Confessions of a Transylvanian (15 page)

Turns out that when yo
u’
re smoking pot, there are many ways in which you can take the smoke into your lungs. There is the traditional method of lighting a joint and smoking it like a cigarette, there is the use of pipes or bongs (which came, I knew from my short time as a stoner, in a myriad of shapes and sizes), ther
e’
s the classical hookah (they had one at the Orphanage, in fact, but it was
n’
t in use at the time) and then...there is the shotgun.

A shotgun is typically delivered thusly: The shotgunner—in this case, Donny—sits backward in a chair and lights up a joint. (In Donny’s case, he would instead squeeze himself into an antique wooden school desk, his girth bulging out on all sides.) A line forms in front of him. Donny takes a drag of the joint and, while the smoke is still in his lungs, turns the joint around and sticks the lighted end in his mouth. At this point, the shotgunee leans forward and positions himself directly in front of Donny, who would then
blow
on the joint sticking the wrong way out of his mouth. A stream of smoke would shoot out the end, to be inhaled in by the eager recipient.

If this sounds like a somewhat convoluted method of getting stoned,
I’
d have to say: I agree with you. But Donn
y’
s Shotgun Booth had become a tradition with this crowd and they all swore by its effectiveness. Who was I to argue? When in Rome, keep your gladiator criticism to yourself.

Tempting as it was, though, I did not get in line. I had given up the Wake & Bake a long while back and was
n’
t about to fall back on my youthful indiscretions. Besides, I was still soaking up the whole carnival freakshow that surrounded me. With that kind of entertainment bubbling all around, drugs became redundant.

Music blared almost constantly as you moved from room to room, but it all came from televisions rather than from the stereo. Every room had its own set and each and every one was tuned to MTV. A constant stream of music videos played all day. (This was back when MTV showed actual music videos instead of “reality” TV shows. Pretty radical concept, is
n’
t it? We called it “music television.” But I must
n’
t digress.)

The only areas that were off-limits in the place were the bedrooms themselves, and those were
n’
t exactly empty. People were clearly making good use of them, but you had to be
invited
in. These folks may have been exhibitionists, but there were limits.

Rus
s’
s bedroom, though, had an open-door policy and there were a lot of people crowded in there, forming a semicircle on and around his bed. Russ himself was sitting up, leaning against the headboard, dressed only in his fedora, a tight pair of red Speedo underpants and, unsurprisingly, a bow-tie around his neck. He was holding court, as was his custom, but hailed me the moment he saw me.

“Jack!” he hollered out. “Finally back in the land of the living! About time, too. Have a seat.” I spent the next hour or so sitting at the foot of his bed, listening to him regale his fellow orphans with tales of Rocky shows gone by. He was a natural raconteur and he held the room spellbound with stories of his Rocky exploits.
I’
ll bet a lot of his stories were true, even.

At one point, when he seemed to have paused for breath, I saw my opportunity. I blurted out the question
I’
d been wanting to ask Russ since
I’
d first seen the cast perform at the Ultravision.

“Hey,” I piped up. “How did you all wind up in Deerfield anyway?”

The room went completely silent. It felt as if all the TV sets in the house had suddenly gone dead and the party ground to a halt. Looking around, I realized that everyone was looking at me as if
I’
d let out a fart in front of the Pope.

Russ leveled his narrow eyes in my direction and smiled. “Tha
t’
s a good story, Jack.” He leaned forward, lit up a smoke, took a long drag and said, “Lemme tell it to you.”

7

The Wild and Untamed Things

“O
nce upon a time, young Jack, there was a theater in North Hollywood, Florida, called the Florida Twin. I
t’
s still there, actually, but tha
t’
s not the point. A few years ago, this theater was offered a first-run copy of
'
The Rocky Horror Picture Sho
w'
to be shown on weekends, at midnight, the first such midnight show in all of South Florida. Now, the manager of the theater, who had heard a little something about the Rocky show making big money all over the country, had absolutely no idea how to organize an actual cast. So the word went out that some qualified person was needed to put the cast together and the guy chosen to perform this task was named…” Here, Russ lowered his voice dramatically, “...Marshall Douglas.”

At this, a voice rose in anger from the next room, “
Who said that fucking name
?” There was no mistaking who it was. Moments later, Sunday charged into Rus
s’
s bedroom, steam practically shooting out of her ears. “I heard that, goddammit! Who said that asshol
e’
s name? Speak up, motherfuckers!”

Russ was unfazed, “Relax, Sunday. Jesus. Take a pill or something, will ya? Young Jack here asked me to tell the story about how we wound up at Deerfield and
I’
m telling him.”

“Oh
really
,” Sunday seethed. She was supremely pissed off and darted a glance my way to let me know she was none too pleased with me for having opened this can of worms. “Look, I thought we agreed when we got out of there never to mention that fucking walru
s’
s name again. I
t’
s been, like, four weeks, Russ. What the fuck?”

“The man asks me a question,
I’
m gonna answer it,” Russ replied, undaunted by her bubbling wrath. “I can talk about who I want in my own goddamn bedroom.” Sunday was shooting daggers at him with her magnificent eyes. I do
n’
t know how Russ stood up under the pressure. It was a stalemate.

“Tell you what,” Russ finally said in a conciliatory tone, “
I’
ll tell the story once, and tha
t’
s it. Okay? One time and
I’
m done. Stick around, you can tell me if I miss something.” He paused. Sunday continued to smolder. “Okay?”

“Fine,” Sunday said, slightly mollified. She waved someone away from the end of the bed and sat down next to me. “But this is it, Russ. Never again.”

“Whatever you say. After this,
I’
ll lock it in the vault. I
t’
ll be gone. Gone in the vault.” Russ squared his shoulders. “Okay, here we go....”

As Russ related it to me that day, the story went like this:

The first Rocky Horror show in South Florida was started up at the Florida Twin theater in Hollywood by a guy named Marshall Douglas. Marshall was this huge, behemoth of a guy who, from his description, made Jabba the Hutt look like Christie Freaki
n’
Brinkley. Even Donny conceded that Marshall had a “bit of a weight problem.” He was tall, too, about six-foot three, but he had this annoying little reedy voice that did
n’
t match his look in the slightest bit. With a shock of dark curly hair on top, a perpetual five
o’
clock shadow and an advanced case of halitosis, he sounded like a real piece of work.

Marshall, thus enlisted by the Twin management to bring together a Rocky cast, was further informed that he only had three weeks to make it happen. This he did, but with decidedly mixed results.

Casting a wide net, Marshall made an announcement by way of a D.J. buddy at a local radio station that he was looking for cast members for a live Rocky show and that he would be making his choice on a first-come, first-serve basis. Tryouts were set to take place at the Twin in seven days.

A week later, Marshall waded down into the group of prospective cast members in the Twin lobby and, in just a few minutes, cast the show. He was able to do this quickly due to the unique and novel approach he took to casting: He assigned them roles based on
what they looked like
.

No auditions. No pre-performance viewings of the film. Nothing of the kind. Marshall just walked around the lobby saying, “Yo
u’
re Frank, yo
u’
re Riff Raff, yo
u’
re a Transylvanian, yo
u’
re Magenta, yo
u’
re also a Transylvanian, yo
u’
re Columbia…” until he ran out of people.

And, thus, the Hollywood Twin cast came into existence.

Russ rattled off the names of all the actors who, as a result of this random process, wound up playing the principals down at the Florida Twin. To my great surprise, there were only three people in the Florida Twin A-list cast whose names I knew: Mark, Ron and Iris (who played, respectively, Frank, Brad and Floor Show Janet).

Then came the real shock. After he was done summarizing the Twin varsity players, Russ revealed to me that Sunday, Andrea, Kenny, even Donny...almost the entire Deerfield cast whose performances I had been admiring for weeks...had all been
understudies
at the Twin show. Other than Mark, Iris and Ron, none of the others—not
one
—performed regularly as a main character in Hollywood. It was, to me, inexplicable.

Russ explained that this situation had come about due to what Marshall called his “loyalty” to his cast. Once he had hired his starting lineup, he had thrown them up on the stage and…there they had remained. When it turned out that most of the young “actors” he hired were actually pretty terrible for the parts he had given them, Marshall did absolutely nothing about it. No rehearsals to help them improve, no helpful notes at the end of the performance, no suggestions that they find a different weekend hobby. Zippo.

Wha
t’
s worse, when someone came along who could really knock the socks off the audience in a chosen role...they were out of luck, as far as taking over the part was concerned. In Marshal
l’
s opinion, once you had been given a specific character in the Rocky show, you had it for life. Even if you really, really, really sucked. Which, apparently, many did.

As far as the attendance went, though, the Twin show was a hit. This was due, in part, to the fact that there was no competition whatsoever within 500 miles. The fact that the cast was (mostly) awful mattered not one little bit. If you wanted to see Rocky Horror, there was only one place to go, so people flocked to the Twin.

It was, essentially, a Rocky monopoly.

As the months passed and interest in the show grew, many young wannabes joined up with the cast hoping, as I had when I signed on in Deerfield, that they would eventually be given the opportunity to move up the ranks into one of the principa
l'
s roles.

They swiftly learned: no such luck. If you were really good—I mean terrifically amazing—you might be allowed to serve as an understudy, to fill in for the regular performer if they were sick or out of town. But you would
never
get to play the part full time unless the owner of the role left the show. Or was killed. Which,
I’
m sure, was contemplated.

After this had gone on for about a year or so, Marshall found he had a real problem on his hands.

On one side of the room, he had a cast of performers who had been with him from the very beginning and whom he had gone out of his way to protect. He had shown them his deepest devotion and they loved him for it.

On the other side of the room, however, was a large group of extremely talented and
indescribably
dissatisfied performers who had banded together out of shared frustration into a demonstrably bitter clique of tight-knit malcontents. And they were growing restless. Something had to give.

Turned out, what gave was Marshall. But
what
he gave was completely unexpected.

One night, in late December 1981, Marshall called a cast meeting. The whole group assembled in the Twin lobby. On one side were Marshal
l’
s loyalists and on the other was the Clique (as it was called), the disgruntled group of Marshall haters. Marshall ran through the normal cast bullshit, finances, old business, new business, etc., and then he dropped the bombshell:

It seemed that another print of the Rocky film had become available. Marshall had gotten word that the management at the Deerfield Ultravision had decided to rent the film and start up a Rocky cast of their own the following week. Being the only Rocky game in town, they had naturally contacted Marshall about fielding a new cast up in Deerfield.

Seeing an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, Marshall then announced that, seven days later, on January 1, 1982, there would be a group of former Florida Twin cast members up in Deerfield appearing in the new show.

And to ensure that this would happen the way he had described it, Marshall promptly fired half of the Hollywood cast on the spot.

“The following people are no longer in the Hollywood cast and will be sent to Deerfield.” He turned to the Clique. “Sunday, yo
u’
re fired,” he called out in his little sing-song voice. “Russ, yo
u’
re fired. Donny, yo
u’
re fired. Skinny Kenny, yo
u’
re fired. Andrea, yo
u’
re fired...”

He had meant to continue this list, but those were the last words to pass his lips that night. Andrea, in a blaze of fury, leaped to her feet. She then proceeded to hit Marshall with a double-barrel full of vitriol at the top of her lungs and did not stop hollering at him until she was dragged, bodily, from the room.

What Andrea actually said cannot be transcribed, however, because from what I understand, if the actual quotes were ever committed to paper, the page would collapse in on itself and form a black hole of nothingness and despair. Suffice it to say that Andrea tore Marshall a new one and, while Andrea ranted, the rest of the Clique picked up their gear and marched out of the Twin, never to return.

The Clique had been banished. Marshal
l’
s nightmare appeared to be over.

His master plan had not been without its sacrifices, however. Iris, one of his best performers, was extremely close friends with Andrea and Sunday and so, when they were thrown out, Iris blew out the door with them. As if that were
n’
t bad enough, since Iris had gone to pre-school with Mark and the two of them had remained the best of friends their entire lives, Mark had responded to the mass firings by quitting the show outright, causing Marshall to lose the best Frank-N-Furter on the planet whose last name was
n’
t “Curry.” These are the lumps one has to take when making difficult decisions, I suppose, but it had to hurt, losing Mark.

But while Iris and Mar
k’
s departures had been anticipated by Marshall, what he did
n’
t see coming was that two additional cast members, Ron and Jackie—his Brad and his understudy Janet no less—would also quit under protest and walk out with the rest of the banished cast.

Despite these losses, Marshal
l’
s evil plan had worked brilliantly. He had gotten his wish. The thorn in his side, his albatross, his
bête noire
, the dreaded Clique...

...was gone.

That night, the newly discarded Rocky cast members gathered at the Hollywood Denn
y’
s to vent about what had just happened. Many of them were in favor of just quitting the whole thing outright and never going near a Rocky show again. They were furious at Marshall and spent the evening trading fantasies about what they would do to him if they had him at their mercy. His head on a pike was among the kindest suggestions.

Finally, when the storm subsided, Donny spoke up.

“Listen,
I’
m just as pissed about this whole situation as you are, but...I gotta tell ya: You guys are kind of missing the point of what just happened here tonight.”

“He fucking fired us, Donny,” Andrea shot back. “That fat fuck threw us
out
.
I’
m done with his bullshit.
Done
. I do
n’
t need this anymore.
I’
m finished with this shit.”