Richard O’Brien has revealed that the inspiration for his most famous creation — Dr. Frank N. Furter, the “sweet transvestite” mad scientist played by Tim Curry in the 1975 cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show — was inspired by his own experiences cross-dressing and grappling with his gender identity as a young aspiring actor from New Zealand living in London in the early 1970s.
“It actually comes from me,” says O’Brien, who wrote the book and score to the original Rocky Horror Show stage play that inspired the film (which turns 50 this month), and played the put-upon butler Riff Raff in both. “I used to beat myself up about the hand I was dealt. I don’t know how it works. I have no idea. I’ve read many tomes about the subject of the transvestic nature. It’s the cards you’re dealt. In a binary world it’s a bit of curse, really. Especially in those days when homosexuality was a crime. It’s just one of those things that western society wasn’t very keen on.”
Looking back a half-century later after writing the gender- and sexually liberated Rocky Horror, O’Brien says: “I guess it has to have been cathartic. I guess that has to have been the reason why. I certainly wouldn’t have thought of it in those terms.”
O’Brien, 81, has been married three times, to three different women, and has three children from the first two marriages — two sons and a daughter. When it comes to his own gender identity, however, he says no binary answer is sufficient.
“What I’ve always wanted to be was whole — centrally whole and complete,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter‘s It Happened in Hollywood podcast. “But I have so much girl in me it doesn’t make any sense. I think it would have made more sense had I been born a girl. That’s true. But it is a patriarchic, misogynistic fucking world. So aren’t I lucky? Because I’ve been able to walk down streets and go places that I wouldn’t ever have been able to go down had I been a girl. You just have to put everything in perspective, really.”
Later in the podcast, O’Brien admits that while he admires much of the clever artistry that goes into audience participation at Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings and at stagings of The Rocky Horror Show around the world, at times the rowdy response from Rocky Horror fans goes too far.
“It became a bit rude, actually,” O’Brien says of the tendency of fans to shout things back at the actors. “You know. And not that witty. I’m all for it. But sometimes it’s intrusive. We had to be very careful with the actors onstage. If we weren’t careful the audience would take over the evening. I’m talking about a third of the audience taking over the evening and the other two-thirds are now at a party they haven’t been invited to. In the movie it makes no difference because it’s the same every night.”
Still, some of the tried-and-true sight gags can still manage to tickle O’Brien. “When I’m dressed as American Gothic and throw the pitchfork over the edge [of the screen], someone’s standing below it going ‘Arrggh!’” he says with an appreciative chuckle.
Celebrate Rocky Horror‘s 50th anniversary by visiting its special collection of NFTs. And listen to the entire Richard O’Brien episode of It Happened in Hollywood below and be sure to subscribe for lots more content for movie history lovers.