Chop & Steele (2022 | USA | 83 minutes | Ben Steinbauer and Berndt Mader)
I don’t remember when it began, but I’ve been aware of the Found Footage Festival for quite a while. Every so often, Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher would come through town with a new collection of weird videos to show. Pickett and Prueher have made a living out of finding VHS tapes at flea markets, garage sales, and thrift shops. Corporate training videos where the employees make Tommy Wiseau look like Laurence Olivier are especially a favorite. I’ve never been able to make it to a Found Footage Festival event but it always struck me as great fun.
Joe and Nick are also pranksters and their pranks are often hilarious. They created characters who have been successful in duping local TV news programs. Programmers desperate for time to fill on the air, but no time for a quick Google search, have been a ripe target for them. Hilarity ensues when TV anchors try to maintain professionalism when talking to a yoyo master who doesn’t know any yoyo tricks or chefs that don’t actually know how to cook. But it was the characters of “Chop and Steele” that landed them in some trouble.
In 2017, Chop and Steele appeared on a morning program in Wisconsin. They were billed as “strongmen” and appear to be the illegitimate step-cousins of Hanz and Franz. But “strong” is an adjective that no one would use to describe Chop and Steele. They look like dorks cosplaying as muscular dudes and the media company that owns the station was very much not amused and took the guys to court, alleging fraud, conspiracy, and some other bad stuff. The lawsuit (I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that Pickett and Prueher prevailed) was part of the narrative of the documentary about the Found Footage Festival and this trial called, appropriately enough, Chop & Steele.
The other thread that holds this documentary together is that the notoriety of the Chop & Steele trial got them the opportunity to audition for “America’s Got Talent.” I don’t want to give away what happened but let’s just say that their bit never aired and they won’t be invited back to AGT anytime soon.
The documentary also features talking head interviews with David Cross, Bobcat Goldthwaite, Reggie Watts, and Howie Mandell shows up to say that while everyone else at “America’s Got Talent” was very, very unhappy with Joe and Nick, he thought they were funny and would like to work with them in the future.
In a lot of ways, I thought this film was designed to appeal to me specifically as I’ve been known to laugh at pretty stupid gags. Chop & Steele was good for a lot of laughs, well above what you’d expect from a typical documentary about how the first amendment can be interpreted. I liked it a lot, certainly enough to almost guarantee I’ll be in the audience the next time the Found Footage Festival comes through Seattle.