Maniacs Trying to Collect Every 'Jerry Maguire' VHS Tape Ever Reach 10,000 — Including a Cameron Crowe Donation

Imagine this: You’re wandering through the southern California desert, searching for enlightenment. But all you’ve found so far is dust and dirt…until suddenly, rising out of the parched earth is a sight so confounding, you can hardly believe your eyes: A towering pyramid constructed entirely of Jerry Maguire VHS cassette tapes.

In a few short years, this ludicrous-sounding fantasy will become a reality, if 32-year-old Nik Meier achieves his dream.

Meier is one half of the duo behind the website and collective Everything is Terrible, which curates (and often re-edits) ridiculous clips from old VHS tapes in online videos and live shows (see: “Yellow Dino: Pedo Hunter”). One of the group’s longest-running projects is the quest to acquire every single VHS tape ever printed of Cameron Crowe’s hit 1996 film Jerry Maguire starring Tom Cruise as a struggling sports agent, which became the highest grossing non-Disney cassette ever. “In a life of many stupid ideas and stupid projects, this is the big winner,” he joked in a recent phone conversation with Yahoo Movies.

Though the stunt began as a gag at a show in 2008, it’s taken off in the imaginations of the site’s fans, to the point that Everything is Terrible recently surpassed the 10,000 VHS mark. When they hit 18,000, Meier says, they will purchase land in the California desert near Joshua Tree and build a gigantic pyramid with the plastic bricks. The structure of Meier's dreams will even feature a tunnel and a well in the center, where fans can deposit even more tapes.

The idea began when Meier, having noticed a significant surplus of the tapes at thrifts stores, bought 100 copies of them, intending to give them away as a prize at one of the site’s live shows. “Then we were just like, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t give these to you, because they’re too beautiful,’” he recalled. So, they asked for some more. 

That began a phenomenon that has grown even beyond their demented imaginations: Meier, his creative partner, 33-year-old Dimitri Simakis, and several freelancers have become overwhelmed by the donations of Jerrys (their nickname for the tapes), which pour in whenever they go on tour.

“We’ve received 500 or 600 Jerrys at one show,” said Meier, who also works as a producer for The Onion. “And then we have a show the next day, and we have an 8-hour drive, so there’s a lot of strapping Jerrys to tops of vehicles and very annoying trips for everybody involved to the post office, where we spend hundreds of dollars and everyone there really hates us.”

Watch their call for more Jerrys below:

The donations only continue to grow in size, because of an informal competition among groups of fans…and people with a lot of free time on their hands to root around thrift shops. The current leader is a young man named Alex McNeely, who has donated 1,157 Jerrys to the cause so far, blowing out his nearest competitor, an anonymous donor from Texas who has given 570.

“When we first met Alex — which is four years ago now  — he came to the show with his parents, and they had a hatchback just filled with Jerrys,” Meier remembered. “I think everybody in their extended family does it. I don’t know if he’s a fan of Everything Is Terrible. I think he might just be a fan of collecting Jerry Maguires.”

The collection of Jerrys took up so much space that they once filled Meier’s apartment. He took to storing the tapes in open storefronts in his building, moving them every time his landlord gets a new tenant. Meier called the situation “a living nightmare,” and yet, has received too much encouragement to quit the collection now. (The tapes are now stored in Los Angeles.)

Remarkably, even Crowe, the Jerry Maguire director, has joined the cause.

In 2012, Crowe first heard about the drive during an interview and reacted with a bit of skepticism. Ultimately though, he declared that once they reached a total of 8,000 tapes (a random number Meier had declared as their goal some time before), he’d send in his own copies.

They never heard anything more about the drive from Crowe… until earlier this month, when Meier received an immaculate package from the Oscar winner himself.

“Honestly, the amount of love that goes into packaging these Jerry Maguires normally is kind of insane to me,” Meier said. “But this one was over-the-top, with full bubble wrap on all sides and a beautiful piece of white card stock at the top. And they were all virgin Jerrys. Cameron wrote a very, very sweet note on the case.”

Crowe’s contribution to the Jerry quest.

Despite all the difficulties caused by this mission, Meier has no regrets — and doesn’t even wish he had asked for thousands of copies of a different VHS tape.

“Mr. Crowe probably wouldn’t like to hear this, but a lot of the other movies that you see a lot of copies of — Jurassic Park, Speed — are, like, respectable in a certain way,” he said. “No offense to the many, many people who enjoy Jerry Maguire, but it is so mediocre. It represents everything we at Everything Is Terrible strive to not be, which is just that middle, off-white line of just I’m gonna please everybody and please nobody at the same time and then make a billion copies of it. It’s perfect for that. It’s the most American thing.”

Everything is Terrible currently scores about 2,000 Jerrys per two-week tour, and plan to hit the road again in October. But they also accept single copy donations, which you can send to the address below.

Everything is Terrible!
P.O. Box 50825
Los Angeles, CA 90050 USA

A word of caution: They much prefer Jerrys with their original case, because they intend for the pyramid to feature Tom Cruise’s face. After all, it’s not really a Jerry without Jerry himself.

And here’s a photo of the Everything Is Terrible collective, with Meier featured… somewhere in there.

This post has been updated: The correct name is Nik Meier.