick?

  Weirdly enough, Mel Brooks is one of the few filmmakers to address this in Young Frankenstein where he gives Frankenstein's monster a giant cock. Like the, the joke of the movie is that Frankenstein's monster is hung. Like, it makes sense. There's a song, uh, I Can Make You A Man, sung about sort of Rocky's creation. Very good song.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:06Ryan Broderick?

  And then that leads right into the arrival of Eddie.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:12Ryan Broderick?

  And Eddie is played by Meatloaf and he has one song and then dies.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  And it's so good. And he, well, he is murdered by.

• 21:20Ryan Broderick?

  He is murdered.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Frank and Ferder, who is very angry to see him after he explodes out of the freezer where his body was placed after his head was opened and half his brain was taken and put into Rocky.

• 21:35Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Which I feel is kind of a confusing aspect of the movie, but it is what happened. And, uh, yeah, he gets pick axed by, uh, by Frank and Ferder.

• 21:44Ryan Broderick?

  He has been chopped up and used for parts to make Rocky and he has a death gasp where he sings Hot P'tootie, which is very good, but I think a little long. I think all of these songs are long, but Hot P'tootie is very long. But it is a great sequence of Meatloaf just riding a motorcycle around, uh, like a womb for a while.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  And you know, when I mentioned the motorcycles, what I'm thinking is like, Maybe Rocky is the first man he's made and all of those motorcycles are from all the delivery boys that he kind of stole.

• 22:22Ryan Broderick?

  Oh.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  That's what I'm thinking, right?

• 22:24Ryan Broderick?

  That makes more sense.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Cause they're also, yeah, it's cause it's such a like revelation that he's making this man like from scratch with half a brain from Eddie. And so it probably, I think it makes sense that he's been experimenting on these delivery boys. And that's why, you know, in the beginning, like when Brad and Janet arrive, there's like a lightning strike and it reveals this row of motorcycles. And that confused me for a long time. And then recently I was like, oh, they're probably just, it's probably showing that Eddie is one of many that were kind of kidnapped into the castle.

• 22:57Ryan Broderick?

  That makes sense to me.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:59Ryan Broderick?

  Um, and then that takes us to kind of a, like a fucked up wedding song, which is a reprise of I Can Make You A Man.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 23:07Ryan Broderick?

  And then from there we get to probably, I don't want to say the most controversial, but like definitely an extremely controversial sequence of this film.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 23:19Ryan Broderick?

  And it really depends on how you want to interpret what happens next, I suppose.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 23:23Ryan Broderick?

  Janet and Brad go to bed and Frank Enfertor sneaks into Janet's room, disguises Brad, seduces her. Then she's, she like kind of exposes that it's actually him, not Brad. And she kind of like goes with it.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 23:40Ryan Broderick?

  And then the exact same thing happens again, but with Frank Enfertor pretending to be Janet and doing that to Brad.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:47Ryan Broderick?

  And then same deal.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:49Ryan Broderick?

  Brad's kind of into it.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  I know. It's like, when we say the movie beat by beat, I'm like telling everyone how much I love this movie.

• 23:55Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  It's like, yeah.

• 23:58Ryan Broderick?

  You know.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Describing it is, is, is rough sometimes for sure.

• 24:02Ryan Broderick?

  It, it might just be that like I, you know, I've seen movies from the seventies before, but like this.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:08Ryan Broderick?

  This didn't, I didn't, I didn't clutch pearls watching this. I was like, that's actually like a funny way to show like sexual liberation.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:16Ryan Broderick?

  I thought. Cause that's what it's supposed to be.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:18Ryan Broderick?

  In a way.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I mean, it's not going to trick someone, but there's like a very clear, uh, there's a very, it's, it's saying that like both of them are secretly open to this type of um, exploration with someone that is not, uh, the gender that they, or the gender expression or whatever you want to say that, that they would usually go for and uh, extra, not maritally, but you know, it's a, it's chatin.

• 24:46Ryan Broderick?

  Everyone's getting a little freaky.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, everyone's getting freaky.

• 24:49Ryan Broderick?

  This gets into really dark territory now, but in the, in the era that this happened, when Brad and Janet are tricked and we are led to believe that they have been saving themselves for marriage. So they had, uh, tons of repression and clear desire, but needed a, and an excuse and was never going to be led by.

• 25:13Ryan Broderick?

  It is coercive. They are being tricked. Uh, but you also get that they're being freed of their, of like all of the like cage that they had been in before, that it had to be pried open by some other force. Um, and that like it has to be a disruptive force, um, that makes you uncomfortable or that makes you have to get in touch with parts of yourselves you wouldn't otherwise. Really thorny thing to try to say now, but I also think that there like is some truth in that.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that are very scary. Yeah.

• 25:51Ryan Broderick?

  Exactly. And we're going to talk about where that goes and how confusing this movie gets about what it's trying to say, about what that means. After a word from our sponsors, the Catholic Church.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  When you spend enough time around great companies, you notice that the best ones treat trust as a growth strategy, not a box to check. Vanta helps companies build and prove trust from day one. Its Agentic Trust Platform connects compliance, risk, and trust at enterprise scale. Vanta delivers a 526% return on investment over three years and pays for itself in just three months. Learn why over 16,000 of the fastest growing companies use Vanta at vanta.com.

• 26:42Ryan Broderick?

  Just to summarize here, Brad and Janet are in the mansion. Rocky has been born. Meatloaf has been killed with a pickaxe and everyone got real freaky and lines got really blurry, but everyone seems to be kind of having a good time so far.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:59Ryan Broderick?

  Then Rocky escapes and Rocky is not having a good time. He's chased around the castle, uh, by Riff Raff and Frank Enfertor. Uh, Janet also discovers Frank Enfertor hooking with Brad on one of the monitors. And then you get the Janet and Rocky hookup song, Toucha Toucha Touch Me.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 27:19Ryan Broderick?

  Which is a really good song.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  And a very consensual experience for both of them, I feel like.

• 27:26Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, there's.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  I mean, I guess he has half a brain. I don't know.

• 27:33Ryan Broderick?

  Well, let me race through the remaining scenes.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  All right.

• 27:36Ryan Broderick?

  Cause I want to have a deeper conversation about what you think this movie is saying about sexuality. And then we could kind of talk about the, the kind of reappraisal that's been happening recently.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  You got it.

• 27:45Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. So, cause I, I, I'm with you. I have like, okay. Dr. Scott finally arrives, the guy that they've been looking for the whole movie.

• 27:55Ryan Broderick?

  He has a German accent and I think is like heavily implied to be a Nazi.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:59Ryan Broderick?

  But he's also Eddie's uncle.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:03Ryan Broderick?

  And then they all sit down for dinner and Frank Enfertor feeds Eddie to them.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. And there's like a, an animosity. Dr. Scott seems to know who Frank Enfertor is and vice versa. There's like a confusing like familiarity that we as the audience don't fully understand, but there's, you know, they recognize each other.

• 28:25Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. And after the dinner scene, basically the movie has just like a couple long, really deep, like good dance sequences. Uh, you get, uh, Rose Tint My World, which, uh, turns all of them into stone. It's like a Medusa machine.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 28:43Ryan Broderick?

  And then he dresses them up like himself. And then he forces them all to do a dance sequence with him that goes on for a really long time, involving a swimming pool, uh, fanfare and into Don't Dream It, Be It. And then the whole thing ends with Riff Raff and Magenta, um, killing him because his lifestyle is too extreme, revealing their real alien outfits. And then they all go to space, leaving Brad and Janet behind and, uh, Dr. Scott, I think as well.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  And Brad and Janet, I think are very, at the end, and we'll, I'm sure get into this, are very, they're like crawling on the ground and like thing, like they're in some sort of daze, like it's not a positive ending. It doesn't appear for Brad and Janet.

• 29:31Ryan Broderick?

  So, okay.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:32Ryan Broderick?

  I raced through that because I want to talk about this.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 29:35Ryan Broderick?

  The, I was willing to sort of give this movie like a very deep and sympathetic read.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 29:41Ryan Broderick?

  Um, which is, you know, and perhaps too modern of a read, which is like, oh, like queer spaces can be extremely liberatory, but also like you have to police them to the way you have to police anything else. And there's a predator in this community and then he's removed. That it sort of takes away bodily and sexual autonomy from all of these people. And then he's put down and then the movie ends.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 30:06Ryan Broderick?

  I don't think that that's what was intended for this movie to mean or be, but it is clearly playing with those ideas. And I wish that, um, what's his face, the guy who plays Riff Raff?

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Richard O'Brien, yeah.

• 30:18Ryan Broderick?

  Richard O'Brien was less of a weird crazy person, but he is.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 30:23Ryan Broderick?

  Who's said some really nutso stuff about trans people and the queer community in general. So I'm sort of resigned to maybe just that there is no coherent way to read this movie. But what is your sort of sense of the back half of this movie and what it's trying to say, if anything?

• 30:38Speaker 02

  I don't know. Uh, cause I, you know, it's not like I look at this and I'm like, what a great allegory for the queer experience, but I just feel like we are taking something out of its time, which is fine to do. Like I, I don't know. I think there, sometimes I get criticism for liking this movie, appreciating this movie. I don't mind it because I'm like, look, like we should be looking back at media that maybe had a negative effect now, but I think it also behooves us to look at media in its context when we had nothing like this, right? In the seventies. And unfortunately, Richard O'Brien wanted to make a sci-fi horror movie.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  I assume he wanted to make a queer movie, whatever that meant to him at the time. And I don't know if he thought more than that. Like, I don't know if he was like, I'm making an important allegory through schlock and through B horror. Like, you know, I mean, it's impossible to say that it doesn't reflect the time, horror especially. Like we can look back again at like the atomic era and see all the giant bugs and see that it is, there's a commentary happening, but I just don't, I don't think that, that he necessarily had any social ideas in mind. I think that he just wanted to have these, this type of character, probably the types

• 32:03Speaker 02

  of characters in some way that surrounded him, not murderers, not aliens, but you know, just this kind of alien group of weirdos. Uh, and then, you know, just kind of wrote the script of a movie that included those people as villains and, and the enjoyment of like the disruption of straightness. And in the seventies, we did not have the same conversations around consent, the way we thought of sex, very problematic, very, um, very revolutionary as well. And it's just the seventies were very different and very complicated and had nothing like this. We did not really have queer characters.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  We did not have celebratory queer characters, you know, at all. Um, and you can call these characters villains, which they are, but like you don't walk away feeling like you have been like defiled by these characters as a viewer, at least I didn't, I shouldn't speak for other people. So I think, I just think that it's a very complicated thing that you can look back on and critique because we have like our Buffalo Bill, right? Like our serial killer, trans character, you know, who we wouldn't necessarily call trans, but you know, like the, the killer cross dresser, I think is shorthand for this, this type of character. And you know, that's not great. We don't love that now at all. It can be really problematic, but it's also.

• 33:27Ryan Broderick?

  To be clear though, if you, if you do cross dress and you are a serial killer, like that's, you can do that. That's fine. In real life.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:37Ryan Broderick?

  I want to say that you're valid.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  You're valid.

• 33:41Ryan Broderick?

  But it's not, it's not like all cross dressers are serial killers.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yes.

• 33:45Ryan Broderick?

  To be clear.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you, Ryan. Yeah.

• 33:47Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I just wanted to clear that up.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:48Ryan Broderick?

  Before we get the comments about it.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  So you want me to keep that in, is what you're saying?

• 33:52Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I want you to keep that in. I want you to, I want you to lead the episode with that. Um, I, no, I think you're exactly right, where it's like, yes, Franky Furtur is a villain. I mean, he's a villain even according to the other villains in the movie.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Although I will say really quick, I have a poster in my bathroom, and it's a big Rocky Horror poster, and it says, "He's the hero. Yes, the hero." So I don't know what that means, but yeah.

• 34:14Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I went searching for kind of deeper meaning in this after I watched it, just because, yeah, I am alive in 2026, and that's just what you do. You there are Reddit threads and all the rest. And, you know, I, yeah, it became very clear that like, this is a bizarre fever dream from like, a gay British guy in the 70s who loved crack. Um, like, by all, by all, according to all the interviews I've read.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  I didn't know there was crack involved.

• 34:39Ryan Broderick?

  I'm not sure. Well, I know that he liked crack. I don't know when in the timeline he started to like crack, but he said-

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Was crack around in the 70s?

• 34:46Ryan Broderick?

  When was crack cocaine invented? Let's see. Uh, okay, 1980. So I guess they were smoking cocaine.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  They were just, yeah, they were smoking cocaine.

• 34:56Ryan Broderick?

  Anyways, there's, and this movie does feel like smoking cocaine. Um, I, I do think there are probably some things this movie is trying to say, uh, but I, I agree with you that like, trying to hold it up to a modern context is really tough.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:13Ryan Broderick?

  Um, and even though we, very sensible, smart, um, cool podcasters such as ourselves, can agree that that it doesn't, you know, it's not really a great use of our time to try to say, "What is Rocky Horror Picture Show saying about the 21st century?" Um, there have been several times, unfortunately, where, uh, the general public has rediscovered this movie and gone, "What the ever living fuck am I looking at?"

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 35:38Ryan Broderick?

  And what is, what is this trying to say?

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 35:40Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, the first time we saw a massive spike in interest, according to Google Trends for Rocky Horror, was in 2010, when Glee did the Rocky Horror episode.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. That was actually the first time I watched Glee, was because I wanted to see how they did Rocky Horror. And then I did watch all of it, and I did try to watch it again recently, and I could not get through it, so. We're gonna, we're gonna throw that one in the, the waste bin of time.

• 36:04Ryan Broderick?

  I honestly think Glee, and, and most of Ryan Murphy's, uh, filmography is more problematic than Rocky Horror Picture Show.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  You know what? I'm gonna tell, I want to say this just in case someone out there will make it. I have this dream that someone makes a series about Ryan Murphy making all of these series, and just like totally makes up all of this shit that didn't really happen historically, and it's just called Ryan.

• 36:29Ryan Broderick?

  It would be great to have, uh, Ryan Murphy murdered by the ghost of Jeffrey Dahmer.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:35Ryan Broderick?

  At the end of that, because apparently-

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Or the families that he fucking ignored.

• 36:39Ryan Broderick?

  Apparently the newest season of American Horror Story has the ghost of Jeffrey Dahmer using Grindr to find victims in 2026.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  It does. Are you, wait, you're, that's true?

• 36:49Ryan Broderick?

  Yes.

• 36:51Ryan Broderick?

  He ends up killing-

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Ryan, no.

• 36:52Ryan Broderick?

  So I guess, I guess-

• 36:53Speaker 02

  No!

• 36:54Ryan Broderick?

  I guess the 13th season of American Horror Story is like a massive crossover season. So I did see a scene where Emma Roberts' character from Coven is killed by Jeffrey Dahmer's ghost, and she says something like, "First time ever being inside a woman," when he like stabs her.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  No.

• 37:17Ryan Broderick?

  And then there's like another scene where he's driving around, talking about how Grindr has taken all the fun out of hunting down and killing gay men. The whole thing is a mess.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  No.

• 37:25Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, honestly, a total mess.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  What happened to that man? He made popular in the 90s, and I loved that show. That was like a very formative show for me. And then he just has gone so off the rails. That's shocking information that I have not been given until this moment.

• 37:39Ryan Broderick?

  I saw the, I, I love the first three seasons of American Horror Story. I think they're really well done.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Oh, Asylum is my favorite for sure. It was, you know, they were really, really good.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  Feud, Fausse Verdun, also, also great.

• 37:54Ryan Broderick?

  He also did Nip Tuck, which I actually think needs to be, I would love to re-watch Nip Tuck and see how fucking crazy that show is by modern standards, but I remember it being great.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  Talk about transgressive, I guess, but not in a way that I like, you know?

• 38:06Ryan Broderick?

  Me neither. Like, I kind of tap out. Like, I, I find nothing of interest.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Because there's real people involved, and that's where I can't, I can't fucking handle it. I'm just like, if the vic, if the families of a, like, victims are telling you to please not make your Jeffrey Dahmer show, and you're able to just push through that, that is, I just am like, what is your fucking deal, dude?

• 38:26Ryan Broderick?

  I just, I, I also, I find edgelord shit, even if it's being made by like, a gay guy in this instance.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Like prestige edgelord.

• 38:33Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I find it boring. Like, I, I actually, when I talk about like transgressive art, I'm not talking about like, "Oh, it's going to offend my sensibilities." It's like, you kind of have to, it's kind of harder to make good transgressives, because it has to surprise you. And I don't find anything surprising about what he does.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 38:47Ryan Broderick?

  But his Glee sort of adaptation of Rocky Horror, uh, brought down a bunch of criticism from GLAD, who were mad at the use of, uh, the, the, uh, the T slur. So, uh, they wrote at the time, uh, or Pink News wrote at the time, also Pink News, RIP, got replaced with an AI. So Pink News is all AI-generated now. I read that recently.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Wow, great job, guys. Okay.

• 39:12Ryan Broderick?

  Very sad. Um, pretty sure. Yeah, they cut their staff and they moved to an AI tool.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  I can't imagine that creating any problems.

• 39:21Ryan Broderick?

  Right, yeah. Um, okay, so Pink News reports at the time, "In the storyline, actor Harry Shum Jr.'s character Mike is given the role of Frank Infurter, who dresses in stockings, high heels, and lingerie, but he has to abandon the role because his parents don't want him to look like a, quote, 'tranny.' The Rocky Horror episode was also criticized for cleaning up some of the musical's most famous lines. In Sweet Transvestite, the word 'transsexual' was replaced with 'sensational,'"

• 39:49Speaker 02

  No, it was, it was rough.

• 39:52Ryan Broderick?

  "And while another song saw 'heavy petting' replaced with 'heavy sweating.'"

• 39:56Speaker 02

  That's right. Ugh, and Mr. Schu, the teacher, was just revolting in it, by the way. I can't even remember what he played, but I just remember being like, when he was trying to be sexy in that show, it was, uh, not effective.

• 40:10Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, so, you know, this is 2010, this is right as Tumblr and Reddit are becoming really big areas for fandom discourse, and kind of sowing the seeds of a queer culture that I think is now sort of in full swing, right? This sort of, uh, it would have been derogatorily called like the SJW era, is like starting right now.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:30Ryan Broderick?

  And so to see these people talk about Rocky Horror through that lens, I think is really interesting.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 40:36Ryan Broderick?

  This is on the subreddit Ask Transgender, and it's from 15 years ago. And someone writes, uh, "Opinions on Rocky Horror Picture Show." So this would have been posted like right around the Glee adaptation sort of interest cycle. Um, the user writes, "My feelings lean toward, uh, its dressing up trans experience for cis entertainment. Do you believe that is true, that bad representation is better than no representation at all? I say 'bad representation,' and please correct me if you feel I'm wrong, because it represents trans people as being over-sexualized deviants, not to mention the confusion between the terms 'transvestite' and 'transsexual.' And on a similar mildly unrelated note, what do you think of Glee's demonization of the slur?" And they write the F slur, and, uh, "But they use the slur 'tranny,'"

• 41:22Ryan Broderick?

  "and not to use the word 'transsexual,' just looking for discussion, opinions, et cetera."

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:28Ryan Broderick?

  And then the top comment is very similar to what you said.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:33Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, they wrote, "I think it's pretty hard to judge it by today's standards. You have to judge it through the lens of where we were when it was originally released. To do otherwise is kind of like people who want to go back and edit out racist dialogue from Tom Sawyer. As such, I'm not bothered about it." Someone else wrote, "It's about breaking taboos, getting people out of their comfort zone. If it was about transvestites, you would have seen it through his eyes and not the naive couples."

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Oh, that's interesting. Yeah.

• 41:58Ryan Broderick?

  Hadn't thought about that.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  No, I mean, yeah, I hadn't either.

• 42:00Ryan Broderick?

  "As silly as this movie is, it gave me the courage to come out. The phrase 'don't dream it, be it' changed my life."

• 42:05Speaker 02

  It would have been hard for Glee as a show about musicals not to figure out how to do Rocky Horror. I will give them that, but, uh, other than that, I, I was, uh, it, it didn't work for me.

• 42:16Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, as a British user said recently on X, reacting to sort of the general discourse around Shane Gillis saying the F-word on Saturday Night Live, uh, they wrote, "Country that wants to livestream an execution at the Pentagon upset that someone said the F-word at midnight on Saturday on TV."

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's-

• 42:39Ryan Broderick?

  There you go.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 42:40Ryan Broderick?

  Um, that's, that's it. Welcome to America, everybody. Um- Interestingly enough, about six years later, there was another kind of revival in interest around Rocky Horror, and that's with the live TV version where Laverne Cox played Frank Enfertor.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:56Ryan Broderick?

  Which I feel like is kinda sick, because that scrambles the already scrambled stuff even further.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  It does.

• 43:03Ryan Broderick?

  Laverne Cox was interviewed about it, saying at the time, "I discovered Rocky Horror when I was a freshman in college. When Tim Curry as Dr. Frank Enfertor came onto the screen, I was transfixed. I was like, what is this? This is fantastic. At the time, I had a shaved head, I wore makeup almost every day, and I definitely wore my lashes every day. I was in this very androgynous state, and there was this character who embodied a lot of where I was at the time. It was extremely transformative for me." And then she goes on to say, "A lot of people have been critical of a transgender woman playing a character who refers to herself as a transvestite, but it's really important to note that in 1975, our understanding of the term 'transvestite' was not the same as today. Pioneers used the term to further themselves, and we also need to note that,

• 43:45Ryan Broderick?

  yes, 'transvestite' is an antiquated term. I think it's possible to have a conversation about how language evolves. We can do that, and we can also enjoy Rocky Horror in 2016."

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was gonna bring that up. I'm glad that we're talking about that, because people like Marsha P. Johnson, we're going by this word, they're being left out of the gay rights movement at that time, and they're being, like, hyper marginalized, totally pushed out, and they're the ones, also, I feel, who were doing a lot of the, like, on-the-ground work to, like, help queer youth and things like that, and they were just completely, you know, especially the white gay men of that movement, a lot of the lesbians as well, did not want to accept this group of people into the movement. So I think having that representation at all, even if it is very imperfect by today's standard, it makes sense

• 44:38Speaker 02

  that this was a huge deal for people at that time, and, like, beyond for quite a while, until we get kind of into the modern time, yeah.

• 44:47Ryan Broderick?

  I almost think about it like, if you blow up a mountain to build something, and a bunch of people, like, see photos of the explosion and all the mess, and they're like, "Wow, that's such a mess. That's crazy." And it's like, yeah, it had to be

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:06Ryan Broderick?

  to sort of make space for this new thing. And I sort of see Rocky Horror Picture as like, a great artistic snapshot of like, a moment in time where like, you had to kind of blow everything up to get, you know, the road built to bring us to where we are now. Although I say "now," but actually, like, a lot of these conversations are coming back into vogue, which is really sad.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:29Ryan Broderick?

  And we're gonna talk about the 2020s, kind of re-re-appraisal, after a word from our sponsors, CPAC. Okay.

• 45:41Speaker 00

  When you spend enough time around great companies, you notice that the best ones treat trust as a growth strategy, not a box to check. Vanta helps companies build and prove trust from day one. Its Agentic Trust Platform connects compliance, risk, and trust at enterprise scale. Vanta delivers a 526% return on investment over three years, and pays for itself in just three months. Learn why over 16,000 of the fastest-growing companies use Vanta at vanta.com.

• 46:13Ryan Broderick?

  It's been a while since we've been sponsored by CPAC. It's nice to have them back on the show. Yeah, well, they're back. CPAC is back, baby, and they have thoughts about who's allowed to be in their production of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Honestly, there's so many, uh, let's call them, like, right-wing influencers with rumors around them, that they would be able to put on a hell of a Rocky Horror Picture Show.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Hell of a show.

• 46:38Ryan Broderick?

  Nick Fuentes as Riff Raff, I think, would be pretty good. Nick Fuentes as Riff Raff, Benny Johnson's Frank Enfertor, uh, we got, we got Tim Poole's Brad, maybe, and then Candace Owens, she's probably Magenta. I thought Ben Shapiro would be.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  What about Laura Loomer as Frank Enfertor?

• 46:55Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, she's, she's got it, she's got it nailed down for sure, yeah.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  She's got a fucking lock, yeah.

• 47:00Ryan Broderick?

  All those people would really put on a hell of a show. And what's really sad is, like, if they could have been allowed to do musical theater, none of them would have become fascist influencers. Almost all of them are doing that because their entertainment careers failed, but, um, especially Ben Shapiro. Steve Bannon as Eddie.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  Oh my god, stop.

• 47:17Ryan Broderick?

  Steve Bannon is, I mean, look, Steve Bannon was a great, he wanted to be a director. He, he, he, he, like, directed, like, documentaries and stuff. He was trying to. They all, they're all failed Hollywood people.

• 47:27Speaker 03

  We're not recommending anyone make AI art, but if this were to exist.

• 47:31Ryan Broderick?

  Honestly, please do that. Make that, or just, or just do it as an impression, you know, as human beings.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Importantly, Milo Yiannopoulos is just fully left out, and no one calls him.

• 47:41Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, I thought he could play Eddie's corpse.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Sure, fine, fine. But he gets no face, no face.

• 47:47Ryan Broderick?

  No.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  No, so no one really knows it's him.

• 47:50Ryan Broderick?

  He's Eddie's dismembered corpse in the dining room scene. Um, so yeah.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  I like that Steve Bannon's corpse turns into this twink. It's like, yeah, there you go, alright.

• 48:02Ryan Broderick?

  I love it. So, yeah, unfortunately, the 2020s have not been kind to both Rocky Horror Picture Show and Richard O'Brien's brain. Um, he has made a lot of really confusing comments about his gender and everyone else's gender over the years, and they've only gotten stranger in the 2020s. Uh, once again, this is from, uh, pre-AI pink news. They wrote, "The veteran actor is best known for, as the presenter of the game show The Crystal Maze." I wouldn't say that, but, fine.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:32Ryan Broderick?

  "And for creating the Rocky Horror Picture Show, as well as originating the role of Riff Raff. Speaking to Metro, the UK tabloid, O'Brien weighed in on feminists who say that because someone has surgery that doesn't make them a woman. He added, 'I think I agree with that. You can't be a woman, you can be an idea of a woman. If you're in the middle, and there's nothing wrong with that, I certainly wouldn't have the wedding tackle taken, ugh, taken off. That is a huge jump, and I have all the sympathy in the world for anyone who does it, but you aren't a woman.'" And then he says-

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Why? Why would you need to say this? Alright, keep going.

• 49:11Ryan Broderick?

  So, it, well, I'm glad you asked, because it clearly seems like he is projecting all of his own gender insecurity onto everyone else, because he says, "I think of myself as Richard. I think of myself as a third sex, and it makes things easier. I'm somewhere in the middle. My wife and children love me and..." What? Sorry, what? Sorry, hold on, what? "My wife and children love me and celebrate me for who I am." He's been, he married three women.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. Surprising, right?

• 49:38Ryan Broderick?

  He's also, I believe, taken estrogen in the past.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  I believe that's true.

• 49:44Ryan Broderick?

  In 2013, he said, "I'm 70% man." Oh, yeah, then Otto Straddle wrote about this in 2016. Shout out to a non-AI-written LGBT publication.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  We love you, Otto Straddle.

• 49:54Ryan Broderick?

  We love you, Otto Straddle. They are, I actually, I get kind of emotional thinking about how long Otto Straddle's been around.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  I know, me too.

• 50:00Ryan Broderick?

  Um, they wrote, "On noise, Richard O'Brien and transphobia in 2016," kind of about this round of press that he was doing where he was saying crazy shit about himself and everyone else. Um, oh yeah, he says, "I'm probably about 70% male, 30% female," and he said that he ticks the M-box whenever he's asked about gender, but that would, he'd prefer that there be an other option. He, uh, according to Otto Straddle, he'd been on hormone therapy, like, binary trans women, and he took estrogen for over 10 years.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 50:30Ryan Broderick?

  And he told the BBC, "When I was six and a half, and I said to my big brother that I wanted to be the fairy princess when I grew up." So it just seems like he's really, really confused.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:42Ryan Broderick?

  And, you know, you don't get that confusion at all watching Rocky Horror Picture Show. You really can't feel that through the screen.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Well, and I mean, at, in his context, in the 70s, he was almost like what he is now, kind of denying its, you know, due of legitimacy, because it's like, he's now the old person, uh, who is out of touch, can't keep up with culture. I'm sure that, that, uh, Richard is not a person who spends a ton of time on the internet, understanding the nuances of what's happening in the world. I could be wrong, but, and this is in no way a defense, what this is, I think, is just trying to make sense of someone who now, in their culture, is doing that thing where they're like, "I have gone through

• 51:31Speaker 02

  the experience of being, like, very gender queer at a time when we didn't have words for that, and now I'm in this new context where other things feel possible that perhaps he would want, perhaps not, but he now has this, like, slight superiority over them," which I think that older generations do with, with kind of new generations' ideas and the changes in our culture. There's like, "Oh, well, that's just like kids being weird, or that's just like this new generation, and, and not me, I'm not like that. I'm this other thing that's somehow more legitimate." It's not a good look. I really, uh, it's very, very disappointing, but I'm just trying to understand him, rather than simply just

• 52:15Speaker 02

  sort of judge what he's saying, and like, how did he get here in his mind? It's, it's very, that's just my best guess, I think.

• 52:22Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it reminds me a lot, I was catching up with the podcast Maintenance Phase. They did this episode about, uh, conspiracy theories around HIV and AIDS, and a bulk of the episode is dedicated to, like, one of the very early scientists who actually did, like, a lot of genuinely decent work on identifying HIV, but he became completely fixated on the idea that HIV couldn't cause AIDS, and basically, till he died, uh, just refused to accept new information about this thing that he was very early on. Whoa.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:56Ryan Broderick?

  And I think that happens to, like, a lot of people, where it's like, you are so early to something that, like, there isn't words even yet, you know, in Richard O'Brien's case, for what you're doing and what you're trying to say, and then, you know, the world catches up, and I think there's some ego death there. I think-

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 53:13Ryan Broderick?

  It's ve- like, it's very hard to continue to feel special and sort of smart if, like, the new generation has moved to your level.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  And beyond, yeah.

• 53:22Ryan Broderick?

  And beyond, you know, in a lot of ways. His logic doesn't make a lot of sense, where it's like, okay, you can become the idea of a woman if you try to transition, but whatever Richard wants to identify as-

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:33Ryan Broderick?

  Richard believes in this other space that Richard can, can exist in, but no one else can seem to do that. Like, it's like, he's figured out the magic secret for being non-binary or something.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 53:45Ryan Broderick?

  Tim Curry, luckily enough for us, before he died, uh, two years ago, did sort of weigh in on this in a way that felt very Tim Curry-esque, so he, he wrote on X, "Ah, the is Rocky Horror problematic chat? Through a 2024 lens, of course it is."

• 54:02Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 54:03Ryan Broderick?

  But baby, but babies, being gay was illegal in England six years before Rocky was first staged in 73. It was brave, bold, and brilliant for its time. Look beyond the end of your own nose just briefly, please.

• 54:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:18Ryan Broderick?

  Um, and I think that is easily the best way to sort of think about this. Grant has this very funny meme he put at the end of our outline that is easier to show than to explain. This is a Tumblr post from August, uh, right after Tim Curry died. And, uh, it is a totally insane cartoon guy saying, "You trannies will never be real Wimbin." And then another cartoon guy saying, "Look, he's a queer elder. You've just got to respect it." And then a little kid looking horrified at it.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:48Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, which would be another way of thinking about this.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Totally. Yeah. And I think it like behooves us and me to point out that like, I am a non-binary person. I'm a, I'm a cool 50/50, uh, if we're gonna put it in Richard O'Brien's terms.

• 55:04Ryan Broderick?

  In Richard O'Brien's terms, yeah.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I'm not, I'm not a trans woman. So like, there's no way to speak to this in a way that is even like, uh, my opinion, though I feel like I have some space to speak on this. It's like, ultimately, it, it isn't, it isn't going to maybe cause me the harm that it might cause somebody else who has that, you know, has that identity or is living, who is living as, you know, a trans woman in this world. It's like, I'm just, I'm not trying to speak for anyone at all. And I just, I really think it's great to live in this middle ground because I think there are so many Rocky Horror defenders who are like,

• 55:47Speaker 02

  "No, you just don't get it." Like, "You have to think of it in its time, period." And like, you know, "All of these critiques are so unfair." And then there's like, "The, this thing is completely horrible and completely transphobic and like, needs to be, needs to, you know, we need to stop watching it. We need to stop talking about it." All those things. Like, I just think there's a middle ground where you can be like, "Yeah," like as Tim Curry did, where it's like, "Both things are true. We're allowed to look back at media and be angry at what its legacy is. And we're allowed to look at media in its historical context to find what was valuable then and like, what its lineage did positively." Like, it's okay for us to be nuanced about these things. And it's okay to be really angry

• 56:30Speaker 02

  at it and to totally reject it. And it's okay to, it's, it's just, I don't think there's one answer for something like Rocky Horror that we can ever get to about like, and everyone has such a different opinion. I have a great conver, I had a great conversation about Rocky Horror, um, with my friends BJ and Harmony Colangelo, who are horror, they're in like the horror world, horror critics, horror writers. And, uh, Harmony's a trans woman and her take on is really, really interesting. And I would encourage everyone to listen to that, that take as well. And just take in as many perspectives as you can because it's like, no one is-

• 57:02Ryan Broderick?

  Could you summarize just like a, a little bit of her take here?

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it's just that, that she just, it, for her, it was transformative as a queer person in a small town, you know, in a place where there was not, you know, there, it was very inaccessible to find anything like that. Very dangerous place for trans women as well. You know, it's just like, she had this, this experience that for her was very positive and she really sticks by that. And I think it's really rad. And I think that no group of people is a monolith. And so for us to try to, to say like, "This is the right opinion," or "This is the wrong opinion," erases a lot of individual opinions. And, and we don't, we don't want to do that. You know, we want to, we want to let everybody kind of have their, their experience. And we can, we can come together and talk about that, I think.

• 57:50Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. I mean, everyone is obviously waiting for me, a cisgendered man, to give my opinion on this.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 57:55Ryan Broderick?

  But I do want to say that as someone who watched it without any nostalgia, like really, like-

• 58:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:03Ryan Broderick?

  My only sort of understanding of it was like, it exists, I, I understood sort of the visuals of it. I heard Time Warp and I read Perks of Being a Wallflower in high school. So like, and I've consumed, you know, emo and horror-inflected media since I was a kid, but I've never seen it. And, um, watching it in 2026 for the first time without any nostalgia was fascinating in a way that I think is good and ref, like requires critical thinking, you know, like in a way that I think the, a lot of times the internet kind of forgets is part of the deal of being an audience member. Like, and it's, it's not

• 58:44Ryan Broderick?

  just good. It's like, I think it's necessary to go in and experience a work made by somebody and go, "Okay, I have a lot of thoughts about what you've just put in front of me."

• 58:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:54Ryan Broderick?

  And like, that's a really good feeling. Like, I, I, I, I, I think in a world where you are surrounded by algorithmic media that makes you not feel that way a lot.

• 59:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:05Ryan Broderick?

  It is, it is good and, and valuable. And I really can't think of anything closer to, uh, uh, what Rocky Horror might be trying to say is other than it is actually probably worth your time to have a bunch of conflicting thoughts in your head and try to figure out how you feel about something.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:21Ryan Broderick?

  Um, that is really just as close to a coherent description of what that play and musical and movie is about.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:30Ryan Broderick?

  It's just a bunch of characters going, "I don't, I don't know if I can follow you on this one."

• 59:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:35Ryan Broderick?

  "'Cause you're feeding me a guy and now I'm a statue and you're making me do like a weird fucking burlesque show." Um, like, you, you, you, you may have crossed some lines of my personal boundaries a few times here. Like, like the, the musical is very much about sort of not knowing if you like what's happening.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's really true. And you know, I think another really important thing about Rocky Horror for me, and my kind of biggest read on it, not in a way of like, "What is this trying to say necessarily?" But like, starting with Tim Curry. I mean, Tim Curry is so hot in this movie, right?

• 1:00:11Ryan Broderick?

  Dude, unreal.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  It's unreal. And, and I have many like extremely straight people in my life that are just like, "Yeah, like, I would."

• 1:00:19Ryan Broderick?

  I was barking at the TV.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it, he just is gorgeous. He's so hot. He is not a traditionally attractive man, right? Neither are a lot of people in this film. But like, what it gives you, especially on the floor show where everybody's wearing fishnets, you know, it's like, even though there's like confusion around consent and around like what, what they like and what they don't. It's like, what Rocky Horror tells people is that anyone can be hot if they are like self-possessed and confident. And I really have always thought that was really special. And I think like, for so many queer kids growing up, like, you feel like gross. Like, you feel like you're a gross person. Like, I know I did. I know I was told that. You know, it was like, it wasn't great. And so having this place where

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  you can go and be like, everyone here in this room is like, together, like figuring out how to be confident enough to like, live this way and how to like, feel good about yourself and feel like hot and feel sexy the way that you're watching these people on screen. And it, it seems like sometimes even against all odds, you know, it's like Doc, Dr. Scott is suddenly like pulling up his-

• 1:01:27Ryan Broderick?

  Cut the fishnets. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  You know, and he's, and you're kind of like, "Damn, like, nice legs. You look good." You know, you look great. And I just think that there's something about like, the confidence. And you hear that again and again. Like, "This gave me the confidence to come out. This gave me the courage to come out." Like, "This gave me the courage to, to live differently in some way." And, uh, I just think that that, that's a very important part of this. If you take out all of the narrative that gets really confusing, but like, the feeling of just like, "Tim Curry is so fucking hot and he's hot to everyone." And there's a magic there that like-

• 1:02:00Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  I don't think many people in the world actually have, aside from Tim Curry.

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  I think I saw it like on VH1 with my dad at like eight for the first time. And like, it was then basically a part of my life. I was in it in college. Like, it was a part of my life. And then like, it suddenly wasn't for 10 years where I like decided like, it was a bad movie. Like, just like, like, it's outdated. It doesn't have anything to give now. And then Ryan saw it. And then I watched it with my partner who had never seen it for the, uh, a few weeks ago. And I was like, so emotional watching this thing again that I like loved and was like, "Why haven't I done this every October for all of my life?" I think if there's something that gives you that, don't deny yourself

• 1:02:44Speaker 03

  that. Um, that's my little personal corner, uh, that this was special to participate in again. I thi, I think you could argue that the only consensual sex, the only non-coercive sex in the movie is Ra, is, uh, touch, touch, touch me.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  It, that's, I would agree.

• 1:03:04Ryan Broderick?

  Well, it depends on whether or not you view Rocky as a minor.

• 1:03:06Speaker 03

  Okay, sure. But the only enthusiasm-

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  He also has half a brain.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  The only, or disabled, right?

• 1:03:12Ryan Broderick?

  The only enthusiastic.

• 1:03:14Speaker 03

  Rocky also was born like an hour ago and like has all the emotions of a baby.

• 1:03:18Ryan Broderick?

  Have you had to sigh, Ryan?

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  We can't find it.

• 1:03:22Ryan Broderick?

  If you just put like, the only times where there's somebody's not being tricked that like, it just in this super queer movie.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  I'm not doing a bit, hold on. I'm not doing a bit. I actually don't think there's any consensual sex in this film. And I think that there's something interesting. I think it's saying something interesting, especially because the only consent, like the only sort of consensual, can, the only sort of con, conventional relationship shown to be kind of real is between Riff Raff and I believe Magenta, the aliens at the end. And I, it, it is, there's like a love triangle aspect to this movie that's also really weird.

• 1:03:56Ryan Broderick?

  And Columbia.

• 1:03:57Speaker 03

  And it becomes like a love, you know, a, a love dodecahedron by the end or whatever. But like, the movie is saying something. I don't know what it is saying, but it is clearly saying something about like, the messiness of sexual liberation.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  And, and sort of Frankenfurter, you know, if we go by the, "This is a, a gay cross-dressing man" interpretation of that character, which you could.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  Or bisexual.

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  Or bisexual. Yeah, yeah. Let's, let's do that.

• 1:04:30Ryan Broderick?

  Then the text of the movie is saying that this

• 1:04:34Ryan Broderick?

  crossdressing bisexual mad scientist cooked a twink up in a pot and is now gonna get married to him. And that he has no idea what's going, like, gay, he did, he did a gay Frankenstein.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:46Ryan Broderick?

  He's doing a gay Frankenstein.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  It's gay Frankenstein, for sure.

• 1:04:48Ryan Broderick?

  And like, you can't write that without at least being aware of the dynamics that would be created by birthing a, like, hot Frankenstein and then trying to marry it.

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:02Ryan Broderick?

  The movie for me all hinges on that final line, where Frankenfurter is executed by his other aliens. And they say, "Your lifestyle is too extreme." I think it's one of the funny, I think it's, it's up there with like the aristocrat, like the aristocrats joke of like, "We're the aristocrats."

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Ryan Broderick?

  It is, it is sort of an incredible punchline to an insane movie, where it's just like, "In a world of intergalactic quote unquote, transsexual aliens, you're out of your fucking mind, dude, and you gotta go."

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Speaker 03

  You know, this conversation has led me to think totally differently about that. I think it's actually about pettiness. I think it's about queer pettiness. I think it's when riffraff goes, "You didn't like me, they never liked me." It's actually like, "We have an excuse to knock off the alpha here right now." And I don't actually think it was like, that like Frankenfurter was like, too extreme. It was the excuse of being like,

• 1:05:57Speaker 03

  "Yeah, this guy was always a dick to me." And, look.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:01Speaker 03

  I, I, I think.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  And he's way hotter than me.

• 1:06:05Ryan Broderick?

  I, I don't, I don't think you're that far off. I mean, like, yeah, there's one way to read this where it's like Frankenfurter is a predator in this community, and he's being removed for being a predator. And he's removed sort of sexual and bodily autonomy from the cast and is actually making them perform like puppets at the end. There's something interesting, he's turned them into statues, he snuck into their beds, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there are meta-textual elements to this that you can't ignore. One of them being that Richard O'Brien plays riffraff. And he wrote the damn thing.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36Ryan Broderick?

  And there's a version of this where he actually, he sees himself as Frankenfurter. And he sees the rest of the cast as like a proto seventies queer community bucket of crab situation, where they are attacking him for being too extreme and too liber, you know, liberated and too relevatory. And he's, and, and based on the interviews that I read from him, like, that doesn't sound that farfetched in terms of how he sees himself. Um, Mr. "I'm so special, I'm the only non-binary person allowed to exist" kind of guy. Like, it seems like that could be a way to read this movie. That like, Richard O'Brien is sort of taking the piss out of all the other queer people he knows.

• 1:07:18Ryan Broderick?

  And he's, Frankenfurter gets so close to sort of removing gender and sexuality from the world and creating kind of a neon Genesis Evangelion human instrumentality of queerness. And then is sort of shut down at the last minute. Um, a, a, an interesting way to read the movie.

• 1:07:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then like, is riffraff, rich slash Richard O'Brien, is Richard O'Brien feeling something, like some kinship to, like, this wretched part of, of himself, I believe he would have used him.

• 1:07:49Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  Or.

• 1:07:50Ryan Broderick?

  Gets confusing.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  It does get confusing, but, um, but, you know, Richard O'Brien then is looking at this feminine other, right, this feminine self, like this feminine alter. And, uh, and it must, it must be killed. And that's only sort of become pertinent or, you know, understandable in recent, recent years.

• 1:08:13Ryan Broderick?

  You just unlocked like one of the most confusing aspects of the movie for me.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:08:16Ryan Broderick?

  Which is the sort of inherent queerness of everything in it. But the weird insistence on riffraff having a heteronormative relationship.

• 1:08:28Speaker 03

  With his sister.

• 1:08:29Ryan Broderick?

  Which I.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  With his sister.

• 1:08:30Ryan Broderick?

  With his sister, yes.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  As heteronormative as it gets.

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  If you look at Pornhub, yes.

• 1:08:36Ryan Broderick?

  Well, I really couldn't wrap my head around that choice. It's, it's sort of been, sort of, like, it's, like, I can't figure, I couldn't figure it out. But the idea of casting himself as sort of this decrepit heteronormative version of himself. That sort of puts down the fabulous, gender-fluid, bisexual, everything-fluid version of himself at the end of the movie, before he creates kind of like, pure sexual anarchy. That's really interesting to me. That's, that's.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  Super interesting.

• 1:09:09Ryan Broderick?

  Rocky Horror is great. There's so much to talk about. Like, it's just, like, it's, I don't know, there's, there's that feeling where you like, you experience real art, and then you get to talk about it, and then you're like, "Oh, right." Like, this, like, there could be more of this.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:23Ryan Broderick?

  If we wanted, yeah.

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go make it, people.

• 1:09:27Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  Make the Rocky Horror you want to see in the world right now.

• 1:09:30Ryan Broderick?

  Look, I think that's the real lesson here is regardless of how you feel about Rocky Horror, big show, go make fucked up, hyper-personal art about your own experiences that enforce the rest of us to figure out how we feel about it.

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:42Ryan Broderick?

  I think it's just that, kind of the only point of anything.

• 1:09:45Speaker 03

  Film it in a, in a castle that doesn't have heat, where your main actors all get pneumonia? Because you make them swim in a pool that, that has a big ass picture of David.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  The coolest pool I've ever seen in my entire life.

• 1:09:59Speaker 03

  Such great set work.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  That pool. Yeah. The set work, we didn't even talk about, incredible. Yeah.

• 1:10:03Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, it's, it's amazing. Film it, don't film it, put it on as a play, make an album, whatever. Just do something hyper-personal, that's weird and bizarre and uncomfortable, and let us all talk about it.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  Don't AI it, be it.

• 1:10:15Ryan Broderick?

  Don't AI it. Don't AI it.

• 1:10:17Speaker 02

  Be it.

• 1:10:19Ryan Broderick?

  I want to thank you for coming on the show. This was fantastic.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Such a joy, as always. Yeah, I love, I love talking Rocky Horror, so it was nice to do it, and I'm so happy that you had a good experience, Ryan. And that you, Grant, had a good resurgence with it. It's nice.

• 1:10:35Ryan Broderick?

  Back in my life.

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  It's nice to be among peers.

• 1:10:37Ryan Broderick?

  It was great. Uh, do you want to plug your stuff?

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  I would love to plug a new episode we just did on American hysteria, by the way. That's the podcast I do. We cover moral panics, urban legends, hoaxes, crazes, all kinds of stuff from American history.

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  And all kinds of pop culture stuff. We recently did an episode all about the 1990 mini-series, It, starring Tim Curry. So it was a lot of Tim Curry content. That was kind of our honor, like, our way to honor Tim Curry was to talk about It, because we'd already done Rocky Horror. So, um, if you love Tim Curry as a character actor, doesn't get better than It. I mean, I, I consider it pretty close to Frankenfurter for me. It's Pennywise the clown. And then I wanted to mention the other Rocky Horror kind of analysis episode that I did with The Sends at Prom, BJ and Harmony, Colangelo, who I mentioned, it's a great podcast, great name for a podcast, The Sends at Prom, I love it. So, check that out as well.

• 1:11:37Speaker 00

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