Back on October 21, 1989, in Munich, West Germany, Caroline and I took the very first selfie of ourselves in the reflection of some random building. We had driven down with friends to attend Fantasy Filmfest just four months after we started dating. This is the first photo of the two of us together.

The standout film at the fest for both of us was Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm though we were primarily here for the Dario Argento film Terror at the Opera that featured a soundtrack by Brian Eno. We also took in Hellbound: Hellraiser II and a second Ken Russell film titled Gothic. From here memories get foggy or maybe we were too stoned as my memory says we also saw Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste and an obscure film titled The Navigator about some guys who dig into the earth in the middle ages to emerge in modern times as they tried escaping the plague. We are both certain we watched Jörg Buttgereit’s Nekromantik down in Munich, but the film is not listed on the Fantasy Filmfest archive site so maybe it was showing in an offsite theater. Regarding Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste, it was a gateway drug to his greatest film and an all-time favorite, Meet The Feebles.

I’m 26 years old in this photo; Caroline is only 21. Little did we know that 30 years later we’d still be together and 25 of these years we’d be married.