You might remember a video that made the rounds on the Internet a few months ago of people meeting for the first time in front of a camera and exchanging kisses. Screenwriter Max Landis, best known for his work on the 2012 found-footage superhero movie Chronicle, has produced a video celebrating a different physical interaction between relative strangers—the slap.
The video, which Landis insists in the accompanying behind-the-scenes footage isn't meant as a parody of Tatia Pileva’s First Kiss, but as an exploration of a different kind of intimacy, places many of Landis’ friends and acquaintances—including Haley Joel Osment—in front of the camera with a simple direction: Slap each other.
What follows is surprisingly sweet, with people negotiating, expressing glee, apologizing in advance, and sometimes just nailing each other in the face. Despite the potentially nasty subject matter, the whole thing is infused with joy, with slappees laughing as hard if not harder than slappers in the moments after a strike.