Our daughters reminded me of this story when Tim Curry recently passed away and asked me to share it again…
It’s a crazy weave of true stories that start in 1966 when my mom took me to LACMA to see the Man Ray exhibition. When we walked in we were confronted with a giant painting of lips floating in the sky. I immediately fell in love with Man Ray’s “A l’heure de l’observatoire – Les amoureux” (“Observatory Time — The Lovers”).
Those lips actually got me into trouble when I took the flyer from the art exhibit and made a collage for show-and-tell in elementary school. When it was my turn to get in front of the 4th grade class and share, I was so excited to show the lips and asked the other kids if they too saw the lovers lying next to each other?
The next thing I knew I was in the principles office, my mom had been called to the school and we were sitting being lectured of my supposed infraction by the principle. When he finished my mom quickly and quietly responded “and… he’s talking about art!?!” We soon left the office and thereafter I was hesitant to take art classes in school.
Fast forward to 1974 and my graduation from high school…
My mom gifted me a return trip plane ticket to Europe. I had been working all though high school and saved for this trip, landing first in Barcelona, Spain. My plan was to buy a motorcycle then ride around Europe.
Things didn’t work out that way. Upon a few challenges of not really speaking enough Spanish I decided to start over and found my way to London.
In the youth hostel I was invited by another traveler to go see a play that night. I figured why not, I’m in the land of Shakespeare. All I heard was “Kings Road Theater” and thought that was the title of the play.
Upon arriving at the theater and finding our seats I sensed whatever this was, it was not what I was expecting.
I was seated right next to a runway jutting out from center stage. The stage itself was filled with a multilevel scaffolding set. There was a live band playing on the side of the stage. The ushers with blank stare translucent masks started crawling over the audience in their seats.
The next thing I knew there was this high heeled guy in fishnet stockings kicking up a storm as he pranced down the runway almost kicking me in the head. Nope, this definitely was not Shakespeare!
This was Tim Curry in 1974 at the start of his career in “The Rocky Horror Show”…
Considering how a year later he went on to star in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” which has echoed throughout late night moviehouses over the decades… our daughters love this story.
Like many kids over these past 50 years, they have danced the time-warp again, and again. And now here we are at Tim Curry’s passing.
Speaking of time-warps…
Getting back to Man Ray’s giant floating lips, turns out they were the inspiration for the opening titles of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
The original production plans to have clips of science fiction movies in the opening would be prohibitively expensive. At this point, set designer Brian Thomson had an idea. Inspired by the Man Ray painting “Observatory Time: The Lovers” (better known as The Lips, 1936), he imagined a close-up of a pair of lips singing the opening song, “Science Fiction Double Feature”.
This is where the story now jumps the rails…
In short, one of our daughters a few years ago had an art show and one of the gallery owners was clearing out their library of some art books and gave her a bag of books he knew she would appreciate.
When she got home and opened the bag her jaw dropped. I asked what she had in the bag and out she pulled the catalog from the 1966 May Ray exhibit. She immediately gifted it to me when she saw my reaction as our girls grew up with this story of me seeing the exhibit as a kid.
Soon thereafter the story wandered even further in different directions. It was discovered a close friend of our daughter’s mentor grew up going to her friends house as a kid and seeing Man Ray’s giant lips hanging on their family’s wall.
All of this was being revealed as COVID shut our business down. I had lots of room in our facility to paint with no one else there. I also had lots of old tradeshow banners to paint on. And I had lots of time to think about this time-warp and threads of stories woven into the noosphere.
Time to think about growing up in Los Angeles under the Hollywood sign and Griffith Observatory, going to the Man Ray exhibition in ‘66 seeing “Observatory Time — The Lovers,” then years later traveling to London and accidentally seeing the original production of “The Rocky Horror Show” featuring Tim Curry.
Time to create this painting of 2birds and “Observe-a-Story Time.”
The Eleprocon Chronicles
Eleprocon mythOS 2birds BEAMing noosphere
