Neistat Brothers Biography
Casey Owen Neistat was born on March 25, 1981 at Lawrence Memorial Hospital in New London Connecticut. Casey was the third child in a family with four children. Raised in Gales Ferry Village, sharing a bedroom with his younger brother Dean, Casey suffered from nocturnal enuresis until the age of 8. Attending Gales Ferry Elementary School Casey maintained a solid 2.5 grade point average. In the fifth grade, at the age of 10, Casey was not invited on the class field trip to the Boston Museum of Science and instead stayed behind and watched movies with students from the third grade, his teacher Mrs. Plotnick stated behavioral concerns as the reason for his being left behind. In the seventh grade at Ledyard Middle School Casey was on the Cross Country team and once finished 9th over all in the 2.2 kilometer race, a personal best. After attending Woodward skateboard camp in Woodward Pennsylvania for the month of July Casey entered Ledyard High School. 1995 was a fairly quiet year academically for Casey, with his extracurricular time spent leading the Seals Lacrosse team to a 6 and 3 season. Casey received 11 detentions his freshman year. The summer of 1995 Casey was introduced to marijuana. Realizing the great lucrative potential of the substance he quickly set up a retail infrastructure that dominated the Ledyard High School market. In January of 1997 Casey was arrested for providing alcohol to a minor, after a failed plea of innocence, citing it's impossible to arrest a minor for providing alcohol to another minor, as stated in Connecticut law, Casey was sentenced to 20 hours of community service. The sentence was served out buffing floors at the Our Lady of Lourdes Church, which also served as an excellent front for Casey's then flourishing drug trade. On March 26th, 1997 Casey moved out of his parent's house and into an apartment with his girlfriend, and a few months later the two moved Williamsburg Virginia so Casey could be closer to his brother Van. Van became Casey's legal guardian to meet the necessary guidelines to enroll Casey legally in Jamestown High School. Casey, no longer selling marijuana, got a job washing dishes at Paul's Deli and Bar where he juggled an arduous work/school schedule maintaining his first 4.0 grade point average. In December Casey and his girlfriend moved back to New London Connecticut to have a baby. After two and a half years Casey left High School Indefinitely. On April 14, 1998 Owen Harris Neistat was born at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. The next three years were spent working as a cook and dishwasher in Mystic Connecticut, making four hundred and fifty dollars a week. In June of 2001 Casey moved to New York City to pursue a career in film with brother Van.
Casey currently lives in downtown Manhattan and maintains an apartment in New London Connecticut where his son, Owen, attends the Integrated Day Charter School, an alternative school with a curriculum heavily based on the arts.
Van Neistat was born Van Paul Moody in
Augusta Maine on March 22, 1975. When Van was two, his mother Amy committed
his biological father to a mental institution, and then moved to Norwich,
CT. The pair then moved across the Thames River to New London, where
Van's mother worked as a waitress at Poor Richard's restaurant. There,
she met and married Barry Neistat who eventually adopted Van. The new
family moved to the hamlet of Gales Ferry, 8 miles upriver from New
London. After a brief stint at Eduwema Preschool, Van attended the Gales
Ferry Community Center Nursery School at the end of his street, and
then attended Gales Ferry School, a public elementary school across
the street from the community center. During his elementary school years,
his sister Jordan and brothers Casey and Dean were born respectively.
In fifth grade, Van, along with two accomplices, was nabbed for breaking
into Gales Ferry School, and robbing the Coke machine in the Teacher's
lounge. The heist yielded $27. The following year, Van was picked up
by police for writing FUCK, in three foot letters, on the brick facade
of Gales Ferry School. He used white putty from the school's windows
to scrawl the letters. Van's father was forced to pay $140 for sand
blasting. In seventh grade, Van attended Ledyard Jr. High School, where
he was a B student. The following year Van and an accomplice were caught
by local police for burning down about 10 acres of land behind Van'
house. The judge let him off with a warning. During his freshman year
at Ledyard High School, Van led his freshman class to it's first-ever
hallway decoration contest victory with the theme 'The Circus.' Van
dressed up as a clown and rode his unicycle up and down the hallway
as the faculty judges perused the big top. During his sophomore year,
Van and two accomplices were arrested for shooting the windows out of
cars using a Crossman 10-pump BB gun. Van was sentenced to 60 hours
of community service. He worked for OK Kids, an after-school day-care
program for youngsters. During his junior year Van joined the golf team
and concentrated on getting college-acceptable grades. He took the SATs
twice, scoring 1040 and 1160 respectively. During his senior year he
was accepted to the cheapest out-of-state school he could find, West
Virginia University, which he attended for two years until transferring
to The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia where he
majored in American Studies. He spent 3 years in Virginia before dropping
out of college in 1998 due to financial troubles. In September of 1998
he moved to Brooklyn hoping to cobble together a writing career. After
working in two restaurants as a waiter, Van took an internship at SuperScience,
a classroom magazine published by Scholastic in the spring of 1999.
In the spring of 2000, Van spent his tax return on an imac DV, then
the cheapest computer with digital video editing capabilities, and a
Sony TRV8 video camera. He began digitizing and editing VHS footage
his mother shot of the Neistat family in the 80 s and 90 s, and began
collaborated with Casey on several short movies. Eventually he wrote
articles for SuperScience and ascended to Associate Editor, but was
never officially a full-time employee. When the magazine came under
budgetary review by the Scholastic in April 2001, Van was asked to step
down. He took a job with Artist Tom Sachs as a model maker, though he
had never made models before.
Van currently lives in Manhattan with his wife Christine Glady. He has no children.