Do you have a Tim Curry story?

Still not a personal memory, but I can't resist sharing this for the sheer joyful exuberance of the performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWzqcele1tY I think my favourite bit is when he steals the conductor's baton! I don't really have any specific memories/stories about Tim Curry, but I do remember him as someone who always gave everything to every role he took, and just generally made things better. Don't know if that's helpful or not! Also, here's an article from a horror site about his role as Pennywise, again just in case it helps: https://gnofhorror.com/the-clown-a-tribute-to-tim-curry/ Full disclosure: the woman who wrote this is a dear friend of mine, but I don't think I'm being biased when I say she's a pretty insightful sort of person, and this essay definitely digs a lot deeper than just, "Wow, what a great performance that was!"

I actually got to meet him at a con (maybe Emerald City? Maybe Rose City?) I was there helping my bestie sell his colored pencil art and he had done a big mashup of Tim in his various roles. We got a photo op pass and got to meet Tim and his assistant. He loved the art and he seemed to want to chat more but they were herding us through. He asked us our names and when that voice from that man said my name out loud into the world, I knew that was truly the only time it's ever been pronounced correctly. I was covered in goosebumps.

Tim Curry is somebody who is always going to have a special place in my heart. When I was in college, I was in a shadowcast production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was by far the highlight of my years at college, it really brought me out of my shell and taught me how to be myself. At the interest meeting for the production, I started talking with a group of people about all of the voice acting Tim Curry has done over the years. Then, this one guy brings up Tim Curry's role as the villain in Pebble and the Penguin (a very forgettable, not very good late-90's Don Bluth movie, but one that I grew up on). Me and this guy immediately hit it off, and to make a long story short, we've been dating for almost 3 years now. We always joke that we have Don Bluth and Tim Curry to thank for our relationship, but to some extent it is literally true.

My husband loved his performance in an old video game called Command and Conquer. It had live action cut scenes where Tim Curry plays a bad guy Soviet commander. It’s hilarious. He’s the best comic evil actor to ever act!

I never met Tim Curry myself. I did see him at Fan Expo here in Toronto in 2017, but I did not pay the 250$ to get a meet and greet. I wish I had though. I do still have a Tim Curry story though. Tim was in Toronto in 1979 at the O'Keefe Center (now called Meridian Hall) as part of the tour for his second solo album Fearless. This was years before I was born, but my parents who were dating at the time were in the audience. My mom was a fan of Rocky Horror, but my dad was a much bigger fan of Rough Trade, the Canadian Rock band who was his opener for that night. Tim and Rough Trade actually went back quite a ways, given that he covered one of their songs, Birds of Feather, in his first studio album Read My Lips. My dad said that was the best number of the night when Tim and Rough trade performed that song together, and he actually kinda wished that Tim had considered joining the band full time. Just a side note, Rough Trade has a huge Queer connection. Carole Pope, the front women, was an out lesbian during the band's heyday which was rare to say the least, and one of the band's biggest hits was 1980's "High School Confidential" which was explicitly about a girl lusting after a female classmate, which was even rarer. There's an awesome documentary that was just recently released called Antidiva about Carole Pope which I would strongly recommend to anyone interested in Queer influence in late 70s early 80s rock music, and the ripples that stemmed from that. Anyways, my parents had a really great time at that concert, and it even encouraged my dad to watch Rocky Horror sometime later, and he was grudgingly impressed (both by Tim's voice, and his general outrageousness in that role). He bought a copy of the movie when it was released on video sometime in the early 90s, and he let watch it a few years later. That wasn't exactly my sexual awakening (that happened with the movie Casper when I was 12. Devon Sawa really knocked my on my ass in that movie), but it definitely was one of my first experience seeing a character so out and out gloriously, enthusiastically and unapologetically Queer, which was definitely amazing to see. The fact that my dad encouraged me to watch it was even more so. I hate to say though, while it is up there, that doesn't take my crown as the best Tim Curry performance. For me, Wadsworth in Clue is Tim at the absolute top of his game, while also being one of the best comedy performances ever. I will also say that his Pennywise is also a top performance, while also being one of the best horror performances ever. That was the thing about Tim as a actor, you almost expected him to just go so big with these largely than life characters, that when he flipped the script, like playing the by the book doctor in The Hunt for Red October, or the button down conservative professor in Kinsey, those performances were almost as much fun for what they weren't doing. His voice work though, was also truly second to none, starting with Ferngully (which would have been my first experience with Tim) and the Wild Thornberrys, which is iconic. He also voiced a character in a movie called Queer Duck in 2006 which is currently unseen by me. Given that it looks like it's about an actual Queer Duck, it's definitely something I'm going to look for. In any case though, I'm glad his voice is going to continue on in so many ways. One last note about his voice. I've since had the chance to listen to his album Fearless that my parents saw him perform so many years ago. I have to say, his single "I Do the Rock" still holds up today. It's a lot of fun, which in so many ways, I'm sure describes the man himself.

“Congo” is an underrated gem of a B movie, and so much of what makes it enjoyable is Curry hamming it up with his faux Romanian accent. “No! The diamonds are here!” “Push me, please….Harder, please.” And, of course, the iconic sesame cake scene. It’s such a comfort watch for me. Although it’s a mixed watch for me (as the film glosses over the whole concept of consent and seems to imply that it’s O.K. to bulldoze people’s autonomy in order to get them to engage with their queerness), Curry is undeniably brilliant as Frank-N-Furter in Rocky Horror. Saw the film for the first time when I was 12, and the dialogue is burned into my brain. “And you shall receive it…in abundance!”

I dunno if this counts, but I saw the Rocky Horror Show movie as a kid (after my parents included the soundtrack as one of the CDs that came with the stereo I got that Christmas) and kinda enjoyed it, too young to know how much of it was going over my head lol but when I went back to it in my 20s it made me very uncomfortable. When I watched it again my 30s, I worked out what it was: the movie was my first introduction to, shall we say, alternative gender expression. It took over 20 years to germinate but looking back, it was one of the first cracks in my egg before I realised I was nonbinary when I was 36 or something. I've never worn suspenders and corset, but that movie made me aware that the rules are made up and actually there are no inherant rules to how you identify or express that identity. Which is pretty rad of him :)

Nothing exciting or noteworthy, he was my neighbor here in Los Feliz and I ran into him at TJs in Silverlake way back. You know this area, of course.

Pretty boring, but we used to see him occasionally browsing the antique stores on Sunset in Silverlake. He’d smile and say hello as we passed in the aisles.

Well, I'm not sure if this is an interesting story or not, but growing up, I always felt like watching Tim Curry in a role was like watching a master spin a new idea. If you paid attention, you might see that even if he was playing a character that might be called villainous, often you'd be missing a trick with them. Frank n' Furter was misunderstood and lost, Darkness actually lived in fear, Hexus did what he did because it was his nature, Long John loved being a pirate, but really wanted chosen family, couldn't have both. At least that's how I saw them and I adored every one of them growing up. I took joy in their highs, sang along to their best numbers and felt sympathy for them at the end. If there was one impact Tim Curry had on me specifically through his work, it's that even villainous characters are more than they appear. Unless that villian is a formless being that loves fear and takes on the shapes of creepy clowns, giant spiders and other scary things just to make you scared before it eats you. Then it's just a monster. But he even played Pennywise to the hilt. *shudder* The new Pennywise? He's not scary to me, just crazy. Only Tim Curry's Pennywise ever scared me and I think his is the only one that ever will.

I posted an abridged version of this on Bluesky, but here goes. I'd been a Curry fan since 1982 in college, when I and a pair of women friends would travel 40 miles from campus to the nearest midnight showing of Rocky Horror, most Saturday nights. I wasn't out at the time. No one at my small Southern college was. Traveling to the relatively cosmopolitan hub of Newport News, Virginia, to hang out with other self-professed freaks, in those early and terrifying days of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, was one of my few brief opportunities to let go of the constant anxiety of being called out as queer. I was always grateful to the film, and the community surrounding it, for that freedom. A few years later, in 1988, I was living in Detroit as a grad student. I'd often head to the Detroit Institute of Arts nearby. One chilly spring afternoon, I was approaching the museum when one of its outer doors suddenly swung open and banged me on the forehead. The collision sent me sprawling backward. Someone leaned over me; I heard a familiar voice say, "Oh dear. Are you all right?" "Tim Curry!" I said. I was surprised to see him, but not totally dumbfounded: I knew he was in Detroit touring with the musical Me & My Girl at the time. "Guilty as charged. Awfully sorry." His entourage was shooting me dirty looks and probably evaluating how litigious I might be, but Curry was a class act. He helped me to my feet, brushed off my shoulders, made sure I wasn't seriously injured, and after professing it was good to meet me, went on his merry way. I probably should have wrangled some theater tickets out of the encounter. But at the very least, I'm one of the few people able to open a conversation with, "Did I ever tell you how Tim Curry punched me in the face?"

I wish I had a cool story. I loooove Rocky Horror Picture Show, even though I'm ace and find the unbridled carnality a little icky at times.

In 1998 or so, my friend and I went to dinner at Universal City Walk in LA. Being just out of school and poor, we didn't wanna pay the (at the time) expensive $7 for parking. We parked down on Cahuenga Blvd, across the 101. We returned after our evening and couldn't see my car. We quickly realized it had been stolen. Being 1998, and being poor, I was FREAKED OUT. "MY CAR! FUUUUCK! DAMMIT!" We start walking to a store up the street with a payphone (again, 1998) to call the cops. As I'm freaking out, we walk past a little cafe a couple doors up. There, just sitting by himself, reading a showbiz trade mag, is Tim Curry. We freeze. He lifts his head and smiles that smile. We smile back, giddy and gobsmacked. We giggle "Wow! Tim Curry!" We walk on two more steps and suddenly, again, I'm "FUCK! MY CAR HAS BEEN STOLEN!" Only in LA.

Like many young gays, I associate Tim Curry with coming out. I was seventeen and had just returned to the States from studying abroad. To celebrate my homecoming a group of friends took me to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show, which was a revelation. I don’t think I had ever seen any same-sex interaction before, so when Frank is revealed in bed with Brad I was both shocked and overwhelmed. All of a sudden a veil was lifted and I just knew. It was truly life changing. Over the years I learned I was not alone - that scene and that film were a beginning for many of my gay friends. Seeing Rocky Horror was a rite of passage, and Tim Curry was the manifestation of all that it represented.