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different. I had mine on a toasted brioche.

So there's the tech conference, there's the music conference, and there's a film conference. Um, and there's things that, excuse me, happen at all of those that, you know, in each of those conferences. And I, I look at them ahead of time and I build a schedule and it's like, okay, I want to do this. I want to do this. I want to see this. I want to attend this talk. I want to see this band. I want to see this film.

What's interesting is that, you know, I go with three of my podcasts in mind, right? This one, of course, Mac Geek Gab, which is the show that I do for tech, and then Gig Gab, which I do for musicians. And what's interesting is when I build my schedule, I'll have it in my head like, oh, this will be something I'll cover on Gig Gab, or this will be something I'll cover on Business Brand or whatever.

which is a documentary that's been produced. And I don't know if it has distribution yet, but of course, they're working on it. That's what the film festival is about. One of the purposes. It says, Strange Journey, The Story of Rocky Horror. Now, as a drummer, I have played drums in the Rocky Horror musical probably a hundred times. Oh, right. Nice. And so I thought, okay, well, and I've talked about that on Gig Gab over the years.

So I thought, of course, this will be a Gig Gab thing. And I went to see the movie. The first thing that was really interesting to me was in line for the movie, obviously there were other Rocky Horror fans, interested people around me and when i said to them i i admitted to them which still remains true that i have never seen the movie rocky i've never seen clips from the audience i'd never even seen clips until the documentary uh from the audience perspective i've never seen the musical either

i've only seen it from like upstage center where my drum set is yeah now i understand the story it It took a little while to be able to memorize the show enough to be able to pay attention to what else was going on on stage. But you need to do it a hundred times. It kind of happens whether you want it to or not. Yeah. And as I was saying this to people, they're like, well, that's really interesting.

That's an interesting thing. I'm like, yep. And they said- I didn't even know there was a musical, was what most of these people said. Everybody around me, no one around me in line knew that there was a musical.

Linus' is that his dad created the thing that he was doing a movie about, so he had access to the right people to make a documentary. It is a fantastic movie. If you get a chance to see it, even if you're not a Rocky Horror fan, you're going to want to watch it. So they explain how this started as a musical. It did very well in London. It was like immediately sold out as soon as they kind of started. Obviously, they created it first. But once it hit, it kind of became this,

you know, there was a buzz about it. And it was hard to get tickets and all those things. They eventually brought it to L.A. And I'm skipping over a lot because you're going to see that when you watch the movie, folks. But they eventually brought it to L.A. and showed it at the Roxy Theater, which is a stage but has kind of a theatrical. It feels like a like a theater and a place where you could go see a rock show. Right. You know, Frank Zappa's famous Roxy was was at that same theater.

But um so they did it there and lou adler saw it there and said okay this i can make a movie of this and and so he would he brought people around to you know kind of buy into the vision and buy into the project and all that stuff and it was and one of the pieces that was really interesting was.

Richard o'brien which who plays uh riffraff if you've ever seen the movie or the play or the musical rather uh richard o'brien not only wrote the songs and and conceived of the whole thing and wrote it he starred in it as as riffraff um including the movie which is an interesting thing he uh you know he had people approaching him especially after it was in la uh or while it was in LA people like you know Mick Jagger like folks with money were like oh hey I want to make a movie of this I just

want to buy the rights from you and Lou Adler told him don't do that and he said why not, Because then you don't get to own it. Yeah. And so they produced it themselves. Well, Lou was part of the production. Okay. They were able to keep their rights while partnering with people who were going to produce it, not just selling to people who were going to produce it. Sure.

But they had some risk in the game. Yeah. Right? You know, if you want to potentially have the upside, you've got to have the risk in it. And so they did. They produced this movie on a shoestring budget. It was less than a million dollars to produce this movie. And they were able to keep many of the same cast that had been in the musical, which was atypical.

It's still atypical to do that. Obviously, they brought Meatloaf in, they brought Susan Sarandon in, a couple other people were brought in to play roles. But by and large, you see Richard O'Brien, he's in the movie. You see, my gosh, why can't I think of it? Tim Curry. Tim Curry. Yep. He was from the- Oh.

You know, and, and mostly the people that were coming out of the film when the film finally ended were the college students. That's who was left. So they're like, okay. So, and they're, but they're, but the smart thing was, is they were just paying attention. They were, they were failing and learning.

Right. Got it. capturing the data yeah even if it was just anecdotal data right okay so but this is the value of anecdotal data and the plural of anecdote is not data so anecdotal information is maybe the right way to say this yeah so they you know they noticed okay college students all right okay so maybe there's a like maybe that's our market you know younger people might get this and be into it And at this point, none of the callbacks or any of those things that we as a culture know about

Rocky Horror, there was none of the callbacks to the screen. People singing, throwing things, all that. By the way, if you're going to go see the musical, don't bring stuff to throw. It turns out those of us on stage, we're real. So we don't want stuff thrown at us. But none of that existed at this point, right? It was just the show.

And it was built to be this campy thing. You know, it was built to be tongue in cheek might be the not be the right word, but, you know, they knew what they were creating sort of. And so they said, OK, great. College students. All right. They're trying in theaters are like, well, you know, I don't know. Finally, they said, all right, well, what if we show it at midnight? You know, that this way we're not taking money out of your pocket. You can run three shows.

We're just adding a thing. And all you got to do is pay a projectionist. And, you know, you probably sell enough tickets to, you know, offset that cost. And so they they did this in two theaters to start the Waverly in New York City and ironically, the Paramount in Austin, which it turns out is the theater that I was sitting in watching the world premiere of this. Cool. Which was cool. Right. And so they would, you know, these two theaters agreed to run it Friday, Saturday night.

And so they kind of the partners in the thing said, OK, well. You know, you call on Monday mornings. You call New York. I'll call Austin and we'll just find out. See how it goes. See how it's been. So like three weeks in, Lou Adler calls Austin on the third Monday or whatever and says, how's it go? And the theater manager says, now it's worth noting because I was in the theater experiencing this.

The paramount holds about 1200 people it is a large movie theater it's it's where they host all the premiere the world premieres at south by southwest it's a gorgeous theater the seats are horribly uncomfortable but it's a gorgeous theater and uh and so they call the manager how is it yeah you know about 50 people for each performance and luke's like oh okay i don't know and the guy says yeah but but here's something interesting it's the same 50 people and coming back yeah

and lou said okay that is important information and they were finding the same thing in new york and they're like all right all we what we need to do is just put this out there and let the right people find it and of course putting it in the right markets you know that would have the right kind of people and and and sure enough uh you know it today now of course is the longest running movie ever and i don't i can't imagine what it will take for something to beat that

because it still runs every weekend somewhere yeah and not just somewhere many somewheres, right?

The shout outs, all of that audience participation stuff, that didn't start until September of 1976. The whole idea of wearing costumes didn't start until Halloween performance. And then, of course, it was like, well, we could do this for every performance. And it developed a community. And, you know, they said something interesting. I mean, there's a there's a cult around this. Right. I mean, there's a say how.

We put this thing out after the first night, the rest of the run was sold out. Half of those tickets were sold to the same people. They wanted to see it. And then the rest were people clamoring to get in the door to this place. And it was like, okay, wait a minute. We've got something here. Unfortunately, there were too many different creative minds at work, and there was a huge clash, and it never really went anywhere after that.

He just recently in the last few years got the rights to all of his songs back, but he spent most of his life and career. Not owning the rights at all to any of those credence songs and it was because they signed a bad contract you know it happens all the time it's.

Yeah awesome yeah good story yeah so yeah hopefully the movie will get distribution and uh and you'll be able to see it and we'll we'll let you know we'll keep an eye on it but yeah very very well done and and i i skipped over many many things i obviously focused on the business aspect of it here but um but yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's really good stuff so.

I posted it on my X feed this weekend, and there's a lot of nuance to it that we can break down. I think it would be worthwhile. Yeah. But thanks for sharing that. I thought it was fascinating. Great story.