Sometimes you feel like you should just post the headline and then call it a day. What else is there to say? In one of the most bizarre stories that we have ever covered, a man in North Carolina was recently arrested because of a VHS copy of the Tom Green (and we use this term loosely) comedy Freddy Got Fingered that he once rented. What’s even crazier is that the guy wasn’t arrested because he rented it, which we could understand, but rather because he never returned it.
In 2002 James Myers rented Freddy Got Fingered from his local J&J Video store. For whatever reason, Myers never returned the video tape. Cut to 14 years later and Myers is pulled over for a bad brake light by the local police. His name and license are run, which is standard practice, only to find an outstanding warrant for the crime of "failure to return rental property" which is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $200. The good news is the officer didn’t arrest the man on the spot, as Myers was driving his daughter to school, but he agreed to return to the police station later to sort everything out. However, according to local station WSOC, when Myers arrived, he was handcuffed and booked for the crime.
The news has reached the star of Freddy Got Fingered, who agrees the whole thing is insane.
Tom Green, who is currently on a standup tour of Australia, apparently gave James Myers a call Wednesday evening and is also offering to pay the $200 fine if it is actually levied against him.
It’s difficult to figure out where to start with this. If the statute of limitations on failing to return rental property is more than 14 years, then there’s a significant problem with North Carolina law. We’re going to hope the DA dismisses this entire thing, as it seems hardly worth anybody’s time, especially considering the business which filed the charges is no longer in business. Because it's a video store. And this is 2016.
Those of us who are old enough to remember video stores, and forgetting to return the things we rented, probably remember getting annoying phone calls and letters informing us that we forgot to return some dumb movie that we likely never even watched. We may have even had to pay for the thing if we misplaced the tape and never returned it, but this is insane. Of course, quite possibly the worst thing to come out of all of this is that James Myers has now been outed as a guy who has incredibly terrible taste in movies.
Hopefully, we can use this as a learning experience. If you have old Blockbuster Video tapes in your closet somewhere that you never returned, you may want to verify with the local authorities that there are no warrants out for your arrest. Alternatively, you can’t get so much as a parking ticket ever again.
