Max Headroom (character)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Max Headroom is the name of a fictional British artificial intelligence, known for his surreal wit and stuttering, distorted, electronically sampled voice. The character was created by George Stone[1], Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton and portrayed by Matt Frewer. Max Headroom was featured in a music video programme, a feature film, a dramatic television series and television commercials.
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[edit] Productions
[edit] The Max Headroom Show 1985-1986
The Max Headroom character originated in 1985-86 as an announcer for a music video programme on the British television channel, Channel 4, called The Max Headroom Show. The intent was to portray a futuristic computer-generated character. Max Headroom appeared as a stylized head on TV against harsh primary color rotating-line backgrounds, and he became well known for his jerky techno-stuttering American-accented speech, wisecracks, and puns ("Like they say when you're buying suppositories, 'With friends like that, who needs enemas?'"). The Original Max Talking Headroom Show was made by Cinemax in 1987.
[edit] Max Headroom and 20 Minutes into the Future
The Max Headroom Show was developed into the television movie Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future which in turn became the pilot for a series which ran from 1985 to 1987. The first episode was presented in an extended edition to American audiences in 1986 on Cinemax. Though officially two seasons, only fourteen episodes were created, and only thirteen aired.
The background story provided for the Max Headroom character presents a dystopic look at a run-down near-future dominated by television and large corporations. Max Headroom was shown to have been created from the memories of Edison Carter. The character's name came from the last thing Carter saw during a vehicular accident that put him into a coma: A bar with a sign warning of low clearance, marked "Max. Headroom" along with the height of the bar.
The original movie was rebroadcast on More4 on 21 October 2007 as part of the 25th birthday celebrations of Channel 4.
[edit] The Original Max Talking Headroom Show/New Coke
Max became a minor celebrity outside the television series. He was the spokespersonality for Coca-Cola (specifically New Coke after the return of Coke Classic), using his trademark staccato to deliver the slogan "Catch the wave!". In that capacity, he generated more interest from viewers than any previous spokesman for the company.[citation needed] In the UK, Max starred in television commercials for Radio Rentals. He also hosted an interview show on the Cinemax USA cable TV channel, called The Original Max Talking Headroom Show and performed vocals and appeared in the music video for the pop music single "Paranoimia" by Art of Noise.
Art of Noise featured an overdubbed Max on the song "Paranoimia".[2] Max was also featured on a single titled "Merry Christmas Santa Claus (You're a Lovely Guy)" released by Chrysalis Records.[3]
In 1986, Quicksilva released a Max Headroom game, which was sold in the UK for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. The game's plot was to protect Edison Carter from bad guys with guns, whilst rescuing Max Headroom.
[edit] Digital TV campaign
An older looking Max Headroom has been used in a campaign to warn UK households of the impending digital TV switchover,[4] as he is looked after and fed by a carer he moans about being with the other "relics", and then tells about digital TV. He also seems to fuzz up more than he used to, showing how old he is supposed to be getting. He also says that Channel 4 is now suddenly "20 years into the future", making a comical-but subtle-reference to "Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future".
[edit] Production notes
Notwithstanding the publicity for the character, the real image of Max was not computer generated. Computing technology in the mid-1980s was not sufficiently advanced for a full-motion, voice-synced human head to be practical for a television series. Max's image was actually that of actor Matt Frewer in latex and foam prosthetic makeup with a fiberglass suit created by Peter Litten and John Humphreys of Coast to Coast Productions in the UK. This was then superimposed over a moving geometric background. Even the background was not actual computer graphics at first; it was hand-drawn cel animation like the "computer-generated" animations in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series. Later in the U.S. version they were actually generated by a Commodore Amiga computer. But when these things were combined with clever editing, the appearance of a computer-generated human head was convincing to many.
On the 1985 episode of I Love the '80s, John Humphreys noted that the head was so convincing that the series pilot won the BAFTA award for graphics.[5]
[edit] Hacker
On 22 November 1987, two Chicago television stations had their broadcast signals hijacked by an unknown person wearing a Max Headroom mask. The first attack took place for 25 seconds during the sportscast on the 9 O'Clock news on WGN-TV Channel 9 and two hours later around 11 o'clock on PBS affiliate WTTW-TV Channel 11 for about 90 seconds during a broadcast of the science fiction series Doctor Who episode Horror of Fang Rock. The second disruption also included the masked Max Headroom getting smacked on his buttocks by a fly swatter.
[edit] External links
- Pictures of Frewer's transformation into Max
- 1987 Max Headroom Pirating Incident - article and video
- Max to promote Digital TV - The Times Online
- Video of the Art of Noise featuring Max Headroom singing Paranoimia
[edit] References
- ^ The UK Sci-Fi TV Book Guide: Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future by Steve Roberts
- ^ Movie.php - Film | Cinema | Theatre | Theater | Poster
- ^ Novelty Nook, The Eighties
- ^ Channel 4 resurrects Max Headroom to promote digital channels | Media | guardian.co.uk
- ^ http://www.bafta.org/awards-database.html?year=1985&category=Television&award=Graphics
