Heck of a Find

 

When most of us see a scrap of paper on the ground or old VHS tapes at a garage sale or thrift store, we ignore it, walk past and continue on with our lives. But for the guys of Found Footage Festival, these old videos and notes are a treasure trove of weird, funny and heartfelt items – and the inspiration for their work.

Now, for the first time, the Found Footage Festival and FOUND Magazine have teamed up to tour across the country together in the Found vs. Found Tour, squaring off in three rounds of video versus notes with audience participation helping decide the winner. They will appear at the Heights Theatre in Northeast Minneapolis on Monday, Nov. 14 at 7 p.m.

Both sides toured separately for years sharing their finds with audiences and admiring each other's work from afar, but after they were both booked at the same Madison theater at the same time this past April, Found Footage Festival co-founder Nick Prueher says they decided to join forces.

"We instantly bonded,” Prueher says. “It was kind of like meeting a long-lost brother with the same pet peeves and the same weird hobbies."

When both sides had this fall off to create new shows, they decided to team up and hold the Found vs. Found Tour to share their notes and video and decide which side would reign supreme.

Representing the Found Footage Festival side, Prueher says their festival started with a McDonalds' janitor training video he and co-founder Joe Pickett stumbled upon in 1991. "We became obsessed with the video," he says. "We showed it to our friends and kept an eye out for more."

Fifteen years later Prueher and Pickett realized that they had amassed quite the collection of strange VHS tapes from thrift stores and garage sales and decided they wanted to share their finds with a wider audience, "to take it out of the living room and into the theater.

Found Footage has an incredible collection of surreal VHS clips featuring everything from "A Woman's Guide to Firearms" to "Rent-A-Friend" for lonely people with VCRs. Some of Prueher's favorite finds even come from the Twin Cities, including "Mikenastics," a public access show about an older man named Mike "who got really interested in gymnastics later in life" and converted his house into a gymnastics studio.

So why should found video footage win out against found notes?

"For one, we have full-frontal nudity," Prueher jokes. "How can a found note compare to that? Some FOUND notes are pretty funny, but it's kind of hard to compete with video. We have 20 years of collecting cut together with all the best clips we have."

For Davy Rothbart, co-founder of FOUND Magazine, an angry misplaced note to "Mario" left on his windshield nine years ago sparked the idea for the magazine. "I started showing [the note] to friends, and they surprised me with all the things they'd found," he says.

Rothbart and co-found Jason Bitner wanted to share their found notes from hot spots like public transportation, copy shops, schools and recycling bins and also give people the opportunity to share their discoveries. They created FOUND Magazine as a community art project, and published the first issue in 2001. Rothbart also began touring to share their found notes, and his brother Peter joined playing songs based on the notes, ranging from the ridiculous to heart-breaking pieces.

Although his favorite finds change every few days when he opens the mail, some of Rothbart's favorite notes have included a monthly budget found in Minneapolis where the writer allots $600 a month for liquor, $600 for crack, but also saves $100 a month. Rothbart says the notes represent the range of human experience and can be heart-wrenching as well, like a letter from a teenage boy to his mom that was found tied to a balloon in a tree in a cemetery outside of Chicago.

In Rothbart's opinion, found notes should dominate. "You don't need a VCR to read them," he says. "And you get to see somebody's handwriting. You get to glimpse somebody in a powerful way and get inside their head and how they feel."

To find out which side the Twin Cities prefers in the battle of the Found vs. Found Tour, you'll have to come to the Heights Theatre on Nov. 14 and decide for yourself.