Hi Friends!

I’m writing again a bit sooner than expected. Amidst all the other tragic news this week, Tim Curry passed away a few days ago, and I thought I’d put together a little something about this wonderful actor and why he meant so much to me. This piece is more personal than my usual fare, but I hope you enjoy it. And if you’re in need of a pick-me-up this week, it’s always a good time to pop on Rocky Horror, Clue or Muppet Treasure Island (or 9 to 5 if you lean a little more Dolly!).

Don’t Dream It, Be It

The first film I can remember seeing in a cinema was FernGully: The Last Rainforest, when I was about four years old.

It was an absolute disaster.

Mum took me to an early screening at the local multiplex in Canberra, and for the first twenty minutes or so, everything was right in the world. There were fairies whizzing through the Australian bush, chirpy songs to bob along to, and even a wacky sidekick voiced by Robin Williams. But then, a pair of foolish loggers cut down a magical boab tree, and all hell broke loose. The evil spirit Hexxus was set free from his prison. Taking the form of a sickly black ooze, this monster sloshed through the bowels of the mobile sawmill, infecting everything he touched, shape-shifting into a serpent, then a skeleton. And all the while, his deep, sonorous, and cheerfully malevolent voice echoed through the cinema — the voice of the one and only Tim Curry.

I was terrified. I began screaming and crying, leaping out of my seat, and poor Mum had to whisk me out of the cinema and take me home to calm me down. Hexxus haunted me for weeks, even months — fixating on that ooze, that voice.

I returned to FernGully a year or two later, when the film came out on VHS. By then, I was already deep into my obsession with Jurassic Park and its man-eating dinosaurs — demanding that Mum and Dad let me watch the scary bits — so presumably I had a tougher skin. We popped in the VHS, and when we came to Hexxus’ grand entrance… I ran out of the room again. But at least this time I kept watching, peering around the corner from the open doorway at the screen. And while the ooze remained scary, it turned out I’d fled that cinema mere seconds before Hexxus broke into a fully fledged musical number, ‘Toxic Love’. Now, I watched as this fixture of my nightmares became a flamboyant tornado of high camp, seductively crooning about his desire to unite devour the world whole. Slowly, I tip-toed back into the living room and sat back down on the couch. In just a few minutes, FernGully — and Hexxus — had transformed from an object of fear into one of my childhood favourites.

That was the magic of Tim Curry, the acting legend who passed away last week.

Over a fifty-year career and hundreds of performances, he gleefully straddled the line between monstrosity and hilarity, pathos and camp. There was no one quite like him. Tim Curry could be terrifying, he could be endearing, and — oh yes, I’m getting to it —he could be staggeringly sexy, capable of unsettling you even as he seduced you. He was the kind of working actor who said yes to pretty much everything, but no matter whether the role was for Broadway, a made-for-TV movie, opposite Miss Piggy or in an infamous video game cut-scene, he gave it everything, every time. It was impossible to miss that special twinkle in his eye and arched eyebrow that suggested not only was he getting away with something — you were too.

It was a quality that made him rather perfect for family films, and from FernGully on, Tim Curry was a constant companion in my childhood. I loved his Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island so much that I dressed up as him for scores of birthday parties, and dreamt of becoming a “Professional Pirate”; I refused to believe any ending of Clue that would implicate the Butler; and his officious hotel concierge was my favourite character in Home Alone 2 (only the sequel would do — we never had a VHS of the first film). Tim Curry was always instantly recognisable and immediately welcome in our house, whether he was buried under mountains of make-up as a demon in Legend, or voicing recurring villains on cartoon staples like Captain Planet or Gargoyles.

And then as a teenager I watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time.

Oh boy.

To this day, I believe Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter is one of the all-time great film performances. It’s a work of audacious, impossible alchemy. Just try not to fall head-over-heels in love (or something a little more guttural) with Tim Curry as he struts across a ballroom, shedding his cape as he croons, “I’m not much of a man by the light of day / But by night I’m one hell of a lover.”

The part just shouldn’t work. It’s a pastiche of outdated sci-fi archetypes, layered on top of one another: Frank is a mad scientist, a hopeless diva, an alien invader and (perhaps most importantly) a transgressive pervert. Add to it that the whole thing is an elaborate drag act, from Frank’s grandiose entrance, descending in an ornate elevator as if he’s Katherine Hepburn in Suddenly Last Summer, to his axe-wielding rampage right out of a Joan Crawford ‘hag-horror’ (bye Meatloaf), to his tragic exit, slung over Rocky’s shoulder atop the RKO Tower like Fay Wray in King Kong. And lest we forget, Frank is the villain of the picture — murdering, manipulating or assaulting pretty much everyone he encounters. Yet Tim Curry makes this “sweet transvestite from transexual Transylvania” a living, breathing person who still brings me to tears every damn time as he sings his plaintive farewell, ‘I’m Going Home’. It’s a subversive miracle.

Admittedly, Tim Curry had some practice. He originated the role back in 1973, when the The Rocky Horror Show stage musical premiered in the tiny, 63-seat upstairs theatre at the Royal Court in Sloane Square. Written by Richard O’Brien (who also played Riff-Raff), and directed by Aussie experimental theatre veteran Jim Sharman, the show was a surprise hit, and soon migrated to larger venues in the West End, across the pond to LA and Broadway, and finally to the big screen. Most of the original creative team stuck around, and Curry, already inseparable from Frank, made his cinema debut. And despite many successful reprisals, revivals and drag performances over the past fifty years (most recently, Luke Evans’ acclaimed run on Broadway), the part has been his ever since.

In Curry’s hands, Frank is a ‘freak’ and he’s unfathomably sexy; he’s masculine and a flaming queen; he’s utterly unhinged and yet ever so calculated; and he is in every way radically, incorrigibly queer. Even today I think Frank retains the power to shock us, because his queerness has zero interest in inclusion or acceptance. It’s a dangerous and destabilising force… and yet a seductive one. A siren song of liberation for the Brads and Janets of the world. Don’t dream it, be it.

I was obsessed with Tim Curry’s Frank-N-Furter at 15; but at the time, I couldn’t put my finger on why. I watched the film over and over; I bought the soundtrack and played it ad nauseam at home, in my room, on my discman. I peppered my poor friends with leading questions about “what’s your favourite musical?” or “what’s your favourite song?”, all to give me an excuse to waffle on about Rocky Horror yet again. I even stirred up arguments on film message boards online about why, exactly, this film deserved to be on a Top 20 alongside The Godfather.

The funny thing is, unlike most queers who know all the words to ‘Sweet Transvestite’, I can’t draw a straight (heh) line between Rocky Horror and my own coming-out. Tim Curry arching his brow to ask “how ‘bout that?” right down the camera barrel certainly stirred something in me, but it would be a long time before I had a name for it. It’s as if Rock Horror knew I was queer a good decade or so before I did, kicking open a door I wouldn’t be ready to walk through for many years.

It’s not that I didn’t have the opportunity. Mum and Dad told my brother and I all about those legendary midnight screenings — they’d even been to a couple back in the day, throwing rice and talking back to the screen — and offered to find one in Sydney and take us along… but I chickened out. After all, if you went to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show, you were meant to dress up, and be paraded up on the stage for all to see. And I knew that if I ever dressed up, it couldn’t be as straight-laced Brad, or lackey Riff-Raff, or in-the-buff Rocky, or even greaser Eddie. That would be cheating. I’d have to be Frank, fishnets, corset and all, or nothing. I knew his numbers by heart; I’d learnt every one of Tim Curry’s intonations and grace notes; I even believed I could get his “Antici — — — pation” timing right. But I wasn’t ready to be Frank yet.

Tim Curry would be Frank for the rest of his life. While Rocky Horror was initially a box office flop, the role was nonetheless one hell of a showcase for a young actor, and kick-started his career. And what a wonderful career it was. Sure, Tim Curry never became a star, nor found a role so terrifically tailored to his unhinged charisma as Frank-N-Furter — but so what? He led films, plays and musicals; was nominated for multiple Tonys, Grammys and Emmys; worked with some of the finest directors in the world (John Huston, Peter Hall, Mike Nichols); recorded albums as a solo artist; and even performed in Madison Square Garden.

Tim Curry’s resume is long, and I suspect everyone has their own touchstones. Some probably know him best from Annie, The Worst Witch or Charlie’s Angels, or savoured his voice-work on The Wild Thornberrys, Young Justice or the audiobooks for A Series of Unfortunate Events. He starred as Pennywise the Clown in the original adaptation of Stephen King’s It, and King Arthur in Eric Idle’s hit musical Spamalot. He played Mozart in the legendary Broadway debut of Amadeus, opposite Ian McKellan as Salieri, which is right at the top of my shortlist of “plays I would go back and watch if I had a time machine”, alongside Shakespeare’s original production of Henry IV. Hell, Tim Curry even played William Shakespeare in a mini-series for the BBC!

Curry was plagued with health issues throughout his career (no doubt exacerbated by his chronic smoking) and suffered a debilitating stroke in 2012. But still, he kept on working; lending his voice to the superb animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall in 2014, appearing in tributes to Rocky Horror (including a Covid-era livestream to raise money for the Democrats in 2020), and writing his memoir, Vagabond, released last year. He passed away this week, aged eighty. A bold performer to the last.

I like to think I’ve become a little braver with time. At least, I’m an out bisexual, and don’t run out of movies anymore (although I will sometimes peer in from the other room if things get a little too scary or cringe). For a couple of years now, I’ve been breaking out ‘Sweet Transvestite’ at karaoke nights, putting my Tim Curry impression to use at last. I finally dressed up as Frank-N-Furter in 2022, for my housemate Renée’s decadent 30th Birthday bash (the theme was ‘Space Sluts’, so yes it was warranted). Wig, pearls, fishnets, and a corset repurposed from a Lady Gaga outfit. I’ve never had the makings of a drag queen — Neil has all the family talent there — but there was something joyous and liberating in inhabiting Frank for a few hours all the same. Not too long after that, I went with friends to my first audience participation screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

It wasn’t nearly as intimidating as I had imagined. A drag queen hosted the evening in her own set of fishnets; there was a costume competition, but no parade; and the crowd around us was young and loud and unabashedly queer. It turns out Rocky Horror had been waiting for me all this time, still a wild and an untamed thing. And while the man himself has passed on, it’s a comfort to know that Tim Curry will be playing to packed houses just like this for years to come, full of audiences enriched by his mantra: don’t dream it, be it.

Thanks for everything Tim.

Odds & Ends

• Vale Dolly Parton, one hell of a songwriter and an excellent human being. This well-timed video from Lindsay Ellis is a great primer on how Dolly ended up with her saintly reputation (and why she mostly deserves it), which I found helpful as a non-American.

• Tim Curry fiercely guarded the details of his private life, but he did admit he had one great lost love… his Muppet Treasure Island co-star Miss Piggy. “Once you have pork,” he remarked with characteristic glee in interviews, “you never go back!” For more on the indomitable Miss Piggy, check out this wonderful piece by Angelica Jade Bastíen about how how she is in fact our Last Movie Star.

Thanks for reading! See you next time at the late night, double feature picture show…