Matt Faus

Matt and I went to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” last night. It was the late-night feature showing at the theatre across the street from Microsoft. It was an experience, to say the least…

As we walked into the theatre, we expected to see previews. Instead, we saw all these people dressed in costumes, apparently from the movie. Ok… so, apparently this is kind of a cult phenomenon. Interesting. Then they started talking about how they are the actors, and everyone in the audience is shouting random phrases (which, apparently, they ALL know, but Matt and I were clueless). We were confused as to why there would be actors outside of the movie.

As it turns out, the actors were going to portray the scenes WITH the actors in the movie. As in, move as they move on-screen, look as they look on-screen, and in general, copy the original to the best of their ability. There was also a subscript supplied by all the other audience members, who continually yelled comments and rebuttals to the screen. They also participated by acting along with the movie. For instance, an actor on-screen tried to cover her head with a newspaper during a rainstorm. Most members of the audience had BROUGHT IN newspaper, and put it over their heads during this scene. During a wedding scene, audience members threw rice and blew bubbles into the air. The entire audience (with the exception of Matt and myself) stood and performed a dance number with the actors on-stage and on-screen. WEIRD.

The real fun started when Matt and I left the theatre, completely shocked after the experience. We had a rousing debate about conformity and creativity. My view is that it takes no creativity and no vision to simply pick the exact opposite of that which you hate. These people didn’t want to be traditional, so they took the most obvious route to try to avoid tradition. However, the fact that they ALL TOOK THE SAME ROUTE makes them traditional! Further, I feel it takes no creativity to mimic what has already been done. The actors copied every emotion, costume, movement and facial expression portrayed on-screen. Sorry, but that’s not creative. Matt’s argument was that it was no different than people putting on Shakespeare’s plays. My rebuttal included stylized versions of Shakespeare’s plays, and the fact that each director used different mediums (costumes, hairstyles, sets, etc) to re-create the words on the page. I also tried to pull in some computer analogies. For instance, a problem arises on the computer, and Matt writes a program to fix this problem. If I encounter the SAME problem and simply cut and paste his code as the SAME solution, I am not creative. However, if I have the same problem and I find a different way to solve it, I am creative.

All in all, it was an experience… a WEIRD experience. However, it sparked interesting discussion, so maybe they all made their point after all. I am sure Matt will have his views in another post.

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