What dating tips can you learn from Found Footage Festival 2009?
It’s almost like a "What Not To Do." I would say, if you’re going to date, don’t wear an obnoxious sweater with reindeer on it. That would be one tip. Don’t talk about child abuse. That’s a no-no. Try to avoid talking about how many hours of sleep you get per night — it’ s just not that interesting. There’s one guy in there who says everything he doesn’t want. He doesn’t want any fatties. He doesn’t want any "Donna Juanitas," which is the female version of a Don Juan. And he doesn’t want any "hamsters." Now, I have no idea what he’s talking about there. I don’t know if it’s hairy women, or what. But he definitely knows he doesn’t want them. So I would say, instead of trying to date by process of elimination, maybe put a positive spin on it and say what you can bring to the table.
So I hear you actually tracked down Winnebago Man [the angry host of a doomed industrial film, immortalized in a rant-filled blooper reel].
Yeah, last year. This guy was the Holy Grail of people we wanted to meet. Winnebago Man’s name is Jack Rebney, and his friend came to our show [in Las Vegas] and bought one of our DVDs and showed it to Jack. And apparently, Jack was pretty pissed off about it, believe it or not.
Shocking.
Yeah, surprise, surprise, he was not happy that we were showing that video. ... But anyway, we were able to convince him somehow to appear with us in a show in San Francisco last year. We were very nervous, and he was pretty prickly at first. He was saying, “All right, let’s get this over with. Who are the lunatics coming to this show?” And at the end of the night, we played the video, and people are laughing -- in tears and stuff. And we look back to the back of the house, and Jack is there with his arms folded, and as he sees how much joy this video is bringing people, a little smile comes over his face. We compared him to the Grinch, where his heart grows 10 times its size all of a sudden. He comes down, and just regales the audience with hilarious stories from this awful shoot in Iowa, and what was going through his head, those problems he was having with flies.
Many problems with flies.
Yeah. We even gave him a flyswatter with a bow on it. ... And so yeah, at the end, he had a standing ovation, there was a line of people 30 deep to get his autograph, to get their photo taken with him. And we actually hugged him at the end of the night. That was definitely a highlight for us: hugging the guy who people had dubbed the angriest man in the world, and winning him over. We’re not worried about anybody else getting mad at us about showing their face, because if this guy -- known solely for losing his temper -- is OK with the fact that we’re doing this in good fun, then I feel like we’re pretty safe.
