All of you YouTube addicts out there are probably familiar with many of the "absoludicrous"* found video clips from Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett's touring Found Footage Festival (*Mr. T makes an appearance in the "Celebrities Who Teach" series). The critically-acclaimed event will be in San Francisco tonight and tomorrow night at the Roxie Red Vic at 7:15 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. and this Sunday at the Parkway in Oakland for a 5 p.m. matinee. Every screening features Nick and Joe's live, in-person commentary. If you can't make it to the live show, you have the option to buy the Found Footage Festival Vol. 2 DVD, which features Nick and Joe's commentary and the live audience laugh track from a screening at The Heights Theater in Minnesota. Note: This event has very adult content. There is a clip at the end that will shock, titillate, and stun -- shall we say, "flopping, full frontal?"
The most famous clips from the festival are probably the "world's angriest RV salesman" Jack Rebney (not suitable for work unless you have headphones) and New York cable access talent show from the '80s "Stairway to Stardom". The most endearing character from the festival has to be Harvey Sid Fisher performing his "Astrology Songs." Harvey Sid Fisher makes a live appearance on the festival's DVD, and we are pleased to know that he is a Sagittarian, just like this blogger.
As far as what clip is the most disturbing -- that one's a toss-up. The E-Z Catch chicken harvester will be sure to have you saying no to industrialized farming for good, if you haven't already. The "climax" of the instructional video, "How to Seduce Women Through Hypnosis" and Alan Thicke's PSA where he pairs up with He-Man's Orko to talk to kids about divorce are pretty disturbing as well. Oh, and there's the instructional "face exercise" video that features a mask that resembles the "Carver" from F/X thriller Nip/Tuck.
But we would have to say the clip we found most unsettling was the one entitled "Queen's Home Video," which was found by Nick and his girlfriend on a tape inside a camcorder at an estate sale in Queens, New York. It starts off with a 40-something woman with '80s bleached-blond, stacked bangs flipping off the camera, then cuts to large person in shadows wearing silver lamé and dancing to "Phantom of the Opera," which transitions to a half-naked elderly man in a similar metallic lamé outfit drunkenly stumbling/dancing to "Phantom," and ends with a house being demolished while the camera person argues with one of the construction people about whether he should be allowed to film.
The wonderfully edited Fest ends with wonderfully weird and corny exercise/self-help videos by characters such as Pat Boone, "The Dancin' Grannies," new-age O.J. Simpson, [stoned] rapper Marky-Mark Walberg, perverted sleazeball bodybuilder Arnold Swarchenegger, and a fleet of tall, dark, and flaccid naked men, a sight that rivals the Hayes Hill on the morning of Bay to Breakers (NSFW).
Found Footage Festival | The Roxie The Red Vic: Fri, 10/5 through Sat, 10/6 7:15 & 9:15 p.m., $8.50 | The Parkway: Sun, 10/7 matinee, 5 p.m., $8 | Buy the DVD | Add them on MySpace!