Peter never wasn't brilliant!

The idea Trevor's image came from this man Ashley is positively intriguing. I'd love to see that drawing, but I feel as if I already have.

What luck to live in a gorgeous place like Bali.

His artwork featured in one of my art school lectures last year. I found it very striking and intense!

The idea of a colloaboration between Ashley Bickerton and Peter Chung is extremely intriguing to me!

...Why don't you field this one Mars.

P.S. Interesting? possibly. Sordid? Certainly. Paties involved? Uhm...Yup!

But to start off, I'll say Ash was always the baddest of the bad boys ; he set the standard with the looks, the accent; he had the rebel European punk thing, the laid back surfer thing; postmodern "interregnum!!" critical theory-declaiming, beatnik poetry "intaglio, ratsbane!!" spouting, hipster dance-moves and oh yeah, not to mention sheer natural artistic talent to burn.

I dyed my hair blonde for Halloween 1980. That broke some ice, but no doubt my incongruous association with the campus weirdo (at CIA, that's saying something) Mars didn't hurt my streetcred in spite of being an animator (and, at the time, a Christian one at that).

Hooboy, guess you had to be there.

I did check out a few spots on the internet of Ashley's works, these sages beat out the Bluemen in Vegas:

http://www.artseensoho.com/Art/SONNABEND/bickerton99/b1.html

Now that you've developed dialog in the show, have you also sacrificed the enigma of your mystique of silence?

Traditionally, women are to be seen and not heard. From this position, different women draw different destinies. The woman who is seductive may indeed, as your question suggests, use this unspoken rule of no-speak to the purpose of reinforcing the feminine mystique which, symbolically, has everything to do with the abysmal, the void, the hole, the vacuum, the silence. But this only works for a woman if she has something to say which she won't - or at least if she pretends that she has. In this situation, she may turn the prohibition into strategy - to use the edict of silence against you. The woman who hasn't the guile to use this trick to her advantage, a woman who as a person is straightforward by nature, is the true victim of this situation and is naturally outraged.

As to myself, though I'm a person of action, I am nonetheless a person of Considered action. But I don't believe in saying anything unless it is a matter of substance. I despise idle chat, and certainly in this sense more is always less.

How do you interpret or respond to Breen policy regarding the Monican population? I refer to a certain Breen document --

--"Monica Objectified," yes, I'm familiar with that. Goodchild is foolish to consider Monicans to be the masses who absorb energy and don't respond. He's displacing things to be said about the Breen masses - his very own population - onto Monican people. His is an unconscious inversion he does not realize he is using to avoid any conscious recognition of his own contempt for Breen society.

Goodchild is more of a Monican than he is a Breen. He thinks like a Monican. Like Trevor, any Monican cultivates their own identity, their own politic, their own way of thinking about themselves and/or others, and they each of them take an individual - as opposed to any collective, or "collectivist" - responsibility for it! Monicans, in my experience, are individualists. It would be the Breen population who would actually characterize the subject of that report -- and it would be Trevor Goodchild who would never want to face it.

Is AEON FLUX a Radical Feminist, a Relational Feminist, or a Do-Me Feminist?

No answer to that question is satisfactory. Even if you were to say, "Oh, she's no feminist at all!" -- as I were to escape the feminist paradigm altogether -- it's not true. Nothing escapes a paradigm. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but whips and chains excite you, not names and labels. They pigeonhole anyone they touch; they reduce any true discourse.

Do you consider yourself a terrorist?

Terror? Is terror an ism? How does a person "believe" in something like "terror?" You wax poetic, now. I've experienced terror, but I don't see how that can necessarily be construed as some sort of "practice," as if terror were a theory the way that, say, we have a theory of chaos. As I were a fear-ist theorist?? ...Hmm. Interesting, actually!

Do you have any reservations about fostering delinquency in your audience?

Delinquency??! It's odd, this preposterous notion that it's some "kid's show" -- this idea is taken to be the basic given for any business about the show! Whereas for those of us who actually produce it, who create it, and for those of us who watch it - the hilarious irony of that is: We know we aren't children. I mean, what is this idea of "Adult Programming," anyway. Is it to do with one's quality of mind or level of education? What does it mean to be an Adult, anymore? What makes Aeon Flux a show for adults? That it's informed by, or the product of a level of sophistication that transcends generic popular culture? Should it therefore be X-rated? Ridiculous.

So now you have a voice - but, whose voice is it? How can you speak for yourself in an interview like this when you are, part and parcel, the concoction of fantasies and phantasms of (male) artists and writers? And, how does it feel to be a figment?

I may be a figment, but if movie stars and media stars can pretend to speak for themselves - which they never do; no industry interview is candid. You yourself are media-figment; you yourself, my interviewer, do not exist. Neither of us are our own inventions. Who is?? If you are interviewing me as a Star - then you are therefore already talking with a person who is more virtual than actual because you are creating me, you are contributing to the development of my figment. That is to say, I don't exist -- whether I do or not. Any media figment -- and who in this world isn't a media figment, anymore. Any fan of any media product is therefore a media figment.

You're a cartoon character!!

Takes one to know one. In any case, yes, we are cartoons. What else characterizes the period but cartoons; transience; simulation(s)? The question of what is artificial, here, is no different than for any other artifact of popular culture at large. The zeitgeist today is cartoon! You yourself are a fictive synthesis - which makes you no different than me. No different, in fact, than anyone who absorbs, takes in, The Media. Conversely, I, like you, have a mind. But who can say that her or his mind is self-made? Who can say that one's mind is one's own, in vacuo?? In a society of free information, we are all heterogeneous. We are the products of our "respective" intercontamination with all other elements that infuse and inform us. How dare you challenge my existence. My very right to a selfhood, an identity. My ego.

Hey, look -- put that thing away --

After you're finished with it. I'll put you away first. How can I be dangerous if I do not exist!? Why does Broadcast Standards and Practices constantly fret about my influence on tender hearts and minds.

No -- ! Please!!!

Consider this interview "terminated."

Or that there was a way out for the baby from the bathwater, of this longstanding dilemma - something we could bother to have done for quite some time and every reason why we surely should remain in obscurity, irrelevance and safe insignificance yet today. A simple reason too, of simple solution, considered and intelligent though. When no one had to be - just like with sci-fi, ours always remained stigmatized in quaint or tent-show conventions, cliches, fanfare marathons and the frustrated symptoms of inveterate cultdom in its somnambulent, neverland nostalgia, procrastinate, delinquent, obsolete! Impertinent and spiteful after all, artistically and critically - along with all the boys clubs, playgrounds, Disneyland rides ever outgrown or retired.

And that entertainment is not even a subset of what art is - let alone the other way around too, fool - you know what I mean. Why the same satisfaction is impossiblr from your kids to the art museum but Six Flags makes you sick from.

All right. But if, say, Wes Archer never should have thought to consider applying a kaffeeklatsch of writer’s writers to some feasable studio product either next season or ever in his wildest go-postal brainstorms and still nobody got it how Chung ever hit every respectable critical venue with a 10 with a vengeance like your boyfriend’s back - like some kinda art star from hell I mean to make us out the fools your momma don’t even wanna know you motherfucker yeah I mean! Film Comment, for shit on your mother!! The village Voice - all in five star spades for Aeon Flux like a snob with my attitude on a bad hairdo black monday just to piss you off! Nobody’s fault but Chung’s, after all, that he’s the only one among anybody else in the whole eff’ing field to pay any meaningful attention or put a degree of effort against the outstanding vacuous dearth of intelligible writing talent - even for TV! - so sorely and historically and glaringly preeminent in, and always identified in particular with, the animated cartoon television series, the genre that’ll NEVER GROW UP.

God, did he get away with murder in the first. And, too, to top it off? He’s even pulling wild, impeachable doozies like hiring one hopeless loser - this fatal, prohibitive-impediment hurtpuppy mastermind, Mark Mars, on board as some sort of a writer. Seriously attempting to smuggle a line past BSP such as: “Son of a bitching slut for Satan down with my rat patrol I’ll tear you a brand blue new one too, rock’n’roll, n’ I know yuh gud - like I own you!” Or, “Oil my motor, mouthgirl.” DAMN !

If anyone at the studio had known, it never could have happened. Not back then. Not back then and not now, not yet, hey well, we'll call you.

So one day some time after this, some Hollywood suits cutting that uh huh sharper image in an otherwise uneventful, way-too-out-to-powerlunch-at-Coco’s got a clue. Some wise guy intern fell right off and had a brainer outta nowhere win the lotto. But that’s when some of these duh-no-show-biz, spare-any-change-for-a-phD’s-ass riff-raff shitheels some-or-any-fkn-way-fkn-how stole aboard to get hired.

No, never having set foot anywhere Beyond Baroque, ah, but for no excusable reason it seems it had never occurred to anyone else? Then suddenly everybody all the while oh yeah knew better all along what a shame to have managed to have ignored THAT sorry crowd! Like some healthy, artistic self-respect were ever somehow construed the last thing at all worthwhile for television in the 21st Century ALREADY YOU HO’HO’HOMELESS ALL YOUR FAULT SENSITIVE PERSON BABES-LESS HERE’S YER NICKEL EINSTEIN?? YA DED-TA-RIGHTS ART FAGGOT LOITERER 911 ALREADY?!; that is, to include the process of creative development you have going on in successful, respectable, excellent properties like Seinfeld or anything good youSPOCK-BUTTON, NERD-ANAL, LUNCH-DOIN’, MORTGAGE-APPROVEABLE, DAY-JOB-DILBERT-CAN’T-COMPLAININ’, WORKABLE, REGULAR, O.K.see what I mean?

And I mean having aboard, on payroll, a regular, Godless bullpen of these off-the-curb, got-a-smoke-man, foreign-film-fan, Harper’s-reading, literate and intelligible life-of-the-mind, world-of-ideas, professional-student types should ever have hoped imagine them szorry selves somehow to wind up all health-and-dentaled or 401K’d like Reagan never happened. Just as if it had somehow mattered what the fuck Bob Dylan was inferring or John Lennon would have thought about it. Like we even been there done there - like we never resented their freedom or their danger.

And moneyed suits with cheap excuses, denial or blame from the pocket to shank you - all hate-radio, blame-the-victim and impossible bad taste, idiot material, yeah - for this sort of high-volume social attrition evident in certain demographics. While at the same time of course all these poetry-literate people went home without any supper. While all the crap on television sucked at sucking cock so bad just like your Sunday’s-best, unabusive, infomercialable, Saturday morning cartoon kid stuff never been even fucking experienced.

All the while and we all could have been making sense while we sat on their hands.

"Sticks and stones may break your bones, but whips and chains excite you" is my favorite. That ought to make it into the new episodes (MTV willing).

The interview with Aeon Flux, I loved! Didn't know, except for the small detailing clue Peter left behind, it evidently is from another time, and wonderfully is restated here. Thank you:) Intriguing to read the mind of Ms. Flux. She doesn't give up much in an interview, does she? She instead illuminates more depths glimpsed like a hidden city on a mountaintop that I am always trying to get to.

I will say I think I do understand his second post. He was speaking of the birth of Aeon Flux and the pangs MTV had during the birthing, which came unexpectedly to the usual suspects because of the unlooked for unleashing of real creativity in tv scripts, (usually censored out) and baby did not get thrown out with the bathwater after all but baby was borne.

Glad to see not much has changed in a hundred years. Good to know the conversations have just continued on with out me. I am still the same(I hope), but i live in another world. Once i started to read this page I found googling, I knew it could only really truly be the boys of my youth speaking the language I knew so well.....the laughter echoing off the high gloss white walls, the purple sky of yet another dawn spent harressing the Animators Bible breakfast with devil make-up on. Ahh, memories. i could go on of course, since I remember EVERYTHING in DETAIL w/ DIALOGUE.

Peter...glad to hear you still work together with Mark. I bought the Aeon Flux box set at holiday time just to read all of the notes. I follow your work as much as I possiblly can. happy to see you have success. I loved it when you went blonde that Halloween.
I don't know if it has been discussed on this site already...but i was glad to see that they tried to stick to your camera viewpoint as much as possible in the live action Aeon Flux. That made it a little bit cooler I thought.

What do you think the readers of this would think of Ashley & Andy Moses film "the Love Story of Pathgaris Redhill"?? I know Negative Man was in it, but Peter did you assist w/ that production at all i can't quite remember.

I think you all should definitly collabrate!

Ashley...I have been trying to find contact info for you for the past decade - contact me & if you have an opening in NYC soon I can maybe come see? Mark, i have a B&W larry harris portrait of you that is amazing. Once i started to read the posts here, I knew it was you! i like not having to deciper your handwriting....

-Canning

(Mark immediately thought of you, it's true. I don't know what the hell I was thinking when I chose that name.)

I'll send a link to this page to Simeon (my neighbor) and J. O. and see what turns up.

FKN Monica !!!! HOW THE LOVIN FACK ARE YOU doing god DAMN !

Monica, you know, it has never been the same without you. You dropped off the face of our little Warhol Youth Conspiracy for y'know lo the past twenty-odd years now like some sort of yer Edie "Ciao, O Cruel Art World!" Sedgwick Die Young - Stay Pretty kinda tragedy job: What Gives, you?? Like Jim Morrison or any one of yer cash&burn casualty tsktsktsk overtures from back in the day. BUT YOU, you ever lovin' son of a bitch - I mean, with YOU, you were an downright casualty - so would it seem - of Sobriety . . . ?

Sobriety seemed to have made of you (and plenty of others, Monica - what with the whole "wagon train" thing, anyway, etc.) a virtual MIA to everyone whom you'd formerly run with. It was as if Monica had had to have had a massive stroke or something, she were no more.

Well, anyway god damn it, I only sincerely hope that that's all there is to it and that we can therefore put all of that down time behind us and return to matters at-hand, at last.

i will check out the videobites of MM tonight....

thanks Peter & Mark for the Aeon Flux cred. You KNOW I'm Lovin it. Also to be the namesake of Aeon's ideology is so much cooler than people thinking I would ever wear that stupid green 50's prom dress that Shana's Monica wore in "200 Cigarettes" (I know Shana didn't write me wearing it, but how does my public know?).

Hey I think i see some underlying thread in the subconscience of my CalArts pals concerning Ashley & I as .....just what the fack anyhow? i remember that self portrait Ashley did, Peter that you based Treveor Goodchild on....and than Shana D' had that Ashley character too....ARE YOU PEOPLE GETTING THIS???

I really didn't mean to get sober & fall off the face of the earth mark....I just can't talk too long to really drunk people. Believe me, i am way freaked out about living in the straight world for the past 20 years. But i try to keep hovering in with my CIA peeps. I just lost track of a few of the best live acts known to man. But all that is past us now, you are correct. I finally found a link.

s'later babies.

Fack Man. FAK.

Okay. GOD have I missed you! I'm a heel to bitch you out but I have missed you!