Found Footage festival: 'Stupid videos might be the international language'

You have a video recording of the VHS stupid? Brian Logan meets two men who turn their love "found footage" in a comedy festival

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Some say it is the best way to communicate across borders. But Nick Prueher, co-host of the party comedy sensation Sequence Found beg to differ. "I feel," he said, "that stupid videos could be the international language. Believe that this will translate well."

well better be, "these things" material value hours of VHS thrown him and his partner Joe Pickett recovered from charity shops and car-boot sale in the United States. UU .. Now comes the United Kingdom, as part of the first international tour of this format.

So get ready for the Winnebago Man, a seller of mobile homes turning the air blue while continuing to shake his lines while a series of corporate videos 1980. Or Rent-a-Friend, a character from the early days of VHS who embarks on a doomed attempt to make conversation with anyone who is watching. There are shows academic talent and penis pumps, scary movies health and safety instructionals Texan commercial furniture. "All the video tries to do," says Prueher, "all we ask is that they fail in a fun way."

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Pickett and Prueher

set the found footage festival in 2004 to raise funds for a documentary they were doing dirty country, a country singer obscene. Prueher was then a producer on The Late Show with David Letterman, where "part of my job was to locate materials embarrassing celebrities and former players." It was old and Pickett video Amateur. "We grew up together in a small Midwestern city, where there was not much to do out of boredom, we begin to find and show these videos to others, and to this day, it still seems like a joke "

• Since its public Pickett and Prueher FFF was made at the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal, released 36 episodes of a television version of the satirical news website The Onion (where Pickett wrote), and published four DVDs. The program's success, says Prueher is due in part to the nostalgia of the 1980s and 90s, the high watermarks VHS. And despite concerns that after "eight years of scanning, you may be exhausted video rediscover disposal, will not tolerate the opening of the exhibition in digital images.

"Because the VHS format was new and accessible, there were many people who probably do not have much business behind the camera or in front of him, so that the bands. People did not know what was going to be, so just throwing ideas against the wall and tried things. "That's Rent-a-Friend comes in." There's a guy sitting in a room and say, 'Hello, my name is Sam, what's your name? Then there is a pause and is supposed to suspend disbelief and response. "Prueher not seem impressed. "It probably seemed a good idea at the time."

The shows have also ironic about the co-organizers, and updated "Where are they now?" images. Surprisingly, no issue has offended inclusion unsolicited, although passed by the hair. Winnebago Man - whose real name is Jack Rebney - was driven by a documentary filmmaker and invited one of the events Pickett and Prueher. "When he learned of this material has been doing the rounds, was very angry," says Prueher., But towards the end of the series, "to see people laugh folded, you could see a smile on his face come."

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