Some things are constants in a chaotic world: Death, taxes and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” which has played at Portland’s Clinton Street Theater every Saturday night for 43 years.
So, on March 15, 2020, when the theater was forced to close due to coronavirus restrictions, one man was determined not to break the streak.
For the next 54 Saturdays, Nathan Williams came to an empty theater to screen the film, sometimes with a friend, sometimes by himself.
“I watched it alone. I watched it during the snowstorm,” said Williams, who serves as emcee for the theater’s “Rocky” nights. “I was in a position to keep a flame burning, to keep a torch lit.
“I’m just a guy holding a torch for the city of Portland, for all the weirdos, for all the people who don’t have a safe place to call home, we’re home.”
Lani Jo Leigh, owner of Clinton Street Theater since 2012, said it was important for the community to know that the theater was still waiting for them.
“It’s just kind of a silly little thing, but it was still a sense of hope,” she said. “This is what normal is. Normal is we play ‘Rocky Horror’ on a Saturday night, and that’s what’s happening.”
Now, as theaters begin to reopen after more than a year, it was fitting for “Rocky” to be the first film to return to the Clinton Street Theater on April 3.
The Clinton Street Theater opened around 1914 and is one of the area’s oldest movie houses. Thanks to various grants, loans, fundraisers, donations and a lowered rent from her landlord, Leigh has managed to pay the bills over the past year while the theater has remained shuttered.
“On one hand, I would get really depressed and upset and anxious, especially in the beginning, but then people just kept coming and saying, ‘You mean so much to us, this place,’” Leigh said. “I would think ‘I don’t have the money this month’ and somehow, someone would just send it. It just felt like a miracle all year. I felt like Jimmy Stewart in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’”
Under Leigh’s ownership, the Clinton Street Theater has hosted documentary screenings, burlesque shows, lectures and community theater. But it may still be best known as the home of weekly “Rocky” showings, which have taken place since 1978. The Clinton Street Theater has one of the longest running, unbroken streaks of weekly “Rocky” screenings in the world.
Seeing the cult film at the Clinton has been a rite of passage for generations of Portland prom goers, bachelorettes, tourists, night owls and self-proclaimed weirdos.
Williams first saw “Rocky” in 1999, as a teenager, at the Clinton Street Theater. That was where, under the marquee, a woman dressed as a pirate asked if he was a virgin – meaning a first-time viewer of the film.
“She put a V on my cheek, smacked my ass and pushed me into ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ and I fell in love,” Williams said. (With the movie, not the pirate.)
And not just the movie, but the experience around it.
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” released in 1975, is a campy musical tale of a straight-laced couple who become stranded at the castle of a cross-dressing, mad-scientist alien. The movie has had the longest theatrical run in history – not because the plot makes sense, but because of the audience participation around the film. At midnight screenings of “Rocky,” movie goers yell at the screen, throw rice and toast, and dance “The Time Warp” along with the cast on screen.
Since 1987, members of the Clinton Street Cabaret have acted out “Rocky” on a stage below the screen at the Clinton Street Theater, mimicking the film in what’s called a shadow cast.
“‘Rocky’ has always been a place for the weird, quiet kid and the loud extrovert and the person who’s just looking for something fun to do and the theater kids and LGBTQ kids,” said Loren Thompson, the current president of the cabaret. “It’s where all the misfits come to find family.”
For Thompson, who joined the cabaret in 2017, “Rocky” was a support system during a journey into sobriety and recovery. One of the rules of the Cabaret is that everyone must perform sober.
“I had to kind of separate myself from my whole life and try to find new places to be,” Thompson said, “and I met this whole new family all at once. They took me in super quickly with so much love and support. So ‘Rocky’ has been really important to me, amongst other things, for that reason. It may have literally saved my life.
“I’m not really a church-going person, but sometimes it feels like going to church,” Thompson said. “It’s my community. I go to feel like I’m part of something that’s bigger than myself.”
“Without Rocky, I don’t know, everything’s a little less sparkly,” said Haley Skinner, who has been a member of the Rocky Horror cabaret for two years, and in January 2020 was cast in her dream role as Columbia. Here, Skinner prepares for her role from her bedroom in Portland. April 3, 2021 Beth Nakamura/StaffThe Oregonian
Last Saturday evening, another cabaret member, Haley Skinner, smeared an Elmer’s glue stick across her eyebrows.
“Without Rocky, I don’t know, everything’s a little less sparkly,” she said. “Literally.”
But not tonight.
Skinner applied the glue, then the foundation and finally the glittery eyeshadow to complete her character makeup.
The shadow cast typically performs on the first, third and fifth Saturdays of the month, but the cabaret isn’t yet returning because of COVID-19 restrictions.
That didn’t stop Skinner from wearing her costume to opening night.
“When it first came out in the 1970s one of the things that was so revolutionary about it was that it was this representation of a gay man on screen who was out and proud and was the most powerful person in the room,” Skinner said. “And that was a really liberating and empowering thing for young queer people to see.”
A senior at Lewis & Clark College, Skinner transferred to Portland from a school in Ohio because of the Clinton Street Theater’s weekly “Rocky” showings.
“I looked up Portland, Oregon and I looked up the Clinton Street Cabaret and I decided, yup, I’m going to move here and I’m going to join this cast,” she said. “And I did.”
She’s been a member of the cabaret for two years, and in January 2020 was cast in her dream role as Columbia.
She only performed in a handful of shows before the theater closed.
“It’s been pretty sad to not have this thing I was so excited about,” she said. “But also, at the end of the day, I still have this group of people in my life. It’s not about the stage time or the role, it’s definitely the people of the cabaret that I’m going to remember the most.”
On April 3, the first 50 customers returned to the theater, filling less than a quarter of the seats. For now, that’s the largest audience the 222-seat theater is permitting inside. Coronavirus restrictions require theaters to close by 11 p.m., so the movie will start at 9 p.m. (midnight, Greenwich Village time.)
“Rocky” opening night was populated by a handful of virgins, but the majority of the audience were die-hard fans like Beth and Zola Honey, who first met at a “Rocky” showing at The Clinton in 2002. The now married couple showed off their matching lips tattoos, which commemorate the film.
“It means the world is somewhat coming back to normal,” Beth said of opening night. “It’s a release valve for all those pent-up tensions that we’ve had over the past year.”
As the film began, the couple was among the first and loudest to yell vulgar jokes at the screen, the majority of which aren’t fit to reproduce in a family newspaper.
This is normal.
This is what Portland does on a Saturday night.
For now, it looks a little bit different, with a mostly empty theater and an empty shadow cast stage.
But soon, our world will do the Time Warp again.
IF YOU GO: “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is shown at 9 p.m. Saturdays at The Clinton Street Theater, 2522 S.E. Clinton St. The pre-show and “virgin games” begin at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $12 and can be purchased online at cstpdx.com. Attendees are invited to use and throw props, with the exception of water guns or open flames. Under COVID-19 precautions, audience members must stay seated or standing in front of their assigned seats.
-- Samantha Swindler, sswindler@oregonian.com, @editorswindler