While prank wars are often the stuff of legend, no prank war has become more legendary than the one between Amir Blumenfeld and Streeter Seidell, senior writers for comedy site CollegeHumor.com. Their prank war has escalated to such massive proportions that they were recently invited to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and are now hosting their own show, Pranked, on MTV.
The pair were among the first writers hired to CollegeHumor's fledgling team in 2005, where they were put in a cramped New York office seated next to each other. "The first prank is so innocuous, looking back on it," recalls Blumenfeld, a 26 year-old comedy writer with an encyclopedic knowledge of Simpsons episodes and Far Side cartoons.
Frustrated by Blumenfeld's habit of borrowing his iPod and then singing along loudly to the music, Seidell remixed one of the songs with the audio from a homemade sex tape, then hid a camera to film Blumenfeld's reaction. He posted the resulting footage on the site with the unassuming name "Audio Prank." "I didn't know he was going to put the prank online," says Blumenfeld, "but when I saw the response [from users], I decided I had to get him back."
The followup prank, Streeter's Big Date, required a more elaborate setup involving fake e-mail accounts and borrowed cellphones. The prank ends with Seidell sitting alone in a restaurant, waiting for an attractive woman who never shows up -- because she doesn't exist. Blumenfeld gleefully raps on the windowpane, waving at Seidell as he films his victim's reaction.
Blumenfeld thought the pranks would end there, until Seidell struck back with the third prank of the series, Fake Audition. The reveal of this prank is both uncomfortable and hilarious, as Blumenfeld turns red with embarrassment, pleading with Seidell not to use the prank online. That was a turning point, Blumenfeld recalls. "Then there was an understanding that the theme was going to be vengeance. The challenge was to make each prank bigger than the last."
The pranks escalated further with the next three installments: Streeter Bombs, in which Blumenfeld convinced an audience to remain completely silent during Seidell's standup set; Amir's Big Break, in which Blumenfeld was offered an appearance on MTV's Human Giant only to have his acting mercilessly criticized; and The Yankee Prankee, where Seidell unwittingly "proposed" to his girlfriend during a sold-out Yankees game.
Do the two pranksters live their lives in a state of perpetual fear, nervous about what terror they will have inflicted upon themselves next? "For the first couple days [after a prank] you're paranoid, then you start to forget about it." Still, he acknolwedges that it's difficult to plan a massive prank when the other guy is always expecting it. "It's getting to the point where you really have to wait for the other person to let their guard down," he says, which is why months will pass between Prank War installments.
As the Prank War videos have garnered millions of views online and turned the pair into Web celebs, Blumenfeld and Seidell are now taking an even bigger stage. "Pranked," their new MTV show, premieres Thursday night at 10:30 p.m., featuring hilarious user-generated video clips of pranks and practical jokes, with running commentary provided by the devious duo.
"We look for videos that are short, sweet, unique, and not too harmful," says Blumenfeld, recalling one clip where a man is pranked by his friends as he attempts a bungee jump. Just as he makes the leap, his "friends" all scream in unison, and one of them throws the end of a rope down with him, as if his cord has come loose. "The last thing you hear is the guy screaming as he falls," laughs Blumenfeld.
It's not the kind of elaborate, high-concept prank that the duo have become known for, but it is the kind of prank video that ends up attracting hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. "Pranked" gathers all that viral goodness into one show, with bonus clips that can only be found at pranked.mtv.com. "We like to say we're bringing you the best pranks from the Internet, right to your television ... online," he jokes.
Meanwhile, the pressure is on Blumenfeld to lead the next invasion in the prank war. The last installment, "The Half Court Shot", featured Seidell tricking Blumenfeld into believing he had won a $500,000 blindfolded, half-court, free throw shot at a University of Maryland basketball game -- with the help of an entire stadium full of fans, who were in on the prank. It's a sign of the pair's growing influence that the stadium cheers Seidell when he announces his name, and they go nuts when Blumenfeld makes the shot (which in reality misses wildly).
"Even though I won and lost half a million dollars in a matter of minutes, it was still an amazing experience," says Blumenfeld. "I'll never again have the experience of shooting a basketball in front of 18,000 people, and having the crowd go wild. It was an awesome, awesome feeling."
"Pranked" airs Thursdays at 10:30 pm on MTV.
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