35 years ago today, I was 15 and trying to make a movie.
I did that a lot between 13 and 15. And, as would become typical later in life, it was a reboot of something I’d already done. There was room for improvement!
I had three guys helping me. Two I’d known less than a year, the other only a few months if that. I honestly don’t remember when he and I first crossed paths, but I really think it was that summer.
Most importantly, he had a VHS video camera, and agreed to come help make this film.
And I was pissed.
We were making good progress at first. We even went by everyone’s house to pick up “special effects,” which included a green floodlight, a red flood light, and two different strobe lights.
As I was directing, trying to get effects set up and tested, someone started playing Guns N’ Roses. Paradise City. And then they fucked around, all three of them. Swinging the floods around, lip-synching into a flashlight, spinning the camera.
I have this on tape. You can see and hear how irritated I am. We are Making A Film, goddammit!
I wasn’t gonna win, though. So instead of throwing a fit, which was typical in those days, I gave up and joined in, thinking that maybe if I did that, they’d get their zoomies out and we could get back to work.
We never did get back to work. Instead we spend the next several hours making “videos,” meaning, lip-synching to songs and recording it all on the VHS. I did “Comfortably Numb.”
And then we made plans to do it again.
Other people heard about it and wanted to join in. This kicked off roughly a decade in total of this odd past-time, known as “Videos.” To an outsider, most of it is probably really weird or stupid. I won’t argue that.
But that outsider wasn’t there, being a rock star for a few minutes a couple times a year, expressing all the joy and rage and angst our sixteen to twenty-one year old selves could muster from bands like Metallica, REM, Genesis, Social Distortion, Pink Floyd, and dozens more. One of my best was “Hey You” from The Wall. I fucking rocked that video.
Jesus, it was so much fun. As we got older and got jobs, we started spending real money on this hobby. Which I guess is normal for any hobby.
Most importantly, 35 years ago today, while I may not have known it at the time, something got kicked off that would last all these years later.
Not unilaterally. Not evenly. (Both to my everlasting regret.) But still here.
Elements and ephemera from that day suffuse my writing to this day. In MERCY RULE, I even wrote an entire scene in which some kids are making Videos, and it’s secretly one of my all-time favorite beats in any of my novels.
The passion, the heightened emotion, the drama and angst…the loyalty…
I write young adult, I write horror, I write urban fantasy, sometimes I even write high fantasy or dabble in some genre. In all of it, those guys are there. That love is there. That hope is there.
That hope that those who read my work feel seen and heard, the way I felt seen and heard giving my best David Gilmour impression with a wooden guitar in hand and fake microphone taped to a PCV pipe “mic stand” performing for an audience of thousands in my living room.
35 years ago today, something special began. I know that not everyone had or has what I did and do. Whether or not you were given that gift, I hope my writing and the community around it can extend it now.
Everyone deserves and needs a June 30, 1989.
