Staff Pick Premiere: Here’s a mixtape, please love me

“The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with — nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mixtape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life.”            — Love Is a Mixtape, by Rob Sheffield

Before songs could be shared without actually buying them, and before they could be plucked out of a cloud library you didn’t build yourself, there was the mp3. A rare gem that had one had to go to the local Radioshack or a crowded smoky basement to purchase; these musical bits of data defined the lives of music nerds like you (and me). There were tracks you hated, liked, or loved, some mp3s more than others. The ones you coveted made you feel emotions deeply. And you believed, when all of your beloved pieces of music were meticulously arranged by you into one carefully curated mix, they conveyed a message that would take an essay to explain. A mix was made for aimlessly driving over the speed limit around your hometown with buds, for muting the boredom of a soul-crushing job, and for representing a piece of your heart as you placed it in the hands of your crush. In other words, they communicated much more than words.

Can you relate? If yes, you’re gonna go crazy over today’s Staff Pick Premiere, “Mixtape Marauders.”

The story of high school BFFs Patrick and Cheech was written by brothers Peter and Ian Edlund (Ian plays Cheech!), who were inspired to write this hilarious and charming ode to friendship while Peter was crashing on Ian’s dorm room floor. Peter explains:

“I had been thinking about a movie built around music and set in my hometown, but I wasn’t really sure what form that would take…I talked to Pete [McNally, who plays Patrick] and Ian about creating versions of themselves whose lives had played out very differently. What would that look like? How would some of their traits and personality quirks manifest themselves in these weirdo, alternate universe cousins. They both came to Stanwood, Washington [Pete and Ian’s hometown] a week before the shoot, stayed at my parent’s house and lived the lives of these characters. My mother was legitimately worried that Ian was this person now, and I had to comfort her and say, “No, he’s just in-character. He’ll stop hotboxing your car when the rehearsal process is complete.”

It’d be easy to classify “Mixtape Mauraders” as another story about two bored teens whose only interest is to high-tail it out of their hometown, itching to experience the world outside of its picket-fence lined border. The bones of this film are familiar, but what makes it so endearing and relatable is how true-to-life its portrayal of sensitive, artistic millenial kids is. It’s like spending fifteen minutes with your best friend’s older brother, the one who doesn’t know how cool and funnny he is. And it’s also like spending weeks trying to put together the perfect audible love letter, only to find that your potential boo is dating a dude in a band called “the Fuckbois.” According to Ian, alternative names for this unfortunately named band that is mentioned in the film included “Eternal Pity, Performed Confidence, The Second Season of Chicago Fire, Apathetic Bois, Hufflepuff, It Doesn’t Have to End With You Crying, Enthusiastic Circumcision. There are more but that seems like enough.”

If mix CDs and cassettes were an integral part of your adolescence, or if you’re in the mood for watching one of the first and best films to portray the teenage days of twenty and thirty-something millenials, we highly and lovingly recommend “Mixtape Mauraders” to jumpstart your next trip down memory lane.

PS: Peter, Ian and producer Megan Leonard are deep in the process of writing a feature version of Mixtape Marauders. If you like the short and want to see these characters in a larger story please say it. Loudly! Shout it into the internet void! Comment on the vid itself! Because the script is a thing, and they’d love to make it real with cameras and lights and way more awesome music.

Check out more of Vimeo’s Staff Pick Premieres here.

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