Zach and I are woefully behind on our Atlanta Bucket List blog posts. I gladly devoted my Lawthenticity blog to Girls Rock Camp ATL for a while, but it’s time to get back to work on sharing some of Atlanta’s best sights. Or, in the case of this blog post, experiencing one of Atlanta’s longest-running cult rendezvous.

On Friday, the husband and I joined three of my intrepid friends for a late dinner, drinks and a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show at Atlanta’s Plaza Theatre. According to the Plaza’s website, they’ve been showing Rocky every Friday night for the last ten years. None of us had seen Rocky at the Plaza and had no idea what to expect. All I knew is that I needed a nap in order to START my evening at 9:30 p.m. after a long week.

After dinner at the new Wrecking Bar Brewpub, we arrived at the Plaza around 11. Zach writes:

About 50 people were milling about outside the theatre. We thought we had a 50/50 chance of the movie being sparsely attended. Not so much. We went into the Righteous Room next door and had a couple of reinforcement beverages. While there, I encountered a long wait for the men’s room. One of the patrons encouraged me to go to the women’s room. Talk about a harbinger of things to come.

We exited the smoky bar about 15 minutes before midnight and the line had swollen to at least 100 people, most of them in costumes. A tall woman wearing only a black corset, panties, garters, stockings and heels (the outfit that Tim Curry wears throughout most of Rocky Horror) greeted me in line. She was asking me and the other people entering the theatre if they were Rocky Horror virgins. Since this was my first time, the corseted woman drew a “V” on my forehead with bright red lipstick, before giving me a matching kiss on the cheek. My only thought was “I wonder if that cheap lipstick is phthalate-free?” Zach smartly passed on the makeup application.

When planning this midnight outing, we knew to expect costumes. We’d heard that there would be singalongs and audience participation. We heard there would be some raunchy pre-show festivities thanks to the local cast of Lips Down on Dixie. All were true. The guy who insisted on us taking pages from a Creative Loafing newspaper into the theatre did so because he knew we were going to be sprayed with water during every rain scene in the movie.

Live, costumed actors performed on stage in front of the screen,  lip-synching and dancing to each scene of the movie. The audience, seemingly filled with people who had witnessed this event a hundred times, yelled throughout the movie. They knew all the lines, catcalls and responses. During the Time Warp song, most of the audience got in the aisles and danced. If you want to hear the original dialogue or songs, you should stay home and watch the movie on VH1.

Zach writes his final thoughts on this Atlanta Bucket List experience:

There were quality trailers, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Power Rangers.

I give credit to the Atlanta actor playing Tim Curry’s role; he wore the fishnets well, even if he had a bad case of bacne. We were sworn in as non-virgins midway through the flick. I would say that the percentage of straight males was on par with the average Lady Gaga concert. For lovers of eye candy, the evening was like Halloween. For every scantily-clad woman, there was a guy wearing just a pair of gold underwear.

I thought the experience was a lot of fun, although at about the hour mark of the film the audience’s energy dropped and so did my eyelids. I could use less of the audience trying to out-Mystery Science Theatre 3000 each other. The wife and I want to know how this of all movies made it into the midnight movie inventory.

I would add that before the show started, the cast members called on a couple in the audience who were there with their wedding party. She in a white, sequined dress with army boots, and he in a white button-down shirt and green plaid kilt, stood and accepted the audience’s applause. Apparently, one year before, the groom had proposed to his bride at the Plaza Theatre’s Rocky Horror Show. They had returned on their wedding night. I told Zach that if he had asked me to marry him at that venue, my answer might have been different.

We left the theatre at 2:30 a.m., feeling like we had sufficiently made good on a dare. We’d checked off another Atlanta experience on our bucket list and didn’t feel the need to repeat it anytime soon. Just like any boring old married couple, we won’t accept an invitation to any event with the word “Midnight” in it for a long, long time.