So indulge me if you could for a second, before I get to
this video. I have a friend who regularly likes to joke that I’m always out of
the loop when it comes to current and popular trends. O.K. granted that’s true.
I’m an old fogey stuck in my ways.

And just to make that point pretty evident, when we got
the video for this First Kiss parody, First Kiss – The Lost Takes, by
filmmakers Ashley Denise and Adedana Ashebir, I didn’t get the joke.

So I looked up the original First Kiss video on You Tube, and
discovered that it’s gotten over 74
million views. Wow! Seems a whole lot of people know about something that I
had never heard of before, or even knew it existed. Yeah I’m pretty much out of
the loop all right.

And for one or two out there who, like me, have no idea
what First Kiss is, it’s a viral video in which complete strangers are brought
together to kiss for the first time and on camera no less. However as Ms.
Deinse says:

“Adedana and I were both
struck by the original “First Kiss” video the night of its premiere.
I actually thought the video was kind of beautiful, but as one of my friends
noted, there was a glaring lack of diversity onscreen. I made a Facebook status
update commenting on this, and Adedana messaged me almost immediately. She
couldn’t believe twenty strangers would be “un-offensively attractive and
monochromatic at the same time”. Days later it was revealed they were models
and actors, and that the video was a clothing ad”.

Ah ah! I knew there had to be catch somewhere

So both Ms. Denise, who is a Harlem based independent filmmaker who has formed her own
production company, Nuanse Entertainment, and Ms. Ashebir, a DC based journalist and writer who says her “secret dream is to become the
Ethiopian-American hybrid of Mindy Kaling, Aisha Tyler, Jean Grae, and Tina Fey,” got together, and, literally two weeks after, put together a crew and a cast of
actors to make their own short video spoofing the First Kiss video, and righting
wrongs.

And here it is: