Nick Prueher as a fictional TV chef named Chef Keith. On a real news program.

Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett have made a career out of weird, awkward videos. The UWEC grads now based in New York created the Found Footage Festival in 2004, which collects VHS tapes of public access shows, infomercials, self-help tutorials, and more, then tours the country presenting the cream of the crop in all its cringe-worthy goodness. More recently though, they’ve taken to creating their own awkward situations. ¶ In early March, the duo released a compilation video featuring Prueher portraying the character Chef Keith, a leftover expert, on a variety of real morning shows (including plenty close to home in Wisconsin) bumbling through segments, creating terrible recipes, and generally running amok. ¶ The video immediately became huge, collecting nearly 2 million views before it was pulled down. (The duo is now posting some of the full segments on the FoundFootageFest YouTube channel.) This wasn’t their first attempt at these pranks. The team was also behind the virally famous Kenny Strasser, Yo-Yo Artist videos in 2010. ¶ Found Footage Festival turns 10 years old this year and the pair are on tour celebrating with a new DVD of unearthed classics (look for them passing through late in 2014). We chatted with Nick and Joe about where their viral successes.

On Kenny Strasser and the basic idea

“He had to work in ‘basketball murderers’ (on air) and he nailed it. The reporter didn’t even bat an eye at it.” – Joe Pickett, on the “Two Word Phrase Challenge”

Joe: We always have to do these morning shows for the Found Footage Festival and they’re awful. I cannot stand them. We have to wake up at six in the morning and we’re wondering if our audience is even watching those shows. We feel like mostly moms are watching it and schoolteachers, but I feel like our demographic doesn’t wake up early to watch those shows. So we wondered why we do them. But we still do them. It’s good work. But then we started entertaining ourselves on these shows. We called it the “Two Word Phrase Challenge” where I would dare Nick to say some sort of a phrase on the air while we were doing this interview and he’d have to work it in randomly at some point. My favorite one was to use the two words “basketball murderers” on air. He had to work in “basketball murderers” and he nailed it. The reporter didn’t even bat an eye at it.

Nick: That’s the thing I think we realized in doing this kind of stuff is that they don’t actually listen to what you’re saying. It reminds me too, one of the first times we started playing with news stations was in Eau Claire actually and our friend Steve played a character named Funny Man who is an impressions comedian who was opening for us in Eau Claire and he came on with Joe on, what was it, WEAU?

Joe: Yeah, WEAU. We just showed up to do an interview. It was going to be for Found Footage Festival, but then our buddy was there – Steve – and we asked “Can he come on too?” and they said “Sure, why not?” and he went on and did impressions. And I think they were in the mindset of, “Nobody’s watching this right now, who cares?” And I feel like a lot of these local news shows are turning into public access stations. They’ll just do anything. And it’s run by 22-year-old kids who are probably not making anything. So it really wasn’t hard for us to get on these things. We wrote a press release. I mean, if you think about it, they’re on five days a week for 90 minutes a day. They’re starving for content so they’ll take anybody who can demonstrate something. So that’s what all started the Kenny (Strasser) thing, but then we were like, “Let’s write up a press release for a fake person, just write the biggest slam dunk press release that we can for them.” So we went with a yo-yo artist. We called him a yo-yo artist. He traveled around to elementary schools teaching children about the environment with his yo-yo. And it doesn’t make any sense if you really think about it. But they totally bought it. We sent out 10 press releases, we got seven responses saying that they’d love to have the yo-yo artist on their show. So we had to do it. That’s our pal Mark Proksch. We developed the idea with him.

Nick: (Mark is) also from Eau Claire, by the way.

Joe: Yeah, he’s also from Eau Claire. And he volunteered to be the yo-yo artist and the best thing about Mark is that he has no idea how to yo-yo. No clue how to yo-yo, and he’s going to be the yo-yo expert. And it went off without a hitch. We got him onto seven morning shows.

Nick: We had more success getting him onto shows than we did Found Footage. We were on tour sending press releases to stations and this fictional person had a lot more success than we did getting coverage for our show.

Joe: I think they just see it as, “Y’know, I can just take five minutes off this morning. I don’t have to do anything, this guy is just gonna do his yo-yo tricks and I’m just gonna sit back and enjoy the show.” It was far from that, actually.
Nick: I mean, we said he was a professional and had done a lot of public appearances, so yeah, they probably thought it was an easy morning show segment.

On getting the stations to bite

Nick: If we can toot our own horns, we did write up a pretty killer press release. We had a friend who’s a graphic designer come up with a book cover for Chef Keith’s book called Leftovers Right: Making A Winner Out Of Last Night’s Dinner, and it looks like a real book.

Joe: We also included in that PDF with the press release and the book cover a fake article from Good Housekeeping Magazine, which was an interview with Chef Keith. The designer lays out professional magazines so it looked real. So if you look at this thing, it looks real.

On preparing to go on

Nick: Well, we had basically a wish list of things we wanted to say and do on each segment and then Joe and I would be preparing the triple gravy the night before, loading up cans of gelatinous gravy from Woodman’s.

Joe: Or scoring the leg on the table (that collapses). I’d say like 95 percent of it was all preplanned. The table falling over, that was fixed for that.

On the aftermath

Nick: Most of the time it wasn’t awkward, it was just them saying, “Thanks so much for coming on and good luck with your book signing,” and they were very polite. The one time that was an issue was the one where the table fell over. On the table there was a microwave, an entire turkey and a gallon of milk and lots of pans.

Joe: Yeah, lots of pans, cranberries, just sh** everywhere.

Nick: So basically, there was a mix of milk and turkey and all sorts of stuff all over their carpeting and floor, so I spent about a half hour afterwards mopping it up with the news anchor. So we were both down there cleaning it up, so that was a little uncomfortable. I just kept apologizing. I was worried that they’d think something was fishy, but at the end they were like, “Well, we know it didn’t go very well for you, but it was memorable and that should get a lot of people out to your book signing today at Barnes & Noble.”