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One of the strangest imaginable film festivals is coming to the Hollywood Theatre.
On Friday, March 11, the theater will host the Found Footage Festival, a collection of zany shorts culled from VHS tapes found in thrift stores.
Selections include everything from footage of the 1987 Miss Junior America Wisconsin pageant to an exercise video titled Skiercise! However, the highlight of the festival will likely be a video of a massive, sunglasses-sporting feline named Pudgie Wudgie the Wonder Cat.
Due to the pandemic, 80 of the Found Footage Festival’s tour dates were canceled. Its return to the Hollywood will mark the first time in five years it has been presented in Portland.
The festival is the creation of childhood friends Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher. Pickett is a contributing writer for The Onion, and Pruehler is a former staffer at The Colbert Report and The Late Show With David Letterman.
Pickett and Pruehler have been collecting VHS tapes since 1991, when they found a training video called Inside and Outside Custodial Duties at a McDonald’s in Wisconsin, their home state.
The duo is famous partly for their role in a bizarre legal battle. In 2018, they triumphed over a lawsuit leveled by a Wisconsin local news station, which took issue with their TV appearance as the fictional “strong man” team Chop & Steele, which involved a workout using lightweight objects like twigs from a parking lot.
In 2018, Pruehler celebrated their victory in a post on the Found Footage Festival’s website.
“We are reinvigorated and will redouble our efforts to put news stations to the test in the dumbest way possible,” he wrote. “Will a particularly incompetent cat trainer make the rounds on local stations later this year? Time will tell.”
SEE IT: The Found Footage Festival screens at the Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-493-1128, hollywoodtheatre.org. 7:30 pm Friday, March 11. $12-$15.