A Communal Celebration of Crap

The Found Footage Festival is just what it says it is: a collection
of film and video clips culled from random sources (thrift stores, flea
markets, Dumpsters) and presented by curators Joe Pickett and Nick
Prueher, childhood friends from southern Wisconsin turned freelance
humorists in New York City. In advance of the Found Footage Fest’s
one-night-only return to Seattle’s Central Cinema, I chatted with
cofounder/cocurator/cohost Nick Prueher about the inspirational power
of McDonald’s training videos, the deal-breaking creepiness of Steve
Vai’s biggest fan, and the benefits of communal viewing of crap.

So how did this all begin? What was the catalyst video?

During high school I worked at a McDonald’s, and there was a video
in the break room called “Inside and Outside Custodial Duties.” It was
a training video for McDonald’s custodians. I popped it in and watched
it in the break room, and I just couldn’t believe how dumb and
insulting this was. It tried to have a plot, with an annoying perky
crew trainer and this really dopey trainee… So I took it home in my
bag that night and showed it to Joe, and we just fell in love with this
video. If there was nothing to do on a Friday night, we’d have people
over in my family’s living room and pop in this McDonald’s training
video and make fun of it. And then we got to thinking, “If there are
videos this stupid right under our noses, imagine what’s out there
waiting to be discovered.” So we decided to keep our eyes peeled, and
we ended up finding a lot of discarded VHS footage at thrift stores and
garage sales and workplaces that was just really funny. Four years ago
somebody said, “Why don’t you take it out of your living room and do it
in a theater?” So we rented out a theater in Manhattan, handed out
press releases, and to our surprise sold out the place. Then we started
getting offers to take the show all over the country. For some reason
it really struck a chord with people. Here we are four years later.

Over this time, the “viral video” market has continued to explode,
making it easier than ever for anyone with a computer to find the
craziest of videos. What does the Found Footage Festival experience
offer that a night alone with YouTube never could?

It is a different ball of wax, really. First, we don’t take any
videos from the internet—all footage has to come from a found
physical videotape, that we’ve either personally found or that has been
given to us by friends or people we’ve met at shows, so this is stuff
you can’t see anywhere else. At the live shows, we always expound on
where we’ve found the videos—to us, the story of where and how a
video was discovered is almost as interesting as what’s on the
footage—and then we make smart-ass remarks over the videos while
they’re playing. A lot [of the Found Footage Fest] comes from
industrial videos and exercise videos and training videos—things
that weren’t intended to be seen with a group or an audience, just
watched alone in a break room. And when you take that type of video and
project it on a big screen in a movie theater filled with 200 people
who have given themselves permission to laugh, it’s automatically
funny. There’s something uncomfortably familiar about all these videos,
and it’s cathartic for people to come and laugh at this ridiculous
stuff together.

What criteria must a film meet for consideration in the Found
Footage Fest?

Our criteria are basically that the video has to be a found physical
piece of videotape and it has to be unintentionally funny. And we’re
really drawn to footage featuring people with a lot of ambition and
very little talent.

Obviously you’ve seen your share of disturbing footage. Have you found anything so upsetting you knew you could never show
it to anyone else?

You wouldn’t know it from watching our shows, but we do actually
exercise discretion once in a while. There’s this video that’s made the
rounds among touring bands, a fan video sent to guitarist Steve Vai,
that’s become kind of legendary. It’s this woman who says that to
impress Steve, who makes all sorts of funny sounds with his guitar,
she’s going to make all sorts of funny sounds with her vagina. And
she’s sort of staring into the camera vacantly while she does this, and
she’s clearly got a few screws loose, and it’s just more weird and
creepy and disturbing than funny. To us, it has to be funny. The whole
point of our show is comedy.

This is an all-new show for 2008. What new footage are you most
excited to share with crap-loving Seattleites?

We have a video in the new show called “Who Needs a Movie?” It’s a
promotional video made by a husband-and-wife filmmaking duo from
British Columbia, touting their services as filmmakers—”We can
make a video for your marching band or to help sell your RV or home or
jazz up your website!” They have all the tools—green-screen
technology, animation—and it’s a great lesson about the
democratization of filmmaking. With today’s technology, everyone can
make a film, but that doesn’t mean everyone should.