It's not over exaggerating to say that a lot of people, LGBTQ+ or not, grow up with The Rocky Horror Picture Show or it's stage counterpart. It is simply part of culture as whole. For fifty years the film has delighted the midnight crowd, and allowed youths, and slightly older people, to embrace their darker or weirder fetishes in a safe rock-n-roll environment. But, very few can say that they genuinely grew up with Rocky Horror, inside the belly of the beast. Linus O'Brien can. Being the son of Rocky Horror creator Richard O'Brien (who also played Riff Raff), Linus has a unique insight into the phenomena of the show and it's lasting legacy. Who else can say their dad killed Frank-n-Furter and their mum is a Time Warping Transylvanian?

For his documentary Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror Linus has assembled the people who made the show and the film possible and looks at how a weird rock opera paying homage to the drive-in B-features of yesteryear became a calling card for it's cast, and salvation for queer youths the world round.

Just before I begin, anytime in my life I've mentioned Rocky Horror is a favourite film of mine people feel compelled to tell me Janet Weiss was their sexual awakening.

And maybe still is?

For you personally what was it like growing up with Rocky Horror? Everybody does, but yours is slightly different.

I think people expect it to be like The Addams Family or something, but it's a very kind of traditional household for the most part. Then Rocky would just kind of pop in at points in our lives from conventions to anniversaries to stage productions. So, yeah, it would pop in for a second then disappear then pop back in.

Is it true that your dad had the statues from the Rose Tint My World section? I heard a rumour he kept the Little Nell statue.

No, I think that's an urban myth! I don't know where they are. It would be great to find them because they're so cool.

When you're examining the history of the show and the film how do you go about appealing to the hardcore fans and the new people, not getting too in the weeds but also not telling the same stories again?

It was quite tricky because we wanted to keep it to ninety minutes, the origin story, plus my dad's journey, plus the midnight screenings and the effect on the LGBTQ+ community. It was tricky giving everything enough weight because we wanted it to feel like they wanted it a bit more. You really just have to try to hit that sweet spot. It really comes down to placement. You know we wanted to include the shadow cast, but we only had limited time, so for the modern shadow cast there's only about four or five minutes and people might think that's not enough because they're so important today. But because we placed it right near the end they were the kind of capper to it, so it takes on more importance. Okay we only had that little moment but it came at the perfect time.

So a lot of those things are just the placement of segments is really important. Same with my dad's personal journey, we needed to pepper those in at different moments, so that they weight of it is felt but not so it just comes all at the beginning or all at the end. It's tricky, but the placement is the most fun part, because you start to feel how it all comes together.

With regards to timing, did you want to talk about Shock Treatment [the semi-sequel from 1981] or was that something you were never really that interested in?

It's the timing, it was how do we give that it's own segment and it's own weight. But would it distract from the overall Rocky story which was the most important thing. People have asked me if I can do a documentary on Shock Treatment and I say, well if you have £1.4 million I'm happy to do it.

Rocky Horror is the sort of thing you could do a documentary on the stage show and all the various people who have done it, the film, the legacy. You could do a series on it, so getting it to ninety minutes is impressive.

I originally wanted to do it in two segments, like the Garry Shandling documentary that Judd Apatow did, but my producer wanted it to be a feature film so that's the way it was. But I've seen it so many times now in festivals and it really works. The funny thing is there's some really hardcore fans out there that are very critical and very protective of it in general, so some of the superfine have said it's amazing. The response has been very positive, there hasn't been anything negative which apparently is really good as far as hardcore Rocky fans go.

I can imagine if they don't like something they let you know.

That seems to be the vibe, but that's true of anything that's worshipped that there's gonna be detractors, so to not have any is great. I think a lot of that boils down to that my dad has always been a little guarded with regards to his personal life and Rocky in general. So I think because they saw him in a softer light they were so pleased by that it satisfied them to a degree that I didn't realise before.

Being Richard O'Brien's son, how easy did that make getting people to agree to be in the film – I was surprised to see Peter Hinwood [the actor who plays Rocky] in the film.

I wanted to get Peter involved because when I rewatched the movie three and a half years ago when I had the idea I was like “I need to watch it again” I was really struck by him. He really did a great job, it could have been easy for someone to bypass him. I contacted him on Instagram, and started this very soft dialogue. Just come down, it'll be twenty minutes. He actually had a really nice time. It was great to have him included because no one's heard from him.

How do you think the film stands within the LGBTQ+ community? Obviously the times change and it's a relic of fifty years ago.

Yeah, you know, it's fifty years later. The thing is Rocky never tried to bang anyone over the heard with a message, that was never it's intent. So because of that I think that's why it survived so long. Had they tried to go with an intent to be “you should feel this way or that way” then I think it's easier to pick it apart. But because it's just meant to be fun, in general, and joyous, I think it gets a free pass for the most part. If they do it just seems silly. The people who are more conservative you can say “Frank gets killed at the end, society is protected”, so why are you arguing against it?

I know of homophobes who love The Rocky Horror Show and I think – “have you not seen it? He's in fishnets!”

I know, it's strange isn't it? That's the whole strength of it. If Frank was dressed up in regular clothes you would just see him and a very confident, macho guy. He's got that real male energy. But because he's got that male energy and he's wearing what he is you get that weird mix where women are really attracted to him because they want a man who is confident but they also want a man who is in touch with his feminine side. So, Frank-n-Furter hits that sweet spot.

When you have a film that is so popular – you know there's popular and then there's cult – how do you feel the film is then viewed? It goes beyond a work and becomes a phenomenon. Do you think it affects how it gets viewed?

Rocky is going to outlive us all, we'll all be dead and they'll still be playing it. But at the end of the day what Rocky is, and it's legacy really, is community. It's what it's provided around the world for fifty years. That's how I view it. I view it as a place where people can not be judged, and not be shamed for who they are. It always seem like it's a place where everyone gets welcomed in immediately. It's never “this is a closed club and it's precious to us” it's more “No no no come in and be apart of our world”. I haven't come across any negativity while filming the documentary.

Were you ever surprised by the size of the fandom? 

It's weird because sometimes it feels small – when you go to a small town that has a very small shadow cast. Then sometimes, you know, there was a stadium concert for Rocky and there's like 20,000 people in Berlin and I'm like “that's crazy”.  We had a showing up in L.A. there's this group that puts on outdoor showings and there were 5,000 people there. So sometimes it can seem massive and sometimes it can seem very very small. It depends where you are.

This could be a controversial question. How do you feel about tributes, the remake.

Do you mean the TV one?

That one, the Glee episode as well. Personally, I hated them.

We just ignore them. I haven't seen the remake or the Glee episode. With the fans, they always want more. Regardless of how it comes. So maybe they're happy on some level, maybe to see Tim [Curry] as the narrator.  I don't have a problem it. It's like what my dad says at the end of the film, that shadow cast member who said “the truth is Richard it doesn't belong to you, it belongs to us”, so it's not ours, it's everyone's. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, it's in there. It's in Fame, it's this rite of passage. I'm very happy that that's the case. Why would you argue against something that's so positive? People are having so much fun.

With the film, as much as it's a celebration, there's a melancholy to it. Obviously many of the actors are getting on in years, Tim Curry has his stroke and we recently lost Meat Loaf, how do you balance that – celebrating it and saying time in ticking on?

We leant into it, basically. We wanted that kind of reflection. I think the last fifteen minutes really lean into it. We wanted it to tug at your heartstrings, that's what I wanted to invoke. So with me and my creative partner we wanted to lean into that.

It has a similar structure to Rocky Horror it starts out and you're not sure what route it's gonna take, then it becomes very big and then you get Tim on the stage and that's when you get your dad lamenting.

What's nice is that we had Richard Hartley and my dad sing the songs for the first time in fifty years, and when they did that rendition of Super Heroes, we were like “this is perfect, it's just just like in the movie but it's a new version”, what we didn't realise until we got into the editing is that my dad says “get down I'm a bad motherfucker”. And we were like that's a great way to end the film. Whenever I see it in the theatre I cannot wait for that moment because it's a mic drop basically.

With the film, your dad is putting on a voice but in reality he actually has a fantastic singing voice, that maybe people might not actually know. So when he performs it it's a surprise.

That's something about my dad, he's very reticent, he never self promotes, just very conservative. But it's nice to be able to celebrate his talents. I feel sometimes he doesn't get his due enough. So to written one of the top ten musicals of all time, it's nice to be able to celebrate him.

Particularly with Super Heroes which is a beautiful song. When Charles Gray delivers those final lines it's hard not to burst into tears.

Again it's another mic drop.

You may have been asked this before, but what is your favourite song from the show?

When I was younger it was the more bombastic ones – Wild and Untamed Thing. But as I've gotten older, no it's Super Heroes and I'm Going Home. And that's the things, he had them in a drawer somewhere and he just put them in at the end. So to have all this rock-n-roll at the beginning and then end on those ballads it gives it this gravitas which previous the eighty minutes didn't have. 

Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror is in cinemas from October 3rd

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