We Thought We Were Cool, Artist Statement

This film is a representation of a video intended for a friend for her birthday. It is more a compilation of memories into a storyline rather than an intensional message to this friend. Maria was a German foreign exchange student who I befriended in high school and managed to keep in touch with her after she returned home. So many of us missed her the year after she left, so we decided to send her a video for her birthday. The two fellows in this film are still friends of mine, although only one of them still lives nearby. We obviously thought we were pretty cool, doing illegal things and just being ridiculous teenagers. The friend who still lives nearby, Joseph, and I got together recently and when I mentioned this project, he seemed excited, although he had trouble recalling the events of the day we shot this footage. We had a long conversation remembering that time in our lives until he finally started to grasp the memory. I arranged and edited the footage in a way that conveys the way memory serves to only remember the best and worst parts of a given event.