Let Your Dreams Come True: Gordon’s Horror Picture Show

Once upon a time there was a man 
When he was a child 
A movie blew his mind
And he became a Rocky Horror fan

Back in Dublin he loved every bit
Later, it became a cult film hit
But in the atheist land that became his home
No one had heard of the RHP Show

Years went by until one day
He put together a show to blow Praguers away
This story is a dream come true
So if you want to have your mind blown too…

Keep reading!

Four Prague Friends Ramble Online…

31st January 2020

Unipony: What events are you looking forward to in February?

Matt: Well, definitely not The International Festival of Overcharging You in Restaurants (you may know it as Valentine’s Day).

Unipony: Haha – Oh there is a live version of Rocky Horror Picture Show at šiška on Valentine’s (with live music)! Something you might be interested in? (I totally am).

S.: Ooh, I’d def be up for RHPS!

Unipony: Yes! It’s 250 for club members and we will need a reservation, so I’ll maybe ask around who else would be interested and book it for us?

S.: YES! Love the RHPS – I’ve been a couple times to the Kino Aero shadow performance, and it’s always a blast.

Kasia: I have never heard of this 🙂

I only know RHCP.

Unipony: Basically the same thing 😛

Matt: I know that the guy who hosted The Crystal Maze was one of the writers, and that turning up to screenings in costume and reciting the script / singing along became a cult thing. Never actually seen it though (!!!) 

I’m in 🙂

Unipony: It’s a musical-comedy from the ’70s. I read it’s a parody tribute to the old sci-fi and horror B movies. After the release of the movie, the audience kept returning to the cinemas. They began to talk back to the screen, bring props and dress as the characters, that has snowballed, now “Shadow Casts” of fans acting out the entire movie below, or in some cases directly in front of the screen, are almost always present at showings.

It’s six of us now interested, so I will make a reservation with Gordon, he directed it, brought the whole cast and is actually playing the main character!

What happened with that Dublin kid? 
An explanation’s what you need. 
Just sit back and don’t you worry, 
Let Gordon tell his epic story.

“Six Walls Where Anything Is Possible”

Gordon’s gaze lands on a bar stool a couple meters away. He fetches it and places it next to his, and I jump up. Žizkovšiška is still closed and friends, staff members, run around to get the place ready for the regular Monday movie screening and for an exhibition opening the following day. “It’s a space with occasional cultural program”; Gordon finds it hard to put a label on it. 

“I’m a mediator, I’m like the conductor between electricity and water. An idea can come through here and become a reality. Some of the bands who play here met here, and now they’re producing together something of value. I feel very proud that I give people a place to meet. If it’s on an artistic level or even only boy-girl, this space can become the next stepping stone – step on my head, onto the clouds.” I look above Gordon’s head as if expecting a cloud to appear there. “I don’t necessarily feel responsible for it,” he continues. “I’m just part of it. Part of the bigger picture.” 

“Once You’ve Seen It, There’s No Going Back”

“I discovered Rocky Horror as a very young teenager, and I couldn’t believe it… The first time I saw it, the audience didn’t know what to do. So we watched it like any other movie… Gobsmacked,” Gordon opens his eyes and mouth wide, “Like, ‘Just what the hell is this?’; ‘I better watch that again, I guess’,” he jokes while explaining why he decided to present the live music set of Rocky Horror Picture Show at Žižkovšiška this Valentine’s. 

“As a teenager you have no idea about anything, and suddenly, there’s loveable transvestites, and transexuals, and all sorts of dubious, promiscuous activity going on,” he grins. And then he adds, “But it’s not pornography on any level; it’s not lewd or rude; it’s just risquee. And bawdy – which means sexy, and funny. In no way is it diminishing to anybody, or attacking any genders. It’s a very friendly product for confused young people. For me, coming from a Catholic country, it completely broke down all of the taboos. Suddenly, it all just seemed okay; it wasn’t a sin.”

Gordon gets quiet for a moment and then exclaims, “And the music, of course, is fantastic! Okay, one of the characters is Meatloaf, who’s an icon of rock music. There’s a lot of Pink Floyd influences, and The Who… so it meant a lot to a teenager who loved this type of music,” he sums up.

“The next time I went, people knew how to react to it. The audience shouts responses to lines in the movie, making it even funnier. At certain points, people rattle newspapers, they throw rice, they squirt water pistols, they’re all dressed up… it’s a crazy, crazy burlesque kind of a party. I went with my mum a couple times, would you believe?” Gordon doesn’t wait for an answer. “She loved it too. It ran in the cinema in Dublin, every Saturday night at midnight for 28 years.”

“I Remembered How Great It Was”

“I’d been meaning to show it inside of our cultural program at Žiškovšiška somehow. Expose it to people here. It’s not very well known in this country; it didn’t really translate properly anywhere…. It’s only in the English-speaking world where it’s such a big hit,” he sighs.

“I showed it to a friend who was new in Prague and wanted to get into English-speaking theatre. She watched it four times in three days. She couldn’t imagine that she spent her whole life not knowing anything about this film. Her reaction gave me a new wave of inspiration. I thought, ‘It really is great, isn’t it?’ And then I said, ‘You want to get back into theatre, I wanted to do something with this thing, why don’t we experiment?’”

“We Took It One Step Further”

“It’s probably extremely rare that anybody would try it with a live band. Usually when you come across this in a public place, it’s either a karaoke style, or they stand in front of the movie screen and act it out with the film. But we took it a step further.”

First, Gordon put together the band. “I made a list of everyone I know who plays the instruments we needed. I tried to find people who knew what I was talking about when I said Rocky Horror, which wasn’t difficult; nearly everybody knew exactly what I was talking about, because that’s the kind of thing it is.”

“We had to rearrange the songs to match the vocal talent of the singers.” Maarten, one of the band members, took on the role of Music Director and the responsibilities that come with it, Gordon explains. “It was a huge project – he had to take a song in A for example, and bring it to G for all the instruments, which is guitar, bass, piano, saxophone, and drums – drums stayed the same, obviously, but especially saxophone was difficult.”

“Everybody Pushed Themselves to Their Limit”

“In the meantime, I picked the cast, and we started rehearsing using karaoke on YouTube. When Maarten said, ‘Okay, we’re ready to try and bring in vocalists,’ we did the first runthrough only with me – I played all eight roles.” Gordon’s pause feeds my curiosity. “How was it for you?” I ask. “Exhausting!” He bursts out laughing. “I lost my voice because I was having so much fun, I kind of forgot myself. I couldn’t do my part in the next rehearsal, because my voice was gone.” 

The singers practiced individually before doing full-group rehearsals, he describes. “Anybody who wasn’t doing their part at the time had to do backing vocals. Every song has a huge backing vocal element. There was a lot to learn for everybody.”

After that came stage direction. “We had to figure out how to manage it all on this tiny stage with 20 people and all the microphones. We had technical troubles, everything feeding back, and whistling… it was the most difficult thing we ever did here. Everybody pushed themselves to their limit.”

“I worked on it 24 hours a day for two months to pull it off. It took a huge amount of coordination and a lot of people and personalities to deal with.” Gordon takes a breath. “It’s a big deal, it’s a great production, and I’m so proud of it. We’d only planned to do one show. But for all the work we put in it we said, ‘Well, we might as well do two in the same weekend.’ But then some people couldn’t come because it was around Christmas. So we said, ‘Alright, let’s do one more’.” But that’s it.”

“It’s Part of My Being, Somehow”

“I took the smallest role in the last production – a three-minute cameo. The only reason was that I felt that if we were doing it for fun, then I’d like to be involved with everybody, as opposed to only direct it from below the stage, and also to lead by example, like, ‘Look at me; I’m not doing it great, but I’m still doing it. If I can, you can too. Don’t worry, we’re just doing this for fun.’”

Gordon strokes his wrist. “I’m taking the biggest role in this last show…. Because the main person of the production can’t make it. If we tried to bring in somebody else, we’d have to go back into full rehearsals again, which nobody really wants to do. I was doubling the role throughout the whole thing. I’ve been watching the original guy who did it for 30 years. I know all his moves, every intonation of his voice. I don’t need any direction. Because it’s part of my being, somehow.”

“So I gave my small role to someone else,” he continues, “And I took over the main role, which for me is shocking. Because I never stand on stage. Ever. I’m a background guy. But I said it’s the only chance I’m ever gonna get. It’s my own place; nobody can tell me ‘no’,” he jokes, but then gets serious. “The other people in the project believe in me, I guess. So fuck it, I’ll just do it.”

“This Is What a Good Time Looks Like”

“This is a once in a lifetime experience, of something that people may have as part of their entire lifestyle.” For many of us, the only possibility to see it performed on this scale. “It’s as magical as a fruit fly, or a daisy. Comes up for one day, has a beautiful, wonderful life, before…” Snap! 

Gordon invites us to experience this enchanting show. “Come with an open mind and bring your sense of humour. It’s not like going to the theatre, where you sit safely in your chair and watch something happen. It is like going to the castle, and you might end up involved… It’s live, it’s very loud; it’s a rock musical with a lot of people who are throwing themselves off the cliff by doing this at all, and maybe they take some people with them…”

And this is where the story ends 
So that a new one can begin. 
So go buy tickets with your friends
And I’ll see you when you get in.

For more insight into life in Prague go to this section.