MovieChat Forums > The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do the Time Warp Again (2016) Discussion > Can't blame it entirely on casting a wom...

Can't blame it entirely on casting a woman as Frank...

posted 8 years ago by Whooda_Thunkit
18 replies | jump to latest

Even if they had cast a man as Frank, if they had done everything else the same, it still would have sucked. It still would be a sanitized, G-rated, over-choreographed, high school version of Glee.

They could have made it work with a female Frank, I think, if they had swapped everything. For example, made a muscular, beautiful female Rocky, had Janet as Frank's primary object of conquest, etc. Oh, make Frank a drag king while being happily female, like Curry's Frank was happily male.

They would have had to add the edge back in, the grit. Add the sex back in and make Frank intimidating again... give him (or her) his edge back. In the original you never quite knew whether Frank wanted to have sex, kill, or both. Then probably do something with the corpse.

In the new version, the worst you had to fear from Frank was a bad word or slap on the cheek.

And a pretty Riff Raff? No! Give me back the creepy effer Riff used to be, the bisexual Transylvanians, and a cast NOT composed of stereotypically attractive people.

Basically, do a full gender swap and rough it back up.

[–] mel_arewar 8 years ago

I completely agree with you on this. They took away the edge, the roughness, and that was what really ruined it.

[–] 8 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Whooda_Thunkit 8 years ago

Women who could have played Frank, if they had done a full gender swap and left the gritty tone of the movie intact, would have included Tina Turner and Grace Jones from a couple of decades ago. I don't think Annie Lennox has ever acted but I would have looked at her too.

I am sure there are some modern actresses with the chops and the vocal credentials to do it, I just too old to know who they are.

[–] CookieNCreams 8 years ago

Where's this sanitizing argument coming from? I've admit to have never seeing any of the stage shows before (heard the original production was more gritter and scandalous than the movie), but I did see the movie a week before and this show seemed to be almost similar to the movie in terms of story structure. It has gotten away with a lot of things for a prime-time premiere. Was it not dark enough compared to the previous productions, or have not honor both the stage shows and the movies enough at the same time?

And I could agree with you a little about the casting of Dr. Frank. I almost didn't mind it, but I could also see how it would slightly defeat the purpose of Dr. Frank in the context of the original story. Unless other gender-flipped roles were to take place like how you mentioned about Rocky, having Brad in a fling with Rocky instead, etc.

🍭🎃👻🍬

[–] mel_arewar 8 years ago

Did you see the movie in a theater with the accompanying stage show? The responses and the props? If you haven't you probably should when you get a chance--they show it all over the place and it's really the way to get the full experience. I first went as college freshman in the early nineties and it was a blast--that's a lot of why it feels sanitized to me.

[–] CookieNCreams 8 years ago

No, a friend of mine happens to own a dvd of the movie. We watched it at his house on a wide screen with surround sound speakers. So it kinda felt like my friends were watching that at a private cinema for the moment. :) Earlier before that, I’ve first learned about Rocky Horror back in high school when my two classmates are fans of it and wanted to do a reenactment of ‘Time Warp’ for a presentation. Until then, I’ve never gotten around to see the full movie or the shows. I've also understood the pop culture references from other media from quite sometime.

🍭🎃👻🍬

[–] mel_arewar 8 years ago

You really do need to see a live show if you can. They're still being shown all over the place, usually at midnight--get a bunch of your friends together and you'll have a ball. You can google the audience response script and what props to take and everything--believe me, it's awesome :)

[–] CookieNCreams 8 years ago

That sounds like it would be an interactive show when it involves the response scripts and props. :) No wonder there's a cult following for it.

🍭🎃👻🍬

[–] delerium76 8 years ago

It pretty much is an interactive show. Kinda like a party really, which is why most theaters banned it. back in the mid 90's I used to go twice a week for a few years, but the theater staff hate cleaning up after the show, so alot of props got banned, and eventually the whole show got taken out. It's hard to find a showing anymore because of that, unless it's specifically a Halloween showing. As for the sanitizing of the show, you watched it on dvd and not tv right? There's (some minor) nudity, profanity, and the suggestive sexual scenes were alot more, um, suggestive, than this one. Normally it's not a big deal if those things are missing because they aren't that important to the plot, but this particular show was pretty heavily sexually themed and that part was mostly lost. Ultimately they just turned it into RHPS - High School Musical Edition.

[–] mel_arewar 8 years ago

They still show it where I am on a pretty regular basis, fortunately. They stopped the rice but that's about it on the banned props.

[–] Whooda_Thunkit 8 years ago

If you saw it back in the day, how is the audience feel now?

I started in '75 and, by the late 80s, the feel was radically different. By the early 90s, in some theaters gawpers would wait for the movie to end to, well, not be nice. Hecklers would sometimes come into the theater to make fun of us.

Is it anyway returned to how it was.

Do they still allow newspapers, squirt bottles, and toilet paper? I'm guessing lighters are a no go now.

[–] CookieNCreams 8 years ago

Yeah, they can’t get away with nudity and a lot of profanity for primetime. So there are several things sanitized from the show. Were the older shows all that different from the movie? Songs omitted or such?

🍭🎃👻🍬

[–] mel_arewar 8 years ago

Here's a page where you can find a showing near you :) http://www.rockyhorror.com/participation/showtimes.php

[–] CookieNCreams 8 years ago

Out of curiosity, how was Shock Treatment?

Was it kinda the Grease 2 of Rocky Horror from what I’ve been hearing about?

🍭🎃👻🍬

[–] Blue_Eyes_James 8 years ago

Shock Treatment was, IMO, great... but different.

It shouldn't be considered a sequel, O'Brien liked to call it an "equal". It couldn't hold the burden of being a sequel, hardly anything could.

The music is great, not as good as Rocky but catchy. Not as interactive, no Time Warp.

Here's a good article about it, which also explains how the actual setting and set design was changed due to a writer's strike.

"The movie was supposed to play it completely straight by filming it in an actual American town called Denton but a writers' strike meant that Denton had to be completely set in a film studio."

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/ShockTreatment?from=Main.ShockTreatment

[–] Whooda_Thunkit 8 years ago

Have a stage production to compare both to: https://youtu.be/VIPckPtYmXk?t=15m27s . The play begins at 15:27, interviews before that, including with Richard O'Brien in interviews and in the play.

That was simulcast to theaters across Europe, sadly not to the US. I would have paid a lot of money to watch this with an audience. It is also supposed to be very close to the original production.

[–] Blue_Eyes_James 8 years ago

I'd mentioned that months back, if hey wanted to cast a woman make her a female transvestite. Look at Marlene Dietrich in her soldier whites or how Raquel Welch emulated her in "Myra Breckenridge".

http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm274/blueeyesjames/Movies/Marlene%20Raquel.jpg

A REAL role reversal turning it upside-down would have been a miles better experiment than what they just did. Probably would have failed but with the right creative team it could be worth a risk. Sounds like something the French would try! But... botzing up the main character's gender and leaving everything around it basically the same is just nuts... or nut-less.

But to be honest, this sounds like something they'd do to a film way decades after the original had been remade and way too many shapes and forms. In fact Frank himself IS a bizarre remake of Dr. Frankenstein! But when something is as good and unique as it it, they don't require re-filming, or re-booting or re-inventing or re-anything! RHPS is one of those films. I hope the stage play runs through many risks as it and other stage productions of musicals have always done. Movies, if they're an unrepeatable classic with a magic no one could ever intentionally reproduce again in 1000 years.... leave them alone!

[–] pistrix 8 years ago

No, I do not blame the whole thing on casting a female as Frank. I just blame the whole thing.

It was overly glamorized, too polished and catering to the pretty aspect. The singing was awful, the dancing was awful. It was just all around freaking awful.

The original had flaws, but that is what made it perfect. It was perfectly imperfect and did NOT try or OVERdo like this crappy remake did. The fake accents drove me nuts. UGH just all of it irritated the crap out of me.

((Damn the remakes, Save the originals.))