From: ed@cwis.unomaha.edu (Dusk Thornwell)
Subject: Re: Aeon Flux 
Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 18:52:21 GMT

bkeener@cs.ulowell.edu (Brian E. Keener) writes:

>LTV on 11/17 kind of bit until Aeon Flux... I thought it was the best
>	episode they've had all season.
>Now that it's pretty much certain that each scenario is entirely independent
>	of the others, but with the same characters, I hope they bring back
>	the second girl in future episodes... perhaps even make her the
>	heroine.  She is infinitely less clumsy.

There will be one more episode this season, I don't know if the girl you
like will be in it.  No more AF's have been made beyond that.  WRITE TO
MTV and tell them you want it!  
 
Oh...don't take my word for it...here's an excerpt from the Peter Chung
interview that'll be in the January issue of SOUND.
 

 
"Originally I had the idea of doing something like Aeon Flux for quite a
long time.  It's basically my reaction to seeing Hollywood
action/adventure
movies and wanting to do something that kind of showed viewers what was
always implicit but what those films never really delivered.  Which was
basically having the main character doing all the standard heroic
things,
but doing so in what I would call a 'moral vacuum' in which you don't
really know why she's doing the things she's doing but you're kind of
caught up in the action.  And seeing how viewers would, how far along
you
could lead them on (laugh) until the point where she dies in a very
ridiculous manner and it's been interesting to see what people think of
that.  I mean some people hate to see her die and other people think
it's
funny.  The intention was to make you wonder about whether she was a
good
person or a bad person to begin with...and I don't know what YOU
thought..."
 
(I mentioned the imagery and extreme violence)

"Well, that was an attempt to get it to tie into the whole Liquid TV
concept which was to, basically, do a show that was satire and spoofed
various genres of things that were out there.  The thing that I chose
was
heroic action/adventure movies.  I don't think it's that far from what
you
actually see in say, an Arnold Schwartzenegger movie where the
exaggerated
level of the one-against-all battle scenes is pretty absurd."

ed: (some people took it more seriously, I thought it had a different
level
other than JUST a spoof)
 
"I had arguments with MTV about...they didn't understand it and the only
way I was able to sell it to them, to sell them on the idea of doing it
or
letting me do it was to tell them that it was a spoof.  My intentions
were
much more...I guess you'd say academic.  I was interested in
experimenting
with visual narrative, telling a story without dialogue and also trying
to
create a style of telling a story with animation that wasn't influenced
by
the usual kinds of things that you see.
      For me there is a solid storyline going on under all the action. 
It's not really that important to me whether or not everybody agrees on
what that story is.  There were very specific demands that had to be met
working for that format.  One thing that was very important to me was
doing
something that could be watched more than once and that you could look
at
again and still read other things into it.  Because the fact that MTV's
been running that show over and over and over again and is still going
to
do that.  And so, I think a way to do that is to get people involved and
thinking about it and talking about it."
 
(I tell him of people doing that...intensely...watching over and
over...)

"Who are these people!?"  
        he needs to convince MTV of this loyal following, he's been
struggling
        with them about funding more episodes...write letters.

AF originally made for LIQUID TV
6 two-minute episodes in the first season....5 in the second season.

ed: (is she a clone, alien, robot?  or cartoony?)

"Well, um...originally she died at the end of the first season.  My idea
was not to bring her back...but they wanted to bring her back.  I
couldn't
really find a credible way to (bring her back), I mean I didn't want to
pull something where you say 'she fell down but she didn't really die'
or
'they put her back together' or something like that so.  I just said
'the
hell with it', I'm just going to bring her back, I'm not going to
explain
it and she's going to die in every episode."

ed: "that makes sense"

"Let people fill in the blanks the way they want.  I hope people aren't
thinking she's a robot, I prefer that they didn't think that because
she's
much more interesting if she's a real person."

[sorry about the quirky formatting....but I haven't formatted it for
ascii and it looks really cranky.  "ed" is me....the unqualified quotes
are his.]
 
....e

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