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The faithful in each city work their own variations on a standard text. As the ruby lips in the film's opening credits give way to a wedding attended by normal, nerdy young Americans Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon), the audience in Coconut Grove, Fla., flings rice gaily in the air. When the young lovers get stranded in the rain, regulars in Denver douse the front rows with squirt bottles. When Brad and Janet see "a light over at the Frankenstein place," hundreds of lighters, flashlights and one small '50s table lamp illuminate the Eighth Street Playhouse. In Dr. Frank's old dark house, where Brad and Janet are seduced in turn by the extraterrestrial transvestite, they meet their old science prof Dr. Scott (Jonathan Adams) and in Washington the air is filled with streamers of Scott toilet paper. Frank (Tim Curry) proposes "a toast," and burnt toast pops up at a Chicago theater. At the end, when a betrayed Frank sings about "cards for sorrow, cards for pain," the cognoscenti in Berkeley mournfully toss playing cards aloft.
The Eighth Street regulars consider themselves the college of cardinals for this amiable sacreligion; that must make Sal Piro the pope of Greenwich Village. Piro, a tubby, T-shirted imp of 35, was just a member of the audience when Rocky mania started blooming a few blocks away at the Waverly Theater in 1976-77. But now he has seen the film 873 times and cheerleads a half-hour pre-show routine in a style that blends the early Jerry Lewis with the late Paul Lynde. Tonight Sal does a little break-dancing. He asks for a show of hands from those who have seen R.H.P.S. more than a hundred times; more than a hundred arms are raised. He surrenders the stage with a hearty "Welcome to the second decade!" and the real show begins.
By the late '70s the Eighth Street players had codified an elaborate system of responses to the screen dialogue and action. Tonight, as on every weekend night, they perform their lines with a professional precision the latest cast of A Chorus Line would be hard put to match. As the Fox logo fades, the crowd recites the utterly inappropriate prologue to Star Wars: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." Poor normal Brad is greeted with the same scatological taunt every time his name is mentioned; poor virginal Janet is "Slut!" Brad cannot slap a desk, or Frank snap his surgical gloves, without the faithful's perfectly timed handclap. The portentous pauses in Rocky cry out for rude interpolations, so that the screen actors at times seem to be responding to directions from the audience. Before Frank can introduce his assistant Magenta, the crowd bleats, "What's your favorite color?" Before he mentions another character, Columbia, comes the question, "Where do you get your drugs?" When Frank asserts that "There's no crime in giving yourself over to pleasure," the New Yorkers respond, "There is in New Jersey!" The evening is raucous, high-spirited and remarkably benign--a PG-rated toga party.