| Max Headroom | |
|---|---|
| Max Headroom character | |
 | |
| First appearance | |
| Last appearance |
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| Created by |
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| Portrayed by | Matt Frewer |
| Voiced by | Matt Frewer |
| In-universe information | |
| Species | Artificial intelligence |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Television host |
Max Headroom is a fictional character played by actorMatt Frewer. Advertised as "the first computer-generated TV presenter",[1] Max was known for his biting commentary on a variety of topical issues, arrogantwit,stuttering, and pitch-shifting voice. The character was created by George Stone,[2]Annabel Jankel, andRocky Morton. Max was advertised as "computer-generated", and some believed this, but he was actually actor Frewer wearingprosthetic makeup, contact lenses, and a plastic moulded suit, and sitting in front of ablue screen. Harsh lighting and other editing and recording effects heighten the illusion of a CGI character.[3] According to his creators, Max's personality was meant to be a satirical exaggeration of the worst tendencies of television hosts in the 1980s who wanted to appeal to youth culture, yet were not a part of it. Frewer proposed that Max reflected an innocence, largely influenced not by mentors and life experience but by information absorbed from television.[3]
Max Headroom debuted in April 1985 onChannel 4 in the British-madecyberpunkTV movieMax Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future, his origin story. In the movie,Edison Carter (portrayed by Frewer) is a journalist fleeing enemies into a parking garage, crashing his motorcycle through the entrance barrier reading "Max. headroom 2.3 metres" - UK vehicle clearance signs use the phrase "Max headroom". While Carter is unconscious, an AI program based on his mind is created. The AI develops a personality identified as "Max Headroom", and becomes a TV host who exists only on broadcast signals and computer systems. Like Carter, Max openly challenges the corporations that run his world, but using commentary and sarcastic wit rather than journalism.[4]
Two days after the TV movie was broadcast, Max hosted Channel 4'sThe Max Headroom Show, a TV programme where he introduces music videos, comments on various topics, and eventually interviews guests before a live studio audience. During its second and third year, it also aired in theUS onCinemax. Max Headroom became a global spokesperson forNew Coke, appearing on many TV commercials with the catchphrase "Catch the wave!". After the cancellation ofThe Max Headroom Show, Matt Frewer portrayed Max and Carter in the 1987 American TV drama seriesMax Headroom onABC. The series returns to Carter and Max challenging the status quo of a cyberpunk world, now portraying them as allies and providing a slightly altered version of Max's origin. The series was cancelled during its second year.
Max's appearance and style of speech has influenced and been referenced by different media, such asRon Headrest, a fictional character in the comic stripDoonesbury who was a political parody ofRonald Reagan, andEminem's 2013 "Rap God" video, in which the rapper resembles Max.[5] Max Headroom was emulated by an unknown person in a Headroom mask while hijacking a local television broadcast signal in 1987, later referred to as the "Max Headroom incident".[6][7] To advertise and promote Channel 4 and its subsidiary channels shifting from broadcast to digital signal, an aged Max Headroom (again portrayed by Frewer) appeared in new commercials in 2007 and 2008. Max has a cameo in the 2015 filmPixels.
With the rising popularity of music videos with youth culture, and stations such as MTV, Channel 4 hosted a music video programme.Rocky Morton was tasked to develop a graphic to play before and after the videos, clarifying to audiences these were features of a special show and not just random music videos between TV advertisements. Taking inspiration from MTV video jockeys (VJs) and US TV hosts, Morton decided a graphic or "bumper video" would not appeal to youth nearly as much as a host with a loud personality.[3] He thought British youth would be suspicious of a youthful personality attempting to appeal to them and might instead appreciate the cynical irony of a host who appeared to be a conservative man in a simple suit and tie attempting to appeal to youth but lacking a true understanding of their culture. He saw the host as "the most boring thing that I could think of to do... a talking head: a middle-class white male in a suit, talking to them in a really boring way about music videos".[3] Morton thought the host should be computer-generated or animated. When this proved impractical, an actor was cast with the illusion of a computer generated host. Channel 4 executives enjoyed Morton'spitch and introduced Max as a character in an hour-long TV movie before presenting him as a programme host.[3]
Producer Peter Wagg hired writers David Hansen and Paul Owen to construct Max's "whole persona",[8] which Morton described as the "very sterile, arrogant, Western personification of the middle-class, male TV host".[9] The background story provided for the Max Headroom character inMax Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future was rooted in adystopian near-future dominated by television andlarge corporations, devised by George Stone and eventual script writer Steve Roberts. The character's name came from the last thing Carter saw during a motorcycle accident that put him into a coma: a traffic warning sign marked "MAX. HEADROOM: 2.3 M" (an overhead clearance of 2.3 metres) suspended across acar park entrance.[3] The name originated well before other character aspects from George Stone, who remarked "[the phrase] 'max headroom' was over the entranceway of every car park in the UK. Instant branding, instant recognition."[10] It was decided "Max Headroom" was a comically ironic name for a host who implied he knew and understood everything, as the name indicated his head was actually empty of true knowledge and wisdom.[3]
Canadian-American actorMatt Frewer tested for the role after a friend of his had already auditioned and then suggested him instead.[3] Producer and character co-creatorAnnabel Jankel thought Frewer would be a good choice to masquerade as a person whose appearance was designed by a computer, seeing from his castingPolaroid photo that he had "unbelievably well-defined features".[3] Frewer was given "a few lines" of dialogue and then encouraged to improvise. His comedic improvisation of more than ten minutes impressed the production crew.[3] He was inspired by characterTed Baxter ofThe Mary Tyler Moore Show, recalling in 1987, "I particularly wanted to get that phonybonhomie of Baxter ... Max always assumes a decade long friendship on the first meeting. At first sight, he'll ask about that blackhead on your nose."[11]
While Hansen and Owen continued writing Max's lines in the TV movie and music video programme episodes, Frewer always improvised more dialogue during filming and was encouraged to do so.[8] Hansen and Owen later wrote the 1985 bookMax Headroom's Guide to Life from Max's personal perspective.[12]
In discussing Max's fictional origin story, it was first proposed that he could be an AI created to stand in for a human TV host who was late for his own show. The backstory would be revealed through different five-minute segments during the first season ofThe Max Headroom Show.[3] When Channel 4 decided Max's origin would be featured in an hour long TV movie instead, an expanded story was developed and the origin was altered to now involve a crusading journalist named Edison Carter. On 4 April 1985, the TV movieMax Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future introduced Max to television audiences.[4] On 6 April 1985, Channel 4 aired the first episode ofThe Max Headroom Show.
The character's classic look is a shiny dark suit often paired withRay-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses. (The sunglasses look was adopted when the special bright contacts Frewer was wearing would become painful to wear.) Other than the publicity for the character, the real image of Max was notcomputer-generated. Computing technology in the mid-1980s was not sufficiently advanced yet for a full-motion, voice-synchronized human head to be practical for a television series.[13] Max's image is actually that of actorMatt Frewer in latex and foam prosthetic makeup with afiberglass suit created byPeter Litten and John Humphreys.[13] Preparing the look for filming involved a four-and-a-half-hour session in makeup, which Frewer described as "gruelling" and "not fun", likening it to "being on the inside of a giant tennis ball".[14] Only his head and shoulders are shown, usually superimposed over a moving geometric background. This background is a piece of CGI footage that had been generated for one of Morton and Jankel's ad agency's commercials,[3] and later, in the United States version, generated by anAmiga computer by Jeff Bruette.[15] His chaotic speech patterns are based upon his voice pitching up or down seemingly at random, or occasionally becoming stuck in a stuttering loop. These modulations also appear in live performances.
The rights to the Max Headroom character were held byAll3Media as of November 2007[update].[16]
Max Headroom debuted in the British-madecyberpunkTV movieMax Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future, which was broadcast on 4 April 1985.[3] It consists of material originally planned to be broken into five-minute backstory segments forThe Max Headroom Show, later expanded to one hour.[3]
Set in a near future world, it focuses onEdison Carter (Frewer), a crusading and witty journalist who openly challenges the corporations that rule the world, including his own employer Station 23. Max Headroom is a secondary character, an AI created from Carter's basic brain patterns and memory fragments. As Carter exposes corruption in Station 23, Max rises as a host on independent, public access television. In the movie, Max and Edison Carter never meet.[4]
Premiering on 6 April 1985, it features music videos with Max Headroom as video jockey (VJ or "veejay"). Early episodes unusually feature no introductory title sequence or end credits, beginning and ending instead with acold open of static as if Max Headroom is hijacking the broadcast signal to speak to the audience. Channel 4 advertised Max as the "first computer-generated TV presenter" and Matt Frewer was initially under contract to withhold his identity in the role.[3] Many believed Max was a computer-animated puppet, manipulated and voiced by an actor. For this reason, the series pilot won theBritish Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for graphics in 1986, though the show has no computer generated graphics beyond Max's simple background lines.[17]
The show was an immediate hit in the UK, doubling Channel 4's viewing figures for its time slot within one month.[11] In its second year, the programme broadened the original concept to include a live studio audience and celebrity interviews. Frewer did not appear in-person before the audience or share the stage with guests. Instead, he filmed in another room as Max Headroom and appeared before the audience and guests on television screens via a live feed, maintaining the illusion of an AI living in broadcast signals and computer systems.[3]
The second and third years of the show were also broadcast on the US cable channelCinemax.[3] A Christmas special was written byGeorge R.R. Martin, later famous for his book seriesA Song of Ice and Fire, the basis forGame of Thrones.[3]
Channel 4 endedThe Max Headroom Show after its third year. Cinemax then produced six more episodes for US audiences in 1987, rebranded asThe Original Max Talking Headroom Show.[3]
American TV networkABC acquired the rights to create an ongoing series titledMax Headroom. Rather than a music program, this is a prime time dramatic series based on the story and concepts of the original TV movieMax Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future. By this time, it was known to the general public that Max was not a computer generated character or puppet but rather actor Matt Frewer in prosthetics, so press for the show openly spoke of him as a lead cast member in both roles of Max Headroom and Edison Carter. Amanda Pays reprised her role from the original film.
The pilot is largely based on the original movie. The hacker who creates Max Headroom is innocent and manipulated rather than overtly villainous and callous. Max's origin is slightly different and he more strongly shares Carter's drive to expose corruption rather than only comment on it. In the pilot, Max and Carter meet, leading them to work as allies for the rest of the series. It regularly parodies and criticises media corporations and topical news events.
Max Headroom was broadcast for two short seasons from 1987 to 1988. Producer Peter Wagg attempted to sell a movie concept calledMax Headroom for President, but it was not picked up.[3]Shout! Factory releasedMax Headroom: The Complete Series on DVD in the United States and Canada on 10 August 2010.[18]
On 22 November 1987, an unidentified person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume carried outbroadcast signal hijacking of two television stations inChicago, Illinois. During each signal interruption, the hijacker speaks with distorted audio and stands before a swivelling corrugated panel to mimic Max Headroom's geometric background effect.[19] During the second signal hijacking, he referenced Max Headroom's endorsement ofCoca-Cola, the TV seriesClutch Cargo, WGN anchorChuck Swirsky, and "all the greatest world newspaper nerds" (a reference to WGN's call letters, which stand for "World's Greatest Newspaper").
The first"Max Headroom incident" was 25 seconds during the sports segment ofWGN-TV's 9:00 p.m. news broadcast. Approximately two hours later, the second signal hijacking was about 90 seconds duringPBS affiliateWTTW's broadcast ofDoctor Who ("The Horror of Fang Rock").[6][7][20] The second video ended with the hijacker apparently exposing buttocks and being spanked with a flyswatter. Normal programming then quickly resumed. Thesevideo pirates have never been identified.[21]
On 29 July 2022,AMC announced a series reboot, withMatt Frewer as Max.[22]
Max made celebrity cameos and sampled appearances in other TV series, books,[23] theArt of Noise song "Paranoimia" and its video (which became a top-40 hit on theBillboard Hot 100),[24] and advertisement campaigns.[16] He was thespokesman forNew Coke (after the return ofCoca-Cola Classic), delivering the slogan "Catch the wave!" (in his staccato, stuttering playback as "C-c-catch the wave!").[11] After the two TV shows and the Coke advertising campaign ended, Peter Wagg attempted to sell a movie concept calledMax Headroom for President but did not find a company willing to produce it.[3]
In 1986,Quicksilva released aMax Headroom video game, developed by Binary Design, originally for theSinclairZX Spectrum and ported to theCommodore 64,Amstrad, andAmiga.[25] In 1987,Comico announced a thirty-two pageMax Headroom 3-D comic, written byMike Baron and illustrated byArnold and Jacob Pander[26] but the issue was never published.
Max returned to television in 2007, appearing in an advertisement series for Channel 4 to raise awareness for thedigital switchover. These advertisements were directed by original creator Rocky Morton. Matt Frewer portrayed Max, with make up that showed the AI had aged considerably and was in ill-health, implying he belonged to obsolete analogue television and had no place with new digital technology.[16] Matt Frewer played Max Headroom for a brief cameo scene in the 2015 moviePixels, a narrative that featured many digital characters from 1980s video games.
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Max Headroom has inspired many imitations and spoofs:
[S]everal other instances of uplink video piracy have occurred [...] WTTW (Channel 11 in Chicago) was also overridden by a 90 second transmission, this time by a man in a Max Headroom mask smacking his exposed buttocks with a fly swatter.
[T]here was a book market for what had become Max mania: Steve Roberts whammed out a picture-book novelization of his film script, and Owen and Hansen came up with Max Headroom's Guide to Life (the most suitably pompous title they could concoct), and both sold well.
The magazine has a spoof Keir Starmer column that depicts the Labour leader as the computer-generated character Max Headroom.
