Went to an amazing show over the weekend that you’ve gotta see. It’s called The Found Footage Festival, and it’s two guys who find old VHS tapes (and, increasingly, DVDs) of home videos, employee training videos, public access shows…anything that will unintentionally get big laughs. They cobble them together into a 90-minute show, and it’s seriously one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
Highlights include an Angela Lansbury workout video, a medley of awful pickup lines culled from sexual-harassment-in-the- workplace videos, and twisted cartoon footage from sex-ed and potty training videos. After an hour and a half, I had a headache from laughing so much.
Like America’s Funniest Home Videos, it glorifies those halcyon days of the late ’80s and early ’90s, when every family and wannabe filmmaker had just purchased their first camcorders and were recording all kinds of stupid crap that didn’t make sense, all while wearing terrible, terrible clothes. Like YouTube, it puts on a pedestal those people who are simply too stupid to know just how stupid they look to other people. And like the American Idol auditions, it reminds us that, yes, America really is chock full of crazy people, and they’re drawn to video cameras like moths to a flame.
It looks like this latest version of the Found Film Festival is done in New York for now, but they’ll be in SF in June. Check em out here.
I watched the preview while on the phone with Corinne, and almost peed myself during the “Workplace Safety” demonstration.
Yeah, it’s funny…until toxic acid accidentally drips into YOUR eyes and then you’re like “Why didn’t I pay more attention to that safety video?!?”