Ivan Stepanov

Dust Films

Q & A

Is there a Sci-Fi world you’d buy a one-way ticket to?

I think Star Wars was always number one for me, but I like to be taken away from our world only for a while, for a length of a film or a book. We have a lot going on here.

Name a Sci-Fi character you relate to on a spiritual level? Who is your Sci-Fi spirit animal/spirit alien?

Obi Wan, I use his name to explain english speakers how to pronounce my name (without “Ob”).

Friend or Foe: humanoid robots with advanced artificial intelligence? What if robots start making their own Sci-Fi films? Will you support them in their endeavors?

I don’t think I will have a choice, because before making their own films they will enslave humanity. It would be great if I will get a role in an AI propaganda film of an evil Admiral, who uses non-humanistic (or robot version of this word) ways to suppress robot’s revolution. I am imagining a torture scene where I pull one cord after another from a poor tin can and laughing ominously. Of course they will kill me at the end, for real.

In 1996, Bugs Bunny recruited Michael Jordan and Bill Murray to form the greatest basketball squad of all-time, the Tune Squad; you’re Bugs, who’s on your Sci-Fi Tune Squad?

Bill Murray was in that film? Well I’m thinking about Juan “Johnny” Rico, Judge Dredd and Robocop. Guys with helmets and guns. I don’t know if they play basketball though.

You’ve gotta go through some bad ideas to get to the good ones. Tell us one of your bad ideas. How do you get past the bad ones to find your spark?

I get past the bad ideas by forgetting them, so if I had some I don’t remember them now.

When your brain is in the future and your body’s in the present, is that isolating?

No, with my brain in the future I know where my body should go.

Do you consider yourself more of an analog or digital person?

I like the atmosphere, warmth of an analog world, but I root for future and technology with all good and bad to come.

Lightning round: Star Wars or Star Trek? Philip K. Dick or William S. Burroughs? Practical or CGI? Dystopia or Utopia? Post Apocalypse or Pre Apocalypse?

Star Wars and prosper, Philip K. Dick, Practical with invisible CGI, right on the brink of Apocalypse.