Hello to all of you. Unconventional conventions. Welcome to Rocky Talkie. I'm Jacob. I'm Aaron and I, we got an unusual lineup this week, guys, the jokester and the boss and the assistant. What's gonna happen? Which is which I'm obviously the boss. No, I'm the boss. I've never come on. That's the boss doesn't show up in person. He's always off to the side. Come on. Come on, Eileen. Oh, all right, guys. What's been going on this week before we dig into all of the Rocky horror news? How are you guys doing? Yeah, this has been kind of a fucked up week. Yeah, this has not been my best week. Well, what's going on with you, Jacob? Um Dear God. So first off, I'm so upset because I had, I, I need to set up the scene. So here's the context I was going to guest perform with the ordinary kids. They're a cast in New Jersey and I scheduled to, to perform with them like a, at least a month ago, a month and a half. And that was gonna be this Saturday. I was so looking forward to that. But this past Friday, I went to New Jersey to visit my beautiful girlfriend, Andrea and watch her F N S show and we were hanging out in New Jersey and chilling. And at some point, um she learned around Monday that she had been in contact with someone who had COVID, which of course, put me at risk for having COVID and I didn't feel sick and it was only like secondary contact and Andrea wasn't sick. So I didn't think too much of it. But then Tuesday, there was a tickle in my throat, but I tested negative on a COVID at home test. And then Wednesday, which is today the day we are recording. I was much worse for where my throat is. A little fucking, my nostril is a little, a little iffy and I took two COVID tests and both have said Jacob, you are, you've got the Rona. Um So now I don't get to go visit the ordinary kids and perform with them. Uh I've already seen them once they are great. You should check them out. Uh So that really sucks. I've been stuck in bed all day, which is terrible. Oh, what about you guys? Dude? That sucks. That sucks. That sucks. That sucks. Yeah. So, Aaron and I went to Buffalo this past weekend and when we got back, our dog Dobby was sick. When we got back, he wasn't feeling so well and he started being sick everywhere. Um on Monday evening. So we took him to an emergency vet and we have gone to the vet every single day with him since then and that's been a lot of fun. He has not liked it. It has probably been the worst week of his life because he hates going to the doctor and he hates seeing other dogs and he hates seeing other people and he hates being sick. So it's like a quadruple whammy for him. But he has been put on some medication and he's feeling better now. And that's really good because we've been really concerned about him for the last few days, but it seems like everything is sort of looking up there and it might have just been a little bug or he got stressed out because we went away. I don't know. But that's what we've been doing basically since we walked back home from our trip this weekend. Yeah, I mean, we'll talk all about our trip out to Buffalo later. But, uh, yeah, it's been, uh, been a little hectic, uh, you know, having to run around, uh, with Dobby and, uh, trying to catch up on everything. So this episode is gonna be a little bit by the seat of our pants. Um, that's obviously why we don't have, uh, one of our amazing community guests this week. We will have a fantastic guest next week. So make sure you tune in for that. All right, guys. Now that, that's out of the way, let's dive into our first segment, global news. So we all know that Rocky is the longest running movie of all time. Bar. None. And it's been screening in theaters across America since its release. That's September 26th, 1975. But not every theater has been showing Rocky every week or every month or even every year since then, except for the Clinton Street Theater since 1978. The Clinton Street Theater has been showing the Rocky Horror Picture Show every week making it one of the Hero Theaters keeping Rocky Horror in perpetual screenings. The next time you tell a friend how you're a part of the longest running movie, musical sensation of all time. Thank the Clinton Street Theater in Portland, Oregon. The Clinton Street Theater has been showing Rocky Horror for 44 fantastic years. In fact, last Saturday, along with their resident Shadow cast, Clinton Street Cabaret, they celebrated their 44th anniversary of Rocky screenings with a special double feature night of two shows. And I just want to put it in a little aside here. You guys might remember Clinton Street from when we talked about them during the pandemic. They kept their show running the whole time. They didn't have an audience because obviously COVID, but they did have uh their director and like a couple of members of their cast come by the theater every week to run the movie to an audience of just them where they sat and like did callbacks, sometimes it was just the director but like he kept the fucking candle burning so mad props to them good on them, man. Absolutely. And since at least 2002, the local cast, the Clinton Street Cabaret has been performing every 1st 3rd and you know, sometimes the fifth Saturday of the month right now, the cast is in their 70th iteration as in the 70th Clinton Street Cabaret. That's crazy. Yeah, they have a cool little site which of course will be posted in our show notes and it has a direct feed of their Facebook page, a running cast list, a guide for virgins and some fun videos of their coolest preshow. This includes lip synced performances of flagpoles set up from a shock treatment show, Little Mary Sunshine for Reefer Madness, Shadow Cast, and finally a performance of the Chippendales S N L sketch, which is one of my favorite fucking sketches. Chris Farley is a God. All are very, very good pre shows. But as we all know what's a cast without a theater and Portland's most popular shadow cast wouldn't be able to do what they do without the Clinton Street Theater, a social hub and staple of the community. And now that theater is in trouble and they need your help. The Clinton Street Theater is recently under new ownership and they need donations to upgrade the theater and keep it running as a fun community space quoting from their gofundme. The previous owners worked to turn the theater into a community space, particularly for queer folks drag shows and local theater groups. The Clinton Street Theater has been a venue for art house film, horror, independent, out of print and hard to find church of film screenings and of course the longest continuously running Rocky Horror picture show with Cabaret. The new owners have been working for almost two years behind the scenes, running maintenance and all the day to day workings of the theater. But now they need our help. They want to equip the theater with a projection setup which can cost anywhere from 75 to 100,000 dollars. The goal for their gofundme is $50,000 and if they reach that goal and get the extra cash they need for the projection set up, everything will be going towards that. If they aren't able to afford a new projection set up, all the money that they raise will be used for improvements. Elsewhere. In that case, they'll be looking at a bunch of improvements for the theater, including a new website, ticketing system upgrades to sound as well as other facility fixes fancy on their go fund me. They also say we've pulled our savings to make this happen because we believe that this theater plays an essential part in the fabric of our neighborhood and provides a home for unique performance groups to thrive. We're committed to seeing the Clinton Street Theater continue its history of being a space dedicated to art in its many forms, welcoming artists, performers, musicians, lecturers, and those who celebrate and appreciate the cult niche underrepresented and the avant garde. In addition to using their own savings to help in the upkeep of the theater, these six new owners have been working behind the scenes for the past two years to keep the theater running and that's not just all they're doing, They all have full time jobs, six working adults with regular adult lives and on top of it, they're all dedicating their nights to keep the lights on at this historic Portland hub of movies and community. You guys all fucking rock and deserve a massive pat on the back. A pat on the back. They've invested their time and money over two years, they deserve at least a blow job, maybe even two. Well, a very sincere pat on the back and two blow jobs again, you guys are all fantastic and we wish you the best. They've already reached over $12,000 of their $50,000 goal since starting their gofundme back in late March. And if you'd like to contribute, we'll have the link to it in our show notes and hopefully all can help make a difference and support this amazing local theater. Moving on HBO Max is in the process of developing an it prequel series. Uh This is a Rocky horror podcast, so we expanding what's going on here. Yep. A new article from Deadline reveals that, oh Tim Curry, I get it now. Yep. A new article from Deadline reveals that there is work being done on a new series titled Welcome to Dairy, which will serve as a prequel series to the 1990 mini series. It Jason Fuchs famous for spearheading Ice Age Continental Drift Pan and Wonder Woman will be leading the writing and the director of it. part one and it part two. Anti muti along with Barbara Muti will executive produce the project via their double dream production company. The prequel leads up to the events of it. Part one based on Stephen King's novel. Uh Maybe we don't have a lot of info right now, but the series has opened up a writer's room and we'll be sure to keep you in the loop as things progress. I'm sure all of you are just as excited as I am for this series. I'm a huge Stephen King fan loved it, loved the It reboots. I can't wait to see this fucking universe get expounded upon even more and um I'm sure they'll do Tim Curry. Very proud for those of you wondering why we're mentioning an it prequel series, Tim Curry starred in a two part it mini series for ABC in 1990. Curry starred as Pennywise, the lead antagonist. That's the uh scary ass clown for those of you out there who aren't up on your Stephen King I'm excited too. This sounds like it's gonna be fucking fun. HBO Max has done great work with their dune mini series and all of their other adaptations just don't hold game of Thrones against them too hard. So with that, let's move on over to some community news as all of our listeners probably know this past weekend R H P S Buffalo put on their casts first ever shock treatment. Shadow cast, Jamie Ryan Ally and the whole Buffalo cast spent months putting this show together. They were rehearsing, they were building props and they were doing the millions of other things that go into putting on a new show. It all culminated on April 1st at their performance at this absolutely adorable Art House Cinema, Meg and I took the trip up to Buffalo along with one of our cast members to attend and we just had an absolute blast of a time. So we left New York City on Friday. We traveled up by train and we got into Buffalo about an hour before show time. We got to the screening room cafe, which was the cinema where it was held about a half hour before the show started. And we were able to say hi to everyone and give all the cast members big, big hugs before the performance began. You want to uh you want to tell all of our listeners why we only got there about 30 minutes beforehand because I forgot what time the train was leaving. And I thought that we had booked a 10 o'clock train and actually we had booked a seven o'clock train. So that was a lot of fun, but we got to sleep in for a couple of hours. So, yeah, I honestly, honestly, it all worked out perfectly fine. Like there was just a mad dash at the beginning of the day to uh get to, to, to get our train and uh find one that would get in on time. But yeah, it, it worked out just fine. We got there with minutes to spare and uh plopped down in our seats ready to check out a shock man. The cast was totally amazing. There were lots of Buffalo performers of course, because it was Francis Bacon who was putting it on. But they also looped in cast members from J C Z P from R K O from F BC from Tester Act and the Transylvanian Concubines from Virginia. That was really cool to be able to meet one of them people seriously came from all over the place and it was just wonderful to be able to see everyone and to hang out with them all weekend. I know I came all over the place that weekend too. So we share that. I mean, we'll get to the hotel parties later. But uh no, I mean, this, this was a fucking fantastic experience and just so many people there from all over from these different casts. Like we joked about it during the event, but it really did feel like a mini Un convention or, you know, buff Con as we were kind of joking about it by the end of the weekend. Like, it, it definitely brought a ton of cast members together from all over the community and I mean, what a, what a great kind of preview of the kind of, you know, camaraderie and just fun that we're gonna expect from a A O later this year. Hell yeah. Um After the show, we all went for drinks to this really, really cute Broadway themed bar where everyone got to kind of mingle and chat and get to know each other. It was so much fun to hear about all the work that went into the show, Jamie and Ryan got to like unwind a little bit from the madness of just producing this, this monolith of a, an event. Um And as we all sort of unwound, we got to hear about all of the behind the scenes stuff and just talk to everyone about their favorite parts of the performance. Absolutely huge. Shout out to this bar. It's right in the middle of like the downtown Buffalo kind of theater district. I wanna call it. Um There's a ton of theater down there in the area and this is just a great uh beer and wine bar with an absolutely massive beer selection and the bartenders there were fantastic. They, you know, stayed open late for all of us to shoot the shit. And at the end of the night when I realized, oh shit, it's, it's a little bit too late to go hit up a liquor store. They were even kind enough to make sure that we were able to go home with a couple bottles of wine to share in the hotel. Yeah, so um a whole bunch of us ended up staying in the same hotel, of course, as you do at one of these events. So we all went back to our hotel. We spent a couple of hours in the room drinking, digging around. We ordered some pizzas from the 7-Eleven because that was the pizza place that was open. It was great. Yeah, I mean, we had a ton of fun, like a bunch of people from J C C P joined us. Um and we're hanging out. Uh We got a show with all of our good friends from over there, Sam Bassett Randy. Like just everyone that you guys know from out in the community. We were also sharing our room with uh Harley and 13 from R K O. So that was super fun to get to hang out with them. And on top of it all, we finally got to meet Gretchen. Some of our longtime listeners might remember her from the early days of our show. She uh was a huge Rocky Horror fan. Who would write into us all the time. And uh she went on to join the cast up in Buffalo. And just this last weekend, she performed as nurse ants along in shock treatment. This was amazing. She was a fantastic performer and it was an absolute blast to get to meet her and hang out in real life for the first time. I loved getting to meet Gretchen Gretchen. If you're listening, a huge shout out to you just getting to see your kind of story arc from just a little groupie almost and then going to turn around and get to watch you perform on stage was so much fun. It was great. Gretchen is huge on tiktok. If any of our listeners are tiktok, people will link her account for you in the show notes. She puts out some really, really fun quality rocky content that you all will probably enjoy. And then on Saturday, uh everybody met up for brunch at this like absolutely ridiculously delicious cafe. They had stuff like cinnamon bun egg sandwiches and like mac and cheese, like on toast and like they had this ridiculously delicious cold brew coffee that was on tap. I was exactly what I needed after downing a bottle of wine at the hotel the night before. Yeah. And then after breakfast, uh brunch, I guess Jamie and Ryan brought us to this big mural uh in downtown Buffalo. Buffalo has a bunch of murals. It's a very very artsy place. I didn't know this going into it, but one of these murals, it's big yellow and it has these big red lips all over it. So we went to the lips mural and we all took these fun ridiculous photos together for about an hour because we're rocky people. If you're friends with anyone who went on this trip on social media, you've probably seen these pictures circulating already. We all like went nuts and posted them. That was a lot of fun. That was a blast. After that. A big group of us drove up to Niagara Falls to check out all the water. This was super cool. Like I, I talked about this before on the show that like one of my favorite things about going and visiting casts and all of these places is seeing all of the local landmarks and like doing the touristy crap that like Rocky is, you know, you're there for Rocky, but it's a great excuse to also get in some sightseeing and all this. And I'd never been up to uh to Niagara Falls before and it was super, super cool to get to see just the frozen river and the falls and like uh it, it was, it was crazy how much water there is, Jamie uh was an excellent tour guide and we all took a ton of photos there as well. Had a blast and got to see, you know, everything Niagara's got to offer So, after Niagara, we all sort of took a little, a little break in between the day because we had, had a very long night at a very long day up until that point. So I was still hung over from the night before I needed sleep. I needed some nappy time. I wasn't gonna go there. But yeah, we all kind of went and took naps. So, yeah, after our quick nap time, we met up for dinner with Jamie Ryan and Ally. It was wonderful to finally get to meet Ali and to put in some face time with them in person. I feel like we spend so much time talking about all of the great content that they put up on. Um the Francis Bacons youtube page, all of the wonderful videos. So getting to meet them and talk to them in person after just all of this time corresponding back and forth on like social media was really wonderful. Yeah, I loved it. I mean, it was this great ramen place. I think it was uh Meta Chows right again in downtown Buffalo. Great food up there too who would have known um really, really cool place like the, the the food was delicious. But the best part about this restaurant is that after dinner, they've got kind of a little like arcade clubby kind of venue upstairs um where they have all of these arcade machines. I know that Buffalo has done some performances there. Before. Um It's a fantastic venue for kind of AAA different intimate experience and uh they were doing some kind of DJ club night. Uh We were just up there. I, I uh beat our friend Marty at uh some games of Gallaga and uh Frogger. That was super fun. I lost it. Pinball. All right. But yeah, this spot was really fun. We took a photo on the pink staircase, which is a big deal. Uh There was a big hello kitty mural. They're all about murals in Buffalo. I was so there for it. That was good. The whole trip was really just such a blast. But of course, the best part hands down was getting to watch Shocky our first night and to see all of the hard work the cast had put in Jamie Ryan Ally, really everyone up at Buffalo and everyone who came from out of town to perform and help like you all clearly put in so, so much work to making this show totally spectacular. And um just big shout out to Jamie especially. We know that you really poured your heart and your soul into making this show successful and it absolutely showed. It was wonderful. Good job, Jamie. Yeah, we, we just want to thank everyone for being so hospitable to us and for just showing us such a great time in Buffalo. We're so grateful that the community is getting out and doing these kind of events again. And we just absolutely cannot wait to return the favor whenever everyone comes over here to New York City and we, they're super, super excited to see all of you guys at Arcade Ocon for. Yeah. Actually, I have one question. Um, this Mada Chow's place looking at pictures online. Did you, were there two like giant women's statues, statues where I'm on the arcade area? It looks like it's like a pink, a lady dressed in pink or maybe pink lights and a woman dressed in blue or perhaps blue lights. They look to be behind a thing about it. It's like it's meant for you to take pictures in front of them. You know, I did not pay attention enough to see that. No, I didn't see them either. All right. Well, if you guys can't help me, um, hey, Jamie up in Buffalo, would you let me know if at MauA Chows, there are two like life size dolls of a pink woman and a blue woman. Um, seemingly to take pictures with, I found a link on Google that, that seemingly promises me these life size women exist. And I'm really curious. I might, I might take that that eight hour train ride just to get some high fives from the women. It's a cool picture. I wish we had seen them. I would have taken pictures with them. I didn't notice I'm looking at all these pictures of Mazu Chows on Google images and no, no No, this is the only one with the women. So maybe they, they got rid of the women. Maybe there was a lot going on in that upstairs situation. So it's very possible that we might not have noticed that. Oh, all right. All right. Thank you for letting me keep hope alive. Anyway, for those of us schmucks who had to stay home this weekend and do regular rocky shows like myself. Fear not, there will be plenty of opportunity for us to have a great time with the whole community very soon. The R K O K committee recently put out another reminder to book your hotel room. Please do that ASAP, if you haven't done it already and you're planning to come to the con, which you are right. You want to come party with us, right? Getting your room booked sooner rather than later will make sure the Khan Committee has an accurate headcount and can book more rooms if necessary. So if you haven't done it yet, hit the link in our show notes and put in your RE ASAP. And with that damn, it's been a while since we jacked off, hasn't it? I don't know. Didn't you come all over something like on Sunday? Uh I've jacked off very recently. In fact, a few minutes before this recording, I was furiously hunched over in my bathroom. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about, we're talking about Jacking it with Jacob, which notably has two cues instead of AC K. So, is that why you're so calm right now? Um Absolutely. My head feels a little airy too. I think it comes from that. Well, this week we're doing a bit of a, uh, little different Jack off sesh, uh, we've got an article that said, you know, I wasn't gonna say it but no, there, there was an article that came across our desk this week. Uh that, that kind of raised an interesting topic. Um So this came, comes out of Boston and uh the Boston Conservatory. Um It's kind of the conclusion of a two decades long saga for one Rocky horror fan that attended the Boston Conservatory in the late nineties and early two thousands. So Stephanie Lippman entered the Boston Conservatory in 1995. She was an acting, dancing, singing Triple Threat major and a state champion pianist back in her hometown in Maryland. She was the only black black woman in her musical theater class. And from all accounts was an up and coming star within the Boston Conservatory. Mike Forte, a Rocky horror cast mate was quote drawn to her electric energy. Brian Nash, the show's music director loved that she refused to walk on the path the Conservatory had so carefully laid out for us and for her final directing assignment, she dreamed of doing Rocky R. But shortly after casting, she was told that the Conservatory had been unable to secure the rights for a 70 person performance with no admission charge. There's two stories of what exactly happened here, one from Lippman and the other from the Conservatory, then chair of the theater department, Neil Donohoe. So Lippman maintains that they tried to get the rights and after the first rejection was received by the theater department, they kind of had washed their hands of it, she was left on her own to try and secure the rights. And even though she had reached out to Sam French, she said she reached out to the Rocky Horror Fan Club president. She said she reached out to Richard o'brien and she had received nothing. She was unsuccessful in getting the rights for the stage show in an unsuccessful April 1999 lawsuit, Lippman brought against the Conservatory. Donohoe stated that the department had supported Lippman's desire to present Rocky Horror until the department couldn't secure the rights. He said Lippman wanted to get special permission from the creators to move forward though she said she understood that without the owner's approval, there could be no show either way. On the day of the dress rehearsal, Donohoe told Lippman there would be no performance. The Conservatory posted a handwritten sign on the door of the theater. No Rocky Horror tonight. And oh my God, what like what shitty behavior I feel like from the Conservatory the night of a dress rehearsal. There's so much preparation before that point. And that the, that the Conservatory didn't know they wouldn't be able to see this through and cancel it. Then. That's ridiculous. And I mean, everybody understandably that was involved was incredibly upset and they were all trying to figure out how to get the production to move forward. In kind of a last minute Hail Mary, a classmate told lippman about a potential loophole. They said that she could put on the show potentially without violating the copyright. If they performed just a handful of songs out of order in what everyone would call a review, they thought it was worth the risk. And they did the cast sang nine songs that evening to an audience that was not charged any admission fee and they had a great time. The show went fantastic and Lippman said she was very proud of the performance, but Donahoe took the Rocky horror performance as an act of insubordination in an affidavit. Lippman said he called her conniving and manipulative and said she was purposefully trying to push his buttons which like Jesus Christ is not all about you, Donohoe God, right? So fucking Donahoe who does not deserve the title of any kind of hoe if you ask me, took the most extreme action, he could, he expelled her in a note from the Conservatory's Dean of Academic Affairs. Lippman was quote, dismissed from the musical theater program and the Boston Conservatory effective immediately, these decisions are final and non-negotiable. End quote. So Lippman was not allowed to graduate with her classmates in 1999. Even today, she says that she's unsure why her show garnered such a severe reaction. The administrators alleged that she might have broken the law and that she had been expelled for putting the school in legal jeopardy. Hm. Maybe old white boomers are trash, right? Just saying. And for the next two decades, lippman didn't let the setback hold her back. She sang backup for Cindy Lauper and twisted sister and even performed in professional Rocky horror productions. She also forged a catwoman esque character named Militia Vox who hosted a reality TV show and sang on several alternative metal albums. Hell yeah. I mean, it shows uh that school's not everything right me. Wow. But by 2020 the theater world at the Boston Conservatory had undergone a huge turnover. Thank fuck all. But one of Lippman's former professors have left for various reasons including the former chair, Neil Donohoe. The fall 2020 musical theater class included 26% people of color. And between 2019 and 2020 the institution saw a 40% increase in black undergraduates. So Lippman asked the Boston conservatory to reconsider her story and much to her surprise, the conservatory agreed to give her her diploma. In a statement, the college said, quote, we are pleased that through our academic review processes, we were able to determine a path for Miss Lippman to receive her degree and we are honored to have her among our alumni in May 2021. Lippman posted a photo of her diploma to Facebook with the caption check mate Donahoe. Yeah. Fuck you Donohoe. On graduation day, Lippman drove down a Connecticut road, blasting metal songs while the virtual ceremony streamed on her phone. Truly the best way to attend a college graduation. If you ask me a faculty member called her name, they really did it. She thought they actually finally gave me my degree. Fuck. Yes. What real cool runnings moment, right? Like what a what a good redemption story, right? Like good on the college for, you know, finally going back and correcting their mistake and good on lippman for pursuing her dreams in the face of all of this adversary over the last 20 years, adversity, over all in the face of all this adversity in over the last 20 years and in the face of all that adversary like Donahoe in those 20 years, right? So where do we go with this? This is a really interesting story and I kind of clocked one very specific thing here that I think would make a really cool bit for us to talk about. And that's specifically why the hell wasn't she able to get the rights for the stage show in the first place? Right? The the legal world of Rocky Horror and just shadow casting in general is kind of a subject that we don't touch on very often it's kind of a subject that the community shies away from a lot of shadow casting exists in the gray areas of copyright law. Um, but we kind of want to pull the curtain back a little bit today and talk about why Lippman ran into this circumstance and how things have changed in the 20 years since then. So, Meg I think this is time for a good old fashioned legal disclaimer. Yeah. So we're gonna be talking about a lot of legal stuff here today. None of us are lawyers. None of us are in any place to be giving any of our listeners legal advice. This is all sort of just layman discussion from the perspective of people who have probably had more experience with this sort of thing than the average bear. Don't take anything we're saying as legal advice, please contact your attorneys if you have them and you want actual legal insights. But as Meg said, we do know a little bit more than the average bear. I don't have any legal background. Meg uh has a degree, not a lawyer. I am not a lawyer. Meg. That's correct. You still do have that doctor in front of your name. Um But you didn't specialize in copyright law. So some of this is outside of your uh your field. I actually one of my best friends, Meg Beaver Hausen is a lawyer. So I know a lot about lawyer things and I would actually this is, this is my, this is my legal advice. I am offering to all listeners. All right. So if somebody needs to be sued, you heard that right? It is Jacob Roger Gordon, who I am offering advice if you choose to use it. I feel like that's on you. Be careful. Um Yeah. All right. So one of the things that the article uh talked about a lot is that they interviewed a number of experts in copyright law and what a lot of them said was that they'd never really heard of a rights holder taking action against a student or a collegiate organization for putting on an unlicensed version of a show. Now, obviously, copyright holders still have legal protections even for academic performances, they hold the rights to their content and they can tell you if you can or cannot put on a show, nobody is disputing that. But what all of these legal experts pointed out and Jacob, you touched on this a few minutes ago, they think the college should have done more to help lippman in this scenario. Yeah, absolutely. Finding out even something as simple as who holds the copyright to some of these different shows that are shadow cast can be really, really tricky. Some of them are kind of straightforward, but some of them you have to dig. And in my experience, there are quite a few of these organizations that won't even get back to you or won't point you in the right direction. If you reach out to them, telling them that you're looking for even who to get in touch with, to find out about obtaining the rights. I would imagine that an organization like a college will have a lot more pull even in communicating with some of these organizations than someone will as an individual, especially a student. So, yeah, it was kind of fucked up of the college to not give her a hand with this to just sort of leave her to her own devices and then pull a rug out from under her when it didn't go. Well, yeah, I'm, I'm like, sure if that o'brien heard about this story, he would have been like, yeah, you're, you're not charging anything. This is like pretty similar to a shadow cast, go go have fun with it. But you know, one individual emailing Brian, I'm sure he gets hundreds of emails a day from random schmucks and I can totally understand him not coming across it in time or not even ever seeing it if just lippman sent an email, but an entire conservatory with money and power, like I'm sure I'm certain they have channels to reach powerful people, even if they don't, even if someone who works at the Conservatory, right? Doesn't directly know o'brien. They must have some connection somewhere to people around him or to an institution near him that can get in contact with him to ask such a simple question, not helping students navigate rights is just encouraging them to do something illegal. So let's let's ask the question on this one. The end result of this and what ultimately led to lippman's expulsion was that she went ahead and put on a review version of the show. Now, what's a review? Basically, that means there's no dramatization happening. It's only the songs you're not telling the story, you're not doing any dialogue. Reviews in general are classified by the rights holder. It's not like a legal term that defines what a review is. So there's a little bit of kind of gray area there, but you can ask the question and this is what the advice she was going on is that reviews would qualify you to be exempt from having to get the rights. Is that actually true? So the short answer to this is no, because obviously rights holders still hold the right to their content, even if it's in an academic setting, even if it's in AAA bridged sort of setting like a review. The longer answer to this is that it kind of depends different license holders have different requirements for the way their material is able to be used. For example, M T I license shows still require music licenses and even then you still need rights for the performance of the sheet music, even if you don't use original compositions. Yeah, M T I is just one of many license holders, they don't hold the license to Rocky Horror that's controlled by a firm called Concord Theatrical. They hold the Rocky Horse Show license and the same license for most of the other Sam French musicals. So again, this is for the stage show in the documentation I could find from Concord Theatrical. They make no explicit mention about review performances. However, they do say that they are willing to negotiate reduced rates for things like cuttings or monologues or other kinds of kind of restructured performances, but you still have to get a license from them for that. So here's the deal stage show rights are not available in the UK, but they are available in the US with fees and materials quoted on application and origin theatrical holds the rights in Australia, Australia and their website says the performance rights for the Rocky Horror show are currently withdrawn. So what's up with all of this diversity of how copyrights with Rocky Horror work across these countries? And obviously just noting again, copyright law varies from country to country. This isn't legal advice, just knowledge. Yeah, and that's kind of the reason why you see different rights holders for all of these different countries, right? So here's kind of a brief high level history of why this works the way that it does in general, it seems like the rights holders in the UK do not want to give out any kind of amateur or you know, community theater kind of license to put on the stage show, period. Full stop. Why? Because, and this is my, just my guess here there is always a version of the Rocky Ho show running in the UK, right. They have the touring version uh every few years, they'll do a west end revival version. There's also a touring version that goes throughout Europe. So, you know, in different countries in Europe, if they're gonna have a tourist stop, odds are you're not gonna be able to get the rights to put on a local production of the Rocky Horror stage show. Same thing applies in Australia. Australia has touring productions all of the time and they generally withhold the rights for the show when there's an ongoing tour. Now in the US, there hasn't been a tour of the stage show or a Broadway revival in over 20 years. Now, 20 years ago, when Lippman was facing this controversy, there was the Broadway revival that was going on and that's when you just could not get the rights to the stage show. There was always kind of this very hoity toity attitude that came from the Richard o'brien company that said we will never ever, ever give amateur productions a license for the Rocky Horror show. There was a standard of quality that they wanted to keep up. There was kind of too much worry that it would dilute the brand. Um And that's kind of the world that Lippman was operating in, in 1999 in the early two thousands that said the Rocky Horror Broadway revival only lasted a short while. It closed. It, it, it opened before 9 11 and then went on hiatus, you know, for obvious reasons and closed a few performances afterwards. So that was the time period that she was dealing with in years since this has changed. I know firsthand that a college can now get the stage show rights. Uh My father was involved in a production, uh at a Sunni school a few years back, they were, had no problem getting the stage show rights. And I know that a lot of local productions have been able to, to get the rights for the stage show since. So it seems like they've kind of opened that up at least in the US. And if you go to Concord Theatrical, you can request a quote for how much it's gonna cost you in order to license the stage show rights. It's not cheap. A significant amount of the revenue that you would be bringing in for a stage show production goes straight to the rights holder. Uh Which is why a lot of places that put the show on also do things like prop bags and merchandise and all of these other kinds of things to generate additional revenue just because the licensing fees are so high. This all brings up an interesting question in my opinion, which, you know, maybe we can do this on another Jack and it with Jacob segment. But why does Austra, why do Australia and England have, you know, seemingly infinitely recurring stage productions of the Rocky Horror Show? But America does, does not, does not seem to care as much. Yeah, I think that that's, um, that's a great topic. We should definitely, uh, talk about it more high level. My, my kind of understanding of this is that because the stage show originated there. It's kind of been a perennial like staple, right? Of the theatrical community. If you are outside the US Rocky Horror is the stage show, right? It is going and seeing live theater and the whole experience of being able to scream things and throw things and all that kind of stuff in a live theatrical environment in the US. It's all about the movie, right? There's very little kind of fanfare over the, the state show here and I just think that they haven't found it financially profitable in order to run a touring version. It's not the kind of touring show that US productions really like to put on, right? If you're looking at what kind of shows tour in the US, they're all big budget Broadway musicals, right? Your your Wicked And Your Kinky Boots and your Book of Mormon kind of things, or they're all of your Disney shows, right? Your family shows, they're your Aladdin. They are Disney on ice there, you know, all that kind of stuff. Neither one of those demographics does Rocky Horror fit into? Right. You're not bringing your nine year old to see Rocky Horror and if you're looking at, you know what's coming to my town this, this month and, and, you know, for the average Denville USA, there might only be a couple of, of shows coming in and they're expensive. These are $100 plus tickets in most of these places. Are you gonna go see the new smash Broadway sensation, you know, Book of Mormon or something? Which I mean, it's almost 10 years old at this point. So Haiti's Town or are you gonna see a 40 year old plus musical that you could also go to a movie theater and see the adaptation of any, any day of the week? So I think it's a little bit to do with that. I'd love to dig into it more further though, on an additional episode, I think that's a great idea. I also think that like, again, just like from a layman's perspective theater here is expensive. Like you said, it's expensive to get tickets to a Broadway show and it's expensive to get tickets to a touring show. So I feel like the kinds of people who have the money to be going and dropping hundreds of dollars on show tickets may or may not want the experience of like the people around them screaming obscenities, you know, like you're going to the theater for a night out, you're not going to the theater to be at a, a rock concert or something. Right. That's probably not the kind of experience most people who are dropping that kind of money are looking for. So I could see why the overlap between people who are willing to pay those prices and who want to go get. That sort of experience is probably pretty limited. And obviously, like the rights holders can do whatever they want to do with the rights whenever they want to change what they're doing with the rights. It's why sometimes you can get the license in Australia. Sometimes you can't, it's why right now you can get the license in the US pending approval, but you may not be able to get it next year, next year is the 50th anniversary of the stage show. Is there gonna be a revival? We don't know, we've heard nothing about that, but it's gonna depend on what the rights holder wants to do here in New York City, you just flat out cannot get a license to do the stage show, period. You can get a license to do the stage show in other parts of the country, but you can't get it here in New York because they absolutely do not want anyone to think that it is remotely comparable to a Broadway production. Yeah, that's what we got. Um And if you're looking at other venues, like if you're in a bar or a restaurant, for example, or some other business that just simply wants to like sing or play some of the songs for Rocky Horror. The entirety of the soundtrack is covered under a B M I license, which almost any establishment that plays music should already have. Now, obviously be careful thinking about that. I mean, that's not saying that you can go put on a stage production in a bar just because they have a B M I license. This generally means things like karaoke or review or just playing the music and you know, dancing around, you know, to the time warp or something. But if you're doing a bar show and you don't want to get the rights for the movie or something kind of a dance and sing kind of thing might be covered under A B M I license. You should definitely check that out. If someone wants to cover rocky horror songs and sell or otherwise distribute them, you can obtain a license through the Harry Fox Agency. However, mechanical licenses as they are called, are covered under a statutory license. Meg What does that mean? Um So basically a statutory license permits the public performance of copyright protected works in exchange for some kind of payment of royalties which are established by statute. It requires copyright owners to allow third parties to use their works under a certain set of conditions, whatever requirements they set out and a user of a statutory license does not need to obtain or negotiate permission from the copyright owner for using a work. This is how bands can do things like a cover of a song and release it on an album. They're still paying rights to whoever originally recorded that song or holds the license on that song, but they don't have to negotiate and obtain all of the hoops that would normally go with licensing that song proper. It falls into this kind of gray area where it's a modification of the original, right, like you're doing a unique performance of it. Um So you can't just say that the rights holder has complete control over it. That's why this kind of, you know, area of the law was carved out. Note the stage show is not the movie, that's a whole other thing. You need to get the film license for the Rocky horror film through criterion criterion also holds the rights for the remake and of course, how all these rights things interact with the rights for the film is gonna be a little different and we don't know the exactness of any of it, but we can tell you about our experiences getting film licenses through criterion. They're pretty good to work with Meg you've dealt with this. Yeah. Um Actually I just got uh two copies of the license to screen Rocky Horror just a couple of days ago. It's pretty simple. You go onto the criterion website, you send an email, sort of telling them about the venue that you want, the number of people who are going to be seeing it, what you're gonna be charging for tickets. And a very nice man named Brian Fox will get in touch with you and he'll ask you a little bit about the show. There's some paperwork involved and he tells you what the fee is gonna be and that's pretty dependent on where you're located, where the show is gonna be. So, I know that in New York City, um, the minimum that you're gonna pay for a license to screen the Rocky horror picture show is $650. That is the absolute bare minimum in Manhattan. If you go to other parts of New York City, it's a little bit less. I think something like 500 bucks. And if you go to different parts of the country, it may or may not be even less than that. So you tell him about the show, he tells you the price, you sign a contract and then after your show finishes, you pay the bill, it's pretty straightforward. Uh, but it is expensive that per performance or one lump sum it's per screening. Oh, my God. Wow. It, it also varies depending on how many people actually show up and buy tickets for your show. Now, this is probably something that changes depending on your location. Uh, Brian is just the east coast representative for criterion, um, your mileage may vary depending on where you are. But in a lot of contracts that we've seen you end up having to pay 650 minimum or it's gonna end up half of all of your ticket sales, right? So if you sell to a venue of 500 people at 20 bucks a head, you're gonna end up paying half of all your ticket sales instead of the 6 50. So 6 50 is really, really bare minimum for Manhattan. Now, why is this super important? Obviously, if you're putting on a big show that you wanna promote, you've got to get the rights. There's no question about it. Somebody who's involved in the production has to get the rights. It may not have to be your cast. A lot of casts out there when they go to outside venues, things like drive ins or, you know, these alternate places, uh, they'll put it on the venue to get the rights. That'll be part of your contract that you'll work out with the venue that you're performing at. And you can say it's on you guys to get the rights for the film. That's great. You are pretty much in the clear at that point, it's on the venue. If there's, they run into any issues, it's on them to sort them out. Uh But you do give up a lot of your negotiating power in kind, kind of figuring out the split on, you know, are you gonna get the entirety of the ticket sales? Half the ticket sales, are you gonna get a cut of the drinks? Are you gonna get cut of, you know, anything that's vending at the location? Uh, you're gonna be giving that up if you're not taking on some of these costs and it's a lot to take on the cost, but the reduced headache of it might make it very worthwhile to just have that in your contracts with these venues that they're the ones on the hook to talk to. Criteria and to get the rights. What about other shows? We shadow cast a lot in our community. Can we talk about how to obtain the rights for some of the other shows that we put on? So shock treatment works pretty much the same way. Criterion holds all the film rights for shock treatment. Yep. If you're doing a screening of Shocky, you're gonna be reaching out to the same people over a criterion figuring all of the logistics out with them and you're going to get a bill at the end of your performance for however much you owe them. Shout out to Brian Fox. So OK, Rocky Shocky. Oh It, it's worth mentioning if you want to do the remake criterion also holds the rights to those. I don't know why you would but good luck. It is my dream to shadow cast, the remake. But what about some of this other stuff, Buffy, what's the deal with Buffy? So Buffy in October of 2007, after a dispute with the Screen Actors Guild over unpaid residuals. 20th century Fox pulled the licensing for public screenings of once more with feeling effectively ending official Buffy singalongs. Josh Whedon called the cancellation hugely depressing and attempted to influence the studio to allow future showings. So what's this mean for Buffy? Well, we know as do most of you out there that lots of places put on performances of once more with feeling. Now, obviously, I can't speak for any of those performances as to the league nature of, you know, if they obtained rights or not, if someone out there was able to obtain the rights, I'd love to hear about it. There is kind of a gray area for non for profit performances. But again, your mileage is absolutely gonna vary on that. You've got to work very closely with the venue you're performing at and whoever might be interested or concerned about it to make sure that you alleviate all of their concerns. Puffy is a weird one. Josh Wheaton would love to have more shadow cast of it out there. But unfortunately because it's part of a franchise that's owned by one of these big media corporations, they're not gonna make it easy for you to figure out how to get the rights, the room. On the other hand, seems like it might be pretty simple to obtain the rights to the rights are held by Wiz films worldwide distribution. So if you go to that website and you attempt to obtain the rights to the room, you just get a Contact Us page which gives you an email link. And I think that email goes directly to Tommy Yo's personal Gmail account. Yeah. In the most Tommy Yo thing I've ever heard, it sounds like you just got to talk to the dude if you want to put on his show. So he might even throw in a couple of pairs of his custom underwear for you don't quote me on that. It's probably not true, but maybe he will. So yeah, that one seems a little bit more straightforward although uh good luck navigating the minefield of talking to Tommy Yo, that sounds like a great time. Imagine if he's just a regular guy and it's just sort of on film. He goes crazy and the email conversation with him is like perfect. It's just, hey, I want the rights and yeah. OK. Regards Tommy Yo and then you're set. I hope when you email him, he opens up his emails with, oh hi Aaron. Good to hear that you are interested. Just O H A I. So what about doctor? Horrible. So this is another Josh Whedon thing, right? Uh He directed this along with Buffy, but because of the nature of this, he didn't have any studio backing with it, right? I'm Sure everyone out there knows Doctor Horrible was originally released as a direct to the internet kind of series of mini episodes and it was all during the screen actors Guild strike and all of these other things that were stopping people from putting on and producing film during that time. As far as I know he still holds the rights to Doctor Horrible. Don't quote me on that obviously. Um I can't find any information online about actually getting the rights, but there have been many, many productions of Doctor Horrible shadow cast throughout the, you know, last two decades, many of which members of the cast and Josh Sweeten himself have shown up to and given his blessing. So I think that you're gonna be on a bit more safe territory with something like Doctor Horrible. Obviously, if you can get the approvals, you really should at least try. Um And that's one of those that I think is probably on the safer side. Now, let's talk about Reefer Madness for a second. I went through a little bit of a phase a few months ago where I went absolutely bananas trying to find the rights for Reefer Madness because I thought it would be cool as fuck to be able to shadow cast it. We know that Concord Theatricals holds the stage show rights and we know that Viacom owns CBS and CBS owns Showtime and Showtime produced Reefer Madness that said I went through this whole rabbit hole of emailing everybody who works at Viacom, every single person trying to find out who to get in touch with to obtain these rights. And I came up with nothing. So good luck trying to find them. If any of our listeners, any of our besties out there have any insight as to how to get the riots, like slide into my D MS because inquiring minds are super curious about this. And I mean, this isn't all that surprising, right? Reefer Madness. The movie musical was put on as a direct to show time TV, kind of release. It never got a big theatrical release. It's not one of these things that theaters are really clamoring to get in and show. So it doesn't really go through all the normal distribution channels that said it's kind of ridiculous that if you want to put on a small shadow cast production of some of these shows that the big studios own, you're just having to hunt and dig and you know, just go through a million different contacts in order to just find somebody who even knows what you're asking about. You would think that with the prevalence of this stuff, I know that it's, we're not huge. The shadow casting community isn't humongous by any means, but I feel like they've got to get like a fair number of inquiries at least like every year, you know, we're all just trying to give them our money, right. Let us give you our money. This is awful effort to, to, to put into the social consciousness, these productions and films that have not been relevant for, in some cases decades at this point. Right. We're, we're literally trying to give you free money as a community. It's frustrating, it's frustrating. And I can see why a lot of people don't go the avenue of actually acquiring these rights and just kind of hoping obviously that puts you in a really rough situation, puts your venue in a tough situation. Um But, you know, in some cases, that's all you're gonna be able to do. And what about Hedwig? Let's talk about Hedwig, do we know? Yeah. So the stage show is licensed through Broadway licensing that straightforward Hedwig is still a production that's put on by tons of, you know, real stage theaters all over the world. Um And the licensing for that is pretty much the same process as like in most other stage shows, as far as the movie, all I could really find is that film Bank media seems to hold the Hedwig rights for the film. This might only be in the UK. I'm not sure if it's different who holds the rights in the US. Uh But I imagine that you're gonna be able to figure this out if you're trying to put on a head wig shadow cast, it seems like the information is out there. Yes, you might have to send out, you know, a dozen emails to a bunch of different people to figure out who holds these rights. But I think that there is a pretty good track record of being able to actually get the rights for these kinds of showings. So it took like 15 minutes for us to explain the copyright laws and legal things just involved with like a handful of Rocky horror and spoofing movies. And we aren't even sure after doing a bunch of research about anything within it, it's all kind of weird and uncertain territory. And that's today. How could a conservatory have expected Lippman a student back in 95 when the freaking internet wasn't even like a thing and you couldn't even do this research. My God, that's crazy. How would she have survived? How would she have done any of this? It's kind of crazy. Um Shame on you Donohue. Yeah. Again, we are not lawyers, except for me, this is not advice and also I just want to throw this one out here. If you are looking to do a Rocky Horror shadow cast in a movie theater, uh you need to be talking to your movie theaters management, movie theaters, book their films through a separate channel than going to somewhere like criterion that's used for one-off performances. They're gonna get a much better deal from you because it's gonna be part of their package with the movie theater studios. They have a direct line to fox to Disney, to whoever holds these rights and they'll be able to, to hook you up with that. If you are trying to put on a performance at an outside venue and you have a local home theater, ask your theater management if they know who they would go to. A lot of these theater managers are really nice people. You all know them, they help out with your shows every single week and I'm sure that many of them would be willing to give you an email address for the booker that they work with so that you can at least ask somebody whose job it is to know this shit. And that's our show. We want to thank Gretchen for finally meeting Megan Aaron. I can't wait to meet you too if it happens at some point, um We meet at the Oh my God at the con. Perfect. I'll be wearing a blue earring. All right, if you find me Gretchen in my blue earring, we also want to thank lippman for her arduous story of finding the rights to the Rocky Horror show. And we would also like to thank Jamie Ryan Ally, the whole cast of the Francis Bacon Experiment up in Buffalo for being such wonderful hosts this weekend and for putting on a great show. We had a wonderful time. We cannot thank you guys enough and all of our friends from the community who came out and we got to hang with. Thank you too for just being fucking awesome people. And I don't want to forget. We want to thank our editor Aaron from Tennessee for making us all sound fantastic, dude. You're doing God's work. You're helping me out a whole bunch. I appreciate you so fucking much. And we want to thank our writer slash performer slash boss Jacob. Thank you, Jacob. Oh my God, you're so welcome. If anyone has a question, they'd like us to answer on air for Jacking it with Jacob or whatever, cool sounding thing comes with your name or maybe just some community news that you'd like us to talk about or a cool story that you want to share with the community. You know, we would love to include it in our show. Just go to our website that's rocky talkie podcast dot com and fill out the contact form to tell us all about it. If you're enjoying Rocky Talkie, please help us out by rating review and subscribing to the show. It makes the podcast more accessible to new listeners, which really helps us grow the show. And if you want even more Rocky talky content, check us out on Facebook, youtube, Instagram, tiktok. We're at Rocky Talkie podcasts on all the platforms. We'll talk to you next week. Bye bye. I also want to thank Rowan who wrote in asking specifically about this topic. They messaged me on Facebook about it. Oh, hi, Rowan. Thanks for the great topic. Roan. Bye bye. As an act of in. Oh, I just wanted to feel included. I didn't really have to cough meg. What does that mean? What does it mean? I don't know. You know, I watched Suits for a few seasons. I think I could explain. So, a statutory license is a license that if you have sex with it. So help you. God, you will get. No, no, that's not. No, no, no. Are you sure? That sounds right. Sounds about right. Yeah, I've definitely walked into law offices and they've gotten mad at me when I attempt to jack off with the, uh, the papers. So I figure those might be the statutory licenses that, that we're talking about. It's like, don't, no, you can't jack off with that paper. It's gonna get you in jail. So, really, I should thank those people instead of masturbating more next time I'm doing that. You're absolutely right. In addition to what Jacob just said, not instead of, um, a, a statutory license, basically.