Found Vs. Found at Oriental Theatre
It was only a matter of time before Found Magazine and the Found Footage Festival came head to head. With the former specializing in lost or discarded notes and letters, and the latter dedicated to celebrating the strangest scenes ever committed to VHS tape, their overlapping orbits were destined to end in a collision, one casting weird and horrible debris in every direction. Thankfully, Wednesday’s joint Found Vs. Found at the Oriental Theatre gave the public the chance to enjoy the fallout, and what’s more, decide which team is the true king of found.
The competitive aspect of the show consisted of three rounds, wherein each side took a turn showing off its all-time best finds, with the winner of each round decided by a trio of voting audience members. Representing Found Magazine was founder and co-editor Davy Rothbart, who gave enthusiastic readings of his favorite discarded notes and flyers, and his musician brother, Peter, who extrapolated said scraps into folksy songs, which were by turn heartbreaking and hilarious. Rothbart’s readings brought a lot of life to the odd love letters and grocery lists, unsurprising given he’s a frequent contributor to This American Life. It would have been nice if they had found an acceptably logical way to also project the notes on screen, since the scrawled handwriting and spelling errors are often as evocative as the words.
Found Footage Fest hosts Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett returned fire with a selection of their favorite videos, lovingly culled from hours of insane public access TV, exercise tapes, and discarded home movies. Of the two sides, Prueher and Pickett probably suffered the most from the rapid-fire round set-up, since much of their material feels all the more surreal the longer they let it roll, but they did an admirable job of picking highlights from their vast collection. Diehard fans may have been a little disappointed by the familiar nature of some of the clips (the tour does have a “greatest hits” feel to it), but old chestnuts like the McDonald’s custodial training video and the irate Winnebago pitchman Jack Rebney never seem to get old. Better yet were the new additions, including a slideshow of the best (worst?) VHS covers they’ve come across, and footage from a New York public access show, the premise of which seems to be to see how many different kinds of pets the host can fit onto a small table.
Though Found Magazine ended up the night’s victor, the competitive nature of the show ended up seeming more like an excuse for the hosts to trade good natured pot-shots. In the end, they’re both on the same team, both competing against time and the fickle, disposable nature of our culture. But it was the setting that provided the night’s most elegant irony—using the most opulent and ornate theatre in town to celebrate not high art, but things nobody was ever meant, or ever wanted, to see. For that, we’re all winners.
