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While perusing a stack of ’90s magazines I’d ordered on eBay, I recently came across an article about Sofia Coppola and Zoe Cassavetes’s Comedy Central series Hi Octane (1994). Then in their early twenties, the two young women are the picture of downtown nonchalance, dressed in tight shirts, low-slung pants, and with spunky hairdos. I was intrigued. Soon after, I found three episodes of Hi Octane on YouTube uploaded by a fan and watched the roughly 25-minute clips back to back. Watching those three short episodes was enough to make me feel like I was smack dab in the middle of one of the coolest moments in ’90s history. The show has a fast-paced vibe about it, like House of Style only more ADD with cartoonish special effects and jolty transitions. And yet, despite the often erratic segues, there is a common stylistic thread that’s totally compelling. It’s essentially all of Coppola and Cassavetes’s wide-ranging interests brought under one roof: rare cameos of Sonic Youth, Naomi Campbell, Beck, and behind-the-scenes views of Paris Fashion Week, you know, before iPhones. You’ll even find a hot Keanu Reeves stranded on the side of the road with a motorcycle. It is basically a wet dream for ’90s nostalgia enthusiasts.
“It was what we were into and what we had access to,” says Coppola speaking over the phone from her home in California. “It wasn’t a comedy show. I don’t really know how they let us develop it.” A student at Cal-Arts at the time, Coppola tapped her friend Zoe Cassavetes to co-host. Very loosely, the theme for the show was, well, all-things hi-octane: muscle cars, monster trucks, and stunt double drivers. In other words, girls getting rowdy in cars. (Coppola drove a vintage 1969 convertible GTO back then. “It would stall in the intersection of LA and I couldn’t fix it,” she says. “I was kind of a poser to have that car, but it was fun.”)
Filming was DIY not because it was trendy, but because there was no budget. The visuals are shoddy and lo-fi. The editing is janky. But it allowed Coppola and Cassavetes to experiment. Cassavetes recalls the bloopers with fondness. If a camera got in a shot, that was ok: it became a part of the show’s personality. “We were the very beginning of [multimedia]. We weren’t trying to start a revolution or anything, but we didn’t have any money to start a show. We were like ‘Let’s take these cameras and let’s do these fun things,’” says Cassavetes. “I don’t think anyone else had really used a digital video as a TV show at that point. We didn’t care about making it look gorgeous or anything. It was really about the spirit of the show, the guests, and two young hot badass chics in a car.” Coppola shares that sentiment. “It was very scrappy and homemade,” says Coppola. “We were just getting our friends to help us.”
Their friends, a circle of impossibly cool and very famous freaks and geeks, certainly did help, especially those in music. “When fun is involved people are really open to doing crazy things and that is magic,” says Cassavetes. Throughout the series, there is a recurring segment titled Thurston’s Alley in which Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore interviews people in a downtown New York alley. “There was an alley by where Kim [Gordon] and Thurston lived right off of Lafayette,” says Coppola. “They would do interviews there with Johnny Ramone.” The Beastie Boys got in on the action, too. In episode two, Coppola and Cassavetes play caricatures of talk show hosts in a fictional segment called Ciao LA and interview the rap group’s dopey cop characters from their music video “Sabotage.” Here, the rappers discuss stunts and being abducted by aliens. For this, Coppola and Cassavetes are dressed up in classic Chanel skirt-suits. (“Sofia had the hookup,” says Cassavetes of the garb.) The likes of Blondie and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who had some iconic opinions on cars in episode three, also make appearances. “Cars are a sort of metaphor for evil sins in this city and everything that disgusts me and sucks my soul out,” he says. Cassavetes has vivid memories of Flea jumping into the pool in his child’s toy car. “He couldn’t get out, and we all had to dive in to save him!” she says.
While Hi Octane offers an all-access pass into the world of ’90s indie music, there are windows onto fashion as well. At one point, Moore left his alley, which came complete with a sign that read “No Pissing or Shitting,” to head to Vogue’s then headquarters at 350 Madison Ave. Moore enters, looks at the office directory, and says: “Nice place to visit,” adding. “But I wouldn’t want to work there.” Eventually, Moore ends up in Anna Wintour’s office, where he talks about Kim Deal of the band The Breeders who had written an article for Vogue’s July 1994 issue titled “Will You Carry My Guitar.” Moore goes on to explain to Wintour how Deal gets her hair all nice and greasy, a beauty secret that he witnessed backstage firsthand: Deal opens a catered sandwich, uses the mayonnaise on the bun, and rubs it in. “I don’t know how she agreed to be in it,” says Coppola of Wintour’s participation.
The segment in which supermodel Jenny Shimizu serves a lesson in fixing trucks is just as riveting. (Shimizu boasts a buzzcut and a tattoo of a pin-up girl riding a wrench.) She’s a riot, too. When asked about her “best limousine ride,” Shimizu has the cheekiest response. “To the CFDA [Awards] with Christy and Naomi. We had a menage à trois and it just got out of hand.” (Try getting a model to make that kind of raunchy quip today.) Other memorable fashion moments: The late photographer Sean Mortensen heading to Paris to interview Karl Lagerfeld. (He refers to Lagerfeld as the “man with the fan.”); the episode documenting the first runway show of X-Girl, Kim Gordon and Daisy von Furth’s cult streetwear label, that was held on the street in Soho, New York. For a second, you can see a young Chloe Sevigny with a pink dye-streaked bowl cut pop out of a van while “Rebel Girl” by Bikini Kill blares in the background.
Created in a time before social media, there’s a spontaneity and unbridled energy about Hi Octane that feels right for now. Coppola and Cassavetes had their fingers on the pulse, they knew instinctively what kids wanted. Everyone else simply followed. (Other cable television shows in this genre include the aforementioned House of Style and Squirt TV). But perhaps the world wasn’t ready for something like this. After all, Hi Octane only ran for four episodes. It took some time before Coppola felt ready to re-watch the episodes herself and appreciate that raw talent. “People ask me if I revisit my work or want to change things and I feel like that is a time capsule of us in our 20s and stuff that we were into. I wouldn’t change it because part of the sloppiness makes it unique and what it is,” she says. “I think if anything has sincerity and heart, this is it.”
Below, watch an episode of Hi Octane.