When the fifth Found Footage Festival comes to the Oriental Theater this week, it will be a homecoming not only for founders Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett, but also for the festival, which got its start when Prueher and Pickett found an insipid McDonald's training video in the break room of a Stoughton fast food restaurant.
Since then the pair has amassed a stunning collection of equally stunning (stunningly bad!) videos of all kinds. They share their collection in the Found Footage Festival tours -- this one started in late September and runs nearly non-stop into the new year -- but also no their Web site.
The tour hits Milwaukee at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 17. Admission is $10.
Pickett is a veteran of The Onion and Prueher's credits include The Onion, "The Late Show with David Letterman" and "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Both of them helped write and direct segments of Mark Malkoff's "Mark Lives in IKEA" film series.
We asked Prueher about the Found Footage Festival.
OnMilwaukee.com: Can you tell us a bit about how the festival is paced? What can people expect?
Nick Prueher: The Found Footage Festival is a guided tour through our collection of videos we've found over the years at thrift stores and garage sales across the country. We introduce each clip, explain where and how we found it, and offer a running commentary as we play each video or montage, then we give our take on what we just saw. Having personally found these videos and sifted through hours of footage to find the cream of the crop, we feel like we've earned the right to make fun of them a little bit.
OMC: Did you expect this to be an ongoing event when it first started out?
NP: The first Found Footage Festival was done as a lark five years ago. Whenever friends would come over to hang out, we'd pull out our latest VHS finds and play our favorite parts, offering jokes throughout. At the urging of a friend, we decided to take this little routine out of our living room and into the back of a bar in Manhattan.
To our surprise, people beyond just our immediate friends showed up. The show sold out and seemed to really strike a chord with people for some reason. To be honest, we're continually surprised that people find this stuff as funny as we do. When we're trotting out videos we've found in garbage cans for crowds in Paris and Amsterdam and Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, it's like, "Is this for real?"
OMC: Will you bring anything extra special back for the hometown crowds?
NP: We always like to include some videos with Wisconsin connections when we return for shows. This year is no exception. We've got a public access TV show starring a guy from Kenosha named Frank Pachowski. The show aired in L.A., but Frank is Wisconsin through and through. He's this balding chunky guy who wears a patriotic Speedo and dances to John Philip Sousa marches. But that's not the weird part. The weird part is that he's surrounded by a semi-circle of disinterest elderly people who are forced to watch this man prancing about. It's among the strangest and most fascinating public access shows we've ever seen. You can't look away.
A touring slew of films
Also landing in Milwaukee his week is Range Life Entertainment's traveling mini-film festival, co-presented by The Onion.
Filmmaker Todd Sklar -- who started Range Life -- brings 14 films to 35 cities this fall, including screening three films at The Times Cinema on Sunday and Monday, Dec. 13 and 14. The tour also stopped in Brew City back in September.
On Sunday at 7 p.m., Sklar presents "Assassination of a High School President," starting Bruce Willis and Mischa Barton. It was directed by Brett Simon. Then, at 9, Dan Lindsay's "Last Cup" -- subtitled "Road to the World Series of Beer Pong" -- screens. Check out the fella in the Brewers gear in the trailer!
On Monday at 7 p.m., Ari Gold's "Adventures of Power" with Michael McKean will show.
Gold describes his film as, "an epic comedy about a mine-worker named Power whose love of drums and lack of musical skill has turned him into the ridiculed 'air drummer' of his small town. But when Power's union-leader father calls a strike at the mine, Power discovers an underground subculture of air-drummers who just might hold the key to changing the world. Power's journey across America brings him face-to-face with his town's greatest enemy, and allows him to discover the beat within his own heart."
Admission is $5 each night. That means you get two full-length films for just five smackers on Sunday.
Learn more about the tour at the Range Life Web site.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
