The Time Warp, With Instructions—in French

April 1, 1976.

A hundred people in a downtown NYC theatre, trying to figure out what to do with a really strange movie, adapted from a play about singing transvestites from Space, but it was magic.

Fifty years later, a room is full. People still lining up outside. But it’s in Paris.

bref.

Musicals are a perfect art form—except when they’re not. Rocky Horror survived by becoming an interactive: chaos in the U.S., taught participation in France.
Same film. Different rooms, different countries. There is very possibly no other movie experience like it.

Audience partici….pation!

“If you don’t know, do what the others do.”
“When we tell you to do something, you do it right away.”

It’s strange, hearing how to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show explained before it begins.

The French version is a bit more interactive theatre than the individualist chaos of the NYC shows, but it works.

In New York, the chaos was palpable, the legendary midnight showings a chaotic mess of energy amid a pharmacy’s worth of personalized experiences.

Just a jump to the left

The Rocky Horror Show began in 1973 as a small, scrappy stage musical by Richard O’Brien at London’s Royal Court Theatre. At £1-2 a ticket, it grew into a cult West End hit without ever going mainstream.

The 1975 film—The Rocky Horror Picture Show—initially flopped, only to be revived through midnight screenings at places like the Waverly Theater, where audiences turned it into an ongoing, participatory event. Tickets were $2 on average and the first shows were attended by about 100 people at each show.

People started talking back. Then shouting. Then dressing up. Bringing props.

And it was the same 100 people coming back, week after week.

And then a step to the right

The Waverly Theatre in Greenwich Village, where the midnight showings started, closed in 1989. Then it moved to another theatre for the next 20 years.

The show in Paris has been running every week (except Covid, etc.) since 1978, the longest continually running Rocky Horror Picture Show in the world.

Hands on your hips

Radio France has a whole segment on it (I love this app)—long-form, reflective & because it’s France, a kind of philosophical discussion of why this movie appealed to people.

It’s one of the funnier parts of the whole show, but I don’t think it meant to be (it shows up around 22:00-25:00 on episode 1).

Bring your knees in tight

It wasn’t supposed to last.

And it did feel different there. Not better, just… denser. Like the room had memory. Like every callback had been sharpened by repetition over years, decades. Less chaos, more ritual—but still loud, still messy, still alive in a way that regular cinema never is.

But it’s the pelvis thrust

That really drives you insane.

Let’s do the Time Warp again.

But in French.

It’s not particularly good.

nothing can ever be the same

I’m not 100%, but I think I want to see the French one.

Which version have you seen?
Or which one do you think you’d last longer in?

The movie is perfect and beautiful and weird and chaotic.

I’m not entirely convinced I’d survive the French one without instructions.