Do I love Brooklyn because of or despite the fact that every fifth girl has the haircut of Karen O? Is it fond memories from my unspeakable past? Or is it that I always seem to be drunk every time I’m over there?
I’m not sure, but the place lifts my spirits. In Williamsburg, at least, there’s a warm blend of youth, beauty, oddly Midwestern architecture, and the Manhattan skyline, the sight of which at night is like one of those dreams where you’re floating above your own body.
I was in town to catch the Found Footage Festival, which I first saw last summer on the grassy playground of an automotive high school. Tonight it was held at Galapagos Art Space, which is disguised as a dark bar, complete with an abstract, scrim-like artwork hanging over a large pool of water near the entrance, and small spotlights with colored gels over them in the restroom, so you feel like you’re peeing on the set of a Broadway musical.
The Festival is a combination of rummage-sale finds, industrial and in-house training films, exercise and instructional tapes, infomercials, smudgy dubs of home movies, religious shows and public access television, and other random bits. Like last time, two of the festival’s curators (who collect and edit the footage), Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, were onstage to banter back and forth between segments and interject Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary.
The footage was 95% new, opening with a perennial classic: Winnebago sales video outtakes starring Jack Rebney, world’s angriest RV salesman. There’s a short version online, but I must warn you that Jack has what you might call a potty mouth.
Another great sequence tied together unfortunate and surreal public service announcement tapes featuring celebrities, including Henry Winkler as the Fonz telling kids it’s “not cool” to be touched in your “special place,” Alvin & the Chipmunks and Alf warning against the dangers of smoking reefer and Beverly Hills 90210’s Jason Priestley cautioning against improper handgun usage.
The best was a disturbing but sincere how-to video from the late ’80s with instructions on how to hypnotize women into sleeping with you, if you happen to be a gawky gentleman in stone-washed jeans. The narrator for this video, who sits in a chair before a crackling fireplace, resembles Satan.