Email to a Friend

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

The Found Footage Festival is coming back to the area this Saturday evening.  Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, whose credits include The Onion and Late Show With David Letterman, showcase terrible, terrible footage from videos that were found at garage sales and thrift stores and in warehouses and dumpsters throughout the country.  They make the screenings into an event by cleverly editing the footage, adding live commentary, doing some comedy bits, bringing special guests in, stuff like that. I’ve been a couple times in the past and each time I yell at my friends afterwards who missed it.  I mean, just watch:

Amazing.  You have no excuse this time tho cause we’ve got two pairs of tickets to giveaway, just comment below and let us know you want them.

Found Footage Film Festival
$10.00
Saturday Nov 7, 2009
Doors 6:15PM
Show 7:15PM
Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse
2903 Columbia Pike
South Arlington
http://www.arlingtondrafthouse.com/
http://www.foundfootagefest.com/

As it’s the 5 year anniversary of the fest, we decided it was time to havea little chat with co-host Nick Prueher.

Cale: What is the most important lesson you’ve learned in 5 years of showing people shitty videos?

Nick Prueher: Full-frontal male nudity is always funny.

C: Has it become harder or easier to find new content?

NP: It’s actually become easier. More and more people are getting rid of their VHS collections at thrift stores and garage sales, so it’s prime season for us.

C: As the popularity of the fest has grown do you now also get a lot of people sending you stuff? Do you take submissions?

NP: Yes, about half of the footage in the new show is stuff that people found and sent into us. We always love it when we get a VHS tape in the mail from somebody who found it somewhere. It’s like Christmas morning for us. We just can’t wait to pop it in the VCR and see what’s on it.

C: Do you get weirdos sending you home movies they’ve made?

NP: Luckily, we don’t get many people sending in their own home movies. Our criteria is that the footage has to be legitimately found, so it’s cheating if you’re in the video.

Three rules govern Found Footage Festival:
1) Footage must be found on physical format, no YouTube;
2) Footage must be unintentionally funny;
3) No Richard Simmons footage.

C: If your house was burning down what video would you save first?

NP: I think I’d go for “Clown Ministry” first. It was a really good find and it comes in this giant clamshell case with an instructional book on how to preach the word of Jesus as a clown.

C: Which would you save last?

NP: I don’t think I’d expend too much effort trying to rescue “Kathie Lee’s Rock ‘n’ Tots Cafe” from the flames. We’ve got, like, ten of them.

I first saw this infamous “Winnebago Man” clip at the Found Footage Festival, it has recentlybeen the topic of a feature length documentary.

C: How come you guys didn’t make your own movie about tracking down the Winnebago Man?

NP: Honestly, we’ve got so many awesome videos in our collection that it would be hard to concentrate on just one. But Ben Steinbauer, the filmmaker behind “Winnebago Man,” really loved the Jack Rebney R.V. video and decided to hire a private investigator to track him down. The documentary is really good, and I’m not just saying that because we’re in it.

C: I actually haven’t seen it yet, did he learn of the footage from you guys, or was this something that was widely avail, or should I just watch the movie?

NP: We were doing a show in Las Vegas a couple of years ago and, unbeknownst to us, a friend of Jack Rebney’swas there, saw his pal up onscreen, and bought a DVD to show to Jack. When Jack found out about it, he was apparently pretty pissed off. Not too big of a surprise from a guy we call “The World’s Angriest R.V. Salesman.” But somehow, through the help of this filmmaker who’d seen the footage online somewhere, Jack agreed to appear withus at a show in San Francisco last year. I won’t giveaway the ending, but I will say that it was probably the biggest highlight of our five years doing the show. “Winnebago Man” will be released in select theaters soon and DVD thereafter.  http://www.winnebagoman.com

C: The press release for the fest this year describes footage that sounds similar to the infamous Heavy Metal Parking Lot film… are you trying to confuse us, entice us, what’s going on here?

NP: Jeff Krulik, the filmmaker behind “Heavy Metal Parking Lot,” came across a home movie very similar to that, except it takes place at an outdoor death metal festival in Potomac, Maryland in 1985, not a Judas Priest parking lot in 1984. He was kind enough to let us cut together some clips from it for this show. Also, and here’s where it gets weird, the home movie was shot by a security guard who worked at CBS and he used their equipment to record everything. So you’vegot all these shirtless drunk guys talking about LSD and holding a CBS microphone with the eye logo. It’s totally incongruous.

C: Have you ever watched the special features on the Heavy Metal Parking Lot DVD where they try to track down some of the kids? I think it’s zebra man who is like really creepy and doesn’t allow them into his house and makes them show it to him in his garage or something cause I guess there are dead bodies in his living room. Have you ever tried to track anyone else down? Is there anyone that you’re just dying to know what they’re up to now?

NP: Our favorite part about doing the show is finding out the back story behind the videos. Jeff Krulik is a kindred spirit and he’s currently in production on a documentary where he tracks down the people from this heavy metal home movie. Jeff will be at the show in Arlington to talk more about it. The one person we’ve never been able to track down from our footage is this guy named Kirk from a home movie called Kirk’s 40th Birthday. Kirk: If you’re reading Brightest Young Things right now, please contact us via www.foundfootagefest.com.

C: Are the stories of legendary debauchery backstage at the found footage festival true?

NP: Oh yeah, slutty groupies just love sarcastic guys who collect VHS tapes.

C: Has an unknowing audience member ever been surprised to find themselves appearing on screen during the festival?

NP: Sort of. We were showing this instructional video for a male pleasure device called the Venus II at a recent show in New York and a guy came up to us afterward and said, “You’re not going to believe this, but I went to high school with the son of the inventor of the Venus II.” We got the guy’s contact information and flew to Illinois to meet him. It did not disappoint. We play the instructional video and the interview with the inventor in the new show.

C: Are there any infamous videos out there rumored to exist that you’d like to get your hands on? Like the mud shark incident at the Edgewater Inn or something like that?

NP: I guess the most frustrating thing for us is when someone sends us a YouTube link of a video we wished we’d found. There’s a corporate video called the “Super Broker Shuffle,” a take-off of the Chicago Bears’ Superbowl Shuffle, that is perfect for the FFF. Unfortunately, the tape still eludes us.

C: You were an intern at MST3K? Dude!

NP: Yeah, I grew up making fun bad television, so when I first saw MST3K, I was in love. Then after college, I got an internship there and got to know the guys. It was a big inspiration. I thought, “Wow! You can actually get paid to be a professional smart-ass.”

C: Is there another DVD in the works?

NP: We just shot this new show, Volume 4, in Tucson, Arizona, a few weeks ago and are editing it now. It should be out in three weeks via http://store.foundfootagefest.com

C: Are there legal hurdles you have to deal with when presenting or selling found footage, or is this stuff pretty much off the radar?

NP: Luckily, we’ve never run into any problems. What we do is covered under fair use and satire laws because we’re showing small snippets from much longer videos, talking over them and putting them into the context of a comedy show. That, and I don’t think the producers of the “How To Seduce Women Through Hypnosis” video are anxious to come forward and admit they made that tape.

Once again, if you want to go, just comment below, we’ve got two pairs of tickets to give away!

Found Footage Film Festival
$10.00
Saturday Nov 7, 2009
Doors 6:15PM
Show 7:15PM
Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse
2903 Columbia Pike
South Arlington
http://www.arlingtondrafthouse.com/
http://www.foundfootagefest.com/

Email to a Friend

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•