You might think you've seen it all on YouTube or by watching Web Junk 2.0, but Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher are connoisseurs of filmed oddities. These two have been digging through stray videotapes and a few Dumpsters since they were teenagers, and you won't believe what they've found. They'll be sharing their treasures with the masses tomorrow night, Saturday, March 31, at midnight at Coolidge Corner Theater. Tickets are $9.50.
If you think you've seen everything thanks to YouTube and viral videos, you are wrong. Bostonist has attended the Found Footage Film Festival, and Joe and Nick treat these videos with the skill of museum curators. If you've seen them before, you should still consider attending on Saturday night because they will have some all-new treats. We asked them questions about how they developed their highly unusual careers, and we also heard more about their documentary, "Dirty Country":
1. It must be hard to find a kindred spirit when it comes to scouring Goodwills and Dumpster diving for strange videotapes. So how did you and Joe Pickett meet each other?
Nick: Joe and I actually met in sixth grade and realized pretty early on that we had similar senses of humor.
Joe: We both have always had a pretty high tolerance for pain - not physical pain, but visual pain, I guess. Together, we’re able to watch any sitcom, exercise video, or home movie, no matter how stupid or boring. Except Boy Meets World. We can’t get through an episode of that show.
2. Where did you find the inspiration for the Found Footage Festival?
Nick: While I was working a McDonald’s in high school, I found a video in the break room called “Inside & Outside Custodial Duties.” It was a training video for a McDonald’s custodian, and it featured an annoyingly perky crew trainer and an extremely dim trainee. I immediately took the video home and showed it to Joe, and we developed this sort of running commentary to the tape. We’d have friends over and do our whole routine with this video for entertainment. And we thought, man, if there are videos this stupid right under our noses, imagine what else is out there. So we began combing all the thrift stores and garage sales in the area every week to search for more video gold.
Joe: For the last four years, Nick and I have been working on a documentary called “Dirty Country,” which we began when we found a cassette tape called “Songs for Studs” at a truck stop in Wisconsin. It featured some of the filthiest - and surprisingly well-written -country music we had ever heard. So we tracked down the guy who recorded it and followed his story for three years. When we ran out of funding, we turned to our video collection and put together the FFF. The revenue we make from the Found Footage Fest helps us finish “Dirty Country.” So, to answer your question, dirty country music helped inspire the Found Footage Fest.
Image of found footage involving a Rejuvenique face mask courtesy of Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett. More interview after the jump!
3. Other than digging around at the local Goodwill, where is the weirdest, most unlikely place you've found video gold?
Nick: A friend of ours from college found a videotape inside an old box that was being stored in a warehouse for a hardware store. It turned out that the warehouse was once used by a regional home shopping channel and this box was left over from the early 1980s. The tape was an excerpt from this program called the "John & Johnny Show," featuring two of the most obnoxious home shopping hosts in the history of television.
Joe: One time my girlfriend and I were at an estate sale in Queens, NY. I purchased a cheap VHS camcorder for, like, $3. When I brought it home and plugged it in, an unmarked video tape popped out. On it was the most bizarre video. We’ll be showing that video this Saturday, completely uncut.
4. Do you guys have dayjobs? If so, what are they, or has the Found Footage Festival brought you untold riches?
Nick: We are both filmmakers by trade. Our feature-length documentary, “Dirty Country,” premiered this month at the South By Southwest Film Festival and won the audience award. We’re looking forward to touring the festival circuit this year.
Joe: The only riches we’ve acquired from the FFF has come in the form of video. We’re both blessed to have kind and patient girlfriends with regular incomes.
5. Some of the people who appear in these videos are absolutely crackers. Has anyone who appeared in one of these videos contacted you? And, if so, what transpired? (We're really worried that Jack Rebney, angry RV salesman, managed to track you guys down.)
Joe: It’s happened on a few occasions, and whenever it does, we brace ourselves for the worst. One of the home shopping hosts from the aforementioned "John & Johnny Show" found out about the show somehow and contacted us. That’s a particularly embarrassing video (for him) so we thought we were done for. But he loved it, and relished in the fact that he’s become a sort of cult figure as a result. Our show never crosses into mean-spiritedness, so I think that helps.
Nick: Not too long ago, we found out that Jack Rebney, the angry RV salesman, had found out about our show. Apparently, a friend of his came to our show in Las Vegas last year and bought a copy of our DVD to show to Jack. Rebney could not believe that this project that he did 20 years ago and forgot about was being screened and talked about and celebrated. We are going to try to get him to appear at one of our shows in the near future. We have so many questions for him.
6. How has the rise of viral video and YouTube changed the Found Footage Festival? Has it helped the Festival or hurt it? Are YouTube and "WebJunk 2.0" your biggest competitor?
Nick: We love YouTube, but our show is a completely different experience. It’s one thing to watch an anonymously forwarded video by yourself on your computer screen. It’s an entirely different thing when you are in a theater, hearing how and where a videotape was found, and then watching it on a big screen with 300 people. These are videos that we have personally found at thrift stores, garage sales, warehouses, and Dumpsters, so we truly cherish them and offer our own comedic take on the material. We are your tour guides through the vast, untamed world of found video.
Joe: "WebJunk 2.0" gives me a stomach ache. It puts the hack comedian and his lame jokes before the video. Our show puts the video first.
7. Copyright is clearly a huge issue on the Web, and not everyone has been able to control their content. Is there a way for you to protect your footage, or have you had to take down footage or pay anyone because of copyright concerns?
Nick: Apart from a short promotional trailer for the festival, we do not post any of our videos online. As far as showing copyrighted videos at our live shows, we have so far not run into any legal issues. Since we are showing small snippets from much longer videos and framing them in the context of a comedy show, we are covered under satire.
Joe: We fly pretty far below the radar, so it hasn’t been a huge concern yet. The only complaints we receive pertain to the brief non-erotic full frontal male nudity that we include in every show. And those complaints are valid.
8. The last time we saw the Found Footage Festival, you were showing a clip of "Carnival in Rio," a softcore tour of Rio featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was in the midst of running for governor of California. You might have had one of the few copies of "Carnival in Rio," so did journalists or opposition groups contact you about that tape? Did anyone on Schwarzenegger's team hassle you for showing it?
Nick: No, in fact, at a show in Sacramento, we had a woman come up to us afterward and tell us she worked in the governor’s office and that, confidentially, she thought the video was hilarious.
Joe: When we were on our West Coast tour, we heard a couple of rumors that Schwarzenegger’s cronies were trying to destroy all copies of it. I think that might actually be true because it’s really hard to find a physical copy. Occasionally there will be one on EBay, but it’s usually really expensive. Luckily our edit of that video is all over the web now, so Arnie’s sordid past is only a click away.
9. You have a form in which
Nick: For us, the litmus test for a good video is whether the footage is unintentionally funny. That, and it has to be legitimately “found” material.
Joe: We’ll never say no to a training video produced in 1986. That was an incredible year for training videos.
10. Each of you, what is your personal favorite out of all the videos you've seen?
Nick: My favorite video changes from week-to-week, but right now I’m very enamored with this cable access show called “A Song for the Enlightened Age.” It is a religious program featuring three of the worst gospel singers you could possibly imagine. But they are very sincere in their intentions. It’s mesmerizing.
Joe: My favorite is an incredibly earnest informational video created for lonely guys called "How to Seduce Women." I'm not going to give away the secret to this particular brand of seduction, but rest assured, it's hilariously creepy.
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