Why a Man Was Arrested After Renting a VHS Copy of ‘the Worst Movie Ever’

In March 2016, North Carolina resident James Meyers Jr. was pulled over while driving his daughter to school. The reason for the stop was a broken brake light, but after handing the police officers his license, Meyers was shocked to learn that there was a warrant out for his arrest. His big crime? Not returning a VHS copy of the 2001 Tom Green comedy Freddy Got Fingered, a box-office bomb once described as “the worst movie ever released by a major studio in Hollywood history.”

“They were chit-chatting with me and talking about how ridiculous this is,” Meyers told ABC News afterward. “Then they arrested me.” He was processed at the Concord Police Department and charged with “failure to return hired property”—he’d rented the movie from a video store 14 years earlier. To make matters even weirder, the store had been closed for about 10 years by then. Meyers had never been arrested before and found the situation humiliating because his daughter was with him at the time.

A Man Got Arrested for Not Returning This Critically Panned 2001 Comedy to a Video Store

News of the arrest spread all the way to Australia, where Green was in the middle of a stand-up comedy tour. The actor tweeted about how unbelievable the situation was and reached out to Meyers to put him at ease. Green started singing to Meyers over the phone and offered to help him in any way that he could. “He was so cool, he was a class act. It made me feel a lot better because of all the stress that is going on,” Meyers recalled.

Green also agreed to pay the fine for Meyers, which was $200, “just for the principle of the thing.” A month after his arrest, Meyers appeared in court hoping to clear his name. The district attorney’s office ended up dropping the charges against him that day. Ahead of his court date, Meyers decided to rewatch Freddy Got Fingered, telling the New York Daily News that he thought it was hilarious and that he’d definitely recommend it.