Sending an Attractive Lookalike to My High School Reunion

we are gonna have to shave your head this is stephen stephen didn't have a great time in high school but with his 10-year high school reunion coming up he wants to go and he wants to impress stephen i knew it i knew it i knew what i knew i didn't recognize but will his former classmates realize that the steven they're so blown away by isn't actually him [Music] i made an app it enables you to order a look-alike of yourself to go and do something you don't want to do or feel like somebody could do a better job of i want to send a hotter more successful look-alike to my 10-year high school reunion how's that going to work i mean i don't talk to anyone from school either but people know your face right okay i got a picture of the guy oh we've gotta do it he looks so sweet i'm taking a nine hour flight with a small camera crew to colombia maryland to meet steven fasto find out who he is and why he doesn't want to go to his high school [Music] reunion how are you doing i'm good good to meet you i'm stephen stephen's back for thanksgiving and he's mulling over his dad's request because he wants him to move back to columbia and take over the family dental practice i don't think the parents had any real idea why we were there this is your leaving year 10 years ago this is the class that will be there ah there you are [Laughter] jazz europe trip yep and yup jazz band maryland all-state band do these guys know what's good i haven't told them much okay [Music] so the reason he's here is i applied to his app and we're gonna send a look-alike to the reunion a person that's not actually me but a more uh like socially like affable or uh uh charismatic person than me you go for it but stephen you're very affable you're really sociable you're all these things you shouldn't put yourself down mom just relax it's all good do you think that's gonna work maybe people who haven't seen steve and it will work so have you actually got any footage of you when you're in band yeah my parents have a lot check this [Music] out this is uh what got me through high school that was a pipeline dream of mine for sure and it's still one of the most important things to me are there any moments in high school that stick out to you as something that was like particularly embarrassing every spring we had a concert where we dressed up in costumes and i had put on the back of my shirt uh chicks dig me and i like literally stood there like in like a pose and everything with my back to the audience but there was a wedgie going straight through the middle in front of all 800 people that um so it's a big deal the whole community comes for this concert and he thought they were laughing because it just chicks dig me but a lot of people were laughing because he had a nice wedgie that uh something you would like a do over with yeah i mean i tried to roll with it for four years and like play it off by just kind of continuing it every year but it's still one of those damn it moments we can see what we can do with that i'd appreciate that right next next step i guess we're headed my high school so it's only a couple minute drive from my folks house [Music] what's coming to mind band's pretty much what i think about all from that room there and that's kind of where i really centered myself so why do you not want to go to the reunion i mean i think a lot of people have already like established themselves they're out of school they've got a lot of enough careers and family and are really getting settled into their i guess lives i've had an experience a little more different i think so like starting with the music and going to the dentistry and like originally thinking oh you know i could be anywhere and now kind of selling myself back here into this area so i'm not quite where i want to be yet do you think that the people at high school will remember you i don't think the majority of them will but it'll be nice to revisit and see them or that wouldn't work for this no never know not at all it would be cool to see him touring musician like traveled had a lot of neat experiences can entertain a small crowd you know good looking confident version would be awesome so i found the lookalike on a casting website and i just set the maximum price like not that much money because we'd spent most of the money on the flights over there what are your like special skills would you say so i can play guitar that's good all the music stuff you know what i actually have a video of me sweating [Music] you want to go in and be like a really charismatic kind of like a little bit of a douche like you want to be cool don't you you want to be you want people to leave being like yeah that was stephen today's the day and stephen to come and give me a load of materials like dvds of him from high school his clothes any questions you've got before we do this well i'm hoping to like work in this area like as a dentist but besides that whatever like you know as long as it's fun again good come on yeah yeah sure this is the yearbooks so stephen faster here we go that's steven this is the stephen who you need to be today his idealized virgin himself that's you what do you think i can make it work you think if you had glasses it might help the whole thing these are pretty on the mark we are gonna have to shave your head like properly completely bold yeah like shaved yes okay at the end of the night you're gonna get out the guitar you're gonna tear off your shirt doing a face melting solo turn around and then you've got a tattoo on your back that says chick stick me and is this the weirdest job you've done oh yeah one hope is that hey hey man how's it going good to see you stephen this is steven nice to meet you good to meet you stephen we've got like literally an hour and a half we got to make you look like you we've got to get the brown eyes we need to do your hair all right [Music] we kind of want to make him look like this okay i want to expose a spot on the scalp thin line down the middle you know there's still hair there [Music] oh have we taken her off i look pretty bald though no no a little hair are you wanting no hair it's pretty good huh we're gonna have to uh do the tattoo yes do you think anyone in the room will remember the moment kristen colin anybody band related all right baby put you on a whack in those contacts then let's turn blue into brown [Music] fascinating i think we did it [Music] the new and improved stephen was about to enter a high school reunion where he knew nobody so we had to give him some help we've got like five hours until this begins we're not gonna be able to give you all the information you need you just need to be able to what do you do now do you still do music oh i'm here and there you do your band's called the right guy there's gonna be posters up on the way that you walk to go to this venue [Music] so we put up professional gig posters around columbia maryland to show stephen was this successful musician now i wanted to subliminally associate aaron's face with the right guy which he obviously isn't there's an anecdote i think you should have about when you were touring an old kyoto you should start going into a phrase in japanese okay and then say sorry and then say it in english watashi stephen um all right so there's him this is steven out on his own the man that's kristen and she's a friend of stevens from bands so avoid her this is jesse we want stephen to be cool so make friends with them bam okay guys here okay i don't know who that is katie flew hardy i think stephen had a crush on katie's throughout high school but you know never had the guts to ask her out charm her she's actually not going to be there tonight what's her name katie kitty this is your big ally you need to get out of a tight spot you got chris i hope you took some of that in because it's important how are you feeling great i can't wait all right we should probably get over towards the venue because chris is going to be there soon [Applause] [Music] ally [Music] that's chris chris knows what we're up to so he's an ally man tonight this is stephen so oh yeah that's steven i'll stand by the front so that he sees me when he comes in maybe help him with his name badge maybe won't the cameras look a bit suspicious we're making a very important documentary about high school reunions if anyone asks that's awesome that's so awesome why do you think high school unions are important um i mean i think they're important just because steven and andy did you know them i'm pretty sure they were all in band in middle school because i remember steven played clarinet i played clarinet he was way better than me there was people that went to jazz band and i was not good enough to try out for jazz band so so narisha she just told us this you played because middle school you don't know that she was jealous you beat she was and then you upgraded to sax when you went to jazz okay okay that's all you need right cool he's heading in please work please work it out please work it out [Music] [Applause] hey how's it going nice yeah dude it's so good to see you man yeah for sure it's good i need a name tag i think they're right over here man you remember me no and i remember your name i play guitar i know i used to play sax but i'm playing guitar now hopefully it's a lot more socially swabbed than i am when i was in old kyoto there was a sage there and he used to always say [Applause] first up we got jesse so can our lookalike convince the most popular guy in school that he is the real stephen fausto that is so jesse jesse go man how the hell are you faster yeah yeah yeah yeah that's right dude how's everyone dude everything's been good you know what i i was gonna follow my my dad's footsteps but actually i moved to l.a okay i'm doing some crazy right now so you know i'm just trying to man it's good to hear man thanks man yeah i mean i i try to trim off with everything you know but you know never looked as good as you but i i i try well i'm glad you're having a great day great great job yeah man it's great seeing you man no doubt man yeah you take from youtube it's worked he worked for that awesome no one recognizes me here you look so different well i mean i i i've lost weight i've like grown into myself i came here victor stephen i have a little memory he worked with quite a lot of people but they were genuinely shocked about his dramatic change in appearance but they were shocked for the better some thought he looked great this girl tried and hit on him which her boyfriend was not very happy about wait yeah i was in old kyoto there was like a shaman the murakami yamamoto which basically translates to never trust a monkey without shoes what does that mean the girl i was seeing at the time was cheating on me so that i think that's what he was really implying he's unreal like music's my passion i went to la and i invested in in bitcoin bitcoin where the hell is he coming up with this have you ever heard of uh maroon 5 maroon 5 yeah that's the band i play it seemed to kind of be going well until we found out somebody was there who we were not expecting to be the girl that you said was the girl that you fancy at school is here killing me are you serious [Music] what's my last name i did have a little bit of a crush on you so [Music] tell me something about me you're beautiful that's one no no no well thank you something about me previously um what else this is horrible this is so horrible i know i've changed a little bit you know i wish i still had my hair but you don't remember me do you i know seem fast though would you play guitar when's the last time you've talked to me you don't care about it i'm not buying it let me get charged with kristen we got a good doctor i know stephen i will never forget him that's not him see if we went to school with him for a long time and you're not him i am 100 him i play clarinet in middle school as you know and you play clarinet as well i don't i always felt like this weird like competitive thing with you really because i thought you played something in between clarinet and saxophone what was that oh god things have changed yeah he's digging deep i am stephen no you're not i'm sorry you don't look like him even they didn't do a good job well the other the stephen festo that went to blood now i've been waiting to find steven to talk to him does anyone in the room still think it's him you're not stephen fatso i just believe it stephen passed out it's game over soon everyone in the room would know that this was not the real stephen so we had a matter of minutes to finish this thing he just needs to do chick dig me and get out of there let's send him a note so if you remember the chicks dig me performance the most embarrassing moment of stephen's high school where he had the big wedgie now this was going to be his chance to do it all over again and do it with a sexier more topless version of himself [Music] oh that's awkward all knew me as a saxophone player but i'm going to show you something you've never seen before [Music] you're such a bad musician he's so much better than that [Music] [Applause] you get shirts off right now after chicks dig me things really really went bad they all knew by that point that it wasn't stephen and stephen and i were in the back of the van and stephen was freaking out are you all right i don't know it's like a mixed bag for me like i haven't seen these people in 10 years you know i'm like you know is that's gonna like on my career like being a dentist in the area like who knows how it's gonna settle out but you know i signed up for it so [Music] [Music] i'm stephen and i'm 29. they wanted to see him all along and steven has this like moment that maybe he wasn't invisible at high school here's the way i feel it's touching to know that these people that i didn't think still felt connected to me actually do so like yeah i i guess i undervalued those friendships that i made in high school and that's something not to really take for you know take for they're not into granted festo right now not my version of steven what do you think went wrong when wrong is that him like that they love the real stephen festo we should go in yeah no i do want to go in let's go you want to go in yeah for sure [Music] all [Music] all right [Music] i love steven [Music] steven always had 17 bags on his shoulders and he was making it to where stephen needed to go i've known steven since middle school and yeah he got picked on in high school and middle school i mean it was kind of a it was kind of like he had friends and we all kind of had friends but outside of it it was tough [Music] i did not anticipate this in any way and i didn't think that i was still relative in their thoughts even like you know 10 years after high school but i got proven wrong it's really nice to think that people still you know i have those feelings towards me or those thoughts about me and they have like these memories that are really fresh to them [Music] talking with natalie afterwards and the way she's like hey i worked with your dad this is my experience there and like hey i you know cried after leaving his office i was thinking about changing my career and like just staying there like that's a huge affirmation for me since that's kind of where i've redirected my career path yeah we did a gag on them but this was a huge learning experience for me so it worked then in its own little way it did the inadequate invisible person that stephen thought he was at high school died tonight he even managed to do something that he had never been able to at high school ask his crush out let's get coffee sometimes let's do coffee sometimes okay we will [Applause] you

Channel: VICE

Views: 1,085,586

Rating: 4.8653712 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, film, short film, VWN, Vice World News, world news, news, Oobah Lookalikes: Skydive Oobah Butler, Prank, Lookalike, high school, school, band, trumpet, bullying, high school reunion, reunion, VICE, con, trick, blag, blagger

Id: AHRM_QNvp9E

Length: 22min 36sec (1356 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/rch09c]

I couldn’t watch the guitar part after they discovered it wasn’t really him. That was arguably the most cringe worthy thing I have ever seen

[u/xbenetti]

This guy just needed a proof that he wasn't a phantom in high school, that would appear to have embarrassing moments in front of the whole school. And I really hope that it's going well with the high school's crush

[u/LemonTimeee]

This was fun to watch and I’m glad the guy realized at the end that people did genuinely care to see the real him. Also, as someone who can’t pronounce Gloucester, it was nice to hear a Brit struggle to say Maryland properly

[u/cat9tail]

I did something like this at my 20 year high school reunion - we all met at a bar on a Friday night, and I found a perky young 21 year old with blonde hair (I'm blonde as well) and I said, "I'll buy your next drink if you put my name tag on and say hello to my classmates in the private room." Not only did she agree, but she spent about 15 minutes in there hugging everyone and telling them how great they looked! It was absolutely hilarious, and when I bought her and her friends their drinks in gratitude, it turns out they were all college students at the university where I teach. That was nearly 20 years ago, and I seriously want to do this again at our 40th...!

[u/Scottdavies86]

This guy is so sweet you could eat him on a slice of buttered bread. Oobah isn’t bad either.

[u/RandomDigitalSponge]

I understand how you could pull off the “hotter” part, but isn’t “more successful” a bit redundant just what everyone else is already pretending to do? The lookalike doesn’t really have to be more successful.

[u/thesearemet]

I’m Stephen and I’m 29!

[u/bitwise97]

I thought I was on /r/cringe but I guess this works too

[u/CoffeeonCloud9]

Oobah has hands-down the funniest content. He can even make everyone’s high school reunion dreams come true!