Many years ago, my brother and I made a movie to show at the surprise party we threw for our parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, which was 31 years ago today. That’s them below, in the Bensonhurst apartment where Irene and I lived at the time, just before they cut the wedding cake.

At the time, I was 23 and my brother was 19. We ransacked our parents’ photo albums, trying to be surreptitious about it so they wouldn’t suspect what we were doing. Lee, who at the time was taking film classes at Brooklyn College, did most of the hard work—he shot the film and cut it together the old-fashioned way, by hand, and did all of the animation himself in those difficult days before digital.

We stayed awake for at least 24 hours straight immediately before the party, struggling to get the soundtrack done in time. We created it by speaking into a cassette tape recorder while playing records at an extremely high volume in the background, turning both machines on and off hundreds of times trying to get the sound and the picture to sync correctly, and undoubtedly driving our landlord and our neighbors crazy. Amazingly, no one called to complain.

We ended up destroying the record player in the process, because the belt drive couldn’t handle being in constant use for that length of time. It got looser and looser, with the music getting slower and slower. By the end of the process, we had to play 33 1/3 records at 45 or even 78 speed in order to make them sound right. I’m still stunned we were able to make such a primitive process work.

We finished maybe an hour or two before the party started. We gift-wrapped the film reels and presented them to our parents as the final present of the night. In order to watch it, we had to start the film and then press play on the tape recorder a few seconds later. A few years ago, my brother had the whole thing transferred to DVD so we wouldn’t have to haul out a projector and find a cassette tape recorder every time we wanted to watch it. Here’s the first 2/3 of what we created to surprise my parents 31 years ago today.

Normally, I’d be calling them both around this time of day to wish them a happy anniversary, but my father died early last year, just three days after their 55th anniversary. So when I call Mom shortly, it will be different, a conversation of commiseration instead of celebration. But we still have the memories, as the video below, the first 2/3 of the movie my brother and I made so long ago, shows.

Geographical footnote: For those interested in these sorts of things, the apartment at the beginning of the video is 1381 East 72nd Street in Georgetown. The arcade with the photobooth at 1:52 was on Flatbush Avenue a few blocks away from Kings Plaza; I have no idea whether it’s still there, but I doubt it. The tree I’m sitting by starting at 6:57 and that my brother is standing by starting at 7:33 was in Marine Park.