Max headroom commercial
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But Channel 4 wanted to explain the character, so a live-action movie introducing Edison Carter - and the whole Max Headroom idea - preceded the 13-week music-video series. NBC floated the concept of "MTV cops," and came up with Miami Vice in 1984.Ī year later, Britain's upstart Channel 4 wanted a music video outlet of its own and went to producers George Stone, Annabel Jankel and others, who came up with the concept of a computer-generated wiseguy host who would make fun of the videos while presenting them. When MTV burst onto cable in 1981, everyone wanted a piece of that action. The history of Max Headroom is described, but not shown, and that's a shame.
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And, as one of the show's creators explains on a separate disc of special features, it was a brilliant case of countrywide free advertising: At the time, every parking garage in England featured the same "Max Headroom" sign.īut even with a whole disc reserved for extras - including a segment in which Tambor and other co-stars, but not Frewer, reunite and reminisce - too much is missing. When a computer genius back at Network 23 downloads Edison's brain into a computer file, the result is a slightly jumbled visual talking head, whose first words - Edison's last thoughts - become his name: Max Headroom. The last thing he sees is the warning on the barrier: "Max Headroom - 2.3 meters." Instead, he goes airborne, and nearly dies when he crashes into an exit barrier. Edison Carter, being chased by bad guys while covering a story, is trying to escape by motorcycle from an underground parking garage.
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To me, the most brilliant aspect of all is the origin of the title character.
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This is smart stuff - and way ahead of its time, as a good sci-fi series should be. "I can't use more than 30 seconds ," he says. The cast of Max Headroom: (Left to right) Matt Frewer, Amanda Pays, Jeffrey Tambor, Morgan Sheppard and Chris Young (top)īack in the Network 23 control room, Murray the director - played by Jeffrey Tambor, long before The Larry Sanders Show and Arrested Development - glances at the screen. Plots have to do with Network 23, or other broadcast operations, trying to increase their audience share and maximize their advertising revenue through all sorts of nefarious means - like subliminal ads called "blipverts," for example, that run too quickly to fast-forward through. Like Max Headroom the character, who is an irrepressible talking head, Max Headroom the series dares to bite the hand that feeds it. One detail they got wrong, though, was the size of his camera: It's huge.īut so are some of the ideas this series floats, very sneakily, into a broadcast television program. Played by Matt Frewer, who also plays Max, Edison is a one-man bureau, carrying his own camera and reporting live by satellite - one of many visions of the future this series got right. The biggest media giant in the world is Network 23, a global operation - and one of its biggest stars is Edison Carter, a hard-hitting reporter in the 60 Minutes tradition. The show is set, as it proclaims at the start of each hour, "20 minutes into the future," but it's a very dark, cynical, Blade Runner type of future.
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There were only 14 episodes of the TV series, and they're all on Max Headroom: The Complete Series. That's Max Headroom - with a stutter, both aural and visual, that's like a record needle stuck in a groove. No hands, no body, just a head - a head that looks manufactured, like a plastic dummy, but also is eerily human. Now, in front of that background, place a talking head. Imagine a background of thin, brightly lit neon tubes, rotating and pulsating in various geometric patterns. Max, a supposedly computer-generated TV host played by Matt Frewer, was a bona fide media sensation for a while: He hosted a music-video show, starred in ads for New Coke (OK, so that didn't go so well), even appeared on the cover of Newsweek.īut to those too young to have experienced Max firsthand, how do you describe him, much less explain him? Well, let's try. People who saw Max Headroom back in the '80s should have no problem remembering him instantly - and not necessarily from the ABC TV series, which shone briefly and brightly in 19. Max Headroom (Matt Frewer) appeared in music videos, a feature film, a TV series and commercials for products like New Coke.