It’s late on a Saturday night and hundreds of gyrating bodies, some standing on chairs and waving their hands around, fill a room to watch an R&B superstar. One fan faux-seductively climbs onto a table and pours a pitcher of water down his front.
Meatpacking District hot spot? Nope. Try the New York Comic Con at the Javits Center, where hundreds of nerds — many dressed in costumes, including Pokemon and Wonder Woman — took time out from the convention’s movie and comic-book panels to pay tribute to a musical and cinematic genius like no other: Mr. Robert Sylvester Kelly, otherwise known as R. Kelly.
The crowd waited more than an hour for a sing-along and viewing party of Kelly’s bizarre “hip-hopera,” “Trapped in the Closet,” a 22-part song and video cycle in which the singer plays Sylvester, a thinly veiled version of himself, who sings the narration and acts out the plot.
“Trapped” began as a five-part, 16-minute suite of songs on the 2005 album “TP.3 Reloaded.” Sylvester sang about going home with a married woman, only to be surprised by her husband in the morning. To avoid being discovered, he hides in the closet.
Kelly’s record company didn’t know what to make of the songs until producer Ann Carli suggested creating a series of music videos. From those first five episodes, the story spins out in insane directions worthy of a Mexican telenovela, from surprise pregnancies and gunplay to secret lesbian affairs and midgets hiding in cupboards.
Kelly’s last new episode arrived in 2007, but now cable channel IFC is set to debut 11 new chapters on Nov. 23, beginning with the 23rd installment. The material will also be available at ifc.com. The cable channel looks to capitalize on its cult following, which has spawned sing-alongs like the one at Comic Con in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Chicago and Tennessee’s Bonnaroo music festival. “Trapped” seems destined to join “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “The Room” as draws for ironic group viewing. Audiences find the soap-opera storylines, broad characters and whiplash-inducing plot twists a hoot.
“ ‘Trapped’ is hilarious,” says D.J. Chapman, 22, who attended the Comic Con event. “I think R. Kelly is a parody of himself, and the fact that he makes this shows it. It’s one of the funniest things ever.”
Even before the event, Chapman says he and friends from Hoboken’s Stevens Institute of Technology would gather to watch the series and laugh.
“I got a sense of the following when I would hear people talking about it on the subway,” says “Trapped” editor-director Victor Mignatti. “They were talking about how whack it was. The thing that struck me was that people enjoyed how out-there it was. When I realized that white college boys were enjoying it, I thought, ‘Oh, wow. This has crossed over into a really interesting place.’ ”
Mignatti says “Trapped” is a collection of Kelly’s influences.
“He grew up watching soap operas with his mother,” he says. “His mom would also take him into downtown Chicago, and they’d see touring companies of Broadway shows.”
Regardless of whence it came, nobody can figure out whether Kelly is in on the joke. The singer has rarely spoken to the press since he went through a high-profile trial for having sex with an underage girl and was found not guilty in 2008. Even when he does talk about “Trapped,” his replies are enigmatic.
“When I first began experiencing the unknown journey of writing ‘Trapped in the Closet,’ I knew after the first chapter that I had tapped into something that was not of this earth,” Kelly said when announcing the IFC series earlier this year.” ‘Trapped in the Closet’ fans put on your seatbelts ’cause ‘Trapped in the Closet’ is coming to take you away.”
Um, yeah. What he said.
Catching up with R. Kelly’s masterwork
A recap of the first 22 chapters of ‘Trapped in the Closet’
* Chapter 1: Sylvester (R. Kelly) wakes up in the bed of a married woman, Cathy. When her husband comes home unexpectedly, Sylvester hides in a closet.
* Chapter 2: The husband, Rufus, discovers Sylvester, but then says he wants to reveal a secret of his own. There’s a knock at the door.
* Chapter 3: At the door is Rufus’ lover: a man named Chuck. Stunned, Sylvester calls his own home and a strange man picks up the phone.
* Chapter 4: Sylvester rushes home and gets a speeding ticket from a cop, James, on the way. At home, his wife, Gwen, denies anyone has been in the house, but Sylvester discovers a condom in his bed.
* Chapter 5: Gwen admits she’s been cheating on Sylvester – with the police officer who gave him a ticket.
* Chapter 6: Gwen and Sylvester make up, but suddenly, James the cop bursts into the room. He and Sylvester wrestle and a gun goes off.
* Chapter 7: Gwen’s brother, Twan, just out of prison, appears and is accidentally shot. He’s fine, but the noise attracts the nosy neighbor, Rosie.
* Chapter 8: James returns home to find his own wife, Bridget, acting suspiciously. He suspects her of having an affair. .
* Chapter 9: James searches the kitchen and finds his wife’s lover – a midget hiding under the sink.
* Chapter 10: James and the midget fight. They’re ultimately interrupted by the arrival of Twan and Sylvester, guns drawn.
* Chapter 11: Bridget reveals that she’s pregnant and that the father isn’t James, but the midget, nicknamed Big Man for reasons you’d probably rather not know.
* Chapter 12: Gwen calls Cathy to chat about seeing her husband sylvester at a club with a woman wearing a wig. Cathy realizes the man she slept with was sylvester.
* Chapter 13: Out collecting a debt with twan, Sylvester enters a cafe but doesn’t come out.
* Chapter 14: Sylvester meets Cathy for dinner. turns out they planned on being caught in bed by her husband, Rufus. Sylvester recognizes the waitress, Tina, who attacks him with a broken bottle.
* Chapter 15: Tina and a cook, Roxanne, admit that they put Twan in jail by ratting him out on a drug deal. Tina says she was pregnant with twan’s child.
* Chapter 16: Twan doesn’t believe Tina, but Sylvester persuades him to work it out with her. Tina and Roxanne have other plans; they begin kissing.
* Chapter 17: Sylvester wants to shoot the lesbians, but he and Twan leave without bloodshed. Twan threatens to return with a gun.
* Chapter 18: At the church where Rufus is pastor, Rufus calls chuck to break up because he’s going back to his wife. chuck says he’s in the hospital.
* Chapter 19: At Rufus’ church, a preacher and the choir ask Pimp Lucius (R. Kelly) to give up pimpin’. He refuses and walks out.
* Chapter 20: Rosie’s husband, Randolph, a janitor at the church, overheard Rufus and Chuck. Randolph suspects Chuck is in the hospital because he has AIDS.
* Chapter 21: Twan and Sylvester visit a mobster named Joey to discuss robbing a train. Joey may be sleeping with Sylvester’s wife, Gwen.
* Chapter 22: As the rumor spreads of Chuck’s diagnosis, the cast of characters begin to fear that they have HIV.