Callback

A callback is when audience members "talk back to the screen" during The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Callbacks are among the oldest and most integral forms of Rocky Horror Audience Participation. Angie Bowie (then-wife of rock star David Bowie) has been quoted as saying she may have been the first to talk-back at a live performance when she screamed "Don't do it!" to Riff Raff, before he blasted Dr. Frank-N-Furter to oblivion at the conclusion of The Rocky Horror Show. While callbacks initially began at the UA Westwood where audience members familiar with The Rocky Horror Show started making callbacks to the screen, primarily mimicking lines from the Roxy Cast album, the first documented callback took place in 1976 at the Waverly Theater in New York City when audience member Louis Farese yelled "Buy an umbrella, you cheap bitch!" to Janet Weiss during "There's A Light", and "How strange was it?" to The Criminologist's invitation "to take you on a strange journey". Farese was quoted in The New York Times in 1979 as having seen the film for the first time Labor Day Weekend of 1976, so the precise date is not known, but it was his remark was shortly after that.