Richard O’Brien says he has no interest in remaking the musical Rocky Horror Show for the big screen as he believes they got it right the first time.
The creator of the cult show, which was first performed on stage in 1973 and turned into film adaptation The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1975, despairs at Hollywood’s relentless desire to churn out remakes and reboots.
“I think it’s because they’ve run out of ideas really,” 82-year-old O’Brien - who starred in the film alongside Tim Curry and Susan Sarandon - lamented to the Standard.
“Because there are only so many stories, they’re desperate to get something that works.”
“No, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” he added while promoting the latest stage revival of The Rocky Horror Show, which is currently running at the Dominion Theatre until September 20.
“We made that movie in six weeks at 1.2 million dollars and just that one shot of Frank-N-Furter in the pool looks like a million dollars, doesn’t it.
“I think there’s something really special about the energy and we came in under budget and on time and the energy is there, it’s lovely. You can over think things, you can over work things, can’t you.”
Australian actor Jason Donovan - who is reprising his role as Frank-N-Furter 25 years after he last performed it in the west end - agrees, saying: “I don’t think it needs to be touched.”
In the film O’Brien portrays Frank’s servant Riff Raff, who performs one of the show’s most iconic songs, Time Warp.
More than 50 years have passed since he first breathed life into it, but he says he refuses to get sick of it.
“Somebody once asked me ‘do you ever get fed up singing the Time Warp?’ and I was about to say ‘yes,’ I was actually, it was getting a bit meh, and then I saw Cab Calloway of the Blues Brothers singing Minnie The Moocher at 80 and I thought ‘if he can do that when he’s 80 and have that much fun then I’m going to enjoy it and I’m not going to complain’.
“I was invited up to the house where we filmed the movie for VH1 – I got told to take a guitar with me - and as we went around the building, we got outside to where Brad and Janet were singing There’s A Light On In The Frankenstein Place, I started to play the song and the director said ‘Stop stop stop!’ and I said ‘What? What’s wrong?’ He said ‘We know all the songs from this show, don’t we’.
“I don’t know if that’s rare, we know musicals, but most musicals we only know one song from it, but with Rocky, we know all of the songs from it. It seems to have been everywhere and got everywhere. It’s very interesting.”
The Rocky Horror Show has been performed continuously around the world for five decades. Drawn on why the show continues to resonate with audiences, Donovan, 56, said: “It resonates because it’s incredible, it connects with people about being different.”
“Frank says ‘Don’t dream it, be it’ and he’s the master of his own convictions until the act comes undone, but you’ve got to admire his tenacity to sort of think outside of the box.”
“You go home happier than you came in. Open hearts and open minds,” added O’Brien.
