Outrun
video, 1 hour 50 minutes (clip shown: 45 seconds)

The film "Running on Empty" has been a favourite since I was 14 years old. I was infatuated with River Phoenix, who played the main character, although at the time it felt different from the other ‘celebrity’ crushes I’d had. I felt that we possessed a certain shared sensitivity, and I sincerely thought that were he and I to ever meet that we would be together, despite the ten-year age gap. I was devastated when he died suddenly in 1993, convulsing from a drug overdose on a sidewalk outside of a nightclub.

When I watch “Running on Empty” now, more than ten years later, it’s a bit different – the movie still gets me choked up but I also view it from a remove, remembering how I experienced it as an early teenager. In the video "Outrun," I edited the entire film so that River Phoenix’s presence has been eliminated. I zoomed in on specific shots and reframed them so that he no longer appears on screen. All of his dialogue was then filled in with ambient sound from the scene.

In some parts of the movie you can tell right away that someone is missing; in others it only becomes clear after awhile that something is ‘off.’

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