FOX Tries The Time Warp, Again

"The Rocky Horror Picture Show” comes to the small screen. We’ll look at the cult classic’s message now.

In the 1970s, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" blew up as a super-campy, boundary-breaking, full audience participation midnight movie singalong celebrating trans everything. Transvestite glory. Transgressive sexuality. Transformative gender identity liberation that was, at the time, a public revelation. Last night, a major network – FOX– put a rebooted version of the once radical musical right out there on TV. This hour On Point, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," then and now. — Tom Ashbrook

Dan Fienberg, television critic for the Hollywood Reporter. (@TheFienPrint)
Sal Piro, president of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” fan club. Part of the original group that started the cult classic’s audience participation trend.

Judy Berman, independent arts and culture writer. (@judyberman)

The Hollywood Reporter: 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time Warp Again': TV Review -- "When Fox's Grease Live! premiered back in January, appreciative critics, myself included, weren't so much impressed with the originality of the production — many or most of its best moments were straight out of the beloved movie — as they were with how much inspiration director Thomas Kail and his creative team were able to wring within the restrictions of a live TV broadcast."

FlavorWire: We Live in the World ‘Rocky Horror’ Created -- "All Rocky Horror Picture Show fans, like everyone else who’s partial to a particular vice, can tell you the story of the transcendent experience that got them hooked. For me, it was a screening at Los Angeles’ Nuart Theatre in August of 2000, just before my 16th birthday. I’d arrived in the city that day from the East Coast to visit a friend, and had already fallen asleep at one movie screening, as some combination of restlessness, air travel, and the time difference had kept me awake for over 24 hours."

New York Times: ‘Rocky Horror’ Remake: Is It Time to Go Back to Camp? -- "In the predawn hours of a mid-April night, punky revelers weary from a spirited session of jumps to the left, steps to the right and vigorous pelvic thrusts were scattered on a ballroom floor at Casa Loma, a fearsome Gothic-style castle here. High above the bodies, elevated on a crane, stood a gyrating Laverne Cox, who was dressed in a black gown and an enormous disc-shaped headpiece. Gradually lowered to the ground, Ms. Cox met the path of a virginal couple trying to back away from the weirdness. There she extended a hand, covering a rhinestone-sequined glove, and sang her fateful first line: 'How do you do?'"