Man Arrested For Failing to Return VHS Copy of ‘Freddy Got Fingered’ 14 Years Ago
In precisely the sort of absurdist mix-up that sounds like something Tom Green would come up with, a North Carolina man has been arrested for failing to return a VHS copy of the Tom Green comedy Freddy Got Fingered 14 years ago. The Wrap relays the odd tale of James Meyers, the unfortunate soul that checked out a tape of the widely reviled but cult-beloved surrealist comedy at a video store in Kannapolis, NC in 2002, never to return it. Meyers was driving his daughter to school on Tuesday morning when an officer pulled him over to have a stern word about a broken tail-light. But after processing Meyers’ license and registration, an outstanding charge popped up. The Wrap quotes Meyers himself:
“The officer said, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this but there’s a warrant out for your arrest from 2002… Apparently you rented the movie Freddy Got Fingered and never returned it.’ I thought he was joking.”
Failure to return rental property qualifies as a misdemeanor punishable with up to $200 in fines, and Meyers will have to appear in court on April 27 for what will surely be a bizarre proceeding. If Meyers, an evident fan of transgressive humor, really wanted to go all out, he would speak at his own trial exclusively in quotes from the film he watched, then forgot to return. “How do you plead?” the judge would ask him, and Meyers would jeer at him, “DADDY WOULD YOU LIKE SOME SAUSAGES, DADDY WOULD YOU LIKE SOME SAUSAGES?”
Eventually, word of this strange incident got back to Tom Green himself, who reacted incredulously on Twitter:
It’s been a while since Tom Green’s gotten in the director’s chair, but this would be a hell of a premise for his next movie.