Traditionally—meaning up until eight years ago, for the fifteen years preceding that—The Rocky Horror Picture Show has shown [and typically sold out] at The Esquire, downtownish at Sixth and Downing. Then, one night, in 2001, for myriad and uninteresting reasons, that came to an end, and Colorado’s Elusive Ingredient took the film from cinema to cinema to arcade to nightclub to the occasional carpark for the next decade.

Now, finally, CEI’s transient status seems to be a thing of the past. Last night, with little advertising beyond word of mouth [including a crippling number of posts to facebook.com], The Esquire went beyond selling out—half their seats presold online—and had to turn away well over 100 people at the door.

On the bright side, there’s no law against collecting out front on the pavement. Or, probably there is; but—pfft—call a cop. I missed the first few seconds of this while climbing up above the crowd in order to remain alive, but here’s a good example:

Inside: as usual, it was functionally too dark to film much of anything; next time I’ll try to remember to bring an infrared camera. But everyone who’d managed to get a ticket found a seat and the show played out without a hitch. Historically, hitches have included fun moments in which we learned—by starting the film—that the sound wasn’t actually connected to anything; as if the film isn’t bad enough in its standard state, watch it sometime as a silent picture, with mimes in front of it. Or, on second thought: don’t.

The show being an inarguable success [technically, this was a trial run to see whether there'd been a real reason to suspend the film in 2001], mutterings have begun regarding the rest of 2009. As of now, we’re confirmed to return monthly, every fourth Friday at midnight, through November [the fourth Friday in December being the twenty-fifth, whether to show the film that night remains as of now open to debate]; pending some creative shuffling of schedules [they have other midnight films slated to play through the end of the year, as well], there’s potentially some room for expansion. Meanwhile, the film will be playing again in September, on Friday the twenty-fifth; grabbing a ticket online before they sell out again might be a good idea.

See you then….