Day 47: It's just a jump to the left...

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I must say, I was excited for the projectiles.

At most movies, if you talk during the show, a freckly teenager in a bellhop's uniform will come by and tell you to be quiet. Responding to the characters on-screen would probably earn you a second warning. And throwing things at other audience members? Well, that's almost certainly forbidden.

Not so at the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I'd seen the movie before, but never the hybrid movie-performance version at Harvard Square's AMC Theater, so I figured I was due. Not to mention, midnight movies are something I really enjoy, and this was near the top of the list. Before you can even enter the theater, there's a whole spiel you've got to listen to about what you can throw, who you can throw it at, and how to make the actors take their clothes off. And then they give you the projectiles. It was all harmless stuff, but I'm still picking grains of rice out of my hair and shoes.

The audience gets a quick warmup, as the cast performs a couple songs and then teaches the main dance number, "Time Warp." You learn to get cozy with the people you're sitting near very quickly, since you could at any time have to grab their hips and, well, "it's the pelvic thrusts that really drive you insane." Once the movie starts playing, it's a constant dialog between the audience and the big silver screen. At our showing, about a half-dozen people in the audience knew the response to every single line in the movie. It was amusing at first, but it wore on me as the movie progressed and I missed more and more of the actual lines.

Plus, of course, there's a live cast acting out the show right on top of you. And that's not an exaggeration — if you're sitting on the aisle, you might have Magenta straddling you at any given point in time. The costumes were a dead-match for the movie's original costumes, something I understand is uncommon in the cult following of this particular movie.

Overall, it was a blast, even if Rocky Horror isn't my first choice for a cult-movie. I wonder if I can drum up any support for a midnight showing of Newsies....hmm....