One person’s trash is another’s FOUND FOOTAGE
by Chuck Graham on May. 17, 2007, under Calendar, Local
Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett's film finds, which came from garage sales, thrift shops and dumpsters, will be shown at the Loft Cinema on Monday.
Nobody loved the foibles of humans better? more than Shakespeare, or wrote about them better. So the spirit of the Bard is sure to be in the air Monday when the traveling cinema road show they call the Found Footage Festival comes to the Loft Cinema.
In what sounds like a pretty human foible itself, Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett have spent a serious portion of their lives rummaging through the detritus of yard sales and secondhand stores, forgotten warehouse lots and smelly dumpsters, looking for the world’s worst film and video clips. Some of it was shot by accident, some of it is scenes of accidents and some was actually taken on purpose by paid professionals. These are truly forgotten moments from the dark side of nostalgia.
“I was kind of born to do this,” confessed Prueher to one reporter. Well, that would explain it.
For years Prueher collected stuff with no excuse whatsoever, joined by fellow-collectors Pickett and their pal Geoff Haas. Then Prueher and Pickett decided to turn their shady hobby into a shameless profit-raising venture to help fund a different movie they want to make.
Both men also have résumés to prove they did hold down straight jobs in the past. Prueher was a researcher for the “Late Show with David Letterman.” His main task was to track down embarrassing video featuring Letterman’s upcoming guests.
Pickett is a former film technician whose day jobs forced him to watch a lot of bad footage, too. Both friends have written pieces for the satirical online newspaper The Onion.
Being entrepreneurial enough to get their Found Footage Festival up on the screen has turned the innocent collectors into ad libbing comedians stepping on stage to personally introduce their film and video excerpts with the appropriate brio.
The program draws on selections from fast-food training films, hard-sell insurance clips of industrial accidents, outtakes from TV shows, weight-loss videos, public access programs – basically all the places you are likely to see Borat pop up whenever his sequel comes out.
For the avid researcher, there is apparently no shortage of potential candidates for a showcase moment. After all, stupid people are always doing stupid stuff. So far, Prueher and Pickett haven’t had to go any farther back in time than 1985.
Logically, a really bad video would be as rare as a really good video. But these two tireless recyclers of the lumpiness in life haven’t found that to be true.
They do spend hours watching the ordinarily awful just to discover one moment of exceptionally awful. But a person can’t help remembering that potato chip commercial of the past, where the off-camera voice says, “Eat all you want, we’ll make more.”
For a sample selection of Found Footage Festival entries, go to www.cine-magic.com/found footagefest.html.
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IF YOU GO
What: Found Footage Festival, with Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett
When: 8 p.m. Monday
Where: Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd.
Price: $8.50 adults, $5.25 senior citizens, $4.75 members
Info: 322-5638 (322-LOFT), www.loftcinema.com
