Found Footage Festival

Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher are professional data sifters. You could also say they watch crap for a living.

In fact, let's say that instead.

The pair harvests and compiles snippets from salvaged VHS tapes for their Found Footage Festival, then screens the stuff publicly. It results in analog peculiarity -- old workout tapes, crafting how-tos and home shopping network goofs woven together with riffy dialogue. It's pop culture, shrinky-dinked in nostalgia. Still confused? Think MST3K on hallucinogenics at a rummage sale.

On Thursday they close their tour, ending a road trip that's lasted for more than a year, at Dallas' Texas Theatre. Then, they'll take a thousand showers.

When I rang 'em up, Joe was driving, so Nick and I discussed why VHS has verve, his own secretly recorded life, hiring private investigators and what an outsider can expect from Thursday night's Found Footage Festival. Then he begged for handouts. (Have old, must-see VHS tapes? Donate 'em to the Found mission, says Nick.)
Mixmaster: You guys have been touring this program since the lower, mid-aughts. I think I was on the brink of getting a cell phone then. How has the novelty factor of VHS changed or increased since you started doing this?

Nick Prueher: Well, it's interesting because it was pre-YouTube when we started taking our collection public. We'd been showing it to friends privately for many years at that point, but we were lucky that people were ready to look back at VHS and laugh around 2004.

Then YouTube came out, and people got more familiar with this kind of material, and the novelty's changed: Now more than ever people want to come in the theater and see it. You have this footage that wasn't meant to be seen in public, it was meant to be seen privately in a living room or a break room, and now you're gathering with friends.

How did you two wind up meeting each other?

We've been friends since sixth grade, and we've always been doing stupid projects like this in one form or another. This is the only one that other people seem to like.

What were some of the failed projects?

We did a pretty embarrassing comedy newspaper in middle school.

What was it called?

The Daily Chimp.

It already sounds gold.

Yeah, it was comics and short stories and only stuff that maybe three people found funny. And we were just very easily bored so we'd find stupid ways to entertain ourselves. But we developed an appreciation for things that were so bad they were good.

I think something you notice when watching these older videos is that while people appear ridiculous when captured digitally now, the way they react to being recorded has changed. It's weird, because the act of actually recording something on VHS should have been so much more intentional, and yet there's this charming clunkiness. This less-polished awareness of how a camera would wind up capturing them. Why do you think that is? Is it the novelty of a new medium?

I think means of distribution had a lot to do with it. It was everywhere too, suddenly everyone had a VCR. So it was a brand new medium but Jane Fonda's Workout came out in '82 or '81 and it was huge. It was the first thing priced for the home video market, rather than for a video store to buy. It was a gold rush. People saw that and thought: "We gotta hop on this train," so we have all of these Mom and Pop operations getting into the video production business. And there was this wide-eyed innocence -- maybe it was a naïveté or a lack of understanding of what would, and what wouldn't, work -- but people were just throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what stuck.

It would be hard to create [that], because when everyone has a webcam on their laptop and a recorder built-in on their phone, everyone knows that what they're doing could be seen by a worldwide audience. At the time you didn't know that. You thought you were only speaking to people who collect Beanie Babies for a video called How to Collect Beanie Babies. They're marketing to a more specific audience, and now there's more self-awareness.

Do you revisit your old home movies now?
Oh yeah. And the thing I realize is that we can dish it out but we can't take it.

Here is when we learn about one of Nick's most shameful, taped moments. It happened in a Disney Land karaoke room that allowed you to record a music video for $35 dollars. Nick, then 12, demanded that he and his younger sister duet to "Parents Just Don't Understand," a Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff jam with one sexually-charged verse accidentally directed at his sibling. Having not yet hit puberty, Nick was unaware of the lustful connotations. He also didn't realize that her voice was deeper than his. Years later, FFF partner Joe located the tape and leaked it to the area cable access channel. Nick then destroyed the - Dallas Observer

Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher are professional data sifters. You could also say they watch crap for a living.

In fact, let's say that instead.

The pair harvests and compiles snippets from salvaged VHS tapes for their Found Footage Festival, then screens the stuff publicly. It results in analog peculiarity -- old workout tapes, crafting how-tos and home shopping network goofs woven together with riffy dialogue. It's pop culture, shrinky-dinked in nostalgia. Still confused? Think MST3K on hallucinogenics at a rummage sale.

On Thursday they close their tour, ending a road trip that's lasted for more than a year, at Dallas' Texas Theatre. Then, they'll take a thousand showers.

When I rang 'em up, Joe was driving, so Nick and I discussed why VHS has verve, his own secretly recorded life, hiring private investigators and what an outsider can expect from Thursday night's Found Footage Festival. Then he begged for handouts. (Have old, must-see VHS tapes? Donate 'em to the Found mission, says Nick.)
Mixmaster: You guys have been touring this program since the lower, mid-aughts. I think I was on the brink of getting a cell phone then. How has the novelty factor of VHS changed or increased since you started doing this?

Nick Prueher: Well, it's interesting because it was pre-YouTube when we started taking our collection public. We'd been showing it to friends privately for many years at that point, but we were lucky that people were ready to look back at VHS and laugh around 2004.

Then YouTube came out, and people got more familiar with this kind of material, and the novelty's changed: Now more than ever people want to come in the theater and see it. You have this footage that wasn't meant to be seen in public, it was meant to be seen privately in a living room or a break room, and now you're gathering with friends.

How did you two wind up meeting each other?

We've been friends since sixth grade, and we've always been doing stupid projects like this in one form or another. This is the only one that other people seem to like.

What were some of the failed projects?

We did a pretty embarrassing comedy newspaper in middle school.

What was it called?

The Daily Chimp.

It already sounds gold.

Yeah, it was comics and short stories and only stuff that maybe three people found funny. And we were just very easily bored so we'd find stupid ways to entertain ourselves. But we developed an appreciation for things that were so bad they were good.

I think something you notice when watching these older videos is that while people appear ridiculous when captured digitally now, the way they react to being recorded has changed. It's weird, because the act of actually recording something on VHS should have been so much more intentional, and yet there's this charming clunkiness. This less-polished awareness of how a camera would wind up capturing them. Why do you think that is? Is it the novelty of a new medium?

I think means of distribution had a lot to do with it. It was everywhere too, suddenly everyone had a VCR. So it was a brand new medium but Jane Fonda's Workout came out in '82 or '81 and it was huge. It was the first thing priced for the home video market, rather than for a video store to buy. It was a gold rush. People saw that and thought: "We gotta hop on this train," so we have all of these Mom and Pop operations getting into the video production business. And there was this wide-eyed innocence -- maybe it was a naïveté or a lack of understanding of what would, and what wouldn't, work -- but people were just throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what stuck.

It would be hard to create [that], because when everyone has a webcam on their laptop and a recorder built-in on their phone, everyone knows that what they're doing could be seen by a worldwide audience. At the time you didn't know that. You thought you were only speaking to people who collect Beanie Babies for a video called How to Collect Beanie Babies. They're marketing to a more specific audience, and now there's more self-awareness.

Do you revisit your old home movies now?
Oh yeah. And the thing I realize is that we can dish it out but we can't take it.

Here is when we learn about one of Nick's most shameful, taped moments. It happened in a Disney Land karaoke room that allowed you to record a music video for $35 dollars. Nick, then 12, demanded that he and his younger sister duet to "Parents Just Don't Understand," a Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff jam with one sexually-charged verse accidentally directed at his sibling. Having not yet hit puberty, Nick was unaware of the lustful connotations. He also didn't realize that her voice was deeper than his. Years later, FFF partner Joe located the tape and leaked it to the area cable access channel. Nick then destroyed the - Dallas Observer

The 1980s and 1990s were the glory days of the home movie—cameras and VCRs were affordable and easy to use, but no one had any dang idea how to film something anyone else would want to watch: poorly thought-out video dating profiles; cheesy, no-budget advertisements; and embarrassing corporate training videos abounded, and since this was before the dawn of YouTube, all of those glorious disasters were left to rot in the cavernous bins of thrift stores and garage sales.

The Found Footage Festival is devoted to bringing those accidental gems to life. For eight years, a couple guys from Wisconsin with a passion for scouring through dumpsters, second-hand shops, and warehouses have been curating the best, worst, and strangest clips they could find—they’ve made six DVD compilations and a book of VHS covers, and tour all over the world with their videos. I caught up with founders Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher before they headed off to Europe to see how they were doing.

VICE: Hey, Nick and Joe. How’d all of this come about, anyway?
Joe Pickett: We started doing this documentary based on a cassette tape that we found at a truck stop in southern Wisconsin by a guy named Larry Pierce. He had, at the time, recorded about eight albums of filthy country songs. We fell in love with this guy and decided to write him a letter and see if we could shoot a music video for him or maybe do a little documentary on him. Within three days, we got a call back from him saying, “Hey, I got your letter, my life’s not that interesting, I work third shift at this factory, I write these dirty country songs on my lunch break, I’m married with children, I record them in my garage.” We’re like, “Holy shit, that’s an awesome fucking story,” so we both quit our jobs and worked on this full-time and quickly realized that they don’t hand out grants for movies about dirty country singers.

Nick Prueher: We applied for grants, but they always go to something about African orphans with HIV.

Joe: Our rejection letters were basically, “Fuck no, no money for you.” So then we had to get creative with how we raised our money, so we started doing the Found Footage Festival.

What has it been like taking the FFF on the road for the past eight years?
Nick: We’re basically traveling around doing a show-and-tell every night for a new group of people. But the rigors of flying, renting a car, driving nine hours to get to the other city, setting up, doing the show…

Joe: Yeah, my shitting schedule gets all off. My butt is just confused.

Nick: I can attest to that.

Joe: We’re doing a 50-state tour this time; I think we’re at 42 or 43. I’d say maybe there are 39 good states.

Nick: Yeah, there are about 20 you could take or leave. - Vice Magazine

The 1980s and 1990s were the glory days of the home movie—cameras and VCRs were affordable and easy to use, but no one had any dang idea how to film something anyone else would want to watch: poorly thought-out video dating profiles; cheesy, no-budget advertisements; and embarrassing corporate training videos abounded, and since this was before the dawn of YouTube, all of those glorious disasters were left to rot in the cavernous bins of thrift stores and garage sales.

The Found Footage Festival is devoted to bringing those accidental gems to life. For eight years, a couple guys from Wisconsin with a passion for scouring through dumpsters, second-hand shops, and warehouses have been curating the best, worst, and strangest clips they could find—they’ve made six DVD compilations and a book of VHS covers, and tour all over the world with their videos. I caught up with founders Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher before they headed off to Europe to see how they were doing.

VICE: Hey, Nick and Joe. How’d all of this come about, anyway?
Joe Pickett: We started doing this documentary based on a cassette tape that we found at a truck stop in southern Wisconsin by a guy named Larry Pierce. He had, at the time, recorded about eight albums of filthy country songs. We fell in love with this guy and decided to write him a letter and see if we could shoot a music video for him or maybe do a little documentary on him. Within three days, we got a call back from him saying, “Hey, I got your letter, my life’s not that interesting, I work third shift at this factory, I write these dirty country songs on my lunch break, I’m married with children, I record them in my garage.” We’re like, “Holy shit, that’s an awesome fucking story,” so we both quit our jobs and worked on this full-time and quickly realized that they don’t hand out grants for movies about dirty country singers.

Nick Prueher: We applied for grants, but they always go to something about African orphans with HIV.

Joe: Our rejection letters were basically, “Fuck no, no money for you.” So then we had to get creative with how we raised our money, so we started doing the Found Footage Festival.

What has it been like taking the FFF on the road for the past eight years?
Nick: We’re basically traveling around doing a show-and-tell every night for a new group of people. But the rigors of flying, renting a car, driving nine hours to get to the other city, setting up, doing the show…

Joe: Yeah, my shitting schedule gets all off. My butt is just confused.

Nick: I can attest to that.

Joe: We’re doing a 50-state tour this time; I think we’re at 42 or 43. I’d say maybe there are 39 good states.

Nick: Yeah, there are about 20 you could take or leave. - Vice Magazine

Nowadays, an 8-year-old armed with a Flip camera and iMovie can shoot and edit a video that 25 years ago required a TV studio. That same pesky kid can upload content in minutes to a potential audience of millions.


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But once upon a time, YouTube and Facebook didn’t exist. These were the Dark Ages of VHS. To shoot a home video meant lugging around a camera, tape deck, and battery pack as heavy as a Renault LeCar. The only way to disseminate your video awesomeness to friends (real friends, not virtual ones) was to invite them over.

The Found Footage Festival recalls that cruder, less ironic “Golden Age of Home Video’’ of the mid-’80s through the mid-’90s, a time when the number of how-to videos exploded and CG effects were only a few steps evolved from your Commodore 64.

The 2011 fest kicks off its 75-city tour at the Brattle Theatre on Thursday.

For those old enough, video artifacts from that era exhume painful memories of mullets and shoulder pads. For others, their amateurish look is unintentionally hilarious. The Found Footage Festival rides that edge, alternately touching our funny and nostalgia bones.

“We come from the old analog world where to watch a video you had to trade it with someone,’’ say Nick Prueher, 34, festival cofounder and cohost, by telephone from his home in Queens, N.Y. “It used to be a social thing.’’

Prueher and partner in crime Joe Pickett have revived that communal element by touring a selection of found videotapes — corporate training videos, public access programs, home movies — they’ve freshly culled from thrift stores and garage sales. During the live show, the two add context and off-the-cuff commentary: “What we were doing in our living room,’’ Prueher says. “Pre-‘Mystery Science Theater 3000,’ we were already making fun of bad TV.’’

The show has one mandate. The footage must exist on physical media: VHS or, occasionally, three-quarter-inch U-matic videocassette.

“We don’t take anything from the Internet,’’ says Pickett, 35. “No one wants to see a YouTube video all blown up.’’

The 2011 lineup includes all-new footage Pickett and Prueher found while on last year’s tour. Their website — www.foundfootagefest.com — archives top finds from the thousands of tapes they’ve scrutinized; on the big screen is what Prueher calls “the cream of the crop.’’

Clips that rose to the top include: how-to ventriloquism videos found in an Atlantic City Goodwill store; self-hypnosis videos promising better performance in tennis, bowling, and lovemaking; exercise videos featuring an impressive assortment of celebrities; a Linda “The Exorcist’’ Blair instructional tape called “How to Get Revenge’’; a montage of 25 hunting call videos with names like “The Magic of Squirrel Calling’’; and dozens more.

“It’s burly, mustached men in camouflage making funny sounds,’’ says Pickett of the hunting-call compilation. “It almost sounds like free-form jazz.’’ In a segment called “Lying & Stealing,’’ they show tapes obtained while claiming to run a meat-processing plant, or by working at a video store, for a day.


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Where possible, a video’s director or on-camera talent are tracked down and invited to come up on stage. Or sometimes the hosts get the call. Pickett recalls when the makers of a shopping video contacted him. “We thought they were [angry], because it’s not very flattering footage. But we met them and they loved it. They came [to a show] and did a reenactment.’’

Prueher makes it clear that while the festival screens only the highlights, er, lowlights, the edits aren’t manipulative. They’re “true to the tape.’’ Pointing out poofy hair and Dokken concert T-shirts gets laughs, he says, but the point isn’t ridicule.

“There’s partly that nostalgia. There’s partly that remembering the format and the production values of yesteryear and cataloging and preserving it,’’ says Prueher. “The AFI [American Film Institute] is preserving ‘Citizen Kane.’ We’re preserving ‘Cutest Cat Capers.’ ’’ For them, these tapes are a more accurate portrait of the American people. With their wobbly tracking and washed-out colors, they “have more truth,’’ Prueher says, than any AFI top 100 films list.

Friends from the sixth grade, Prueher and Pickett began their collection in 1991 after finding a McDonald’s training video called “Inside and Outside Custodial Duties.’’

“Our friendship is based on our appreciation for things that are so bad that they’re good,’’ Prueher says. “We didn’t excel in school other than that. Our sense of irony was very well developed from the age of 12.’’ Prueher went on to be a researcher at the “Late Show With David Letterman,’’ Pickett a film technician, and both have written for The Onion.

In 2004, living in New York, the two were encouraged by friends to turn their private screenings into a show. Sold-out performances in the East Village - Boston Globe

Nowadays, an 8-year-old armed with a Flip camera and iMovie can shoot and edit a video that 25 years ago required a TV studio. That same pesky kid can upload content in minutes to a potential audience of millions.


Tweet Be the first to Tweet this!
Yahoo! BuzzShareThis
But once upon a time, YouTube and Facebook didn’t exist. These were the Dark Ages of VHS. To shoot a home video meant lugging around a camera, tape deck, and battery pack as heavy as a Renault LeCar. The only way to disseminate your video awesomeness to friends (real friends, not virtual ones) was to invite them over.

The Found Footage Festival recalls that cruder, less ironic “Golden Age of Home Video’’ of the mid-’80s through the mid-’90s, a time when the number of how-to videos exploded and CG effects were only a few steps evolved from your Commodore 64.

The 2011 fest kicks off its 75-city tour at the Brattle Theatre on Thursday.

For those old enough, video artifacts from that era exhume painful memories of mullets and shoulder pads. For others, their amateurish look is unintentionally hilarious. The Found Footage Festival rides that edge, alternately touching our funny and nostalgia bones.

“We come from the old analog world where to watch a video you had to trade it with someone,’’ say Nick Prueher, 34, festival cofounder and cohost, by telephone from his home in Queens, N.Y. “It used to be a social thing.’’

Prueher and partner in crime Joe Pickett have revived that communal element by touring a selection of found videotapes — corporate training videos, public access programs, home movies — they’ve freshly culled from thrift stores and garage sales. During the live show, the two add context and off-the-cuff commentary: “What we were doing in our living room,’’ Prueher says. “Pre-‘Mystery Science Theater 3000,’ we were already making fun of bad TV.’’

The show has one mandate. The footage must exist on physical media: VHS or, occasionally, three-quarter-inch U-matic videocassette.

“We don’t take anything from the Internet,’’ says Pickett, 35. “No one wants to see a YouTube video all blown up.’’

The 2011 lineup includes all-new footage Pickett and Prueher found while on last year’s tour. Their website — www.foundfootagefest.com — archives top finds from the thousands of tapes they’ve scrutinized; on the big screen is what Prueher calls “the cream of the crop.’’

Clips that rose to the top include: how-to ventriloquism videos found in an Atlantic City Goodwill store; self-hypnosis videos promising better performance in tennis, bowling, and lovemaking; exercise videos featuring an impressive assortment of celebrities; a Linda “The Exorcist’’ Blair instructional tape called “How to Get Revenge’’; a montage of 25 hunting call videos with names like “The Magic of Squirrel Calling’’; and dozens more.

“It’s burly, mustached men in camouflage making funny sounds,’’ says Pickett of the hunting-call compilation. “It almost sounds like free-form jazz.’’ In a segment called “Lying & Stealing,’’ they show tapes obtained while claiming to run a meat-processing plant, or by working at a video store, for a day.


Tweet Be the first to Tweet this!
Yahoo! BuzzShareThis
Where possible, a video’s director or on-camera talent are tracked down and invited to come up on stage. Or sometimes the hosts get the call. Pickett recalls when the makers of a shopping video contacted him. “We thought they were [angry], because it’s not very flattering footage. But we met them and they loved it. They came [to a show] and did a reenactment.’’

Prueher makes it clear that while the festival screens only the highlights, er, lowlights, the edits aren’t manipulative. They’re “true to the tape.’’ Pointing out poofy hair and Dokken concert T-shirts gets laughs, he says, but the point isn’t ridicule.

“There’s partly that nostalgia. There’s partly that remembering the format and the production values of yesteryear and cataloging and preserving it,’’ says Prueher. “The AFI [American Film Institute] is preserving ‘Citizen Kane.’ We’re preserving ‘Cutest Cat Capers.’ ’’ For them, these tapes are a more accurate portrait of the American people. With their wobbly tracking and washed-out colors, they “have more truth,’’ Prueher says, than any AFI top 100 films list.

Friends from the sixth grade, Prueher and Pickett began their collection in 1991 after finding a McDonald’s training video called “Inside and Outside Custodial Duties.’’

“Our friendship is based on our appreciation for things that are so bad that they’re good,’’ Prueher says. “We didn’t excel in school other than that. Our sense of irony was very well developed from the age of 12.’’ Prueher went on to be a researcher at the “Late Show With David Letterman,’’ Pickett a film technician, and both have written for The Onion.

In 2004, living in New York, the two were encouraged by friends to turn their private screenings into a show. Sold-out performances in the East Village - Boston Globe

Poorly chosen superimposed fonts, the flick of tracking being adjusted, and a hazy analog fuzz.

These are the hallmarks of VHS, and the absurd instructional videos, home movies, and public service announcements that Joe Pickett, Nick Prueher and Geoff Haas often screened for their friends in high school.

In 2004 the trio created the Found Footage Festival and toured with it to fund their first documentary, “Dirty Country.” This weekend, the sixth installment of the festival hits Anthology Film Archives.

If you’re among the many who frequent sites like Everything Is Terrible!, you’re well aware of the forgotten, personal, and downright bizarre things that have been committed to VHS tape. But while that site often relies on creative editing and splicing to solicit laughs, the videos in the Found Footage Festival are mostly untouched.

“Our philosophy is that the videos are weird enough on their own,” said Mr. Prueher. “We don’t need to weird them up at all. In fact, the more straightforward we are in presenting the videos as we found them, the funnier they are.”


Much like the misuse of fonts and overuse of Photoshop effects dated graphic design in the early-to-mid ‘90s, the introduction of home video cameras and early digital editing techniques created a distinctive, often hilarious aesthetic.

With its neon pulsing titles, budget green-screen effects, and lots of sheer clothing, “It Ain’t Worth it,” a pro-abstinence video starring former NBA stars David Robinson and A.C. Green and NFL great Barry Sanders, shares the early-90s production values of the “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” intro, or a Too Short video. One could argue that no matter how noble their subject matter, cheesy videos like this were asking to be lampooned, even during their time.

“People forget this now, but when VHS first came out for consumers it was revolutionary. It was cheap to produce and eventually, ubiquitous,” said Mr. Prueher. “As a result, any amateur with an inkling of an idea was getting into the VHS market, so you ended up with a lot weird, esoteric stuff on tape.”

Mr. Prueher believes the “wide-eyed naiveté” of early VHS pioneers is “almost impossible in the internet age where everyone is fully aware that their webcam video might be seen all over the world,” and seeing their handiwork archived on the internet just doesn’t compare to seeing it live.

“I like getting a funny YouTube link in my inbox as much as the next guy, but watching a clip on a little two-inch window on your laptop by yourself is a totally different experience than watching it with a big group in a movie theater on the big screen,” he said. “Something magical happens when you take these videos that were meant to be watched at home or in a break room and projecting them on the silver screen.”

Though there is one video Mr. Prueher wouldn’t necessarily want to see on the big screen: “When I was 12-years-old, my parents took me and my sister, age 10, to a theme park in California. I really wanted to do this karaoke thing where you sing a song and then make a music video of it and they give the videotape as a souvenir. My parents relented and I convinced my sister to help me do the Fresh Prince’s ‘Parents Just Don’t Understand.’ I should point out a few things about myself at that age: I was quite fat, my voice hadn’t changed yet, and my comedy philosophy was the opposite ‘less is more.’” - The New York Times

Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett have curated the great American garage sale of fringe video, one unintentional artifact at a time. - The Village Voice

Coming soon to America's West Coast: a unique film festival designed to appeal to those who enjoy the voyeuristic embarrassment of catching a neighbor playing air guitar or relish the contrived story lines of corporate training videos.

The Found Footage Festival is filled with home movies, bizarre personal videos, industrial films and bad public-access shows, all discovered in such prime locales as thrift stores, dumpsters and garage sales.

Based in Queens and started roughly a year ago, Found has toured to sold-out houses in several cities, including Chicago, Minneapolis and Austin. A West Coast tour is planned; organizers are appealing for help.

The show includes everything from bad elementary-school talent shows to rednecks skinning catfish alive. There are bad corporate training films and graphic penis-pump instructional videos. "They get the best reaction from people," admitted co-curator Joe Pickett. "It never fails to deliver."

The festival was started by two childhood friends from Wisconsin, Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, who began collecting and sharing found videos in high school.

"When people would come over we'd pop in certain tapes," Pickett said.

Besides garage sales, friends of friends and Goodwill (a plethora of good videos), Pickett's top-secret source of footage was his former day job at a video-duplication company.

"A lot of the times I'd get some industrial training videos in there that were way too good to pass up," he said. "So I'd toss an extra little videotape in there and push record and make a copy for myself."

Both Pickett and Prueher quit their day jobs (Prueher was the head researcher for the David Letterman show) to pursue the world of video oddities full time. While filming a documentary called Dirty Country -- centering on a country music singer named Larry Pierce who distributes his horribly filthy CDs at truck stops around the country -- they ran out of funds. To raise cash for the production, they started the Found Footage Festival, screening a mix of the videos they'd been showing in their living room.

"I think part of the charm of our show is these are videos not intended for a mass audience. When a mass audience is watching it, you realize how ridiculous a training video actually is," Pickett said. "You're allowed to laugh at it, whereas if you're sitting in a break room, you're not allowed to laugh at it."

Pickett feels the same way about home movies. "It's like the real reality TV. Their own people are working the camera, and you see a slice of life. We're not necessarily laughing at these people; we're not necessarily laughing with them. It's funny because we've all had these home videos, and we all know how hokey they are."

Proving to be a Found Footage Festival favorite is It Only Takes a Second, a safety video put out by Federated Mutual Insurance.

"It's made with the intention of scaring people into being safe," Pickett said. "So whenever they have some new group, like a factory, who has Federated Mutual Insurance as their insurance company, for legal reasons they make all the employees sit down and watch the stupid video."

What follows is a three-and-a-half-minute video of people falling off tall cranes and running their hands through table saws. But it doesn't end there -- the tragic accidents escalate.

"It's unbelievable. It just gets better and better as you watch it. It ends with a car crash and just a huge explosion."

Then there's the joy of a Wendy's training video that features a rapping crew trainer.

"They have this kid," Pickett said. "It's his first day on the job flipping burgers. He has to watch this video, and out from the TV screen is like this rapping guy. He comes out and grabs him and takes him to this other world and he raps him the instructions on grilling a hamburger. It's just jaw-droppingly stupid."

A home movie, Memorial Day 2000, is described as an "instant classic."

"I don't even know how to categorize these people," Pickett said. "They're in their 20s and they take their parents' RV out to this resort area and ride their four-wheelers. There's couch burning, there's mooning the camera, there's puking, there's everything you can imagine. That one just kills. People love that one."

Found at a garage sale in Central Wisconsin is a video called Kirk's 40th Birthday.

"It's basically an unedited day in the life of Kirk and his two buddies and his wife and his two attention-starved kids," said Pickett. "We always preface it by saying, 'This is for the connoisseur of found videos.' It doesn't hit you over the head like the Wendy's training video does; it's more like a fine wine. You have to appreciate it and let it soak in."

"I think Joe and I would be both be a little star-struck if Kirk or any of his pals showed up to a Found Footage Festival," added Prueher. "We've watched his home movie so many times that we feel like we know Kirk personally, and let's face - Harmon Leon, Wired

Coming soon to America's West Coast: a unique film festival designed to appeal to those who enjoy the voyeuristic embarrassment of catching a neighbor playing air guitar or relish the contrived story lines of corporate training videos.

The Found Footage Festival is filled with home movies, bizarre personal videos, industrial films and bad public-access shows, all discovered in such prime locales as thrift stores, dumpsters and garage sales.

Based in Queens and started roughly a year ago, Found has toured to sold-out houses in several cities, including Chicago, Minneapolis and Austin. A West Coast tour is planned; organizers are appealing for help.

The show includes everything from bad elementary-school talent shows to rednecks skinning catfish alive. There are bad corporate training films and graphic penis-pump instructional videos. "They get the best reaction from people," admitted co-curator Joe Pickett. "It never fails to deliver."

The festival was started by two childhood friends from Wisconsin, Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, who began collecting and sharing found videos in high school.

"When people would come over we'd pop in certain tapes," Pickett said.

Besides garage sales, friends of friends and Goodwill (a plethora of good videos), Pickett's top-secret source of footage was his former day job at a video-duplication company.

"A lot of the times I'd get some industrial training videos in there that were way too good to pass up," he said. "So I'd toss an extra little videotape in there and push record and make a copy for myself."

Both Pickett and Prueher quit their day jobs (Prueher was the head researcher for the David Letterman show) to pursue the world of video oddities full time. While filming a documentary called Dirty Country -- centering on a country music singer named Larry Pierce who distributes his horribly filthy CDs at truck stops around the country -- they ran out of funds. To raise cash for the production, they started the Found Footage Festival, screening a mix of the videos they'd been showing in their living room.

"I think part of the charm of our show is these are videos not intended for a mass audience. When a mass audience is watching it, you realize how ridiculous a training video actually is," Pickett said. "You're allowed to laugh at it, whereas if you're sitting in a break room, you're not allowed to laugh at it."

Pickett feels the same way about home movies. "It's like the real reality TV. Their own people are working the camera, and you see a slice of life. We're not necessarily laughing at these people; we're not necessarily laughing with them. It's funny because we've all had these home videos, and we all know how hokey they are."

Proving to be a Found Footage Festival favorite is It Only Takes a Second, a safety video put out by Federated Mutual Insurance.

"It's made with the intention of scaring people into being safe," Pickett said. "So whenever they have some new group, like a factory, who has Federated Mutual Insurance as their insurance company, for legal reasons they make all the employees sit down and watch the stupid video."

What follows is a three-and-a-half-minute video of people falling off tall cranes and running their hands through table saws. But it doesn't end there -- the tragic accidents escalate.

"It's unbelievable. It just gets better and better as you watch it. It ends with a car crash and just a huge explosion."

Then there's the joy of a Wendy's training video that features a rapping crew trainer.

"They have this kid," Pickett said. "It's his first day on the job flipping burgers. He has to watch this video, and out from the TV screen is like this rapping guy. He comes out and grabs him and takes him to this other world and he raps him the instructions on grilling a hamburger. It's just jaw-droppingly stupid."

A home movie, Memorial Day 2000, is described as an "instant classic."

"I don't even know how to categorize these people," Pickett said. "They're in their 20s and they take their parents' RV out to this resort area and ride their four-wheelers. There's couch burning, there's mooning the camera, there's puking, there's everything you can imagine. That one just kills. People love that one."

Found at a garage sale in Central Wisconsin is a video called Kirk's 40th Birthday.

"It's basically an unedited day in the life of Kirk and his two buddies and his wife and his two attention-starved kids," said Pickett. "We always preface it by saying, 'This is for the connoisseur of found videos.' It doesn't hit you over the head like the Wendy's training video does; it's more like a fine wine. You have to appreciate it and let it soak in."

"I think Joe and I would be both be a little star-struck if Kirk or any of his pals showed up to a Found Footage Festival," added Prueher. "We've watched his home movie so many times that we feel like we know Kirk personally, and let's face - Harmon Leon, Wired

The Found Footage Festival Duo Sorts Through Our Cultural Refuse For Ironic Laughs

If Mystery Science Theater 3000 and America’s Funniest Videos got scrambled together in a blender, the results might look something like the Found Footage Festival, a traveling show of videotape detritus retrieved from thrift stores, Dumpsters and garage sales, which plays this weekend at the Chicago Cultural Center and the Empty Bottle. Festival organizers Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher roam the country presenting snippets of exercise tapes, insurance-company safety videos, a McDonald’s training tape and assorted bits of home video, delivered with occasional bits of riffing commentary.

Pickett and Prueher have been collecting our video trash for years. Initially, they only showed it to friends in their living rooms. But in 2004 they turned their stash into a commercial venture to help finance a documentary they’ve been working on about an extremely obscene country singer named Larry Pierce. These days they spend an alarming amount of time looking at otherwise worthless videotape, editing together montages, and debating what an audience will enjoy. “We sort of suffer for our art by sitting through the entire videos and handpicking the best moments to show,” Prueher muses. “I don’t think anybody could sit through the entire Alyssa Milano exercise video.” Pickett chimes in: “There is actual suffering going on here. Actual suffering.”

To the casual observer, their pursuit may seem like the ultimate slacker goof-off, but they put a lot of thought into the editing of the clips and their order in the show. The truly bizarre McDonald’s cleaning staff-training video has to come early on, or people find it boring, and the montage of exercise videos (which includes contributions from Mark Wahlberg, Lorenzo Lamas and four rapping pregnant ladies) works best as midshow punctuation.

“We try to space out things that are home movies with some of the more corporate and training-type videos,” Prueher says. “We’ve also found that there are limits to how much stupidity people can handle at one time.”

When we confess that previewing a tape of one of their shows made us crave a beer (at ten in the morning), Pickett and Prueher seem unsurprised. “We definitely prefer to play at places that serve booze,” Pickett says. “We played the Empty Bottle last year, a great venue. Get a couple beers in you and watch these videos. It’s a match made in heaven.”

But Pickett, careful not to dis their screening this year at the more refined Cultural Center, qualifies the assertion a bit. “Booze certainly helps to an extent, but there are times we get 70- to 80-year-old people in the audience at a community center and they’re laughing just as hard as somebody on his fourth beer. So you just never know. I think stupid videos transcend sobriety."
- Hank Sartin, Time Out Chicago

Ever wonder what happened to that old family video of you and your siblings acting like clowns? What about that instructional VHS of the must-have gadget you used for two days before tossing it in frustration?

Thanks to the efforts of two self-described preservationists of Americana, those videos might reappear in the Found Footage Festival, a 90-minute comedy montage of 15 video clips, presented by curators Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett. The next installment will be screened outdoors Friday in Williamsburg.

As Mr. Prueher explained, "Any idiot could put out a VHS tape in the '80s and '90s, and thankfully for us, a lot of them did."

The offbeat clips include a promotional video for a Japanese bidet accompanied by soothing Enya-esque music and an exercise video hosted by a scantily clad Angela Lansbury. In "Grill Skill," a training video for Wendy's restaurants, an employee is watching television when, in a flash of smoke and red-and-green lights, he is sucked through the television into an alternate universe where a trainer performs a rap song about the proper techniques for grilling meat patties.

Messrs. Prueher and Pickett, both 29, describe themselves as amateur historians, rescuing footage that represents a certain place and time in American life.

"A lot of the clips are emblematic of America and its obsession with the media: that nothing should be left untaped," Mr. Prueher said. "If someone based their view of America solely on the clips, it's not a pretty picture."

In a home video titled "Memorial Day 2000," which was found at a garage sale in Michigan, a group of 20-somethings goes on a vacation that decends into "Lord of the Flies"-type bacchanalia. "Mud fights, drinking till they throw up, a lot of vomiting, nudity, chanting," Mr. Pickett said. "You think, 'Wow, we've come to this.'"

The Wisconsin natives have spent countless hours combling trash bins and yard sales in search of bits of discarded video.

Their foray into the "so bad they're good" genre began in high school, when Mr. Prueher was working at a McDonald's in Wisconsin. A friend handed him a training video called "Inside and Outside Custodial Duties."

"It was so terrible that it fostered a cult following. Joe and some friends would come over and we would watch it over and over in my parents' living room," Mr. Prueher said. He still has the tape.

Upon graduation from the University of Wisconsin, Mr. Pickett worked as a freelance production and camera assistant. Mr. Prueher held jobs at "Mystery Science Theater 3000," the old Comedy Central television show that poked fun at bad movies, and at the "Late Show with David Letterman," where he was in charge of researching embarrassing footage of celebrity guests.

The stars were aligned. The pair debuted the Found Footage Festival in April of 2004 to a sold-out crowd.

"I was amazed how it struck a nerve with people," Mr. Prueher said. "Part of it is nostalgia for the '80s and '90s production values; part of it is the voyeuristic pleasure of watching videos that weren't meant to be seen."

Today, the friends work out of a two-bedroom apartment in Long Island City.

"We wade through hundreds of tapes that are boring, and it can drive you nuts," said Mr. Prueher. "But it's the glimmer of hope that you'll find a gem somewhere: That's what keeps me going."

Mr. Pickett added, "Just knowing that Federated Mutual Insurance comes out with a new instructional video each year is enough." - Rachel Montross, The New York Sun

Found Footage Festival Finds Humor In The Banal

Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett have been collecting odd videos, from home movies found at garage sales to corporate training videos stolen from chain stores to obscure snippets of regional home-shopping channels, for more than a decade. Former writers for satirical newspaper The Onion, with individual credits that also include The Late Show with David Letterman and Mystery Science Theater 3000, the duo were working on a documentary called Dirty Country (about obscure, vulgar country singer Larry Pierce) when they ran out of money and decided to charge admission to the periodic exhibitions of their bizarre video collection.

Thus was born the Found Footage Festival, which will be showing as part of the film program at The Comedy Festival. Prueher and Pickett sift through hundreds of hours of submitted videotapes to come up with the funniest and most bizarre snippets to edit into a 90-minute program. "It's amazing the kind of stupid things that people commit to videotape," Prueher says. Those stupid things sometimes end up at garage sales and in thrift stores, and then in Prueher and Pickett's hands.

Their show is not, however, simply a more risqué version of America's Funniest Home Videos, although Prueher and Pickett are unabashed fans of the long-running show featuring people falling down and getting hit in the groin. The Found Footage Festival trades more on pathos and unintentional humor, with a wealth of cringe-inducing promotional films, uncomfortable outtakes and home movies that are more pathetic than celebratory.

The two are still primarily filmmakers—thanks to the Found Footage Festival's success, they raised enough money to complete Dirty Country, which is now in post-production—and they understand that the overall effect of the program is greater than any one element. "Just the idea of repositioning these videos that were never meant to be shown in public and putting them in that new context, that's kind of an art," Prueher says.

Aesthetic considerations aside, the Festival is about comedy, and laughing at the hilarity of everyday awkwardness. Prueher and Pickett have no Vegas-specific footage yet, although they've recently picked up a video on how to win at slots hosted by the late actor James Coburn. They encourage audience members to bring any found footage of their own to the screening, as they're always looking for new material. "This is what we were born to do," Prueher says. "Unfortunately," Pickett laughs.

The Found Footage Festival is screening November 17-19, as part of the Comedy Festival's film program, in the Florentine and Pompeian ballrooms in Caesars. Tickets are $27.27 per day. - Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly

Ever wonder what happened to that old family video of you and your siblings acting like clowns? What about that instructional VHS of the must-have gadget you used for two days before tossing it in frustration?

Thanks to the efforts of two self-described preservationists of Americana, those videos might reappear in the Found Footage Festival, a 90-minute comedy montage of 15 video clips, presented by curators Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett. The next installment will be screened outdoors Friday in Williamsburg.

As Mr. Prueher explained, "Any idiot could put out a VHS tape in the '80s and '90s, and thankfully for us, a lot of them did."

The offbeat clips include a promotional video for a Japanese bidet accompanied by soothing Enya-esque music and an exercise video hosted by a scantily clad Angela Lansbury. In "Grill Skill," a training video for Wendy's restaurants, an employee is watching television when, in a flash of smoke and red-and-green lights, he is sucked through the television into an alternate universe where a trainer performs a rap song about the proper techniques for grilling meat patties.

Messrs. Prueher and Pickett, both 29, describe themselves as amateur historians, rescuing footage that represents a certain place and time in American life.

"A lot of the clips are emblematic of America and its obsession with the media: that nothing should be left untaped," Mr. Prueher said. "If someone based their view of America solely on the clips, it's not a pretty picture."

In a home video titled "Memorial Day 2000," which was found at a garage sale in Michigan, a group of 20-somethings goes on a vacation that decends into "Lord of the Flies"-type bacchanalia. "Mud fights, drinking till they throw up, a lot of vomiting, nudity, chanting," Mr. Pickett said. "You think, 'Wow, we've come to this.'"

The Wisconsin natives have spent countless hours combling trash bins and yard sales in search of bits of discarded video.

Their foray into the "so bad they're good" genre began in high school, when Mr. Prueher was working at a McDonald's in Wisconsin. A friend handed him a training video called "Inside and Outside Custodial Duties."

"It was so terrible that it fostered a cult following. Joe and some friends would come over and we would watch it over and over in my parents' living room," Mr. Prueher said. He still has the tape.

Upon graduation from the University of Wisconsin, Mr. Pickett worked as a freelance production and camera assistant. Mr. Prueher held jobs at "Mystery Science Theater 3000," the old Comedy Central television show that poked fun at bad movies, and at the "Late Show with David Letterman," where he was in charge of researching embarrassing footage of celebrity guests.

The stars were aligned. The pair debuted the Found Footage Festival in April of 2004 to a sold-out crowd.

"I was amazed how it struck a nerve with people," Mr. Prueher said. "Part of it is nostalgia for the '80s and '90s production values; part of it is the voyeuristic pleasure of watching videos that weren't meant to be seen."

Today, the friends work out of a two-bedroom apartment in Long Island City.

"We wade through hundreds of tapes that are boring, and it can drive you nuts," said Mr. Prueher. "But it's the glimmer of hope that you'll find a gem somewhere: That's what keeps me going."

Mr. Pickett added, "Just knowing that Federated Mutual Insurance comes out with a new instructional video each year is enough." - Rachel Montross, The New York Sun

The Found Footage Festival stars Corey Haim, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Traci Lords and the beer abusers of Oceana County, Mich.

THE IMPORTANCE of "gleaning" is the subject of Agnes Varda's captivating humanistic documentary The Gleaners and I. Varda investigates the old peasant custom of clearing fields after a harvest. As Varda interviews the poor of today in France, she makes a case that gleaning is a rebel's duty, a way of fighting waste and planned obsolescence. It's a holy duty, carried on by second-harvesters, dumpster divers and the staff of Found magazine. The culture of retrieving and rehabilitating discards enlivens the road-show Found Footage Festival, a compilation package of material found dumped in free boxes or sold in garage sales.

Memorial Day 2000—the most flabbergasting of the films—is a home video of a beer bust at Silver Lake State Park, Oceana County, Mich. I'm a hearty peasant myself, but the frenzied hostility of the drinking here is palpable. The anonymous camerawoman was always in the right place to check the aggression brought under the friendly surface, the raw sewage and—ahoy, nostalgia fans—the imitations of the tongue-lolling "Wazzzzuppp!" commercial (made all the uglier by green-tinged night-vision film).

Festival co-founder Nick Preuher wrote me, "This home movie was found at a garage sale in western Michigan. ... We were actually in Kalamazoo doing a Found Footage Festival recently and secretly hoped that a few of the folks in the video would hear about the show and come down. No such luck, but someone who knew some of the people in the video came up to us afterward and gave us some interesting scoop. Apparently, three of the people in the video are now kindergarten teachers somewhere in Michigan. I'm not sure how they'd feel about their video being shown in public, but, hey, they shouldn't have sold it at a garage sale."

Memorial Day 2000 stumps even those jaded by bad behavior, like, say, denizens of downtown San Jose. Images: a skinhead braying an ironic version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" while holding a toy plastic American flag with the UPC sticker still stuck on it. (Where is this bruiser now—did he become a born-again patriot after 9/11? Did he enlist?) Pickup trucks careen in a tar-black mud pit. At night, the so-called "shitter bong" comes out: it's a funnel with inch-wide plastic tubing attached in the matter of a stomach pump. Where an unnamed girl chokes on lager, an unnamed guy succeeds. "You are the whip-shit of all shitter bongers!" the former announces proudly.

Some of the material has been seen on the Internet and elsewhere. Chicago-based outsider musician Jan Terri's self-produced music videos lead one to paraphrase Terri's fellow Illinoisan Adlai Stevenson: Watching her, you feel too grown-up to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh. Terri's power-pop version of "Frère Jacques" has already been heard on The Daily Show. Similarly, the Internet has spread the footage of a newscaster who tried to do a "Pet of the Week" segment with a house cat determined to claw out his femoral artery.

Mockery of everyday chumps is all well and good, but the camera may have worsened the situation. The mulletheads clowning in Kirk's 40th Birthday Party may be revving their motorcycles and mugging with a tit-shaped birthday cake because they know they're being photographed.

But it takes a celebrity or a corporation to really crank up the embarrassment level. Low comedy abounds in two insurance-company safety tapes that consist of a montage of slapstick industrial accidents. If the acting were as good as the stunt work, they'd be impossible to watch.

Just as catastrophic is an at-home-with–Corey Haim video. Haim, a male starlet of the mid-1980s, shows that he is tanned, rested and ready in a calling-card video. "Wuzzup!" he cries, showing his good friend the cameraman around his home and sharing deeper emotions ("Kissing a girl is like—it's like dolphins in your bloodstream").

At least Haim had the temporary sense not to make an exercise video. The festival offers a montage of them, starring such luminaries as Traci Lords (reciting verse as she does some punishing back stretches), a zonked Zsa Zsa Gabor, Angela Lansbury enjoying her aerobics a little too much and a half-grown Alyssa Milano in the alarmingly titled Teen Steam.

These old tapes, with their primitive CG grids and rinky-dink synthesizers, filmed in retina-hurting shades of Nuevo Wavo turquoise and pink, are as evocative as a bakery truck full of madeleines.

So is 1986's Inside and Outside Custodial Duties by McDonald's. "Washing a parking lot? Now that's McDonald's clean!" Whether it's the crawling subservience of the new trainee or the alarmingly chipper manager—cast for her resemblance to Phoebe Cates—the atmosphere is as fraught with tension as the opening sequence of a porn film.

Prueher says, "What we show is a small four-minute excerpt from a much longer video, and we're ta - Richard von Busack, MetroActive (San Francisco, CA)

The Found Footage Festival stars Corey Haim, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Traci Lords and the beer abusers of Oceana County, Mich.

THE IMPORTANCE of "gleaning" is the subject of Agnes Varda's captivating humanistic documentary The Gleaners and I. Varda investigates the old peasant custom of clearing fields after a harvest. As Varda interviews the poor of today in France, she makes a case that gleaning is a rebel's duty, a way of fighting waste and planned obsolescence. It's a holy duty, carried on by second-harvesters, dumpster divers and the staff of Found magazine. The culture of retrieving and rehabilitating discards enlivens the road-show Found Footage Festival, a compilation package of material found dumped in free boxes or sold in garage sales.

Memorial Day 2000—the most flabbergasting of the films—is a home video of a beer bust at Silver Lake State Park, Oceana County, Mich. I'm a hearty peasant myself, but the frenzied hostility of the drinking here is palpable. The anonymous camerawoman was always in the right place to check the aggression brought under the friendly surface, the raw sewage and—ahoy, nostalgia fans—the imitations of the tongue-lolling "Wazzzzuppp!" commercial (made all the uglier by green-tinged night-vision film).

Festival co-founder Nick Preuher wrote me, "This home movie was found at a garage sale in western Michigan. ... We were actually in Kalamazoo doing a Found Footage Festival recently and secretly hoped that a few of the folks in the video would hear about the show and come down. No such luck, but someone who knew some of the people in the video came up to us afterward and gave us some interesting scoop. Apparently, three of the people in the video are now kindergarten teachers somewhere in Michigan. I'm not sure how they'd feel about their video being shown in public, but, hey, they shouldn't have sold it at a garage sale."

Memorial Day 2000 stumps even those jaded by bad behavior, like, say, denizens of downtown San Jose. Images: a skinhead braying an ironic version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" while holding a toy plastic American flag with the UPC sticker still stuck on it. (Where is this bruiser now—did he become a born-again patriot after 9/11? Did he enlist?) Pickup trucks careen in a tar-black mud pit. At night, the so-called "shitter bong" comes out: it's a funnel with inch-wide plastic tubing attached in the matter of a stomach pump. Where an unnamed girl chokes on lager, an unnamed guy succeeds. "You are the whip-shit of all shitter bongers!" the former announces proudly.

Some of the material has been seen on the Internet and elsewhere. Chicago-based outsider musician Jan Terri's self-produced music videos lead one to paraphrase Terri's fellow Illinoisan Adlai Stevenson: Watching her, you feel too grown-up to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh. Terri's power-pop version of "Frère Jacques" has already been heard on The Daily Show. Similarly, the Internet has spread the footage of a newscaster who tried to do a "Pet of the Week" segment with a house cat determined to claw out his femoral artery.

Mockery of everyday chumps is all well and good, but the camera may have worsened the situation. The mulletheads clowning in Kirk's 40th Birthday Party may be revving their motorcycles and mugging with a tit-shaped birthday cake because they know they're being photographed.

But it takes a celebrity or a corporation to really crank up the embarrassment level. Low comedy abounds in two insurance-company safety tapes that consist of a montage of slapstick industrial accidents. If the acting were as good as the stunt work, they'd be impossible to watch.

Just as catastrophic is an at-home-with–Corey Haim video. Haim, a male starlet of the mid-1980s, shows that he is tanned, rested and ready in a calling-card video. "Wuzzup!" he cries, showing his good friend the cameraman around his home and sharing deeper emotions ("Kissing a girl is like—it's like dolphins in your bloodstream").

At least Haim had the temporary sense not to make an exercise video. The festival offers a montage of them, starring such luminaries as Traci Lords (reciting verse as she does some punishing back stretches), a zonked Zsa Zsa Gabor, Angela Lansbury enjoying her aerobics a little too much and a half-grown Alyssa Milano in the alarmingly titled Teen Steam.

These old tapes, with their primitive CG grids and rinky-dink synthesizers, filmed in retina-hurting shades of Nuevo Wavo turquoise and pink, are as evocative as a bakery truck full of madeleines.

So is 1986's Inside and Outside Custodial Duties by McDonald's. "Washing a parking lot? Now that's McDonald's clean!" Whether it's the crawling subservience of the new trainee or the alarmingly chipper manager—cast for her resemblance to Phoebe Cates—the atmosphere is as fraught with tension as the opening sequence of a porn film.

Prueher says, "What we show is a small four-minute excerpt from a much longer video, and we're ta - Richard von Busack, MetroActive (San Francisco, CA)

Brookline, Mass. -- Jack Rebney certainly lives up to his billing as the "world's angriest RV salesman." Rebney, a middle-aged, ramrod-straight man in a tie and a mustache, is the inadvertent star of a montage of outtakes that often brings the Found Footage Festival to its riotous conclusion.

The excerpts of this rage-filled man, culled from an infomercial taping gone heinously awry, pretty much defines the concept of schadenfreude. As he grows more and more disgusted -- with the heat, the bugs, his own flubbed lines and the generally pathetic nature of the station he's achieved in life -- his cursing grows increasingly irrational and more and more creative. Fans of Buddy Rich and Casey Kasem might think they know the drill, but this volcanic tirade makes those legendary hotheads seem like cuddly Teletubbies in comparison. The more unhinged Rebney becomes, the more the viewer's own hysterical laughter becomes involuntary.

That's the express aim of the Found Footage Festival: vigorous, athletic laughter at the misfortune of others.

Sometimes the misfortune is in the form of intense nerdiness, as in the bounty of dorky exercise videos and corporate training films that are festival specialties. Sometimes it's in the form of sadly misguided celebrity, as in the lascivious appearance by a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in a promotional spot for Brazilian tourism. Sometimes it's just plain bad behavior, such as the "Lord of the Flies"-like barbarism of "Memorial Day 2000," an incredibly unseemly home video of a drunk and disorderly camping trip in the mud.

Most of the time it involves someone's mind-boggling stupidity, or shamelessness, or both. The festival founders make no bones about it.

"I was kind of born to do this," says Nick Prueher, who built the vast Found Footage Festival library over years of obsessive collecting with pals Joe Pickett and Geoff Haas. After countless private living-room screenings, they only recently began sharing their stash with the public.

While working on a documentary feature on Larry Pierce, an unheralded singer of adults-only "dirty country" songs, the filmmakers ran out of money. So they started presenting the Found Footage Festival as a sort of live version of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" -- silly programming with comic running commentary -- in and around their adopted home of New York.

They grew up in Wisconsin and attended state school there; for a time both Prueher and Pickett were contributors to the satirical newspaper the Onion. In New York, Prueher spent four years as a researcher on "The Late Show With David Letterman." One of his main responsibilities was to look for "old, embarrassing commercials and appearances" for celebrities who were scheduled as guests. One highlight was the time he found a tape of a young Richard Gere in a London stage performance, way back in 1973, of "Grease."

Gere, Prueher reports, was absolutely thrilled. It was his first big professional role, and he hadn't seen footage of himself in the part for years.

"He was ecstatic," says Prueher, sitting in a coffee shop across the street from the theater where he and Pickett will present the festival later, at a midnight screening. "He came up afterward and shook my hand."

For the partners, some of the unknowns featured in the festival have become celebrities in their own right. Pickett reserves special affection for the star of "It Only Takes a Second," an insurance company's safety video that plays like a micro-budget slasher film. On a tip from a festival fan, they tracked down the actor in his home state of Michigan and invited him to a local screening.

"We like to bring people onstage," Pickett says. "We're always a little starstruck."

The partners have firsthand appreciation for the compromises of their featured performers. Prueher worked at a McDonald's in high school, where he first learned of the sublime nature of corporate training films. (One Found Footage Festival staple is a Mickey D's instructional video called "Inside and Outside Custodial Duties.") Pickett, who worked for a time at a video duplication service, once took a job at a video rental store in a mall just because he'd heard its training films were jaw-droppingly funny. He stuffed a copy in his backpack and quit the next day.

"Luckily, we have no scruples at all," Prueher says.

The Found Footage Festival and others like it are part of a growing community of like-minded scavenger-connoisseurs -- Found magazine, for instance, and the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. These recycling artists cover the visual aspect of "mongo," the art of salvage. In a weird way, they're cousins to hip-hop sampling, in which junk culture is resurrected in a new context.

"It's all the same fascination with the hunt," Pickett says, though the product doesn't always work on the same set of emotions. If Found magazine is "more bittersweet, more poetic," he says, the Found Footage Festiva - James Sullivan, San Francisco Chronicle

Brookline, Mass. -- Jack Rebney certainly lives up to his billing as the "world's angriest RV salesman." Rebney, a middle-aged, ramrod-straight man in a tie and a mustache, is the inadvertent star of a montage of outtakes that often brings the Found Footage Festival to its riotous conclusion.

The excerpts of this rage-filled man, culled from an infomercial taping gone heinously awry, pretty much defines the concept of schadenfreude. As he grows more and more disgusted -- with the heat, the bugs, his own flubbed lines and the generally pathetic nature of the station he's achieved in life -- his cursing grows increasingly irrational and more and more creative. Fans of Buddy Rich and Casey Kasem might think they know the drill, but this volcanic tirade makes those legendary hotheads seem like cuddly Teletubbies in comparison. The more unhinged Rebney becomes, the more the viewer's own hysterical laughter becomes involuntary.

That's the express aim of the Found Footage Festival: vigorous, athletic laughter at the misfortune of others.

Sometimes the misfortune is in the form of intense nerdiness, as in the bounty of dorky exercise videos and corporate training films that are festival specialties. Sometimes it's in the form of sadly misguided celebrity, as in the lascivious appearance by a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in a promotional spot for Brazilian tourism. Sometimes it's just plain bad behavior, such as the "Lord of the Flies"-like barbarism of "Memorial Day 2000," an incredibly unseemly home video of a drunk and disorderly camping trip in the mud.

Most of the time it involves someone's mind-boggling stupidity, or shamelessness, or both. The festival founders make no bones about it.

"I was kind of born to do this," says Nick Prueher, who built the vast Found Footage Festival library over years of obsessive collecting with pals Joe Pickett and Geoff Haas. After countless private living-room screenings, they only recently began sharing their stash with the public.

While working on a documentary feature on Larry Pierce, an unheralded singer of adults-only "dirty country" songs, the filmmakers ran out of money. So they started presenting the Found Footage Festival as a sort of live version of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" -- silly programming with comic running commentary -- in and around their adopted home of New York.

They grew up in Wisconsin and attended state school there; for a time both Prueher and Pickett were contributors to the satirical newspaper the Onion. In New York, Prueher spent four years as a researcher on "The Late Show With David Letterman." One of his main responsibilities was to look for "old, embarrassing commercials and appearances" for celebrities who were scheduled as guests. One highlight was the time he found a tape of a young Richard Gere in a London stage performance, way back in 1973, of "Grease."

Gere, Prueher reports, was absolutely thrilled. It was his first big professional role, and he hadn't seen footage of himself in the part for years.

"He was ecstatic," says Prueher, sitting in a coffee shop across the street from the theater where he and Pickett will present the festival later, at a midnight screening. "He came up afterward and shook my hand."

For the partners, some of the unknowns featured in the festival have become celebrities in their own right. Pickett reserves special affection for the star of "It Only Takes a Second," an insurance company's safety video that plays like a micro-budget slasher film. On a tip from a festival fan, they tracked down the actor in his home state of Michigan and invited him to a local screening.

"We like to bring people onstage," Pickett says. "We're always a little starstruck."

The partners have firsthand appreciation for the compromises of their featured performers. Prueher worked at a McDonald's in high school, where he first learned of the sublime nature of corporate training films. (One Found Footage Festival staple is a Mickey D's instructional video called "Inside and Outside Custodial Duties.") Pickett, who worked for a time at a video duplication service, once took a job at a video rental store in a mall just because he'd heard its training films were jaw-droppingly funny. He stuffed a copy in his backpack and quit the next day.

"Luckily, we have no scruples at all," Prueher says.

The Found Footage Festival and others like it are part of a growing community of like-minded scavenger-connoisseurs -- Found magazine, for instance, and the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. These recycling artists cover the visual aspect of "mongo," the art of salvage. In a weird way, they're cousins to hip-hop sampling, in which junk culture is resurrected in a new context.

"It's all the same fascination with the hunt," Pickett says, though the product doesn't always work on the same set of emotions. If Found magazine is "more bittersweet, more poetic," he says, the Found Footage Festiva - James Sullivan, San Francisco Chronicle

Milkhouse Productions, creators of the short Gas ‘n’ Fuel and the folks behind the Found Footage Festival enjoy some of the same things I do - bizarre video clips that appear produced from the very bowels of hell because no mortal man could possibly come up with something this entertaining.

The Found Footage Festival is comprised of clips from employee training videos, public access shows, educational films and other on-camera blunders found at yard sales, thrift stores and garbage cans. This is the true underground cinema - films and videos that, for the most part, are not produced for the general viewing public. If you want to see something truly different and disturbing, the Found Footage Festival has what you’re looking for en masse...

As of this writing, the Found Footage Festival will be screening a new program of films on August 20th in New York at Cinema Classics. If you’re in the area, you are urged to drop whatever plans you have and attend. It’ll be an experience you’ll be talking about for a long time to come.
- Eric Campos, Film Threat

Milkhouse Productions, creators of the short Gas ‘n’ Fuel and the folks behind the Found Footage Festival enjoy some of the same things I do - bizarre video clips that appear produced from the very bowels of hell because no mortal man could possibly come up with something this entertaining.

The Found Footage Festival is comprised of clips from employee training videos, public access shows, educational films and other on-camera blunders found at yard sales, thrift stores and garbage cans. This is the true underground cinema - films and videos that, for the most part, are not produced for the general viewing public. If you want to see something truly different and disturbing, the Found Footage Festival has what you’re looking for en masse...

As of this writing, the Found Footage Festival will be screening a new program of films on August 20th in New York at Cinema Classics. If you’re in the area, you are urged to drop whatever plans you have and attend. It’ll be an experience you’ll be talking about for a long time to come.
- Eric Campos, Film Threat

Underdog Productions (University of North Carolina-Asheville's activities committee) celebrated the art of hilariously bad videos on Oct. 15, as it hosted the Found Footage Festival, a collection of old training videos and other clips from various corporations, families and celebrities, in the Highsmith Center.

"We felt the Found Footage Festival would be a great draw to UNCA, because it's not your typical comedian, musician or movie," said Gabe Clapper, Underdog Productions promotions director. "And while we still wanted to bring in the usual people who attend our events, we also wanted to bring in a new crowd of people as well."

The event features a presentation of more than a dozen videos, ranging from a McDonald's custodial training video to a music video by A-Team alumnus Mr. T.

Students should find the featured videos funny, not because they were meant to be humorous, but because of their ridiculous nature, according to Clapper.

"A lot of the videos featured use things like cheap special effects and props," Clapper said. "For example, there's one video where a man is supposed to cut his hand on a table saw, but the hand is so blatantly rubber and fake that it's hard not to laugh at his screams of pain."

Others view the videos differently, such as physics and chemistry student Matthew Brown, who ran the event as Underdog Productions' committee chair.

"I think that some of the videos, whether they're meant to or not, offer a great view on society and how some people behave," Brown said.

One example is the clilp "Religious Showdown," according to Brown. The video features clips from two different religious television shows: One syndicated show about love and laughter and one cable-access program which promotes opposite beliefs.

"Just watching how much they differed was amazing," Brown said. "On one hand, you have a guy talking about how you should have lots of love and laughter in your life. But then that is immediately followed up with a man saying that certain people need to drop dead in the name of Jesus Christ. It's just mind-boggling to see how differently people can view religion."

As for the other videos, Clapper called a clip titled "Animal Montage" one of his favorites. This clip featured a cat attacking an Animal Control officer during a Pet of the Week feature.

"It was just crazy, because the cat was acting completely normal, and then all of a sudden, it goes off the deep end," Clapper said. "If that was their pet of the week, I'd hate to see the other animals."

Freshman student Terry Munroe had a different favorite clip: A montage of exercise videos featuring such stars as Zsa Zsa Gabor, Alyssa Milano from "Who's the Boss" and Traci Lords, a former adult video star

"I was rolling with laughter watching how over-the-top most of the exercise videos were," Munroe said. "To go from someone like Zsa Zsa Gabor, who's barely moving, to someone like Traci Lords, who looks like she's filming another adult movie, it's hilariously bad."

About 130 students stopped by the Highsmith Union throughout the evening, according to Brown.

"Not only did we get 130 people at an event on the weekend, but we also got lots of people who we don't normally see at our events and who will hopefully attend more of our events throughout the semester," Brown said.

The event was a success because of its entertainment value, according to Monroe.

"When I go to an event on campus, I want to be entertained," Munroe said. "Events like I went to on Saturday night entertained me very well, and I look forward to attending more events like this in the future."

Clapper also agreed with Brown's sentiments, and feels the Found Footage Festival will help UP become a more successful organization.

"Our goal for the past few years has been to increase attendance at our events, and we've accomplished that," Clapper said. "Now that attendance is up to record levels, we can start focusing on expanding our appeal to students, and I feel that the Found Footage Festival was a step in the right direction." - Mike Bowers, The Blue Banner (UNCA)

Underdog Productions (University of North Carolina-Asheville's activities committee) celebrated the art of hilariously bad videos on Oct. 15, as it hosted the Found Footage Festival, a collection of old training videos and other clips from various corporations, families and celebrities, in the Highsmith Center.

"We felt the Found Footage Festival would be a great draw to UNCA, because it's not your typical comedian, musician or movie," said Gabe Clapper, Underdog Productions promotions director. "And while we still wanted to bring in the usual people who attend our events, we also wanted to bring in a new crowd of people as well."

The event features a presentation of more than a dozen videos, ranging from a McDonald's custodial training video to a music video by A-Team alumnus Mr. T.

Students should find the featured videos funny, not because they were meant to be humorous, but because of their ridiculous nature, according to Clapper.

"A lot of the videos featured use things like cheap special effects and props," Clapper said. "For example, there's one video where a man is supposed to cut his hand on a table saw, but the hand is so blatantly rubber and fake that it's hard not to laugh at his screams of pain."

Others view the videos differently, such as physics and chemistry student Matthew Brown, who ran the event as Underdog Productions' committee chair.

"I think that some of the videos, whether they're meant to or not, offer a great view on society and how some people behave," Brown said.

One example is the clilp "Religious Showdown," according to Brown. The video features clips from two different religious television shows: One syndicated show about love and laughter and one cable-access program which promotes opposite beliefs.

"Just watching how much they differed was amazing," Brown said. "On one hand, you have a guy talking about how you should have lots of love and laughter in your life. But then that is immediately followed up with a man saying that certain people need to drop dead in the name of Jesus Christ. It's just mind-boggling to see how differently people can view religion."

As for the other videos, Clapper called a clip titled "Animal Montage" one of his favorites. This clip featured a cat attacking an Animal Control officer during a Pet of the Week feature.

"It was just crazy, because the cat was acting completely normal, and then all of a sudden, it goes off the deep end," Clapper said. "If that was their pet of the week, I'd hate to see the other animals."

Freshman student Terry Munroe had a different favorite clip: A montage of exercise videos featuring such stars as Zsa Zsa Gabor, Alyssa Milano from "Who's the Boss" and Traci Lords, a former adult video star

"I was rolling with laughter watching how over-the-top most of the exercise videos were," Munroe said. "To go from someone like Zsa Zsa Gabor, who's barely moving, to someone like Traci Lords, who looks like she's filming another adult movie, it's hilariously bad."

About 130 students stopped by the Highsmith Union throughout the evening, according to Brown.

"Not only did we get 130 people at an event on the weekend, but we also got lots of people who we don't normally see at our events and who will hopefully attend more of our events throughout the semester," Brown said.

The event was a success because of its entertainment value, according to Monroe.

"When I go to an event on campus, I want to be entertained," Munroe said. "Events like I went to on Saturday night entertained me very well, and I look forward to attending more events like this in the future."

Clapper also agreed with Brown's sentiments, and feels the Found Footage Festival will help UP become a more successful organization.

"Our goal for the past few years has been to increase attendance at our events, and we've accomplished that," Clapper said. "Now that attendance is up to record levels, we can start focusing on expanding our appeal to students, and I feel that the Found Footage Festival was a step in the right direction." - Mike Bowers, The Blue Banner (UNCA)

Some people shop thrift stores for clothes or records, but Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett peruse them for thrown-away VHS videotapes. Specifically, the odd-ball moments in castoff videdos, the best of which will be shown at their Found Footage Festival kicking off tonight at M Bar in Hollywood.

Dumpster dives, warehouses, estate sales, trashcans. They're all the unlikely sources of what could be called an anti-film fest, one that celebrates the unintentional humor of videos shot by untrained hands - videos so bad even their owners thought they were worthless.

"One thing that we love is people with a lot of ambition and not so much talent," said Prueher, 29.

That includes the two hosts from a now-defunct Wisconsin home shopping channel, the actor hired by an insurance company to pretend his hand got stuck in a table saw and the group of drunken Michigan residents in a tape titled, "Memorial Day 2000."

"It's a needle in a haystack to find something that's entertainingly bad to show for an audience," said Prueher, who recently found a promising tape in his neighbor's trash.

"The label said 'bunion surgery,' and bunion was spelled wrong - like onion with a B. Of course, my eyes lit up," said Prueher, who was let down when he later watched what turned out to be a Discovery Channel program.

Prueher's affection for found footage began as a preteen, when he and Pickett cruised their small Wisconsin hometown for broken answering machines, ejecting the tapes and listening to them for laughs. As they grew up, their affection for found footage switched from audio to video.

The fest's curators now have a collection of 1,000-plus tapes, which Prueher keeps in the "spare bedroom" of his 550-square-foot New York City apartment, where he now lives. New York is also where the Found Footage Festival made its debut, in a small East Village theater in April.

Prueher & Co. decided to take their show to the West Coast because "we kept getting emails from people who had heard about it," said Prueher, whose fest made stops in Seattle, Portland and other western cities before hitting L.A.

"For whatever reason, these stupid little videos have stuck a chord with people." - Susan Carpenter, Los Angeles Times

Some people shop thrift stores for clothes or records, but Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett peruse them for thrown-away VHS videotapes. Specifically, the odd-ball moments in castoff videdos, the best of which will be shown at their Found Footage Festival kicking off tonight at M Bar in Hollywood.

Dumpster dives, warehouses, estate sales, trashcans. They're all the unlikely sources of what could be called an anti-film fest, one that celebrates the unintentional humor of videos shot by untrained hands - videos so bad even their owners thought they were worthless.

"One thing that we love is people with a lot of ambition and not so much talent," said Prueher, 29.

That includes the two hosts from a now-defunct Wisconsin home shopping channel, the actor hired by an insurance company to pretend his hand got stuck in a table saw and the group of drunken Michigan residents in a tape titled, "Memorial Day 2000."

"It's a needle in a haystack to find something that's entertainingly bad to show for an audience," said Prueher, who recently found a promising tape in his neighbor's trash.

"The label said 'bunion surgery,' and bunion was spelled wrong - like onion with a B. Of course, my eyes lit up," said Prueher, who was let down when he later watched what turned out to be a Discovery Channel program.

Prueher's affection for found footage began as a preteen, when he and Pickett cruised their small Wisconsin hometown for broken answering machines, ejecting the tapes and listening to them for laughs. As they grew up, their affection for found footage switched from audio to video.

The fest's curators now have a collection of 1,000-plus tapes, which Prueher keeps in the "spare bedroom" of his 550-square-foot New York City apartment, where he now lives. New York is also where the Found Footage Festival made its debut, in a small East Village theater in April.

Prueher & Co. decided to take their show to the West Coast because "we kept getting emails from people who had heard about it," said Prueher, whose fest made stops in Seattle, Portland and other western cities before hitting L.A.

"For whatever reason, these stupid little videos have stuck a chord with people." - Susan Carpenter, Los Angeles Times