numb3r_5ev3n

I’d like to believe that in another timeline, The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai would have been a franchise with a bunch of movies, like its creators intended. I’d also like to think the same of Stevie And Zoya.

Stevie And Zoya was an animated short which ran on MTV’s weekly animation showcase Liquid TV in the early 1990s, which is probably better remembered for Aeon Flux. Catching Liquid TV on MTV as a teen was always thrilling, like I was seeing something I wasn’t supposed to, something subversive and forbidden. And really, all of it was the kind of stuff that Youtube was created for, the kind of stuff that would probably have found its audience if something like Youtube had existed back then.

A friend of mine once told me that William Gibson apparently once said “I wanted to learn to write the way that David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album sounded.” That’s what Stevie and Zoya reminds me of.

I was instantly mesmerized by Stevie and Zoya’s mix of noir narration (along with the narrator’s frequent slip-ups and asides) and its rough, patchwork, almost grindhouse aesthetic. I wanted it to be as big as Aeon Flux temporarily became. I wanted there to be a live-action movie. I wanted there to be a fandom. I wanted merch. Sadly, all we had for years was just the one animated short.

The artist/creator Joe Horne is still at it, and his more recent efforts (which are awesome) are on Youtube.

Anyway, I made some icons from the original animation, for Dreamwidth and other similar blogging platforms. Here they are.