Chop, Steele, Cook, Get Sued


Unless this is a case of me not doing my damn job, the geniuses who brought you Chop and Steele and Chef Keith really are being sued by Gray Television, essentially because they were made to look bad when one of their television stations didn’t do *its* damn job. Help them out if you can. Nothing they did here is against the law, and we really do deserve better from our media. Yes, even the shitty ass morning show part of it.

Hi, we’re Joe and Nick from the Found Footage Festival and we need your help.  Last November and again in January, we appeared on local morning news shows as a strongman duo called Chop & Steele . We lifted cinder blocks, chopped sticks in half with our bare hands, and crushed baskets with our feet. And in March, we posted short snippets from some of these segments online, hoping to entertain and make a point about how easy it is to get on certain news programs who aren’t doing basic fact checking. Then on April 13th, we found out in the New York Post that the parent company of one of the news stations, Gray Television, had filed a lawsuit against us in federal court, claiming copyright infringement, fraud, and conspiracy.

These claims are totally baseless and we’ve secured a great lawyer, Anderson Duff (that’s his real name!), who’s working well below his rate to take on these corporate bullies who are trying to suppress our criticism of the news. But even at discount rates, our legal bills are piling up and are expected to reach $100,000 by the end of the trial. We are confident we will win this important First Amendment case but we are suddenly faced with a very real possibility that we’ll bankrupt ourselves in the process. In order to continue doing what we do and secure the future of the Found Footage Festival, we need to raise $80,000.

If you’ve enjoyed our live show or our news pranks or even How to Have Cybersex on the Internet , please chip in what you can. If we meet our goal, we promise to continue serving up the most unintentionally funny videos ever committed to VHS and calling out lazy news stations whenever possible. Maybe in the form of incompetent cat trainers, we’ll see.

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