On Thursday, September 13, at The Mill in Iowa City, you’re invited to enter the gates of performance art hell. Or heaven! Depending on your disposition, sense of humor, and interest in obscure video footage.
Since the dawn of time, man has searched for answers … and failed. But the fog of existence has finally cleared thanks to the eternal fruits of a found-footage collective that calls themselves Everything Is Terrible!
Everything Is Terrible! has ingested over 2,000 satanic panic, religious kook, and D-horror VHS tapes and regurgitated them to create a narrative feature reminding us all “who we are, why we are here, and what we should be doing with our paltry time on this dumb planet.” They now invite you to be an initiate of the psychedelic devotion of EIT!
As you take your blood oath, your journey will brim with evangelical ducks, goopy ghouls, and sad white men who believe that Dungeons & Dragons summon actual horned demons. Join the bedazzled Dadgods for an all-new live show, featuring never-before-seen puppets and costumes, as EIT! presents their newest feature, THE GREAT SATAN.
“If you really want to see your mind, you’ve got to be ready to rip your skull open.”
Everything is Terrible! was founded in 2000 by a group of Ohio University friends who began killing their free time scouring thrift stores, garage sales, and bargain bins for the worst, campiest, and most obscure VHS tapes they could find. Since their official website launch in 2007, EIT has released 3,000+ videos and nine DVDs, taking “the best (worst?) clips from a range of categories and spin[ning] them together like a terrible salad” (Paste Magazine), which includes the popular Everything is Terrible! The Movie, So Your Cat Wants a Massage, and Infomercial Hell. EIT! projects have been described as “deeply sad,” “enlightening,” and “terribly funny.”
Over the course of nine years, EIT has also amassed over 22k Jerry Maguire VHS tapes. Says founding member Ghoul Skool, who noticed from EIT’s humble beginnings: “There seems to be nothing but just Jerry Maguire tapes filling our nation’s thrift stores. I don’t know why.” EIT is now in the early stages of planning a permanent VHS structure somewhere in the “Great American Desert,” known as the Jerry Maguire Pyramid. You can read all about the project in the New York Times.