Original subtitles

Woman: This is a movie central

High-definition original programming presentation.

(Clock chiming)

Well, it's nighttime,

And you're with an audience.

And the lights go down,

And you go into a world.

Ebert: And at some point in the '60s,

People became cynical and ironic.

Midnight movies were the opening wedge

In the birth of irony.

Waters: The very fact that it was playing at midnight

Was almost a brand name.

It was a genre.

It sounded forbidden... A "midnight movie."

It doesn't lie.

Write a script,

Get a crew, do it!

It's all an experiment.

A "B" movie... Horror, and, uh...

And Sci-Fi.

One cinema, one little line...

Midnight.

Waters: Midnight movies had to be funny

And/or shocking in a surprising way...

Something completely new,

That you hadn't seen before.

Mainstream society hated these movies

And was against everything they believed in.

(Gun fires)

Now, that's radically different today.

Everything that was in midnight movies

Is in Hollywood movies.

Everything that midnight movies offered

Has become American humor.

There were so few real midnight hits.

The first one was El Topo.

The whole midnight phenomena

Actually started in the fall of 1970

With Alexandro Jodorowsky's El Topo.

(Animals bleating)

(Woman moaning)

Jodorowsky: We make El Topo,

And all the Mexicans was laughing at me

Because I was making something for the world,

You see?

Mexican pictures never go out of Mexico.

You are crazy!

(Animals bleating)

The feeling was, "we need to send to the United States."

In that time, I believe America,

They are the most wise country.

I have very romantic idea.

They know what they are doing, you know?

When I make El Topo,

We came to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal...

And they was enthusiastic when they see that.

I hardly bleed.

I do not resist the bullets.

I let them pass

Through the emptiness of my heart.

Jodorowsky: But they say, "we cannot sell this picture.

We don't know how."

And they say, "no, no, no."

And then came Alan Douglas.

He was underground... Absolutely underground.

Douglas: Timothy Leary, the last poets.

I was doing Jimi Hendrix in 1970,

And those are the products

That we were making at the time.

Alexandro told us about this film,

And he said that it was very unique...

And that I should take a look at it.

I was blown away like everybody else.

Woman: Nothing.

I then went to, probably,

Every distributor that existed.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Everybody was, I think,

Too afraid of the film.

(Groans)

It was a little bit too over-the-top.

We was really in a...

In a very bad situation.

Ben Barenholtz

Was the owner of the Elgin theater

Down on 19th and 8th Avenue.

I began getting the idea

That I could utilize the theater

For midnight screenings.

One day, I went to see a film

At the museum of modern art.

It was El Topo.

They informed me that the film had been sold

To a fellow named Alan Douglas.

Ben said,

"Well, why don't you put it in the theater?

"Why don't you put it in the Elgin at midnight,

After all my shows are over?"

And he... and through the haze of smoke...

Said, "okay."

Today you are seven years old.

Now you are a man.

Bury your first toy

And your mother's picture.

It was the first picture show at midnight.

The total campaign

Consisted of the little ad...

"Tonight at midnight, El Topo"

Is all that we have to advertise it,

And from mouth to ear, the public came.

Came every night.

We opened on a Tuesday night,

And by Wednesday night, there were lines around the corner,

And it just didn't stop.

It went on and on and on.

Hoberman: It was astonishing

How quickly people knew about that movie,

How fast that became a thing.

There were people who saw El Topo 30 times,

25 times.

I have a lot of fan mail...

Who went every night to see that.

Barenholtz: Within a few weeks,

We were selling out a 600-seat theater every night.

There were just lines around the corner.

It became the thing to do.

Hoberman: Dennis Hopper or Peter Fonda would show up,

Warhol people.

It's incredible, no?

It's really incredible.

It's against the system...

Was against the system.

(Groaning, gasping)

The Elgin was a sort of a hippie theater.

You could smoke pot in the Elgin.

Barenholtz: You would walk into the theater,

And there was... It was very electric.

It was very smoky.

You'd just inhale a few times, and you'd be stoned.

The excitement came not only from the film, but from the audience.

And it was like being in a den of cinematic iniquity.

Being in this crowd of people

All going, you know,

Going completely out of their minds

Was something that was very unique.

Barenholtz: It was launched at midnight without money,

And strictly depending on word of mouth,

And, uh, without critics

That could write articles.

Vincent Canby, the chief critic of the Times,

Did come to see it at midnight.

Jodorowsky: New York Times

Received so great amount of letter

Against the critic,

They need to give a whole page,

Speaking good of El Topo

Because the public react against.

Hoberman: The Glenn O'Brien piece

That ran in The Village Voice...

I mean, he explicitly described it...

"Midnight mass at the Elgin theater."

There was always the...

You know, the marijuana cloud.

Always they give me cigarettes of marijuana,

Always they applaud this.

Sounds kind of like a ceremony.

Night ceremony.

Congregants: You shall protect us, o lord.

Hoberman: It was sold as a ritual experience,

As a trip.

All: You shall protect us, o lord.

God loves us and protects us.

Jodorowsky: I put mystical scenes.

I put the person who searches himself.

(Moaning, groaning)

I put a bandit

Who realized his violence...

And became a Saint.

So, really, I didn't have a Western.

I have some kind of "eastern."

There were a number of things

That El Topo had going for it.

It was foreign.

It was very arcane.

It was some kind of very bloody,

Uh, overtly ritualistic Western.

El Topo was a very violent film, also,

Even for... for the period.

(Screams)

(Groans)

It was violence with a soul,

Violence with a rhythm.

It had violence that was shocking.

I've seen lots of people run out of the theater

'Cause they couldn't handle it.

There were shock scenes in it

That you couldn't believe you were watching.

Didn't it have a lot of killing of animals in it?

It's so... so... so extreme,

You need to laugh about that, no?

In El Topo, it's like the freaks fight back.

This guy comes out there and, like, destroys the town,

And that was new.

You didn't see Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda,

You know, dispatching those rednecks.

I mean, they were just victims.

Jodorowsky: I hate everything who's normal...

Who they call "normal," I hate.

(Men chanting)

This "monster" side, I like it.

I like this... This feeling

Of... of the... monstrosity as a part of life.

It's a beautiful part of life.

(Chanting continues)

The film actually ran for six months,

Seven nights a week.

It became a very, very successful,

"Midnight movie" film...

Not only successful from an audience point of view,

Successful from the critical point of view.

Jodorowsky: I was a celebrity rock person.

I didn't understand why.

Was some kind of mythical... El Topo.

Many of the people were coming two and three times.

Ebert: Movies like El Topo are just so visually alive

That you can see them over and over

Like an album... Like you listen to an album.

Barenholtz: John Lennon came at least two times

With Yoko Ono.

Jodorowsky: John Lennon liked the picture.

Was a very good friendship.

Douglas: When I got an urgent call...

"You must go to Allen Klein's office immediately,"

"Because John Lennon and Yoko are there"

"And they want to see you about El Topo."

Barenholtz: Lennon told Allen Klein to buy the film,

And they, uh,

Took it away from the Elgin,

And after a six-month run...

Douglas: He put up this billboard in Times Square

That was as large as five buildings.

You cannot show in theater, great theater.

It's a mistake.

Douglas: He put it into a local Times Square theater.

Five shows a day,

Starting at 10:00 in the morning.

Man: Be prepared

To live the most wonderful experience of your life.

El Topo is more than spectacle.

It got blown out in three days.

In three days it was all over, right?

And El Topo lost all of its theatrical value.

The aura was gone.

They could have... Brought it back and given it back to me,

And put it back on at midnight.

It would still have worked.

But I am happy because I am in history.

I am the creator of midnight movies.

Happiness.

Hoberman: Exhibitors realized...

Well before the end of El Topo's run at the Elgin that...

That there was an audience for midnight movies.

The hipper theaters around the country

Began showing films at midnight.

And then became, you know,

The great search for the next El Topo.

We'll make her one of us!

A loving cup, a loving cup.

(Loud, indistinct chattering)

Gooble, gobble. Gooble, gobble.

We accept her, we accept her. No!

(Shouting indistinctly)

Freaks!

"Freaks" was a word that people used to describe themselves,

And you can see how that would follow from El Topo,

Which had armless guys and dwarves.

(Thunder rumbling)

Aah!

Barenholtz: You can't make

A cult film intentionally; It doesn't work.

It's the audience that creates a cult.

It's not the... It's not the filmmakers.

Man: Welcome...

To a night...

Of total terror.

(Woman gasps)

(Woman screams)

Barenholtz: Night Of The Living Dead wasn't launched at midnight.

It opened in its regular run as an exploitation film.

They had no... No idea what they had.

Hoberman: Night Of The Living Dead

Is the greatest horror film ever made in the U.S.

(Screams)

When I first went to school,

I went to study commercial art,

Painting and design,

At Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.

In those days,

The news was on film.

Are they slow-moving, chief?

Yeah, they're dead.

They're all messed up.

This is Bill Cardille, WIIC, TV-11 news.

So, cities the size of Pittsburgh had film laboratories

Doing 8, 16, 35 processing, work-printing.

That's where I went to hang out, man.

I mean, it was, like... Hanging out with these guys

That are right down in there with the glue pots,

You know?

And... and, uh, I was in seventh heaven.

I said, "well, man, this is where it's at!"

By that time...

This was my fifth year in Pittsburgh...

I had other friends, so we got together,

And we said, "hey, maybe we could use film"

To make commercials."

The first film that I ever shot,

Possibly the scariest movie I ever made,

Was for mister Rogers' neighborhood.

Mr. Rogers gets a tonsillectomy.

That was, like, our big production...

All interiors, in a hospital,

Dollies...

And I thought I was in hog heaven, man.

"I'm makin' a movie here!"

This is 1966.

I said, "hey, man, you know,

"Horror movies... Maybe people would think

That would be a little more commercial."

Man: Every one of you watching this screen...

Look out!

Because soon, very soon,

The most horrifying monster menace ever conceived

Will be oozing into this theater.

Romero: Most horror, through the '50s,

If there was any message in it,

It was... Be afraid of science.

Nukes are gonna get us!

Women are gonna become 50 feet tall,

And boy, will we be in trouble then!

I had been educated on E.C. Comic books,

Which gave me this idea

That horror movies should have a little moral,

You know?

You could get your political opinions in,

You know... You can use it as a platform

To maybe express some anger or something.

We were angry because the '60s had failed.

We thought we had... We changed the world,

And then, all of a sudden, "oh, shit. It didn't work?"

(Screaming, sirens wailing)

We're gonna smack this in the face

And make this movie, really, about revolution...

Pissed off, the '60s... Forget about it.

We're gonna make a movie about new society

Basically swallowing up the old.

The old doesn't see it coming

Because they are too trapped in their own circumstance.

Started to write the script,

We had the equipment,

The lights, the 35-millimeter camera.

We are staying down here, Helen.

Harry, that's...

Romero: Carl and Marilyn played Helen and Harry Cooper.

They were the people

That owned the audio production house,

And there were ten of us...

We kicked in 600 bucks apiece.

On six grand...

That enabled us to rent the farm house,

Buy film stock,

Make a deal with the local lab.

Russ Streiner, one of the producers,

Won the sound mix for this movie

In a chess game

With the guy that owned one of those labs.

God's truth.

We finished the film and threw it in the trunk of the car

And drove it to New York

To see if anybody wanted to buy it.

And Russ Streiner and I were driving to New York,

And then, that was the night.

Man: Martin Luther King, 20 minutes ago, died.

(People exclaiming)

(Shouting)

The movie was made in 1968.

I mean, it was made

In the most violent year in American history

Since the civil war.

They were shopping it around

In the aftermath of the Kennedy, uh... uh,

King assassinations.

Hit him in the head, right between the eyes.

There are very strong political implications

In Night Of The Living Dead.

The fact that you have a leading character

Who is black and he's shot at the end...

Cooper!

Romero: Duane Jones was the best actor

That we met to play the lead role of "Ben."

He happened to be African-American.

We thought, "ain't it cool

"If we forget that?

"Forget that.

We're not gonna change the script."

Hoberman: Night Of The Living Dead

Opens towards the end of '68

In drive-ins and in grind movie houses...

42nd street in New York,

Market street in San Francisco.

And it's just kind of an "X" cheap horror film.

I saw Night Of The Living Dead

First run in Baltimore at a drive-in.

(Screaming)

Night Of The Living Dead was scary, not funny.

Night Of The Living Dead got terrible reviews.

I mean, Variety

Thought that it was practically pornographic.

There should be a law against it.

Crazily enough, it...

You know, Night Of The Living Dead,

Because it has a black protagonist,

Is put on this double bill

With pre-blaxploitation movie slaves.

There's the horror film audience,

There's the African- American audience

That they're looking for.

Romero: The intention of this movie...

Scare you? Yes.

And push the envelope

Beyond where other scare movies have gone

You know, with the gut-eating

And all of that stuff,

Push that envelope a little bit

Because everybody was, you know...

Stopped short of that.

Maybe that will get us some, uh, attention.

(Snarling)

Roger Ebert wrote this famous denunciation

Of... of the movie that was... that read...

Was published in Readers' Digest.

Ebert: I saw it at a children's matinee

On a Saturday afternoon

In a neighborhood of Chicago,

And the children were really disturbed.

They were not happy.

They were... they were sad.

They were crying. They were scared.

(Crickets chirping)

I haven't really seen too many movies

That had that kind of an effect on audiences.

Shaye: A friend of mine called me up

And he said, "have you seen this movie,"

Which was being distributed by Walter Reade at that time.

And I said, "no."

He said, "you've gotta go and see it",

"Because it does something

That I've never had happen to me before in a movie."

He said, "it unhinged my jaw."

The movie starts off...

There's this couple that are going to a graveyard...

They're coming for you!

Look! There comes one of them now.

Shaye: And all of a sudden, this big guy

Turns around and walks over to 'em,

And this was in the first minute and a half

Or two minutes of the movie,

And the guy looks at him and takes a big chunk of...

(Laughing) He bites... Bites his shoulder.

Holy smokes!

What am I gonna see next?

(Thunder booms)

Hoberman: It's barely noticed.

It develops a kind of a cult,

A kind of a critical following.

There's a review that runs in the Voice

That talks about how strong it is.

There's a cineprobe at the Museum of Modern Art

Where it's... It's really taken seriously.

Elliott Stein's review of it in Sight And Sound...

Uh, talking about it being just sort of... very special.

Romero: We shot black and white.

Most televisions were black and white.

Color TV was, you know, just not even...

Just sort of beginning to happen.

Get out of the truck!

We would never have been able to get the textures in color.

Man: Let's get out of here!

The final scenes in the film,

Which are all hand-held...

I was trying to make them...

I'm trying intentionally to make that look

Like the news that we were seeing, you know,

From watts, from 'Nam.

Hoberman: It's shot like Cinema Verite...

As though it were the evening news.

But it never wavers from its desire

To terrorize the audience

And offer no hope at the end.

(Shouting)

Living in a country

Where there is intense polarization and violence,

Then Night Of The Living Dead

Could only be understood, you know,

As a movie about the Vietnam war.

I mean, people got that right away.

Finally, in '71,

A theater in... Washington, D.C.,

Begins running it at midnight.

Night Of The Living Dead

Got a broad release at midnight,

Which was a fairly new kind of concept.

Look!

You're coming from a meeting

Regarding the explosion...

Hoberman: Then that's when it began speaking

To this youth audience.

Do you feel there is a connection between this and...

My title was "film buyer" for Walter Reade.

We played Night Of The Living Dead.

Woman: Get out! Get out!

It was a different kind of age,

Because all the movie theaters had single screens.

We had 11 screens in Manhattan.

That's where it really found its audience

And really took off.

Night Of The Living Dead

Ended up playing in thousands of theaters.

Some attorney at... At Walter Reade

Wasn't paying attention,

And they didn't renew the copyright,

So it went into public domain.

One of the great midnight shows of all time...

Anybody that had a print could go out and play it.

Romero: The one thing it has is an absolute goal,

And we were all pushing toward that goal.

It doesn't lie to you.

Even if it's fucked up,

The screen direction is fucked up,

No matter what...

Everybody's pushing that fucking gun

Right into your face.

There's no lies.

There's no deception. Here it is.

This is what it's meant to be, and we're gonna give it to you

The best fucking way we possibly can. Whap!

Okay, he's dead. Let's go get him.

That's another one for the fire.

The incredible involvement and commitment

That had risen in the late '60s

Began to weaken

As we felt increasingly politically impotent.

Man: Are you listening, Nixon?

(Crowd singing "give peace a chance")

People took their energies for change

And internalized them.

Saw the midnight hour

As a time to congregate.

The Orson Welles opened in April of 1969.

In the greater Boston community,

There were about 350,000 college students

Within a 12-mile radius of that theater.

It had a certain mystique about it.

I saw that you could create a world

Around the concept of midnight...

That at 12:00,

A different world of movie going took place.

Man: Innocently they dance.

Innocent of a new and deadly menace

Lurking behind closed doors...

Marijuana!

The burning weed with its roots in hell.

Jackson: I saw that this strange,

Anti-drug propaganda movie

That had been made in the 1930s

Called Reefer Madness

Had been picked for some midnight shows,

Was running in New York.

If you want a good smoke, try one of these.

Debauchery! Violence!

Murder!

Suicide!

(Screams)

Jackson: So I booked the film,

Mixed in some other wonderful things

Like Bambi Meets Godzilla.

(Exhales)

Midnight, there were lines around the block.

(Playing piano)

Faster.

(Plays faster)

Faster!

Jackson: For the first week or two,

It was like a 400-seat opium den.

Play it faster!

Jackson: Things were going and going and going gangbusters.

Reefer Madness had become a phenomenon.

What we did was turn midnight shows

Into, effectively, a party for in...

Ironic insomniacs.

What do you want?

Bring me some reefers!

New line based its company on the college market.

Reefer Madness was more than a college market.

It was kind of a youth market.

Shaye: The first film that we distributed theatrically

Was Reefer Madness.

Midnight movies had just started.

I was quite envious of El Topo,

Which was playing at midnight

At Ben Barenholtz's Elgin cinema.

I was looking for something

That could at least, take its place

In the midnight screening circuit.

Something comes

In a little fiberboard container,

And it's a 16-millimeter film

From some guy in Baltimore who I had never heard of.

I grew up going to the movies at the drive-in

To see exploitation movies,

Blaxploitation movies.

I always ran away to New York and saw movies.

They had movies you couldn't see in Baltimore.

I saw everything.

I'd go to Times Square, I'd go to all the art theaters.

I'd go to the underground theaters.

I went to the premiere of The Chelsea Girls.

As a teenager,

I did see those movies.

I realized that you could make movies with your friends,

Basically.

That was the great thing about underground movies.

Man: Come on, come on.

You'll see two actual queers kissing each other like lovers,

On the lips.

These are actual queers.

Bystanders: Eww! Yuck! Gross!

Filthy!

Waters: Multiple Maniacs was a movie

Made for hippies to offend them

And make them laugh

At being politically incorrect, in a way.

At the height of peace and love,

You didn't make a movie

About a drag queen that butchered people,

Ate their guts, and, uh...

Had cannibalism, got raped by a lobster.

(Shrieking)

I sent it to new line.

This was, like, '71.

I've looked at this thing, and it was just dreadful.

It was the worst.

(Moaning)

And I sent a letter back to this guy, John Waters.

"Thank you very much,

"But this film really doesn't work for us on college campuses,

"But if you would send me anything else that you do in the future,

Please do so."

It played first in Baltimore,

Then Provincetown... Our usual circuit.

Then San Francisco, at the palace theater.

And then, it played in L.A.

Then I went for that premiere,

And I went to the Manson trial the next day.

Man: How you doin', Charlie?

Good, how are you this morning?

Waters: That's when it all fell apart.

That's when everybody went crazy.

That's when hippies all turned into drug addicts.

Believe me, it...

It was a very insane period.

I asked my father,

"Well, can I have twice as much?"

Multiple Maniacs cost $5,000.

I paid him back, and I have $10,000.

He went, "oh, God." He said, "yes."

What is it, honey?

The Midnight, mama.

You made the cover of the Midnight.

Oh! The filthiest person alive.

Waters: And I knew

It was gonna be about the filthiest people alive.

We'll see who's the filthiest person alive.

We'll just see!

Exploitation movies were over,

Sexploitation movies were over,

And porn was legal, and Deep Throat happened

And became radical chic.

And that was the same year that Pink Flamingos came out.

I made the movie on my friend Bob Adams' farm

In Phoenix, Maryland.

We got the trailer for a hundred bucks

In a junkyard.

We started filming maybe one day a week,

And I had to get some more money.

And we're... And it wouldn't turn out,

'Cause I didn't know what I was doing.

Steve, come here.

Can this thing come up higher?

Waters: It was freezing up there,

And I'd come back...

The whole film would be black.

Or big scratches in it where it would freeze...

The camera... So it was really hard.

People had to memorize three pages of dialogue

To do in one shot.

If they messed one word up,

We'd have to do the whole take over.

I can't look in that lens.

Start... start the whole thing over.

So, we rehearsed endlessly

For weeks and weeks and weeks.

I had no work print.

I didn't know there was such a thing as a work print.

I did tape splices, you know, like this.

And every time I looked at the cut,

I had to feed it through the projector to watch it.

The music was recorded right onto the projector

And recorded right on there.

You can hear the... (Makes garbled noise)

The first screening I had

Was probably for the Baltimore film festival,

And it was completely sold out.

We all went... Divine, everybody was there.

People went crazy.

I knew then that it worked.

I sent it to new line.

I had talked... Sent them Multiple Maniacs,

And they said, "come back with something more polished."

Well, believe it or not, this was more polished.

(Sighs)

Divine: Oh, my God almighty!

Someone has sent me a bowel movement!

A larger fiber container with a 16-millimeter reel

Arrives at my office,

And it says, "dear Mr. shaye,

"I hope you enjoy this.

This is my latest work."

Signed, John Waters."

So, I slap it on our projector,

Sit down in one of our campus director's chairs,

And, uh, start watching this movie.

But I've never done this...

I actually stopped the projector

And ran it back

To be sure that I saw what I thought I saw.

Waters: Uh, cut.

One shot that we can't have anybody seeing, all right?

She has a penis!

A big penis! Not a small one.

So, I couldn't believe I had seen that.

I finished the film and I said,

"I may have"... Or "we may have,"

Because new line did have, I think,

A couple of stockholders at that point...

"A film that will qualify

For the tabernacle of underground cinema."

Waters: And Bob shaye called and said, "come to New York."

We went there, signed the contract.

New line cinema's gonna distribute it

Around the country and... So, that's a little different,

'Cause I usually travel it around, distributing it myself,

And we're gonna see how it works this way...

With a distributor.

I... I hope it works a lot better.

Then it didn't come out. It didn't come out for a year.

They didn't know what to do with it.

I'm all dressed up and ready to fall in love.

Waters: There was one executive at new line,

And he decided to open it

In a gay porn theater in Boston.

I have nothing against gay porn theaters.

But this ain't... Pink Flamingos ain't the movie for it.

This movie was made to be a midnight movie definitely.

I knew about midnight movies.

I knew about the business of it.

I had seen what... I read Variety every week.

The Elgin was, then, the radio city music hall

Of midnight movies.

And that slot was the most important slot

In exhibition in the country

If you wanted to have an underground movie.

Shaye said to me, "there's this film

I want you to take a look at."

Zlatkin: Ben had said, "if you get a chance,

Take a look at it."

I didn't know who John Waters was.

I don't even think it had the name

On... on... on the can.

I'm putting on this film cold.

"Hey, this is something I haven't seen before.

It definitely, has a good feel to it."

So then, I'm wondering,

You know, what's the payoff?

And then, as soon as I see divine

Eat the poodle shit,

I go, "there's the money shot. There's the hook."

I said, "listen, I don't know what I just saw",

But it's the next midnight show."

So, new line got it...

So they would... When El Topo closed,

One night, to see what would happen.

There was no ad... Except The Village Voice,

Only said Pink Flamingo...

They didn't even get the title right.

Bob shaye said, "get your friends to go," right?

So, we got enough people there.

I would say there was maybe 100 people there.

So, they... The Elgin said, "okay."

You can do it one more time."

We went back... Bob went, too... I remember walking in there,

And the line was all the way around the block

Of the Elgin, all the way around...

Which was, I guess,

The happiest night of my show business career.

A little sweet talkin' goes a long, long way.

Barenholtz: Pink Flamingos started a whole other trend,

An entirely different audience.

I think it's the future of city living.

Its initial audience was mainly gay,

But then the audience widened.

The midnight show was word of mouth,

And people were only gonna come to see a midnight show

When you say to them, "hey, you gotta see this."

Man: How'd you happen to hear about it?

From some friends who saw it

And thought it was absolutely marvelous.

Rex Reed told us

That it's, uh, fabulous.

Man: Why would you come out at midnight to see it?

Why go home at midnight?

What are you going to see there?

The audience was a great...

Great part of the success of Pink Flamingos.

Oh, it's marvelous. Absolutely...

Most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my whole life.

Not to be believed.

Absolutely outrageous.

People coming out, like, sort of being shocked.

It's a little gross, but I liked it.

Not knowing what they had seen.

Totally appalled by the whole thing.

Probably you'll all be very insulted.

Oh, it was, uh, really the grossest film I've seen.

Hundreds of people who had just had the greatest time

And loved the whole experience

And were laughing hysterically.

It was divine. Fabulous.

I think John Waters

Has got his finger on the pulse of America.

I think he's got his thumb securely up America's ass.

Shaye: They were completely crazed,

And they would stand up in the theater

As if it were a religious temple,

And would sway back and forth.

They were just... Complete cinematic bliss,

And I felt like I had really...

I had accomplished my goal

Of delivering manna to the new chosen people.

Waters: If anyone vomits during one of my films,

It's like a standing ovation.

People vomit frequently, watching this movie.

It was good for word of mouth.

Eggs! Eggs!

Hoberman: I think I was more shocked

By Edie the egg lady.

You know, like, this adult woman

Acting like an infant in the crib

Was really, you know, like...

That was very creepy.

I have grade-a extra large.

I have grade-a large.

I have medium. I have small.

I have brown and I have white.

Why, look... Just look at these.

So fresh you could hardly believe it.

Midnight movies were about marijuana.

Everyone smoked marijuana.

In the theaters, they smoked marijuana.

I mean, it was... It was a very different time.

At the Elgin, pot was like apple pie.

Everybody was high.

100% of the audience was high

Every night for Pink Flamingos.

I was high when I wrote it; I was not high when I made it.

Zlatkin: By Pink Flamingos,

People had gone from acid to speed,

And then... (Sniffs) Poppers.

Hoberman: All the classic midnight movies

Have some shock element...

Something that you could never, ever see

In mainstream movies.

Had to go further than Deep Throat,

Or anyway, to have something in it

That... something they hadn't made up a law against yet...

Which was coprophrasia, which was eating shit.

(Dog barks twice)

(Barks again)

I knew the end, what it was going to be,

And I had asked divine, "will you eat dog shit?"

And he said, "yes."

I saved it for the very last shot of the movie.

They went in and got a hair dye bottle

And filled it and gave the dog an enema with it.

And finally, this little shit came out,

And divine said, "that little one?"

And I said, "go... yes! Do it!"

Have to be real fast.

Oh, I will.

Facing this way.

And he did it. He ate it.

He gagged. I said, "cut."

People would freak... what?!

It was like a bomb went off in the theater.

That was the...

The imperial margarine crown of filth,

I always say... With a big "F."

It's still firmly in place. It's in the closet.

I don't have to ever take it out again.

I still made the most hideous scene.

It basically inverted everything.

It said that the people

Who were the absolute, beyond-the-pale rejects

Were the people that were being stood up for

And brandished and celebrated.

I mean, how political can you get?

Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth,

The whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Sure, mom. I wouldn't shit ya.

Waters: The Manson trial did have something to do with it,

Because they frightened the world.

Divine said things in it that were Manson-esque certainly...

The kind of frightening, hippie, violent things.

Kill everyone now.

Condone first-degree murder.

Advocate cannibalism.

Eat shit.

But played for laughs.

Played for, totally, the ridiculousness of it.

Trial as theater.

You stand convicted of asshole-ism.

The proper punishment will now take place.

Waters: We just made movies where we'd kill people.

They met people... where they'd kill people in real life.

And in those days, real life and the movies

Were whoo... (Garbled sounds)

You never quite knew which was which.

Pardon?

Uh, it's a... It's all a play, isn't it?

Hoberman: Pink Flamingos

Brings together a number of different subcultures.

There's youth culture, there's gay subculture...

In some respects, a new sensibility.

Let mama receive you like communion.

Hoberman: Pink Flamingos was perceived as pretty shocking.

It shocked Andy Warhol.

Oh, do my balls, mama!

That's it! Ahh!

It was discovered totally through word of mouth

From that 100 people,

And it went on to be a giant midnight hit.

And it went to, then, two nights a week,

Three nights a week.

It was a hit as a midnight show for a while,

But don't forget... It was still in 16-millimeter.

We ultimately did blow it up to 35-millimeter...

But we stayed in New York, and then we waited...

It still never got reviewed.

Fran Lebowitz gave it a great review in Interview,

And then New York magazine said,

"Beyond pornography," or something.

So we had two quotes... Two great quotes to use.

The New York Times, to this day,

Has never, ever reviewed Pink Flamingos.

It's still not fit to print.

The entire ad campaign

Was almost all negative reviews.

The Variety review was something like,

"The sickest film ever made."

"A septic tank explosion

That must be seen to be believed."

What more do you ever want than that?

Pink Flamingos leaves the Elgin

And goes to other theaters

Where it runs for... For quite some time.

Pink Flamingos

Was the first real commercial success,

Uh, in underground movies since Warhol...

Well, you said that all wrong, somehow.

And then it opened in Washington next,

I believe, with David Levy.

We did the midnight business one city at a time.

I would come out first, dressed like a hippie pimp,

And then I'd say, "the most beautiful woman in the world,"

Divine would come out, looking like divine.

You were in a secret club.

At midnight, when you're stoned

And you're with your friends,

It is a lovely experience.

Finally, it opened in L.A.,

Which was our biggest market outside of New York.

It eventually played for ten years

At the Nuart, at least one night a week.

And, uh, talk about legs, right?

I mean, that's a good run, right?

Pink Flamingos went on to become this monster hit

Around the country.

Pink Flamingos was brought back several times

Throughout the '70s.

Pink Flamingos really turned out to be

The next El Topo.

As crude and as silly, and as brash and as lurid,

And as everything that you want it to be...

Whatever you think art is,

There is something that's very valid

And very genuine about it.

I will be queen one day,

And my coronation will be celebrated

All over the world.

Do not forget...

I am divine!

Waters: Maybe that was my mission...

To make bad taste a little bit funnier

And a little bit more accepted,

And to use it

As something that I look up to, never down on.

And that's why, I think, even if you hate my movies,

You can say they're not mean-spirited.

(Laughing)

Barenholtz: The next one after Pink Flamingos

Was The Harder They Come.

That was another film

That was not launched at midnight.

Midnight movies were very connected

To the existence of the counterculture.

This whole way of going to the movies

Is understood as being, in some form, oppositional.

That anti-establishment, anti-Nixon,

Anti-white house, anti-Vietnam sensibility...

The midnight show became a playground

For the ironic.

I started looking for other films,

Maybe even a political statement,

And early 1973,

Serendipity sprinkled its fairy dust on me.

I was sharing a house with a couple of guys,

One of whom was a professional photographer.

And Frank had just been to Jamaica,

And he had become friendly with some people in Kingston,

One of whom came to visit us.

And he said, "I have a client in Kingston."

"He made a movie,

"Which is the first Jamaican movie...

"The first movie made in Jamaica

By Jamaicans and about Jamaica"...

This movie called The Harder They Come,

With a guy named Jimmy cliff,

Whom none of us in north America

Had ever heard of,

Nor had we heard of the filmmaker,

This Jamaican man named Perry Henzell.

You make a film for an audience.

Not for everybody, for a particular audience.

There is no impact you will ever have

Greater than the impact of showing a society

Itself on the screen for the first time.

We opened in a 1,500 seat theater,

Gigantic theater.

40,000 people surround the theater.

♪ You can get it if you really want... ♪

Henzell: When there were three people sitting in every seat,

We rolled the film.

(Horn honking)

(Music continues)

They started screaming.

Never stopped screaming for the rest of the film.

And I wasn't sure that it would go beyond Jamaica.

To get it distributed in the states was not easy.

Jackson: The guy who was distributing the movie

Opened it in January

In 15 or 18 theaters in New York City...

And died by Sunday night.

And he said, "my client is heartbroken

"Because he thinks

"That there should be more of an audience

"For his movie.

Maybe you can help him."

And a print then arrives the next week...

A 35-millimeter print

Of this movie called The Harder They Come.

(Gun fires)

It was shot in a grainy 16-millimeter,

Much of it handheld.

It had almost a documentary reality to it.

(People shouting)

You run!

You run, but I'll find you!

I'll find you, you hear?

And then, we get to the music,

And the music on this soundtrack

Is like nothing I had ever heard.

♪ Well, they think that they have got the battle won ♪

♪ Tell them that they don't know what they've done ♪

I'm sitting there in a screening room

At 10:00 on a Monday morning, you know,

And I can't sit still!

This... ha!

I want to dance in my seat.

♪ And then The Harder They Come ♪

♪ The harder they fall ♪

♪ One and all ♪

I called Perry Henzell in Jamaica,

And he said, "well, what do you think?"

Can you do anything with my movie?"

And I said, "your movie is great."

♪ One more time, one more time ♪

Henzell: Barry, uh, Jackson

Was totally on my wavelength.

We were totally...

We understood exactly what had to happen.

Jackson: I'm not gonna play the movie

And use the ad campaign

That launched the film in New York at that time

That looked like "super fly goes to Jamaica."

Man: From the top of the hit parade...

♪ And then The Harder They Come ♪

To the top of the most wanted list...

He made them all.

He crawled out of shantytown,

Fighting his way to the top.

With this dream

Came the raw world of crime...

Anger...

And love.

♪ The Harder They Come... ♪

Tells it like it is...

When the dream becomes reality,

And life becomes hell on earth.

But I knew it wasn't, you know,

It wasn't Son Of Shaft.

I knew it was made for a college audience.

Hey, good evening, everybody.

Welcome to "the big 't' show."

Back in my home where the sweet soul sisters roam...

Jackson: When I opened it

In the 400-seat auditorium of the triplex,

Word of mouth started to spread like wildfire.

People were coming out of the theater

Humming the two main songs from the movie...

"The Harder They Come"

And "you can get it if you really want."

Cliff: ♪ you can get it if you really want ♪

♪ You can get it if you really want ♪

♪ But you must try ♪

♪ Try and try ♪

Henzell: There was a buzz on the street,

And, I mean, you can tell

When an audience walks out of a theater

Whether it has enjoyed itself... Of course.

Yeah, it was great. It was really great.

That audience saved my life.

It was a very infectious score,

And it also was something new.

And it's an outlaw story

And a drug story.

Then it's set in, you know,

Sort of an exotic location.

There's lots of... Lots of attractions.

The whole theme of Harder They Come

Is, "can the little man get through?"

The promise of the city

For somebody like that

Is an illusion,

And their illusion is so strong

That they'd rather die than give up the dream.

(Shouts)

(Machine guns fire)

This was a film which was... So much of its moment

Spoke to the political concerns,

The racial-political concerns,

The class-political concerns

That were so much a part of everybody's focus

And consciousness in those days.

The Harder They Come

Was extremely political in its impact and importance.

Part of what people were responding to

Are these feelings of frustration and impotence.

Don't fuck with me. (Man screams)

Jackson: We opened in April 1973.

In the first few months,

75,000 people had gone to see The Harder They Come.

After six months,

We had to take Harder They Come

Off the regular screening schedule

And just be showing it as a midnight show.

Going to a midnight show of The Harder They Come

At the Orson Welles

Became the thing to do.

(Singing, shouting)

And we were running to full houses...

400 seats after 400 seats after 400 seats.

It wouldn't stop.

Week after week after week after week.

And the picture ended up playing

For over six years.

(Singing, shouting)

Henzell: They were looking for an individual voice.

I think they were looking

For a glimpse into another culture...

A place where a white American

Could connect with a black tropical character

And not feel a distance.

Hey, come back here, Mon!

And also, I think they love the music.

Everywhere you would go in Boston...

You'd go into a restaurant

Or you'd go into a shop or whatever...

And the soundtrack from The Harder They Come

Would come on the loudspeaker system.

This was the music that moved the community

In those days.

♪ And they say nothing foolish-like ♪

♪ There's not time for this ♪

♪ Well, dem days it is no wonder ♪

Hoberman: Reggae became popular or well-known in the United States,

Certainly in the aftermath of The Harder They Come.

Henzell: After the picture opened

At the Orson Welles,

When Bob came to town with the wailers

To do his first gig outside of Jamaica,

They packed the concert.

It added a whole new dimension,

Both to the film,

And it was a launching pad for the wailers.

And from then on, worldwide,

There was this relationship

Between the film, which always went first,

And the concert audience

Which built on the film.

The Harder They Come becomes the midnight movie

At the... at the Elgin.

Zlatkin: When the Elgin went out of business

March of 1977,

The Harder They Come was still playing there.

Henzell: And then it went into San Francisco,

And L.A., and all the college towns.

It was, like, the biggest thing on the college campuses

In the mid-'70s,

And, uh, it just spread and spread.

It's incredible...

How... how much goodwill

I have, um, accumulated out of that film.

All over the world.

I don't know what makes people so friendly to that film,

And to me, who made it, but it's there, believe me,

And it's really changed my life.

Jackson: The right film, the right politics,

The right music at the right time

With the right cultural consciousness...

It was like, as they say,

Catching lightning in a jar.

Waters: There were so few real midnight hits.

I mean, if you were a hit, you played ten years.

It was El Topo, Pink Flamingos,

The Harder They Come,

And Rocky Horror, the biggest of all.

What... You've never been

To The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

Come on, it's been around for ten years now,

And it's still packing them in.

Woman: You've seen all kinds of movies.

But you've never seen anything

Like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

My name's Richard O'Brien.

I wrote The Rocky Horror Show.

It's astounding.

Time is fleeting.

Madness takes its toll.

O'Brien: 1972... I was very despondent.

I was at home, out of work,

And so I think I'll go back to New Zealand.

And then somebody said,

"Would you come and do the Christmas show

"Out at EMI studios...

To the staff of EMI studios?"

And I finished up, and I was a success.

♪ I remember ♪

♪ Doing the time warp... ♪

It occurred to me that, perhaps,

The idea of a horror musical wasn't too extreme.

A "B" movie... Horror and Sci-Fi,

All blended together.

♪ Let's do the time warp again... ♪

O'Brien: Then I mentioned to Jim Sharman, the director,

That I was playing around with this little project

At the royal court theater,

And that was really how it all started.

And within six months, it was up and running.

A lot of it grew in rehearsal.

We could seat... For Rocky,

We could seat 62 people a night.

On our opening night,

There was thunder and lightning.

The rain was pouring down,

And I had a skylight above the audience.

We went to black to start the show,

And the lightning crashed.

And there, lit by lightning,

Sitting in the middle of the audience

Was Vincent price, and I go,

"Ooh, that's good.

That's... that's a good omen."

♪ Into my life ♪

They got to, "over at the Frankenstein place",

There's a light."

Both: ♪ there's a light ♪

♪ Over at the Frankenstein place ♪

And the audience roared with laughter.

The word of mouth was fantastic.

It was a happy period in '73.

We made an album.

It was coming out of glam rock,

And heading towards the punk era.

And Rocky was right on that cusp.

We moved from the theater upstairs,

Which is... up to Sloane Square, end of the Kings Road,

To a... a little old biograph kind of cinema

That, uh, seated 300 people.

We stayed there for about three months,

And then we went further down the kings road

To a much bigger cinema,

Which seated 500 people.

They were going to a cinema

To see a show about "B" movies.

Britt Ekland had seen the show

And recommended it to Lou Adler.

Adler: Britt Ekland called me up and she said,

"I saw a play that I think you ought to see.

"It's, uh, a huge hit in London,

And it might be something that you'd be interested in."

I had opened a club called the Roxy

On the sunset strip,

And I was looking for something,

But had no idea that it would be a play,

Or theatrical.

But once I saw Rocky Horror...

This would be a great thing for the Roxy.

This was the first rock 'n' roll musical.

♪ Whatever happened to Saturday night ♪

♪ When you dressed up sharp and you felt all right ♪

♪ It don't seem the same since cosmic light ♪

♪ Came into my life, I thought I was divine ♪

Adler: It was just the perfect setting...

400, 500-seater.

The sound was fantastic.

The microphones worked.

Adler: It was one of the great

Rock 'n' roll opening night crowds...

You know, the Jaggers, Bianca, Lennon.

The buzz started after the opening night.

It was really something.

I loved it. (Laughs)

And I used to say,

"When you're acting, it's just 'b' movie acting,

"And when you're singing,

It's your rock 'n' roll dreams come true."

The sexuality of Frank was stunning.

Seeing this man in ripped fishnets walk past them.

This is what I am, and it's fucking in...

You know, it's empowering.

♪ I'm just a sweet transvestite ♪

♪ From transsexual, Transylvania ♪

♪ Ha ha ♪

♪ Hit it ♪

♪ I'm just a sweet transvestite ♪

Chorus: ♪ sweet transvestite ♪

♪ From transsexual, Transylvania ♪

♪ Ha ha ♪

O'Brien: Tim was an instant success,

And the show was an instant success in Los Angeles.

He did it for a year,

And then, we took him back to England to do the movie.

Early on, I thought of the movie possibilities.

Fox was the first place that I went to.

We made a pretty quick deal.

We were given $1.25 million.

Jim Sharman and I took ourselves off to a hotel,

And sat down and wrote the screenplay.

Take two.

Man: Playback!

Rock: It's shot in the winter of '74.

It was bray studios,

Where they'd shot a lot of the famous hammer films.

O'Brien: The house next door was perfect.

It's been used again and again in movies.

In fact, the people that originally created it

And the actors had a lot to do with

Creating the original Rock, and we've kept...

A sort of basic core of original people,

Through the various sort of transformations

As the sort of monster has grown.

The fact that they had been together for so long

And all had... knew the routines intimately

Helped enormously.

We just had to put the camera there,

Get the lighting right,

And put the actors in the right position,

And off we went.

We didn't require many takes.

Adler: They were definitely a group,

And not only a... Artistic group,

But they were all friends.

They all hung out together, including the Transylvanians.

O'Brien: We were very lucky with getting Susan Sarandon

And Barry Bostwick as the two Americans...

That was the only stipulation from 20th century fox.

Adler: Meat loaf had played in the L.A. production.

Curry: I play Frank N. Furter...

Who is a kind of, uh...

New variation on the "mad scientist"

Of horror films that we all know and love.

It's a sort of 1970s version of The Wizard Of Oz.

Adler: Alan Ladd, Jr.

And about six or seven executives

From fox U.S.

Watched the shooting of the swimming pool scene.

I don't know what they thought they were getting,

Or if they hadn't been involved enough up to that point

To either have read the script

Or asked about the film,

But some of them were stunned.

O'Brien: I'm gonna have to be out of there...

It's Christmas coming up,

And the weather's dreadful.

And we managed to shoot that in eight weeks.

Then we opened the play in New York

In the following January, February.

It wasn't a happy experience in New York.

Adler: I went to a very well-known theater

Called the Belasco,

And turned it upside-down.

O'Brien: Lou did make a mistake.

We couldn't have a catwalk through the audience.

It took on more of a society feel

Than a rock 'n' roll feel.

It was a mistake.

But in the end, the downfall was the critics.

They murdered us.

We failed on Broadway.

What could be possibly worse?

O'Brien: I remember standing with Tim one day,

And the show had finished in New York.

And I said, "well, that's it, Tim, isn't it?"

It's... it's kind of all over now, isn't it?"

He said, "yeah, I've been..."

It's been a... three years, great ride, though, hasn't it?"

And I said, "yeah, you're actually right."

"It has been a great ride for three years.

It's been fun."

And then I went back to England...

Adler: I was into the film.

I was into promoting the film.

I thought we had a good film.

And the Broadway thing was out of my head.

I was into the film.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Is something that fox tried to open

As a regular theatrical release.

It opened in L.A. and flopped.

Talk about dejection...

At that point, I was dejected.

Willenson: Bill Quigley

Was the film buyer for Walter Reade,

And I said, "I bet fox will let this out"

As a midnight movie at this point."

A young publicist at fox named Tim Deegan

Called me up, and we spoke,

And he said he had this film called Rocky Horror,

And that he thought it was appropriate

For us to play at the Waverly.

We opened in April,

And we put it in at midnight...

Rock: Complete pandemonium.

I've never seen anything like it,

Before or since.

Based on that reaction,

We went after other midnight situations.

Deegan was able to pick up other cities,

And there was an underground buzz.

We knew we had an audience that was coming back.

The first time I went to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show,

I was 26 years old,

And when those lips came on the screen,

I knew that this movie... I was gonna love it.

Woman: ♪ Michael Rennie was ill ♪

♪ The day the Earth stood still ♪

♪ But he told us ♪

♪ Where we stand... ♪

Piro: I started to go to see it every Friday and Saturday.

We formed a kind of core little fan club.

Once you see a movie twice, or three times,

You begin to notice things

And you begin to sing along.

We spontaneously created audience participation.

When they kick the tire in the beginning,

In the rain,

They'd yell, "kick it." Crowd: Kick it!

When Janet was walking around in the rain

With a newspaper on her head...

Crowd: Buy an umbrella, you cheap bitch!

And then the props began.

During "there's a light,"

People would start lighting their cigarette lighters,

Or they'd bring flashlights,

Or they'd bring candles.

And so, now, you not only were speaking to the screen,

And now participating with the screen

As far as props were concerned,

But people then started dressing as the characters.

Riff: ♪ I remember ♪

♪ Doing the time warp ♪

(Crowd cheering, yelling)

♪ Drinking those moments ♪

♪ When the blackness would hit me ♪

Riff and magenta: ♪ and the void would be calling ♪

Chorus: ♪ let's do the time warp again ♪

We were talking to the screen,

We were acting out the movie,

And we had the props.

We were taking over the movie

And making it part of our lives.

People would say,

"Have you seen what they're doing to your movie

In the states?"

And I said, "mmm..."

Opened and closed, as far as I know."

"Um, nope.

It's, um, startin' to do some midnight business."

Man: How many times have you seen it?

About 56. Around 100.

This is my 301st time.

Man: What does it do for you?

It's... it just gets me excited every week.

It's just something I...

I've just gotta go every week and do.

It's gotten me more dates than I ever got in high school.

Five days a week I'm a nurse,

And two nights a week, I'm a star,

And it levels out my life.

I stopped counting after 2,000.

But I would say I'm probably...

Seen it close to 3,000 times.

Seeing an audience performing

And dressing up as the characters...

The first time I saw that

Was at a convention they held in long island.

To be in New York

With 2,000 people celebrating your film

Was a very good feeling,

Especially since we'd had such a hard time

With the show in New York.

Piro: Not only were these fans

Participating in the film,

They were taking the movie away...

Taking it away from Richard O'Brien

And all the people who produced it

And all the people who made it,

And the studio.

That really was the first time

The audience took over.

And not just an accessory...

They became part of the show.

I didn't make a midnight film.

Richard O'Brien didn't, Jim Sharman...

We all made what we thought was a mainstream movie.

The audience made the midnight movie.

Throw open the switches

On the sonic oscillator!

Rocky was, strangely,

A bit like Frankenstein's monster.

It kind of got a life of its own,

Which was separate to us...

To anything that we wanted to do with it, anyway...

Which was quite extraordinary, when you think of it.

Some of the fans have said,

"Uh, Mr. O'Brien, did you... d-d-did you...

"Did you keep the gaps

"Between the lines of the players?

Is that so that we could say our lines?"

And I go, "ooh."

I wished I had been that clever."

The film was not sufficiently theatrical,

So the audience corrected that problem

By bringing back the theatricality

That the film somehow had diminished.

The kind of extravagances...

Physical extravagances... That I used on the stage

Were very theatrical ones,

And I've tried, in the film, to make them...

F-filmic ones.

I mean... I mean, that will do as a film gesture.

Then on the stage, you want to maybe do that.

♪ I'm just a sweet transvestite ♪

♪ From transsexual, Transylvania ♪

♪ Ha ha ♪

Brad and Janet really kind of represent

The young male and female of the Eisenhower era.

Going from the '50s

Into this permissiveness of the '70s...

♪ Touch-a, touch-a, touch-a, touch me ♪

♪ I want to be dirty ♪

Hoberman: Rocky Horror Picture Show

Has a lot to do with sex,

And that's probably the reason

It has the most elaborate cult.

Turned into a kind of initiation...

People who were experiencing the movie, really,

For the first time are "virgins."

O'Brien: Rocky is a rite of passage.

It is the journey from childhood into adulthood,

The loss of innocence...

Simply because it is the work of a...

Of a... of a 13-year-old, an eternal 13-year-old.

Piro: It played down South.

It played up north.

Cities like Chicago and San Francisco

Were big Rocky places.

When Rocky was at a really high peak,

There were over 250 theaters in the country

Playing the movie Friday and Saturday at midnight.

There were casts and fan clubs in every theater

Performing the film.

It was playing all over the world.

To this day, you know,

There's somewhere... At midnight,

Rocky Horror is playing.

Quigley: Rocky Horror became such a phenomenon

That the profits from Rocky Horror

Actually paid for the distribution overhead

Of the studio each year.

It's extraordinary.

When this film was first released,

It was a flop...

Until it was put into midnight showings on weekends.

Now, the profit...

I'd be comfortable saying

$175 million, you know.

♪ Give yourself over ♪

♪ To absolute pleasure ♪

O'Brien: I got asked if there was a message,

And all I could say was, "don't dream it... be it."

That's all I could say.

♪ Don't dream it ♪

♪ Be it ♪

Tim is the face, if you like,

Of Rocky Horror,

But the true spirit of Rocky Horror

Was always Richard O'Brien.

O'Brien: If we have made the climate a little warmer

For people who felt like outcasts

And... and... and included them in to something,

And given them... Even if it's only

A quasi-kind of family,

Uh, then I'm quite happy about that.

♪ My, my, my ♪

♪ My, my, my, my, my ♪

♪ My, my, my, my ♪

♪ My, I'm a wild and untamed thing ♪

♪ I'm a bee with a deadly sting ♪

♪ You get a hit and your mind goes ping ♪

♪ Your heart'll pump and your blood will sing ♪

♪ So let the party and the sounds rock on ♪

♪ We're gonna shake it till the life has gone ♪

♪ Rose tint my world ♪

♪ Keep me safe from my trouble and pain ♪

(Splat)

O'Brien: Eraserhead in a cinema

Is a wonderful experience.

You feel as if you're in a dream.

(Drill whirring)

Lynch: It's all an experiment

Based on the idea,

And one thing leads to another,

And the thing evolves before your eyes.

(Machine grinding)

It's okay.

Lynch: The idea was Eraserhead.

Hoberman: To compare it

To the other classic midnight movies

As filmmaking... It's really by itself.

It was definitely inspired by Philadelphia.

I love industry.

I always loved it.

I like smokestack industry.

I like the sound of it,

The look of it, the smell of it.

Henry lives in this kind of, uh, environment.

It's just got a particular feel

That, I guess, grew out of some...

Some wind in Philadelphia.

Eraserhead doesn't seem like it was made in...

In Beverly hills, California, but it was,

And it was made in the stables

Of this 55-room mansion.

I was a student.

I was just given this place.

Different rooms... A food room,

Editing room, camera room...

And all this equipment.

I had that for almost four years.

So, it was like having your own studio.

We only worked at night.

There were five people from the very beginning.

There were many, many years no work was being done

Because I didn't have the money.

There's a shot of Henry...

He takes the doorknob, he turns it.

Then it cuts to the inside of Henry's room,

And that's a year and a half later.

I was mixing with Alan Splet.

The Cannes people... They got in the room,

And they said they wanted me

To submit this film to the festival.

And I never heard one word from the Cannes film festival.

I submitted it to the New York film festival

And got rejected.

I got kind of depressed,

And there was a film festival in Los Angeles at that time

Called the "Los Angeles film exposition"... film-ex.

And this guy said,

"Just because it was rejected there

"Doesn't mean we're gonna reject it,

"And we're our own people,

And we'll take a look at your film,"

And, you know, "get out of here."

It got into that festival,

And it ran at midnight.

I wasn't in the audience.

I hate bein' in an audience.

I was pacing out back.

But I could feel that the film was too long.

And I cut 20 minutes out of that film that night.

And I cut the composite print,

Which you're not supposed to do.

Barenholtz: One day I got a call from John Quinn,

Who saw Eraserhead at film-ex in 1977,

And he said,

"This is something that might be right up your alley."

The fellow that was doing my sales,

Fred Baker and I were looking at it,

And in the middle of the screening,

I just turned to him and I said, "I want you"

To get on the phone. I want this film."

Lynch: Ben is called

"The grandfather of midnight films."

Getting behind that film at that time

Was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Barenholtz: It was so totally tactile.

It was an artist that did it.

You can almost touch it... You can feel him.

I didn't know about the midnight circuit.

I didn't know about Ben Barenholtz.

Barenholtz: I just thought

It would certainly fit into the pattern

Of launching a film at midnight.

This was something quite unusual and original,

In effect, much more so than

El Topo or Pink Flamingos.

Lynch: He said, "I am not going to spend

"One nickel on publicity.

"I guarantee you... In two months,

There'll be lines around the block."

Barenholtz: Rocky Horror was still running,

And certainly, Night Of The Living Dead.

Pink Flamingos was still being shown

In various places.

And we opened it Friday and Saturday at midnight

At cinema village.

Lynch: The first night,

There were 26 people in the theater.

The second night, Saturday,

There were 24 people.

And, um, it was... It was so empty.

I said to David,

"Don't worry. It's working.

"You're ten years ahead of your time,

And this is gonna be a very, very slow process."

One of the first movies that I was assigned to review

For The Village Voice when I was a freelancer

Was Eraserhead.

Hiya, Sonny. What've you got there?

Hoberman: I recognized that this guy

Was a really talented and original filmmaker.

Barenholtz: I did get some interviews set up.

The older people, they didn't understand it.

They couldn't relate to it.

People couldn't even quite

Talk about what they were seeing

And what was going on in the plot always.

(Crying)

Hoberman: I mean, this didn't seem to be, you know,

The kind of movie that you would want to take drugs to see.

The one thing I could never do

Is explain what... People asked me,

"What"... And I still can't...

"What is Eraserhead about?"

David came up with

"A dream of dark and troubling things,"

And I said I liked the sound of it.

Rosenbaum: There were never a lot of people there.

There was a kind of a vague togetherness,

But it wasn't anything like

When you're all watching a horror movie

And shrieking together.

It was people feeling more alone,

And it's just that you all knew you were alone with this experience.

And it was about a very solitary character, too, after all.

(Static noise, distant music)

Lynch: Several people have said

If they had got a new boyfriend or a new girlfriend,

They'd take them, first off, to Eraserhead,

And depending on their reaction,

They stay with them or not.

(Static noise, organ music playing)

Rosenbaum: Some of the images

That are very important in Eraserhead

Are not simply the ones

That you're seeing on the screen,

But the ones you're producing yourself

Because of the very suggestive soundtrack.

(Strange, reverberant noises)

Lynch: The sounds...

You've got a trillion unending possibilities,

But only certain things are gonna marry to the picture

And make that world bigger.

You start, or you hear something,

And you know exactly where that's gonna go.

That's gonna go there, this is gonna go here, that leads to this.

And then you experiment some more.

(Strange, reverberant noises)

It's a lot like music,

And it's a little bit like painting,

But it's based on the mood the idea gives you.

Barenholtz: Wherever it played,

We tried to discourage pregnant women from seeing it,

Because it certainly deals

With almost every pregnant woman's fear.

There's a baby.

It's at the hospital. Mom!

And you're the father.

But that's impossible.

(Stammering) It's only...

Mother, they're still not sure it is a baby.

It's premature, but there's a baby.

People would never talk about the baby.

I haven't talked to any about the baby.

(Machinery rumbling) (Baby cries)

Lynch: It's part of the idea.

(Loud thud)

Woman: I can't stand it! I'm going home.

Lynch: It needed to be a certain way...

What are you talking about?

Woman: I can't even sleep! I'm losing my mind.

Lynch: And you can feel those things.

You're on vacation now!

Barenholtz: Very few people wanted to review it

Or even go to see it.

Word of mouth on that was not that positive.

All midnight movies had humor...

In some way... Involved in them.

People laughed in every midnight movie.

Do I just, uh...

Just cut them up like regular chickens?

Sure, just cut 'em up like regular chickens.

Rosenbaum: I think the kind of humor

Was when he won me over.

(Gurgling noises)

I remember there being a very negative review

In Variety,

Which appeared when it showed at film-ex.

The consensus of most reviews

Was that this is unpleasant.

When I was promoting Female Trouble,

And Eraserhead had just come out,

And so I was, like, every night in every interview

Just talking about Eraserhead.

Lynch: He said, publicly,

"Go see this film, Eraserhead."

And I was, oh, thankful, and proud to be with him,

Because it was such a great movie.

It gave it some sort of stamp of approval.

It was a two-year grind.

It was actually very, very slow,

But I felt that... That it was worth it,

And I felt it was a very important film

For its time.

In 17 cities,

Eraserhead was on the marquee,

Sometimes as long as four years.

It only ran one night a week,

Maybe two nights a week,

But there it was on the marquee.

It was all Ben that made this thing happen.

What made Ben Barenholtz so important

Was that he was willing to keep a film playing

Even if people didn't come.

People would discover it at a certain point.

You never come around anymore.

(Wind roars, rustling)

Barenholtz: You feel like you've done something...

Like taken a film that nobody has seen,

Nobody's heard of,

Nobody... you know, and it's so different,

And trying to make something with that...

Ben Barenholtz had a film called Asparagus,

Which was this incredible animated short, very sexual.

Barenholtz: I combined Asparagus with Eraserhead.

Asparagus is a little erotic trip,

But it's a trip.

Lynch: What's so beautiful to me about film

Is... it's going into another world.

Every element is critical,

So it's not working until the final thing... it pops.

I loved living in the world of Eraserhead.

♪ In heaven ♪

♪ Everything is fine ♪

♪ In heaven... ♪

Hoberman: Eraserhead, which is the last

Of the great midnight movies...

You've really come to the end of the line.

♪ In heaven... ♪

What all of the classic midnight movies have in common

Is that they were made outside the system.

And not even on the fringe of the system...

These movies... Some of them

Were made by hand over a period of years,

Dependent on very single-minded individuals

Who were strong enough

To will these things into existence.

They appealed very strongly to a small number of filmgoers,

And not at all to most filmgoers.

The content is transgressive in some way...

Either sexually, or in terms of violence,

Or in terms of style,

Or in terms of difficulty.

Waters: It just broke some ground

As far as what barriers were

About taste and about humor

And about censorship.

The classic midnight movies

All come from a different place.

There's a vast difference

Between what Jodorowsky was doing...

Reminiscent of surrealist films

And European art films,

But also, with aspects of spaghetti Western...

And what John Waters was doing,

Which was really right out of underground movies.

The Harder They Come, which was relatively slick.

Rocky Horror Picture Show was a commercial movie,

And provided a formative experience

For tens of thousands of American kids.

And Eraserhead didn't look like anything

That anybody had ever done.

They were pothead movies

That shared a group madness at midnight

That became a cult... Almost like a religion.

(Cheering)

You pick up on their passion...

From Jodorowsky's passion to John Waters'

To David lynch.

They're all very, very passionate

And very unique people.

That's the secret of the success

Of some of these films.

There's a focus and an intention

And it doesn't lie to you.

I didn't make this picture for an audience.

In the beginning, I made this picture for me.

The experience is making the film

And living in that world.

They showed the way

To generations of filmmakers,

Saying, "these things are possible."

(Laughs)

I mean, you can't do it.

You can't do it yourself.

They communicated so directly

To the particular audience that they found.

The audience is... is king.

To make you feel good about going to the theater,

About going to the movies.

Oh!

Waters: Midnight movies loosened up everything else.

And then, everything changed.

Hoberman: Midnight movies' sensibility was mainstreamed

After the '70s.

Jaws is a re-commercialization

Of Night Of The Living Dead.

It turned it into a terrifying experience.

(Shrieking on screen)

(Crowd screams)

Star Wars is the greatest cult film of all time.

That's one sense in which midnight movies

Were supplanted.

The filmmakers who were involved with midnight movies

Just themselves became more mainstream.

Barenholtz: David got to direct Elephant Man.

It was possible to make these big budget,

Big cult movies.

The definition of the mainstream shifted.

As soon as video came out, it was over.

You had your own midnight movie in your house

Where you could smoke pot, you could have sex,

You could do everything

That people did at midnight movies.

You can do it in the privacy of your own home.

I can't think of anything less interesting

Than seeing Rocky Horror by yourself.

A midnight movie is almost extinct, to me, today.

The death of the midnight film

Is a sad thing.

Ebert: The whole sensibility of midnight movies

Gradually moved to the mainstream

Until today... we live totally in an age of irony,

Almost to the point

Where it's impossible to be ironic,

Because everything is ironic.

Waters: At that time,

Being known as the filthiest person alive

Sounded like something no one would want.

Today, it sounds like a punk rock group.

It sounds like a rap group.

I mean, everybody would want to be called "filthball."

You could be a star and be called that.

Hoberman: Who would have thought

That 30 years after Pink Flamingos,

John Waters would have a Broadway musical?

I made bad taste one percent more respectable,

And that was what I was put on this earth to do,

And I have done that.

If I die tomorrow,

I've done what I was put on this earth to do.

I don't think I've changed.

I think my humor is the same.

I think the American public has changed.

Boom!

I was a kind of genius.

Who is this guy, David lynch?

If I was gonna make a movie, I was gonna be Bergman.

Yeah, I made it for a tropical audience.

I love havin' the celluloid around my neck.

Nobody really wanted to grow up.

Forgot to tell you that part.

All jokes are sick now.

What you said is very beautiful.

There's no such thing as a healthy joke.

Name one. I never heard it.

Bake a fucking good cake.

I've never been interested in anything but realism

On the screen.

Film courses were just...

Sit down and watch Potemkin, and let's talk.

Well, I gotta say something good about John Waters.

I was on the Howdy Doody show, in the peanut gallery.

No puedo matara mi maestro. Cannot do. (Muttering)

Movies win Oscars that have that kind of humor in it.

I explain in English very well, there?

After a film is done, that is the nightmare, to me.

All I could say was, "don't dream it... be it."