Halloween has its roots in Irish culture, but actor Barry Bostwick plays a role in how the holiday is celebrated these days.
Bostwick played clueless Brad Majors in the 1975 movie version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. For a portion of his screen time, Brad/Bostwick walks about in his white cotton briefs.
That campy flick didn’t do well at the box office but became a midnight movie, where people dressed up for the occasion and interacted with what was taking place on screen. That tradition lives on to this day.
Talk about a time warp.
Either way, Rocky Horror very well may have inspired cosplay culture as we now know it, with comic book conventions abounding and folks dressing up as their favorite characters to see all sorts of movies and plays. For instance, I donned my Atticus Finch attire when I attended a theatrical production of To Kill a Mockingbird. Or not.
Rocky Horror also mostly likely inspired how Halloween has become big business, not just for selling candy and costumes to kids but for selling decorations and all sorts of stuff to alleged grown-ups.
Sure, back in the day there were wild street parties in college towns like Carbondale and Boulder. Now, even suburbs, including Elgin and Naperville, have Halloween-time street parties that draw big crowds.
Given all the above, Bostwick is touring the country this October with The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The tour makes a stop at 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in downtown Chicago.
The night will feature a screening of the old movie along with a shadow cast acting out what’s taking place on the screen. As tradition dictates, audience participation will be encouraged, albeit within parameters.
Bostwick’s role in the above will include taking part in a meet-and-greet, overseeing a costume contest, signing autographs and having his photo taken with fans. He’ll also introduce the movie, goof around with the audience a bit and hold a Q & A.
“It’s like people have come to my house and we’re throwing a party. I’m there as the party-giver,” Bostwick said.
Oh. There will also be a wonderful virgin ceremony, Bostwick said.
“You’re a virgin to Rocky Horror Picture Show if you haven’t seen it, but in this case, you’re a virgin if you haven’t seen it with a shadow cast. You’d be surprised by the hundreds of virgins we get every time we do this show,” Bostwick said.
Bostwick’s involvement with Rocky Horror has also led to him attending pop culture conventions.
“I’m always amazed that there are new fans, that there’s a younger generation. Kids will come up to me and go ‘Rocky Horror is my favorite movie,’” Bostwick said.
In at least one case, the fan was just 11 years old.
“I’ll say, ‘You’re 11 years old. How many movies could you have seen? And how did you get in to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Your parents should still be in jail, for Christ’s sake,” Bostwick said.
While Rocky Horror has an R rating, Bostwick said the movie isn’t as salacious as some might think. He thinks of it as “nicely naughty in a way,” particularly by today’s standards.
Beyond being Brad, Bostwick has had a storied career in theater, film and television.
He created the part of greaser Danny Zuko in the original, 1972 Broadway version of Grease. Bostwick received his first Tony Award nomination for playing the part, which would be made movie famous in 1978 by John Travolta.
The original, grittier version of the stage musical debuted in Chicago in 1971 and was set in 1950s Chicago. Bostwick said he performed in the Broadway version when it first toured Chicago.
Throughout the 1970s, Bostwick was big on Broadway. In 1976, he took home a Tony as lead actor in the Mississippi-set musical The Robber Bridegroom for playing Jamie Lockhart/the bandit of the woods.
Bostwick also played George Washington in the 1984 and 1986 TV miniseries that aired on CBS.
“I was offered a part that had never really been explored before – Washington as a real human being. It was always the icon, the face on the coin. I tried desperately and did, I think, bring some humanity to him,” Bostwick said.
Bostwick also mentioned a movie he starred in called Megaforce, a 1982 release which has become another cult movie.
“We’re doing a documentary on the making of Megaforce, and it will be out this year. We call it the documentary nobody was asking for, because the movie didn’t do a lot of business. But it was one of the first GI Joe-kind of films. It was a Hal Needham movie, and it was all about the cars and the machines and the up-to-date kind of sci-fi war machines that we were part of ” Bostwick said.
On TV’s Spin City, Bostwick played Mayor Randall Wilson from 1996 – 2002. The show initially starred Michael J. Fox as Deputy Mayor Mike Flaherty.
“That was just glorious,” Bostwick said.
During those six life-changing years Bostwick traveled from coast to coast and grew his family.
“I’ve been very fortunate to have a wide-ranging variety of parts and to have worked with some wonderful people,” Bostwick said.
As for Rocky Horror’s continued appeal, Bostwick said, “It’s out there because the fans are out there. The fans have made this an evening of entertainment, a family affair. They have created an environment where they have basically stolen the movie from us.”
“It becomes a place to act up, act out, yell, scream, be naughty, rip off your clothes, run around in your underwear, throw stuff at us, yell horrible things at us,” he noted. “We have nothing to do with the evening other than being the catalyst for their insanity.”
Bostwick said the movie and the play on which it was based were just an extension of the drag community.
“We didn’t get a lot of truck drivers coming in bustiers and high heels at the beginning,” he said. “They did start coming later on, because it was fun and their wives and girlfriends forced them into the mesh stockings.”
Nowadays, who better to dress up as than Frank-N-Furter, the work’s gender-bending, cross-dressing, mad scientist villain?
Lest you think Rocky Horror is just another goofy American thing, Bostwick noted that Rocky Horror’s appeal extends beyond US borders.
His son was working on his master’s degree in physics at Cambridge two years ago. He called Bostwick and told him about screenings there.
“Now he’s in Germany at Heidelberg University getting his doctorate in physics. He sees it there, and it’s playing in the local theaters. My daughter who is in vet school in Colorado at Colorado State – they’re doing it. She sees it all the time,” Bostwick said.
As if that weren’t enough anecdotal evidence, Bostwick said his son was in Paris recently. He sent his dad a picture of a poster for The Rocky Horror Picture Show at a theater there.
“(Rocky Horror) blankets the world. It’s in 40 languages. It’s the longest continuously running movie ever, and it’s in the Library of Congress. It’s certainly not just provincial,” Bostwick said.
The movie also has a following in Ireland. While Bostwick has some Irish roots, he’s never been to Ireland before.
“I am waiting for a convention to take me there, so I don’t have to pay a full fare,” he said. “My agent over there say’s, OK we’ll get you into Scotland and into Ireland. So maybe. I hope so. I’ve been wanting to go there forever, but I can’t find anybody who will buy me a ticket.”
Bostwick has been in Irish-American related films and TV shows, though.
According to the always-reliable internet, Bostwick is in the 2016 film, Three Days in August. The web says it’s about an adopted Irish American artist confronting her past when both sets of parents come together over a weekend for her to paint a family portrait.
Bostwick also starred in The Quinns, a 1977 made-for-TV movie.
“It was one of my first TV movies. We were firefighters, multi-generational firefighters, sort of like that show on now with Selleck, about cops,” Bostiwick said.
As for Halloween, Bostwick said he and his family were never big into the holiday.
“We never lived in a real neighborhood where kids would come up and you’d want to scare them and give them cheap candy,” he said.
When his family lived in Malibu, the Bostwicks would take their kids down to the rich area, where they would get good candy.
“We’d get into The Colony, an enclave of big houses on the water in Malibu. That was the place. If you could get into The Colony at Halloween you were sure to get a candy apple or something better than a Snickers bar,” Bostwick said.
For those who can’t make Bostwick’s Chicago appearance, he does offer a unique bit of merchandise on his website – signed and personalized Brad Majors underwear for $55 a pair, shipping included.
“You know, I sell a helluva lot of my underwear, particularly at conventions. I’ll take them to conventions,” Bostwick said. “To me it just makes me laugh to think that how many actors can actually sell their underwear at a convention or online and not just be the creepiest person in the world.”
Bostwick said he personalizes the underwear by writing “whatever they want me to put on it.”
Does he wear it first?
“Oh no. That would cost them way too much money,” Bostwick said.
Mike Danahey is a freelance writer who lives somewhere outside of Chicago. If you need a scribe for any occasion, even Hallowen cards, feel free to leave him a message in the comments section for this post.