Max Headroom

For his role of hosting a music video programme, Max Headroom was conceived of by creator Rocky Morton 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] also deciding that he should be computer-generated.

Canadian-American actor Matt Frewer was chosen based on his "unbelievably well-defined features" that Jankel noticed in a casting polaroid, and from his comedic improvisation skills that he demonstrated in a ten-minute audition.[3] The actor took inspiration from The Mary Tyler Moore Show's Ted Baxter, saying in a 1987 interview, "I particularly wanted to get that phony bonhomie 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."[4] Producer Peter Wagg had already hired writers David Hansen and Paul Owen to construct Max Headroom's "whole persona",[5] which Morton described as the "very sterile, arrogant, Western personification of the middle-class, male TV host".[6] They created dialogue for Max's appearances in the TV movie and TV shows, which the actor added to through improvisation.[5] The two also wrote the 1985 book in his voice, Max Headroom's Guide to Life.[7]

The background story provided for the Max Headroom character in his original appearance was rooted in a dystopian near-future dominated by television and large corporations, devised by George Stone and eventual script writer Steve Roberts. The AI of Max Headroom was shown to have been created from the memories of crusading journalist Edison Carter. The character's name came from the last thing Carter saw during a vehicular 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 a car park entrance.[3] The name originated well before the other aspects of the character from George Stone, who said "Max headroom was over the entranceway of every car park in the UK. Instant branding, instant recognition."[5]

The classic look for the character is a shiny dark suit often paired with Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses. Other than the publicity for the character, the real image of Max was not computer-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.[8] Max's image was actually that of actor Matt Frewer in latex and foam prosthetic make-up with a fiberglass suit created by Peter Litten and John Humphreys.[8] Preparing the look for filming involved a four-and-a-half-hour session in make-up, which Frewer described as "gruelling" and "not fun", likening it to "being on the inside of a giant tennis ball."[9] Only his head and shoulders were depicted, usually superimposed over a moving geometric background. This background was a piece of CGI footage that had been generated for one of Morton and Jankel's ad agency's commercials,[3] later, in the United States version, generated by a Commodore Amiga computer.[10] 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 by All3Media as of November 2007.[11]

Max Headroom originally appeared in the British-made cyberpunk TV movie Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future, which was broadcast on 4 April 1985.[3]

The TV movie consisted of material originally planned to be broken into five-minute backstory segments[3] for the British music video programme, The Max Headroom Show, which premiered two days later. Max Headroom served as veejay, and its first episodes unusually featured no introductory title sequence or end credits. The show was an immediate hit in the UK, doubling Channel 4's viewing figures for its time slot within a month.[4]

A second series, which broadened the original concept to include celebrity interviews and a studio audience, was produced in late 1985, and a third and final series ran in 1986. The second and third series were shown first on the US cable channel Cinemax, and on Channel Four an average of six months later.

A Christmas special was produced at the end of the second season and seen by UK audiences just before the regular run of the season, and just after the US season concluded.

Cinemax produced a fourth series of the talk show on its own, The Original Talking Max Headroom Show, which ran for six episodes in 1987. These episodes were never shown in the UK.

The series pilot won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for graphics in 1986.[12]

The final spin-off from the original film was the dramatic television series, Max Headroom, which was broadcast in the United States, running for two short series (mid-1987 and late 1987), with two more episodes shown later in 1988.

Shout! Factory released Max Headroom: The Complete Series on DVD in the United States and Canada on August 10, 2010.[13]

Unidentified man wearing a Max Headroom mask, as seen during the broadcast signal intrusion.

A broadcast signal hijacking of two television stations in Chicago, Illinois was carried out on 22 November 1987, in an act of video piracy.[14][15][16] The stations' broadcasts were interrupted by a video of an unknown person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume, accompanied by distorted audio.

The first incident took place for 25 seconds during the sports segment of WGN-TV's 9:00 p.m. news broadcast; the second occurred around two hours later, for about 90 seconds during PBS affiliate WTTW's broadcast of Doctor Who.

The hacker made references to Max Headroom's endorsement of Coca-Cola, the TV series Clutch Cargo, WGN anchor Chuck Swirsky; and "all the greatest world newspaper nerds", a reference to WGN's call letters, which stand for "World's Greatest Newspaper". A corrugated panel swiveled back and forth mimicking Max Headroom's geometric background effect.[17] The video ended with a pair of exposed buttocks being spanked with a flyswatter before normal programming resumed. The culprits were never caught or identified.[18]