Found Footage Festival

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courtesy Nick Prueher

Two people surrounded by vintage media.

Joe Pickett (left) and Nick Prueher and salvaged gems.

Wouldn’t it be great if you had a couple of friends who spend all their time rummaging around garage sales and thrift stores to find old VHS tapes of off-the-wall content like, oh, say a New Age seminar called “Elimination: The First Step?” Well, you do. Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher have hoovered second-hand stores across the country and accumulated over 11,000 VHS tapes. The weirdo films (German nudist club, anybody?) are funny enough, but Pickett and Prueher’s bent banter about the selections is a scream.

media release: THE FOUND FOOTAGE FESTIVAL VOLUME 10!

Tickets: $17 Advance/$20 Day Of Show. This is a General Admission – All Seated Show.

The Found Footage Festival, the live touring showcase of odd and hilarious found videos, is emerging from its VHS-strewn headquarters in Brooklyn on Nov. 25 (8:00) to debut a new show at the Barrymore (2090 Atwood). Stoughton natives Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, whose credits include The Onion and the Late Show, will show off their latest video finds and debut exclusive updates and interviews with the people in them in this performance of their Found Footage Festival: Volume 10 show. Tickets to the Found Footage Festival are $18 and available at foundfootagefest.com/tour.

The Found Footage Festival is a one-of-a-kind celebration of the videos that time forgot, dredged up in dusty thrift stores and estate sales throughout North America. Childhood friends Pickett and Prueher take audiences on a guided tour of their latest and greatest VHS finds, providing live commentary and where-are-they-now updates on the people in these videotaped obscurities.

Highlights of the new show include:

• A retrospective of the Magical Rainbow Sponge crafting videos and a tribute to its star, Dee Gruenig

• A new montage of exercise videos, including a Christian workout called “Believercise” and a tongue aerobics tape called “Oral Aerobics”

• A mysterious New Age video called "Elimination: The First Step."

The Found Footage Festival debuted in New York City in 2004 and has gone on to sell out hundreds of shows each year across the U.S., Canada and the UK, including the Just For Laughs Festival, Edinburgh Fringe and Bonnaroo. It has been featured on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and National Public Radio and has been named a critics’ pick in The Guardian and The New York Times. The FFF can also be seen in their weekly YouTube series, VCR Party Live!, and the hit Tribeca documentary, Chop & Steele, now available on blu-ray and video-on-demand.

Additional information can be found on the festival’s official website: www.foundfootagefest.com.

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher began collecting found videotapes in 1991 after stumbling across a training video entitled, “Inside and Outside Custodial Duties,” at a McDonald’s in their home state of Wisconsin. Since then, they have compiled the world’s largest collection of strange, outrageous and profoundly stupid videos. Pickett, a contributing writer for The Onion, and Prueher, a former staffer at The Colbert Report and the Late Show with David Letterman, directed the award-winning documentary, “Dirty Country” and host the weekly internet show, VCR Party Live! They are also the masterminds behind the Kenny “K-Strass” Strasser, Chef Keith, and Chop & Steele pranks that hit local morning TV news shows across and have since racked up millions of hits on YouTube. One appearance by Pickett and Prueher as the strongman duo Chop & Steele resulted in a federal lawsuit that Fast Company magazine called “the dumbest First Amendment battle” of the year. A feature-length documentary called “Chop & Steele” debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival last year and is on blu-ray, DVD, and video-on-demand.