It's been reported--like, by us, like ten minutes ago-- that a remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is being planned by a group of investors that includes MTV, with Lou Adler, the music producer and manager who served as executive producer on the original film (which was directed by Jim Sharman) returning to serve in that capacity on the new one. (Adler would later direct the first Cheech and Chong movie, Up in Smoke and the cult item Ladies and Gentleman, the Fabulous Stains.) Now Richard O'Brien, who created the original stage show and appeared in the 1975 movie as Riff Raff, has pulled an Alan Moore, announcing that he will not participate in any way in the remake and adding that "I have no view on whether it should be remade but it doesn't have my blessing." (This contradicts earlier reports that O'Brien would take a co-producing credit on the remake.) O'Brien claims that "The first I heard about it was when people sent me cuttings from US papers." O'Brien also seemed miffed over the possibility that the filmmakers plan to fiddle with his original score, adding new songs: "Where are they going to get the songs from? Who's going to do that? That's a bit strange isn't it?" The business about the new songs is an ominous development; it suggests that the idea may be to update Rocky Horror for a new generation whose tastes are closer to High School Musical than Velvet Goldmine. (The roots of O'Brien's stage musical were solidly planted in the sexually androgynous glam rock movement and the camp affection for old sci-fi and horror flicks and all things "50s.)
You don't have to regard Rocky Horror as a timeless classic to be impressed by the strong whiff of pointlessness attached to this venture. The original movie, which has basically been in continuous limited release since opening to almost universal indifference in September 1975, slowly built its cult audience by word of mouth and through isolated pockets of self-generated obsessiveness, something all but unthinkable in the age of viral marketing and massively hyped "blockbuster" hits that earn all their money in their opening weekends. In 1981, 20th Century Fox, which had tried to persuade O'Brien and company to hatch a sequel, released Shock Treatment, which was directed by Sharman from an original screenplay credited to Sharman and O'Brien, and which featured the characters played in the original by Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick, but not Sarandon and Bostwick themselves. (The cast did include Rocky Horror stalwarts O'Brien, Patricia Quinn, Charles Gray, and Nell Campbell, but the role that had been written specifically with Tim Curry in mind, that of the villainous American Svengali Farley Flavors, ended up being inhabited by Cliff De Young. One candidate to replace Curry in the Rocky Horror remake is said to be Marilyn Manson.) The fast fade from theaters of the heavily promoted Shock Treatment (a movie that in some ways can now be seen as a precursor of The Truman Show) may be the crowning proof that the kind of accidental cult success that Rocky Horror came to enjoyed cannot be generated by corporate decree. For his part, Lou Adler says, "The Rocky Horror phenomenon has a life of its own that has reincarnated itself in numerous ways since its birth. Our hope has always been that each new endeavour and rebirth will expose the Rocky Horror experience to new audiences and expand the fan base."