Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett have been collecting odd videos, from home movies found at garage sales to corporate training videos stolen from chain stores to obscure snippets of regional home-shopping channels, for more than a decade. Former writers for satirical newspaper The Onion, with individual credits that also include The Late Show with David Letterman and Mystery Science Theater 3000, the duo were working on a documentary called Dirty Country (about obscure, vulgar country singer Larry Pierce) when they ran out of money and decided to charge admission to the periodic exhibitions of their bizarre video collection.
Thus was born the Found Footage Festival, which will be showing as part of the film program at The Comedy Festival. Prueher and Pickett sift through hundreds of hours of submitted videotapes to come up with the funniest and most bizarre snippets to edit into a 90-minute program. "It's amazing the kind of stupid things that people commit to videotape," Prueher says. Those stupid things sometimes end up at garage sales and in thrift stores, and then in Prueher and Pickett's hands.
Their show is not, however, simply a more risqué version of America's Funniest Home Videos, although Prueher and Pickett are unabashed fans of the long-running show featuring people falling down and getting hit in the groin. The Found Footage Festival trades more on pathos and unintentional humor, with a wealth of cringe-inducing promotional films, uncomfortable outtakes and home movies that are more pathetic than celebratory.
The two are still primarily filmmakers—thanks to the Found Footage Festival's success, they raised enough money to complete Dirty Country, which is now in post-production—and they understand that the overall effect of the program is greater than any one element. "Just the idea of repositioning these videos that were never meant to be shown in public and putting them in that new context, that's kind of an art," Prueher says.
Aesthetic considerations aside, the Festival is about comedy, and laughing at the hilarity of everyday awkwardness. Prueher and Pickett have no Vegas-specific footage yet, although they've recently picked up a video on how to win at slots hosted by the late actor James Coburn. They encourage audience members to bring any found footage of their own to the screening, as they're always looking for new material. "This is what we were born to do," Prueher says. "Unfortunately," Pickett laughs.
The Found Footage Festival is screening November 17-19, as part of the Comedy Festival's film program, in the Florentine and Pompeian ballrooms in Caesars. Tickets are $27.27 per day.