Today I want to talk about one of my favorite guilty pleasure websites: The Found Footage Festival. Nick Prueher and Joe Prickett have picked gold from a garbage haul of old VHS tapes since 2004. For someone who loves finding the tackiest item in any garage sale, these guys are as close to kindred spirits as it gets. Their taste is impeccable. How else can you explain a Christy Lane “Learn the Dances of the 80’s” tape?
From a screenwriter’s perspective, watching this counts as research. How did people interact in the 1980s? What were they wearing? What dance moves did they pull? I’m interested in quirky personalities, and nowhere on the internet is this demographic better represented.
To be fair, it’s not just their curatorial skills which I admire. They are also good editors. They take a terrible 1993 D-movie, Cyber Seeker, and boil it down to its best two minutes here—leaving in the goofy, awkward, and the worst of the bad acting.
Nick and Joe are not just curators, they’re filmmakers, in a very post-millennial, cyberpunk way. They take the video detritus of years past and fashion it into something beautiful. I would compare a good eighties dating video supercut to Robert Rauschenberg’s combine paintings. OK, I’m slightly kidding, after all, their videos may be a little more fun.
What’s your guilty pleasure website? What makes it fun? I really don’t have enough places to waste time on the internet.
damnyouautocorrect.com – although there are too many entries daily, so now I only read the monthly digest “Best Of” posts.
Oh, another great site but sorely underappreciated by this non iPhone user!
I think regretsy goes without saying