Hello to all of you unconventional conventions. Welcome back to Rocky Talk, a Rocky Horror podcast where we talk about anything and everything. Rocky Horror. I'm John, I'm Nicky and I'm Aaron. What the fuck is up? I missed both of you. I missed you, John. Oh wow, God, we should like hold hands about it. We have to whisper about that. Ok, hold hands about it. Yeah, I agree. Nicky, what did you do this past week? Anything fun? Anything. I've had an eventful week and I'd love to talk about it. I'd love to talk about it for hours. So, on Friday, we had our first mayhem night back since the pandemic. Uh and like mayhem night is just like a night where before the movie at Rocky, we spin a wheel and you get like a thing that will fuck up your performance. So I was Rocky and I spun the wheel and I got to wear, I had to wear gun range headphones so I couldn't hear a goddamn thing. I missed every single one of my cues. I was yelling at audience members to tell me when to go. It was so much fun. Um I loved everything about it also, yesterday, I actually went down to the city and I got to hang out with me and Aaron and see their new apartment and we had a lot of fun. Hi, Aaron. Hello. Hello. But that was so much fun. And then also on Friday, I was thrift with my friend and we said, what if we just go get matching tattoos right now? So we did. So now I have a new tattoo and I love it and I'm so happy. It's been such a good week. Ok. But what is it? So it's a, it's a sexy chic ghost and she's holding a knife and there's a skull in between her legs. I named her Salma and I love her. She's on my arm. Good old Salma. It's pretty adorable. I did get to see it last night. It looks really cute. Thank you. But how was your week? Erin? It was awesome. Uh I finally got things situated here as you. You got to see like my desk is set up and like I can, can actually do work again. That's very exciting. Uh We're finally getting things situated in the apartment. We might even be able to start recording some more unboxing videos. Yes, I moved an entire box of not opened packages just so that we can keep doing our fun Rocky talkie unboxing videos. So look for that coming up real soon. And um yeah, I had a ton of fun hanging out with Nicky last night, Nick. You forgot to mention the most important reason that we went out. It was our writer Jacob's birthday. Oh, yeah, I totally forgot to mention that. No, of course. I definitely forgot. Yes, we were out celebrating Jacob's birthday. We had so much fun. My bestie Andrea was there so big ass happy birthday to our big ass writer Jacob. Yes. Um but yeah, it's been an awesome week for me. I've been having a lot of fun. I am happy to be here talking to you guys about Rocky right now. So let's get into some of that John first. How was your week? Uh week? It was fine. Nothing to write home about aside from the fact that I realized I have a wedding every month for the next three months and I don't have a singular suit. You're getting married every month for the next three months to three separate people. I know. Right. Everyone wants to be me. I didn't know you were a Mormon. There's a lot of things you don't know about me. Aaron. Oh, now I'm going to a wedding in Florida in August. Happy August, by the way, everybody. Happy Girlfriend Day. Uh So that's happening wedding in August in Florida. I have a wedding in Philadelphia in September and then I have a wedding in Saint Louis in October. I actually don't even know the people who are getting married at the wedding in October. I'm literally going because one of my favorite bands is playing a show in Saint Louis. They never play shows. They play a show once a year. What's your favorite band? It's not my favorite band. Um, it's one of my favorite bands. One of your favorite bands, it's, uh, this band called Ludo. They, they do not perform ever. They perform once a year and it's usually around Halloween for this event called Owen. It's some random place in the country. Once a year, they play a show and it just turns out that the show that they're playing now for this year is in Saint Louis, Missouri and it's for a wedding. So it's a concert slash wedding and everyone who goes to the concert is also invited to the wedding, that's so fun. So I have no idea who's getting married, but I fucking love weddings and it's a Halloween themed wedding where Ludo is playing a concert beforehand and then they are the band at the wedding. That literally sounds like such a good time. It is going to be so fucking cool. And I'm going out to Saint Louis Missouri with my friend Kelly. We're gonna be each other's plus ones. It's gonna be amazing. But I need to get multiple suits because I don't have a single suit that fits me. Right. Exactly. Well, time to go down to Macy's. Exactly. Or, you know, l train vintage because I ain't about that $300 suit. Life like Aaron is. I don't know what kind of cheap ass suit you're buying at Macy's for $300. But, uh, exactly my point. And with that, let's get started with our first segment. Incorrect global news. Nice. Try 50 50 on it. So, first up in global news, if you've been dying for the opportunity to meet our favorite ex delivery driver, Meatloaf. Have we got news for you? Our boy Meat will be appearing at Mad Monster Expo in Concord, North Carolina from September 3rd to September fifth. Mad Monster Expo is a horror sci fi and fantasy themed convention that brings the world's top genre celebrities and vendors together with horror fans to trade stories, attend informative panels, buy autographs and fun merchandise, visit with old friends and meet new like minded monsters. Celebrity guests at this year's Expo include Lisa Loring who played the original Wednesday, Adams Skeet, Ulrich and Matthew Lillard from Scream, right? Tobin Bell and Shawn Smith who played Jigsaw and Amanda in the series. They're also gonna have Bonnie Aarons from the nun in the conjure and uh James Remer from Warriors and Mortal Kombat plus many, many, many more including our boy me, I wanna go so bad then do it. You won't sounds pretty awesome. Nothing is gonna get me to go to North Carolina, but something will get you to go to Ohio. Listen, I do not have to explain myself to you. All celebrity guests will have their own tables set up where they'll be taking photos with fans, citing autographs and selling memorabilia. The 2021 Expo will be held at the Embassy Suites in Concord, North Carolina. And tickets run from $35 for a single day to 200 for a really intense party or, or an R IP pass which will get you to the con all three days plus grants you access to all the exclusive VIP events, priority photo ops, reserved seating panels. Basically, you get to be a baller that weekend. It also comes with a pretty six swag bag full of limited edition goodies. If you're interested in learning more about Mad Monster Expo, you can find out more info on their website. That's Mad Monster party dot com, which we'll be linking for you in our show notes. And as always, if you attend and happen to run in to meet, please write in and tell us all about it. That sounds like a pretty big dick story to me that we would absolutely love to feature in our big dick story time segment. Speaking of magnum dogs this past week, Susan Sarandon gave a really funny interview to the Hollywood reporter where she relived her Janet Weiss audition. Oh man, I saw this and it feels so on brand for the train wreck. That is Rocky horror. Susan told the Hollywood reporter, a friend of mine was in the stage show in L A. So I knew Tim Curry and one day I went by just to say hi when they happened to be casting and they asked me to read, nobody had made Janet very funny, but they were all much better singers. And so I said, no, I can't really sing. Actually, I'm kind of phobic about singing. And they said, well, can you sing Happy Birthday? So I went against my better judgment thinking that maybe I would finally get over this phobia that I had about singing out loud because I realized that it was all just ego. And eventually I did the recording session and I kind of got somewhat over it, but it was just a fluke that I did get cast. So this interview was in part to promote her new film Ride, The Eagle about a man who has left a conditional inheritance by his estranged mother, played by Susan Sarandon. But in order to receive the inheritance, he must first complete the to do list that she's left him. The overarching theme of the movie is to stop taking yourself so fucking seriously a lesson, Susan herself was clearly taught in part by her time with Rocky Horror, as evidenced by this ridiculous audition story. Speaking of which I'm sure we all have a ton of examples of having to give up on taking yourself seriously within Rocky, whether it's during a performance or with a project. Do you guys have any fun examples that stick out in your brain. I remember this one time, like many, many years ago, it was the first time that I was playing Frank and I felt like that there was kind of like a target on my chest when I was playing him for the first time because we tend to enjoy accuracy over other things with N Y C and obviously for anyone who knows what I look like, I'm beautiful, but I have a beard and Frank doesn't have a beard and it kind of like throws the character into a different ethos when he has a beard. Uh like some like it doesn't really matter if many of the other ones have it. But like with Frank, it's like he has such an iconic look and a beard kind of like is a wrench into that. So I had to kind of read AAPT the character around having a beard. So like filling in my beard and making it like really sharp and pointy, just like his eye makeup and everything I, I had to include into the character. And I really felt I was like super nervous about it. I was getting in my head about the difference of Franken Furter as a character, including a beer. But then I really like right before I went on for sweet tea, I was like, what the fuck am I doing to myself? Just play them the way that you would and people are going to enjoy it. And it was a sold out show after sweet tea happened, you know, thunderous applause happened and I walked off stage and I was like, I'll be fine. And, you know, four years later, I'm one of the regular pranks for N Y C. So clearly I did something good. Right, man, I think we can all agree that you did. You know, I've got a good story for this. It's um rocky adjacent and it's actually uh the story of making my wedding where we decided to completely throw caution to the wind and go entirely not taking ourselves seriously. And we had John, you plan our uh audience participation filled ceremony. So literally during the audience participation ceremony, the entire audience had scripts of everything that we were gonna say, everything that our efficient was gonna say. And John planned out places where little props would be thrown and people would do call outs and all sorts of stuff that we just all had to kind of not take ourselves seriously for something that was traditionally an incredibly serious experience. And boy, it ended up better than I could have possibly imagined. Everyone had a ton of fun and like it was really outside of the wheelhouse of like, are we gonna take this day and just, you know, make it a farce? And we did and boy, it worked out. So, yeah, that was a good time. You got you got one Nicky. I mean, I feel like mine is a little more generic in terms of just like, you know, I was a teenage girl in Rocky horror and I feel like when I started doing Rocky, that's really what taught me everything about how I feel about myself. Now. You know, so when I first started performing, it had to be perfect. You know, the wig had to be perfect and I didn't care if I was playing Janet and I had 30 seconds to get changed for floor show. I was going to make sure that my tits looked perfect in that corset and the bra had to be perfectly tailored to my body and I couldn't borrow anybody's costume because if it was too big on me, like or too small, I would look dumb. And it's like after a certain point, I was like, why am I doing this to myself? Like I was always so strung up on being the perfect screen accurate. Incredible Janet that I was like, not enjoying the show. You know, I was just always so stressed. Like, do I look dumb right now? What does the audience think about me? And I was like, they're here for Rocky and to have a great time and I'm not getting on stage doing my own fucking thing, but I just kind of loosened up a little bit and let myself enjoy myself. And I really think that that added a whole other level to my performance that I could have never figured out just from being like, it's going to be perfect. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, I mean, it takes some time right to, to and get in that. And can I just say Susan Sarandon also did an interview on youtube recently where the interviewers put her like hardcore on the spot and asked her to sing a few bars of over at the Frankenstein place like a motherfucking champ. She just turned around and did it right there. No problem. So, I mean, Susan's a great example. I guess she's overcome her stage, right? And I guess all of us have learned to take ourselves a little less seriously. So, thanks Rocky. If any of our listeners have fun stories that they'd like to share too, we would love to hear them. It's so easy sometimes to get all caught up in trying to play a character perfectly or totally accurately or give a stellar performance. But I really feel that times where we have to let go of that are some of the most memorable and it's really what makes our community fun. So send us yours and we'll share them on air if you guys are interested in checking out Susan's full interview or the details about her new movie ride, The Eagle. We've got that all linked for you in our show notes. And now Nikki, what time is it? Global News? That's right. So this week in community news, we've got some really great write ins from listeners. First up is a dual write in from Copeland, Lewis and Gray Syndic. We've combined them into one bigger longer meteor write in for simplicity's sake. Uh So here we go. The message reads. Hi. I'm a member of the cast in a student film Rocky project. We created a film version of Rocky Horror because of COVID And our premiere is on June 30th. That's a day after we're recording this episode. So it literally just dropped. Uh a donation of $1 is all that's required to get the link. Our tiktok is at regular Frankie fan and our Instagram where you will find our trailer is some insects called the Human Race. All one word. We worked all semester on this project and we would be stoked for tons of unconventional conventions and Frankie fans to tune in to our show. I have listened to your podcast and you're all so wonderful and I would be stoked if you watched also, I play Colombia, by the way, smiley face. We were so pumped about this right in. We absolutely adore community passion projects and really wanted to learn more about this film. So we reached back out to these guys for the Des Gray Copeland who are the film's director and the film's Columbia respectively, were kind enough to share with us that this piece is meant to appeal to the Rocky fan who's into a big mashup of Rocky plus cabaret, Euphoria and Tim Burton, much like the O G A lot of exploration dynamics are touched on in the film. So it's got lots of drama and vulnerability at play. The film's production team are of course, big fans of Rocky. The director Gray got started young watching Rocky for the first time at only eight years old and has always dreamed of putting their own twist on it. After attending innumerable shadow cast showings in their South Florida hometown, decided to turn their love of the film into a passion project of their own by teaming up with other students at their university. Gray let us know that their goal for the film is to create a fun, raw and provocative Rocky horror experience for viewers. They're excited to share the original story with a darker tone and deeper subtext. Also, they're super excited for people to finally get to watch and connect to this film that they've been working so hard to create Copeland or Columbia is hopeful that viewers will really get to experience how much fun they all had as a cast, creating the film and that the audience will understand how hard they all work to create these exceptionally fleshed out back stories for their characters. They're also beside themselves. That little Nell herself reached out for a download code. Oh, holy shit. I would be excited as fuck for that too. That's Awesome. So, this film just dropped a few days ago on July 30th and it looks like it's going to be a great time to watch. We've already reached out for our download code and we're all going to watch it and report back to our listeners. Can we do a watch party? That'd be fun. Should we invite little Nell? Sure, Nicky, why not? I mean, honestly, she, she'd probably come set her up on cameo pay by the minute for the whole uh if you're interested in obtaining a download code and inviting little now to your watch party, all you gotta do is slide into the film's Instagram D MS. Their insta handle is at some insects called the human race. Shoot them a message letting them know that you want to buy the film and they will hook you up. It's only a single fucking dollar for a full evening of Rocky horror entertainment and it looks like it's gonna be a ton of fun. We'll see you there. And as always, if you watch it, please write to us and let us know how you liked it. And speaking of writing to us next up, we've got a very special write in from one of our favorite listeners from a hot dog T M I know it has been a couple of weeks since the staycation but give me a break. Homegirl was busy. I just wanted to write and say thank you to you. Rocky talkie and everyone else that attended and performed in Staycation with a special shout out again to our tech daddy Caden and thank you to my fellow T PB director for honoring me with the new You're a hot dog award bish. Had me crying at the club. What started out as a random idea turned into a wild weekend for me and Harley running around my dining room and being glued to some kind of device for the entire time. We wanted staycation to be something to help bring the community together in these trying times. And even though we're all starting to get back into the swing of in person things again, I really don't want to see the virtual rocky space disappear. I was able to connect and get closer with many of the incredible folks in the community. And for that, I am most grateful. I love each and every one of you and can't wait to see your faces again in real life. Best of luck to everyone as we all get back to our theaters with love Tory God, we love you so much, Tori. I'll say personally, that was my first con experience in Rocky Horror and I swear I literally wouldn't want it to have happened any other way. Y'all pulled it off so incredibly and you really kicked some serious ass and it's just so dope to see how you saw the world change and you saw all of us in shambles. Trying to figure out how are we going to do Rocky Horror? And you made something so beautiful out of it. I think all of us here at Rocky talking know exactly what it feels like to work so hard at something rocky related. And I just, I can't imagine how this could have gone any better. Hoola Tori. Thank you. Yeah. Oh my God. Amazing convention. Amazing fun. I had a ball participating in it. I loved getting to meet everybody that I hadn't met before and, and reconnect with some old friends. God, it was so much fun and Tory, you fucking deserved every single accolade that you got. You. And Harley busted your ass and Caden too to like give us an amazing event to everybody who worked behind the scenes. Thank you so much. It was awesome. I love everybody and with that. No, no, no. I uh it was a lot of fun to be able to watch Tory and Harley kind of in both of their elements because I think both of them are natural born leaders in the Rocky community and it was so awesome to get them to be able to showcase that to the greater community at large, so well deserved both of you. I don't understand how y'all continue doing Rocky just like immediately after this, like y'all put on such an amazing thing and then went out and continued being a part of the Rocky community doing stuff with your respective casts props to you like you didn't even have down time after the staycation. Y'all just kept going. Rocky is clearly important to both of you and we are so thankful and so grateful to be able to exist in that same space as y'all. So congratulations. Hell, yeah. And with that, it's time to head on over to morning news. Damn it, Nicky. But yes, that is right, boys. It is time for everyone's favorite segment. I'm gonna have to stop you right there, Nicky. I'm sorry, what? Listen. Um So I've got to take over this week's next snack, uh for our promised follow up to our bootleg episode from a few weeks ago. So I hope our listeners will indulge me in this one because I was beyond gobsmacked at the response that we got to that episode. You've all been blowing up our D MS with additional information about bootlegs, pay cable, network television, video, betamax laser Dick releases. It's been absolutely crazy and I want you to fucking stop. It's been absolutely crazy. I know my phone hasn't stopped dinging every time we get a message. So thanks for that. I haven't gotten this much traction since Hot Girl Summer of 2019, Nikki that was only two years ago and valid. So, of course, a huge thank you to Gretchen for her writing that spawned all of this discussion and blowing up Nikki's phone. I absolutely loved getting to chat with everyone that has reached out and, oh my God, I have learned so much new info. It's insane. All right. I don't love a takeover but I guess I'll go with it. What are we doing this week? Is this an Aaron? Asks a question. A little ax snack. Aaron asks a question. A sounds like you fuck a duck. Like no, no, please. No. A a, you know, I, I made a paper mache great awk once you know, the, the extinct bird, I was like eight but, but I, but I made it bright blue instead of black and white. And I, and I gave it an orange nose in, in retrospect, I, I guess it was kind of like a big deformed gonzo. My parents still have it on the wall in their house. Good job, buddy. I'm proud of you. You did good. What the fuck is an AK? So it, it looked a little bit like a great penguin, right? It's like about the same size, but it's actually not related to penguins at all. Do you know sailors actually named penguins after the Great Auk? Because they looked so similar. The Great awk went extinct in the mid 19th century. It was essentially hunted to extinction for their eggs and to be used as taxidermy and museums. Modern auks are much, much smaller and most closely related to other small Aldi birds like the puffin. And this has been bird talk with Rocky talkie. This is why the segment is named Nack and not a, you asked what an AK was? Oh my God! Ok. Come on, let's talk about Rocky, please. All right, Nicky. So, yes, this week, I want to talk all about Rocky Horror on television for those of you that may have missed it or just want a quick little refresher. During our bootleg episode, we fielded a question from one of our listeners, Gretchen, she told us about a bootleg copy of Rocky that her father had watched in the early to mid eighties and asked for some idea about where it might have came from. We ran through a ton of different options. Maybe it was recorded in a movie theater or it was a rip from one of the early V H S or Laser Dick releases. We presented a ton of options and went through a lot of history on the bootleg Rocky scene, helped in great part by a friend of the show Jean Shiori and several other fabulous community members. And while we talked a lot about one specific TV, broadcast the pirate TV station out of Colorado, we kind of glossed over all the other times that Rocky aired on television. Honestly, I dropped the ball on that one as I was only able to find very little evidence that Rocky had even aired on pay cable before the late eighties. But our listeners out there fucking delivered and sent in mountains of information about all the times that Rocky aired on TV. And you'd like to run down some of that history for all of you today. So let me set the stage a little bit here. We're talking about the late seventies and early eighties, right? That means we're not talking about the kind of television and cable that you get today. We're decades before Tivo and digital streaming. So when we talk about pay cable channels, what is that? I mean, none of us were alive for this part of television history, but that's ok. John Davey and Lisa Kurt Sutton, give us a helpful rundown of how the average consumer experienced this era of pay cable. And we dug into some research about the run up to pay cable channels. So before cable TV, there was only over the airwaves broadcast TV, you know, the kind of thing where you've got bunny ear antennas and you got to shift them around to clean up the signal. So in the late forties and fifties, all over the United States entrepreneurs started to experiment with taking some of these broadcasted signals and essentially REBROADCASTING them over cable systems in order to get service to areas that otherwise could not receive over the air broadcasts. Think places that are obstructed by huge mountains or otherwise out of the range of the broadcasters for the 1st 25 years of cable T V's history. Up through the early seventies, almost all cable programming was this kind of rebroadcast of terrestrial commercial television stations to remote and inaccessible areas. Original programming over cable came in 1972 with deregulation of the industry. However, some of the very earliest subscriber channels still operated with over the airwave signals. Many of these early subscriber only channels would send you a literal electronic box to decode their signal and nothing else. These boxes were for that channel alone, you tuned your TV tuner to the channel frequency they broadcast on. And if you didn't have a box, the video signal was just scrambled. And when cable TV came into play later in the seventies and early eighties, you also had a box, but it was a switcher box that worked with several different channels, including local programming. Z channel was one of those premium cable channels that you could get with a cable subscription. If you were in the Los Angeles area, they would send you a box that gave you access to all the local stations, CBS, NBC, ABC PBS, et cetera. And also give you access to the Z channel which broadcast only between seven pm and three AM showing one or two movies that had just completed their theatrical run and one or two that were slightly older but were well received when they first aired on the channel. So in a full page ad for Rocky Horror airing on the Z channel, the company notes that Rocky was one of the most highly requested films. And apparently they listened the very first television broadcast of Rocky Horror aired on April 21st 1978 at seven pm and later at 12 15 AM alongside Rocky were a bridge too far. The 1977 war drama about Operation Market Garden during World War Two, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine and a long form interview with actor Anthony Hopkins. Already a household name years before he starred in Silence of The Lambs as the iconic Hannibal Lecter Z Channel would go on to air the film multiple times daily over that week in April of 1978 Lisa Kurt Sutton recalls that the Z channel broadcast was using the standard cut of the movie that was shown in the US at the time. She notes that it may have been the 16 millimeter version where the credits were slightly different than the standard theatrical release, but it definitely did not include superheroes or the science fiction reprise. At the end of the movie Christine Tracy G, let us know she suspected the Z channel broadcast may have aired with no station ID or other watermarks baked into the broadcast as she has a copy that originated just outside of California before 1984. Though we were unable to substantiate that claim, several members of the community report having taped copies of the Z CHANNEL broadcast, but none to my knowledge have been digitized and with most people, no longer even owning a V C R. It's not a trivial task for one of these copies to surface in digital form around that same time period. Lisa remember that Rocky Horror also aired on select TV and on V in Los Angeles, she even shared an awesome ad from 1978 showing Rocky alongside the Bruce Lee Classic. Enter the Dragon and Mel brooks' High Anxiety, which is a movie, not the high anxiety owned by Mel Brooks. The ad for select TV touts that it aired exciting uncensored and commercial free programs and was available throughout Southern California except where cable TV is required for a reception, which is neat because it's a great example of what we were talking about before with these over the air premium channels that predated the big pay cable channels like HBO and Cinemax. And speaking of HBO, Lisa also recalled that several years later when HBO would eventually air Rocky, they also broadcast the copy that we had talked about in our bootleg episode that came from the Colorado station, the one with the wrong audio on top of superheroes at the end of the film, which can I say that just makes that whole story even more confusing. Like did Fox send out a copy of Rocky with this messed up ending to multiple networks? Did the pirate broadcast station pull it from one of these earlier broadcasts with the incorrect ending? And why in hell did the mistake end up on a DVD release. 30 years later. This cool fact actually makes the mystery even more interesting. I am going to be digging and digging into this one as much as I can. So there we go. We've got multiple known broadcasts of Rocky from the late seventies. Any one of these could have been easily recorded and copied to become the source for bootlegs that were floating around in the early eighties. But that's not the only additional source of bootlegs. From the early days. We totally glossed over the 1980 laser disk release of Rocky in Japan. We thought this one was unlikely to be a source for some of the early bootlegs just because of the hassle of converting from laser disk and the difficulty of importing a Japan only release. But it's worth noting that it was totally out there and it certainly was the source for some bootlegs that showed up throughout the eighties. Another very early source was sent over to us by Phil DeJean, famed member of the Eighth Street cast, former leader of the New York City cast and one of the folks that worked with Sapiro to run the fan club all throughout the eighties and nineties. He recalled that he saw a bootleg copy of Rocky in 1982 from Joey Snow, a former Eighth street playhouse Eddie who has since passed on to the great freezer in the Sky. Joey worked at a video store and the copy he had access to was recorded from the N Y C pay cable channel. Uptown channel N in a March 1978 article in the New York Times, we can see Uptown Channel N being announced by Teleprompter Manhattan Cable TV. The article explains that Uptown was available to subscribers in Manhattan above 79th street for a monthly fee of $3.95. Could you imagine? Right. And would show it would show second run movies that had already aired on HBO and more other expensive pay channels with HBO costing around $9 for subscribers. I hate capitalism. It also says that Uptown will offer programs aimed specifically for a Manhattan audience. Phil remembers that the channel was famed for showing soft core porn at night. So that all checks out. This is uh the same era when peep shows and porn shops littered Times Square before the big push in the eighties and nineties to Disney, the area and turn it into the tourist mecca that we all know today. We also wanted to quickly clarify the dates of the earliest V H S releases we know unquestionably. Thanks to the impeccable research of Tony Pizzo that the very first V H S release was on August 20th, 1984 in Australia. It was simultaneously dropped on betamax, which was the alternative format that lost the eighties format wars to V H S on September 6th, 1984. Rocky released in Britain on both V H S and Betamax. Then later that month, it was released for the first time in Germany on V H S in lieu of the standard betamax alternative. The film is instead released on a brand new European video format called Video 2000. Another format that lost out to V H S in the format wars on October 1st 1984 the Australian V H S release was reclassified and distributed in New Zealand. And early the next year in February of 1985 Rocky was released for the first time in Japan on V H S. 1985 was also a big year for Rocky on television. On March 18th, 1985 the Rocky Horror Picture Show had its Australian prime time television premiere airing in five states on channel seven at 8 30 PM in a fun bit of trivia. The film was also simulcast live around the country on various local radio stations. Kind of cool. In mid May 1985 Rocky released in France on video cassette and was subsequently released on the aforementioned video 2000 format. On May 31st, 1980 five, Rocky debuted on prime time television in the UK and Ireland. It was screened nationally on channel four at 11 30 pm. Then later that year for Halloween on October 29th, Rocky debuted on German commercial television airing at 10 25 PM on channel Z D F the broadcast used the edited us version of the film, missing superheroes, but was augmented with German subtitles and keeping the ball rolling. That next year on June 28th, 1986 Rocky made its first appearance on Italian commercial television airing on channel one at 11 30 PM, complete with Italian subtitles and was then re aired on July 1st at 11 40 PM and the following year on June 4th, 1987 Rocky aired again on Australian prime time television across the eastern states of the country on channel seven at 8 30 PM. It's a lot of information to dump on you all at once. But the point we're making is, and I feel like we glossed over this in our bootleg episode, Rocky aired all over the world on network television long before it even had a US home video release or aired on broadcast TV. Right? It wasn't until 1990 that Rocky released on V H S in the US and 1993 that it finally aired on television here in the states. Fox had a real hang up to making Rocky accessible outside of a movie theater until the nineties. This left a lot of folks having to rely on picking up these bootleg recordings from television or from one of the international releases all throughout the eighties. Ruth Fink Winter even recalled that the video bootlegs she had included call letters from the TV channel it aired on and that was a copy that she got a hold of in 1988 or 1989. So all the way up to the official V H S release, there was a huge demand and trade in bootleg copies of Rocky John Davey recalled a bootleg from the eighties that he is positive was tele from a 35 millimeter print. We discussed the tele scene process in our bootleg episode, but I hadn't heard a firsthand account that copies for sure were produced. This way, John was able to confirm that someone did indeed get their hands on a print and used a professional setup to transfer the film to video for the geeks out there. John is positive. It was taken from a 35 millimeter print because of the queue marks that appear in the transfer, a 16 millimeter copy would have only had three Q marks and all of the cue marks are present in the bootleg that he still has a copy of today. Super Cool. Going back to the run up to the V H S release in the US. You had a ton more international V H S releases in mid 1987 Rocky released in Spain on V H S. June of 1988 saw another Japan V H S release. And in August 1989 the film was released in Israel and featured Hebrew subtitles just for the sake of all those completionist out there. If you want to see the box art for a lot of these. Please check out Oz Rocky hard dot com where Tony Pizzo and Mark Jabara have painstakingly documented all of these different versions. Don't worry. We promised the test won't include all these locations and dates. We think they're fascinating to give you a complete picture of just how different Rocky was treated internationally versus in the US. It's part of why these very early US broadcasts on Z channel select TV and on TV, on the west coast, the pirate TV, broadcast out of Colorado that we discussed in depth in our bootleg episode. And the uptown channel and broadcast out of New York were pivotal to the early Rocky scene. Lisa Kurt Sutton summed it up far better than we ever could. She said, quote, I can say as a firsthand viewer, it was a big damn deal at the time and it was right around the time when things were exploding in Rocky World, 75 to 1977 was about catching on 78 things caught fire. And in 1979 it went nuclear. And I think that's really cool that something as simple as Rocky airing on television before Fox had figured out they wanted to lock away their golden goose contributed so heavily to the fandom. People were treasuring their copies of these broadcasts for over a decade before they were finally able to pick up an officially licensed copy. We want to extend an absolutely massive. Thank you to everyone who contributed information that we compiled for this episode. So that's Tony Pizzo, John Davy, Phil, Dejan Jean Chiva, Lisa Kurt Sutton, Kevin Boi, Larry, Vill James Norman Ruth Fink Winter, Christine Tracy G and Michelle Moore Schwartz. That's a lot of people. Yeah, and talk about a who's who of the rocky community. Seriously. Thank you so much to all you folks. I cannot wait to keep picking your brains about future topics for the show. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And of course a big thank you to Gretchen for sending in her bootleg question and sending us down this multi episode Rabbit hole. If you like Gretchen have a question or some community news you'd like us to talk about or even a cool story to share with the community. We'd love to include it in our show. Just go to our website rocky talky podcast dot com and fill out our contact for him to tell us about it. We'd also like to thank Tori for writing in to share her post Con Thoughts and Gray and Copeland for hitting us up to tell us about their new film. If you're enjoying Rocky Talkie, please help us out by rating, reviewing and subscribing to the show. It makes the podcast more accessible to new listeners, which really helps us to grow the show. And if you want even more rocky talkie content, check us out on Facebook, youtube, Instagram and tiktok, all at Rocky Talk Podcast. We will talk to you all next week. Bye bye bye now. Come. Hello to all of you, unconventional conventions. Welcome back to Rocky Talkie, a Rocky talkie podcast where we talk about anything and everything. Rocky Horror. I'm John. What you said, a Rocky talkie podcast? Is, is that not what I'm supposed to say? Is it not a Rocky horror podcast? Oh, did I? Oh Yeah. Welcome back to Rocky Talkie. Skeet Ulrich and Matthew Lillard from Scream, right? Scream. I'm sorry. Do you know him from Scream? Matthew will scream. I know good girls. I fuck you. Why are we not talking about? He is the Shaggy Rogers and I will not take any of this scream or good girls. Bullshit. The word from Shaggy from, from Shaggy. Yeah, we'll leave it like that.