May. 12, 2010 - Issue #760: The Meat Issue
Prevue
Rewind the times
Found Footage Festival looks at the unintentional badness of VHS's golden age
"It's simultaneously disappointing and hilarious," says festival co-founder Nick Prueher. "You can't believe that you used to enjoy these cartoons that are just that bad."
Not that the festival only features old cartoons. Prueher and fellow co-founder Joe Pickett select their favourite pieces of unintentional comedy from thousands of VHS tapes bought at garage sales and thrift stores, and present them to audiences with live commentary.
In addition to choice scenes of Rubik, this year's festival features a Dolph Lundgren exercise film, some video dating tape from 1987 and the thespian travails of Bargain Bernie, a Texas furniture salesman turned commercial actor.
"Our criteria is it has to be unintentionally funny," says Prueher. "Usually that means it's bad in some way, like whatever it was trying to do, it failed."
Most of the footage in the festival dates from between 1984 and 1994—the golden age of VHS, according to Prueher, which now sits on thrift store shelves everywhere. On top of their ubiquitous availability, he says the tapes also have a particular mix of nostalgia, voyeurism and schadenfreude.
"It's easy, with some distance, to be able to laugh at ourselves back then," he explains. "It's just enough time where you can appreciate the hair styles and the moustaches and shiny leotards."
Prueher and Pickett do an awful lot of digging to find the best bad videos. Prueher guesses they watch 50 tapes for every one that yields visible footage.
"It's really a needle in a haystack to find something that makes the grade, but that's kind of what makes it fun," he says. "When you find something that's bad in just the right way, you can't wait to show it to people."
Increasingly, other people want to show Prueher tapes that have the right sort of the wrong stuff. After six years of touring the festival around North America and Europe, fans often donate tapes to the pair when they come to town. In fact, Prueher hopes to receive some new material tomorrow.
"We'd love to have some Edmonton footage in the show next year," he says. "If anybody's found anything in or around Edmonton, we would encourage them to bring it." V
Fri, May 14 (8 pm)
Found Footage Festival
Curated by Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett
Citadel Theatre (9828 - 101A Ave), $14
Possibly related stories
New comments for this entry have been turned off and any existing ones are hidden. We apologize for any inconvenience.
