On Max Headroom: The Most Misunderstood Joke on TV
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 เม.ย. 2020
- Uploaded April 4, 2039 - Happy 54th Anniversary, Max.
A complete analysis of Max Headroom. I am Become Satire, Celebrity of America.
/ spacefeather to support more videos.
/ cameronbyerly
Also, thank you for comments pointing out that 'Max Headroom' is an audio joke for loud audio above a comfortable threshold. A 4th reason the name is incredible.
I don't know how to do these descriptions so I'm just gonna start putting in words so the robots know what this video is about.
Robots, Late Night, Talk Shows, Jimmy Fallon, Eminem, Newsweek, British, America, American, Joke, Misunderstood, Glitch, Glitchbot, Cable Television, 1980s, CGI, HBO, Bladerunner, Stephen Colbert, Reboot. - ภาพยนตร์และแอนิเมชัน
![[UNCUT]"เศรษฐา" โดนบีบให้ลาออก เผยดีลลับ "ทักษิณ" ต้องต่อโปร ไม่งั้นเจอจุดจบ! I คนดังนั่งเคลียร์](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XlH3k81dxmE/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you for understanding. Excellent observation. Bullseye.
I have confirmed with her privately that this is the actual Annabel Jankel.
Ms. Jankel is one of Max's creators, as shown in the video, and a hero of mine. It means a lot that she has watched this and commented to let me know she enjoyed it.
Thanks for all the other kind comments, but for obvious reasons, this is my favorite.
@@SpaceFeather thats awesome
She just doesn't get it either. This may seem insane but sometimes a ip grows beyond the way you want it to be. MH is A characture who is supposed to be the robotic corporate shill but somehow retains humanity.
@@jiijijjijiijiij is this like an algorithm thing, or did someone retweet this video? Also why is self-awareness and self-improvement always perceived as self-hatred? do you think dudes who work out hate their bodies and that's why they intentionally shred their musculoskeletal systems up?
@@jiijijjijiijiij "A lot of gym addicts do keep hating their bodies no matter how fit they get, so I'm not sure you're helping your point there" unless you're claiming the majority of people who work out are like this, I'm pretty sure my point is fully-supported.
I understand there's the concept of the death of the author, but the intent and obvious satire of early MH was pretty obvious. It's just sad that criticism is never taken constructively, but that's just human psychology, I guess.
You said 54 years and my heart dropped wondering if I'm so old I'd lost time. Then you put up the math reminding me it's 2039 and I felt old for an entirely different reason.
Wait wtf when did it become 2039
@@godessesque Space Feather puts a little banner across thumbnails noting different years the videos "take place" in. This one (and a lot of the review style ones) takes place in 2039.
@@godessesque since New Years 2039, get with the times.
It’s also the big date on screen at 0:24 and mentioned a few times through the video. There are some lines that make way more sense from 2039.
I had the same reaction but I didn’t even know it was 2039? How did that happen?
Matt Frewer is a criminally underrated actor.
Wasn't he on northern exposure?
I thought that was animated, crazy
He's still awesome!!
He was the neighbor dad in Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Panic in Hercules, Moloch the Mystic in Watchmen, and a board member who was attacked by the Crimson Permanent Assurance (Monty Python's Meaning of Life). Among many many more
Absolutely one of the best "That guy" actors ever.
I am very surprised that Max Headroom hasn't become bigger in the Vaporwave aesthetic scene. he is the VERY CONCEPT of vaporwave
I occasionally think about this too. I believe I picked up vaporwave quite rapidly as it was already evocative of that glossy high tech future the 80s and 90s promised would show up any day now that vaporwave mocks and commemorates in equal measure.
Probably, because they made him fade in obscurity before he got too popular in media to remembered by Vaporwave people.
He is also the VERY CONCEPT of what we call the "deep fake."
Snythwave picked up Max Headroom for a time in the early days of Snythwave
Mitch Murder - In the News
th-cam.com/video/dz7rK3Eks4s/w-d-xo.html
It's quite fitting since one of the defining symbols of Vaporwave is a bust of Alexander the Great. A head with no body.
Max Headroom definitely feels like something ahead of its time. We need him more than ever now, in the age of cult personalities and social media; its like our modern world was designed for him to flourish.
Max was 20 minutes into the future, as his tagline says. It just saddened me that in the second season of the show it harkened 20 years into the past and resorted to a Batman-style recollection of who the badguys were and what they did, in one episode. :)
I watched all the TV show episodes on Tubi for the first time since seeing some of them on TV as a 7 year old in 1987 and I've been amazed how unwittingly prescient the show and character was of the future world we live in today.
So it was the future of the past? .....Doc!!!
@@ScubaSteveM45 I'm old too
It's like his words went unheard and everything he was warning us of has come to fruition and it's almost too late
It should also be said that at least one guy in America got the joke: the infamous Max Headroom Incident, in which a man dressed as Max Headroom (but with a full body) hijacked a tv station. Whang does a really good video on what happened, who probably did it, and why.
i always loved the corrugated metal background, to simulate the Max Headroom background. th-cam.com/video/jjeUuakHsLw/w-d-xo.html
i'm surprised this wasn't mentioned, even in passing, but i guess when you have an already 38 minute video, some things have to get cut if they aren't terribly important to the story.
I love me some Whang
There is no joke to "get"
That is the only max headroom o was aware of until now
I was in my 20's when Max Headroom was on MTV and everyone I knew was aware that Max was a person playing a computer generated character and most of us appreciated the effort and the humor.
This. I've never met anyone who thought he was computer generated. We knew he was an actor playing a computer generated character.
As a 50 year old,i feel like there's some things modern audiences miss about this well loved character. 80s and genX nihilism doesn't just come from the constant existential that of the cold War. It comes from a consumer culture where everything is depressingly devoid of meaning or value. Anything meaningful will be co-opted by commercial interests and recreated as something completely missing the point with the meaningless qualities emphasized. Max is a parody of all that. It's ok that he sold out. It works that consumer demand created stupid parodies that make no sense. Our society is so stupid that we should love new coke. None of it matters unless it's kind of funny.
If phillip k. Dick had written buster friendly in the 80s,it would have been max headroom.
I'm a few years younger and saw the bulk of the content as repeats, though I was aware of the character being aggressively marketed as the subject of controversy over whether or not he was real. I certainly don't remember any real schoolyard discussion of him being like Gibson's Idoru.
My husk-like gen-x view of Max wasn't that he was a machine sellout, he was subversive by hamming up the mask slipping off corporate consumerism and laying it bare.
This comment highlights the need to proofread prior to posting ! If you missed it the use of the word that in lieu of the word threat completely destroys the author’s serious comment by distracting the reader enough to go off into formulating a response like this instead of following the author’s train of thought . Just saying !
@@TonyWhite22351 *threat, not that. Omfg I do it all the thyme
Good analysis. A German political philosopher, Marcuse, called what you describe the one-dimensional society, this is a society where conflict is repressed to make it look like everyone gets along nicely. But conflict is inherent in human life: Without it interpersonal relationships are shallow, lacking in depth.
@@RicardoMartinez-oh9sq i think thats a different thing. the internal conflict that max headroom pokes fun at has more to do with the world being obviously fake and meaningless. we can see it easily but don't want to stop enjoying it. i thought our society would keep getting more garish and embarrassing but that progression hasn't been linear or predictable and lots of people are still taken in and super excited about that new product coming out and the ads
I never saw Max as a villain. We have a thing in the UK called 'taking the piss', and Max was the ultimate piss taker. The closest real life persona to Max is probably Russell Brand
He was a villain to the corporate mass media in the show.
The British, and therefor much more sophisticated, answer to Patrick Bateman is what comes to my mind.
This is correct. He wasn’t some Aryan Nazi representation of annoying talk show hosts. He was just a jerk who tells it how it is.
Ooooh boy, this comment has not aged well. Or, has aged perfectly to prove a point.
@@edwardzieba7887 Lol. Exactly my first thought. 💣
Also, there is a 5th joke in Max's name that you left out. "Headroom" refers to the space a cameraman leaves over the head of the person in the frame. So that makes his name also a reference to the broadcasting format he is making fun of.
Media students unite!
There's a 6th one too: Max is a Head in a Room
@@lochlanhanham8308 🤣
I thought his entire name was derived from the hanging sign in a parking ramp that the human reporter smacked into.
@@lochlanhanham8308 Also the limit of. Seems most people have downsized theirs quite a bit...
The hypothetical Max reboot actually sounds fantastic. I'm sure they'd half-ass it and get it wrong if they actually tried it, but what you described would be amazing.
Imagine if someone uploaded a "lost footage" video of Max Headroom on youtube, then that channel becomes "hacked" and changes to MH's channel as an origin story for getting onto youtube. Then Max would crash different youtubers videos (basically a collab played off as a hack) which would be an easter egg you had to find and add to the others so you can decipher some message and the message would be like the biggest gotcha in recent events.
Uh... I mean, I never really thought about it...
We live in the time of deep fakes. Max Headroom could only live in the 1980s and early 90s. It's silly to imagine him being relevant now.
@@BrightBlueJim did you read the comment before yours? It could get revived in so many ways and work... And of course he'd probably be turned into the ultimate hero, scapegoat, and villain all the same.
@@quoudten No. I did not. I was responding to lazerblade2's original comment. But reading it now, I still stand behind my comment. Max Headroom may have some nostalgia value for people who survived the 1980s, but he is severely dated, today. Nobody under the age of 50 would have a clue what he's supposed to be.
@@BrightBlueJim well, i was born in the 80's and only have a vague memory of the character but the impression the character left was enough that I'd be interested in seeing either an update, revival, or re-memeification of the character. I think he'd fit right into our current dystopia.
Max Would be hugely popular today. Bitterness is much more accepted these days.
Seriously clever with the three second advert thing, next level genius...
Are you referring to this video or the Max Headroom movie?
I angrily tapped my phone
@@followingtheroe1952 I put my mouse over the rectangle saying "Skip Ad", saw it did nothing and thought "wait..."
It's genuinely eerie how the ongoing back-and-forth between "glitches" and ironic commentary EXACTLY matches the rhythm and overall aesthetic of youtube poops...
It's a formula refined and embedded by generations of children's programming. Habitual behaviour. The children who grew up on it became the parents of today's adults, there's no more escape from the vapid performances.
Until people go into the real world, anyhow. Other cultures, other countries. Places where it's more important to pay attention, focus, think, and plan intelligently than it is to be desensitized vs childish distractions.
Really Well observed! So, Max is the first poop, huh?
I couldn't agree more. I think Skooks completely embodies this point. Especially when deciphering where the border lies between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Wait. As a child of the 80's I gotta say, nobody believed he was real cgi. Or very very few and only the oldest and dumbest. He was very clearly an actor.
True enough. I was about eight and I recall knowing his name was Matt Frewer. When Stephen King's The Stand premiered, I recall saying something to the effect of "Hey, that's Max Headroom!"
Child of the 80s as well. This is tr-tr-tr-true.
Perfect satire. You believe it because you have plausible deniability to say you have it figured out.
Also satire, because satire is at its base always a petty lie. An exaggeration, because without exaggeration the joke wouldn't actually land. Because the benign reality is NOT the overkill that the satire tries to present having happened, caling "you're just as bad, as the way I pretend you are worse than you actually are".
Gets 'em every time. That's why REAL critique always defaults to reality, like not knowing an onion article for genuine news. That's why, if you're making pleasantries with a REAL racist Turk instaed of Borat, you get to call it "culturally relative" and ban everyone bigoted enough to call them out for it.
Quintessential 80s next door dad
Nope. Nonsense. Yes, we all knew that Matt Frewer was the model for Max, because there had to be a model, and in the U.S. version, Emerson Carter was on the show with him. But if you believe what this guy says, that the technology for Max was out of reach in the 80s, then you weren't there. Now, my experience with Max was the U.S. edition, which was several years after the British original, and a year could make all the difference in the 80s, but by the time we saw it, it was completely plausible. Not the artificial intelligence aspect, and of course he spoke in Frewer's voice, so that was obviously the actor, but the animated talking head was something that was every bit as possible as the amount of make-up, paint, and prosthetic hair they actually used on Frewer. At the time, I was working in computer graphics, and this was the kind of stuff our late-80s hardware could DO. Not in real-time, mind you, but well enough for the minute or two per week of animation that was required for the show. I know this because that's what this hardware WAS being used for.
The Ray Bans were a practical solution. Matt found the contacts to be very painful, he didn't want to wear them anymore. So they gave him sunglasses.
I'm still not convinced that "New Coke" wasn't just a ploy to got people re-enthused about the "original" Coke.
Humm, given the success of the "classic" coke post the new coke you may be on to something
It was a ploy to replace the sugar with corn syrup without people complaining. New Coke was absolutely meant to fail.
It was a cover for a formula switch to HFCS
Coke’s President at the time said, in response to the conspiracy theory that it was an intentional plan to get people excited about original Coke;
"We're not that dumb, and we're not that smart."
"Life is pain, anyone who says differently is selling something"
Timeless quote
Princess Bride
Yes, they're selling some form of pain reliever.
You can dream about pleasure, but if you dream about pain your instantly awake!
It's funny that people don't really understand exactly how true that is and that it applies to them in absolute perfection. It's only the people who have really experienced some real pain in life who get it, I think. Not getting the exact color of phone that you wanted isn't real pain, kids. It's really not.
@@MyName-tb9oz Pain can also lead to enlightenment and the understanding that life is not only pain. Anyone who says "life is pain" needs to suffer more.
Nobody at the time thought that it was genuine cgi. Just take a look at the limit that contemporary cgi had reached. Money for nothing by Dire Straits was filmed in the same year and it was absolutely state of the art for the time.
@Janitor Queen Children automatically think that any time before they were born is ancient history. Children are naturally arrogant. Children tend to assume that they are the most intelligent beings out there.
@Janitor Queen modern man always looks down on those who came before. Like bringing up cavemen as if they were less intelligent. They had the same brains as us
Amen!
The problem with current relevance for Max is...the satirical dialogue of media control and influence is no longer a secret, it's not punk, it's so blatant and disturbing and inevitable that we meme about it constantly. We've hit dystopian already but can't admit it even though we all know. We meme about a mass pedo/sex trafficker being "suicided" because humor is how we cope with the inevitable reality that our world is run by horrible horrible people who view human lives as the smallest unit of measurement possible. Max was a cautionary tale that no one understand and it's far too late for his message now
Thank you. I was struggling to put that idea into words.
Thanks for the exhaustive dork research on Max. Really enjoyed it.
Nice One...Nnnnnnice One..one one...or is it two?...l think that was two...or maybe just one.....twice.....
Just some random snowflake here....just wanted to say .....dude what you are doing for independent action movie/ comedy projects is awesome. You have respectable influences and are an amazing stunt guy......just the fact that you wached this video makes you a cool/nerd
guy 😎....stay intelligent and humble
Most of the context in this was taken from a previous video which was published a couple of years before this one was produced. Just sayin'
@@PeterGrenader there’s nothing on TH-cam even slightly as broad in scope as this video, what are you talking about?
@@TheSunshineVault th-cam.com/video/NVcRWOhXmh4/w-d-xo.html
Holy shit. The Spiderverse ad joke was hysterical. Absolutely flawless execution.
Oh shit that wasn't an actual ad?
I did wonder, for a brief half-moment, how an ad slipped through my blockers, then instantly realized it was just part of the video. But reading through the comment section, I see that my successful rejection of forced advertisement has deprived me from truly appreciating the impact of Max Headroom's message.
That was the first ad I've seen in years. Life has been amazing!
@@pwnmeisterage If you watch without adblocker, or worse on mobile, you will be bombarded by these 5 second ads all the time. I worry for the young who've become normalised to this "shock therapy" style of advertising.
It worked and I hate it!
I love Max Headroom and used to record his shows on video-tape so I could watch them later. I loved his sarcasm and the music, and when he said to Sting "What do you do when you play in a country where they don't understand English, off the top of my head - America?"
Just pure brilliance!
This was an incredibly interesting breakdown of the Max Headroom character, keep up the great work like this!
You missed one piece of Max Headroom that defined him for me. The song “Paranormia” by The Art of Noise, an incredibly popular group at the time, featured a vocal story of Max Headroom unable to sleep until another voice offers him comfort. Following his origin story, Max was a semi-sentient being uploaded, a “ghost in the machine.” He was a spirit half insane, bashing around computer networks, remembering sleep, but unable to access that comfort. Max was the insanity of our always-on society, on the brink of becoming something new as the internet started to metastasize. He was an insane AI, willing to do the bidding of his programmers, but feeling some shadow of his humanity when the programmers went away. And somewhere some other voice of mercy was leaking through into the machine to give him comfort.
I also owned the Max Headroom Guide to Life, which was a total piece of shit.
The second you mentioned that song, it got stuck in my head again. Damnit.
My kids call me a boomer too.
I must have a star on my door!
@@ohioshaman5313 well that's just a stupid phrase used to denigrate people who still have plenty of value in society and basically built everything that they enjoy. Thanks Boomers. Now could you please put your money into cryptocurrency
@@Meilk27 When you look at cost inflation and housing, I think you'll see that you, like everyone on the planet, has bad and good moments. Sure, you made more electric types of entertainment, but now that comes with subscriptions for several different media companies who all are basically playing Monopoly at this point. Basically. The ones who are most ignorant, cut down the trees for their cabin, but never replant the seeds anywhere. Create, and destroy.
>Clicks the link to this video
>See it's 40 mins long
>Ain't no way in hell I'm sitting through 40 mins of this
>2 minutes in
>Ok. I can sit through 40 mins of this
+ there were at least 20 min that weren't even necessary, but I ain't mad at it; not a second was wasted.
is it a boy or girl ?
I literally clicked this, just to leave the tab open to watch later... and yet here I am, having finished the dang thing.
I thought this was about the max headroom incident. Once I realized it wasn't I left.
Watch at 2x and it is only 19 mins.
Satire and lasting criticism is what make people more careful and cautious about the bad side of the media industry to push it to become better
dude, the natural comedic timing in your commentary is so good. I'm so conditioned to TH-cam vids being voiced by annoying, cringey and awkwardly tropey amateurs, so listening to someone who's not any of that is a breath of fresh fucking air!
6:10 - "Imagine a heartless Robin Williams". There is a small irony in this statement you may not be aware of. The Star Trek episode "A Matter of Time" was written specifically for Robin Williams as he had said several times that he wanted to be on the show and was working to make that happen. However, due to scheduling issues, he was never able to make the time to shoot the episode. The actor who they hired to replace him in his part was Matt Frewer.
I remember that episode. Williams would have been an interesting choice, but Matt Frewer was perfect for that role.
That is some mega-meta level, crossover, coincidence, connecting right there sir...
When you realize the forces at play that connect this video comment to your comment to a random episode in ST that blew my mind and put a "No Way!?!" smile on my face on Christmas Eve...I feel blessed. :))
Now I'm off to go watch that episode.
I soooo miss R Williams. I really wish he had done that episode....
@@Gregorydaerr1971 Robin Williams would have needed to be at the core of a season long plot line. Hopefully some parallel universe has a season of Star Trek that opens with Q begging Picard for help to hide from Mork. :)
@@teruin2 even better then. Many believe a long stint on a remote set triggered a relapse in williams..... that I can understand......but imagine if he had been involved in a season long arc of ST shows..... maybe I Would still be laughing and we'd have a season of Mork from [insert temporal anomaly here].....and he would maybe do impressions of the ST characters ..... imagine episode starting him with RW back facing Picard then he turns slowly with a sharpie goatee claiming to be from an alt universe. Or pretending to be mangled in a transport accident or attempting to mimic data and putting kick me stickers on wharfs back. Or humping Q's leg. Or showing up in a storm trooper suit next to Lucas. I dunno.
It would have been cool.
Max was waaaaay ahead of his time: Skype, blipverts, wi-fi, drones, cloning, body banks, GPS tracking, wikileaks, "resurrecting" dead actors via CGI, virtual reality, etc...
It's like the writers had been reading sci-fi stories or something
@@williamchamberlain2263 🤣🤣🤣
Max was blazing a trail
The technical advisor to the show was a futurist research author. Today we would call him deep state, darpa, black ops, illuminati etc. Info on him is in the commentary extras on the DVD Box Set.
@@billkeithchannel cool! I'll have to watch again.
Max was a streamer decades before it was a thing. I'm glad I got to actually experience the whole of Max Headroom at the time. Matt Frewer's improv was a key part in being able to pull it off live, but the writing was brilliant. Great vid, at the time in UK we didn't really have those talk shows so I was never aware of the connection, though the satire was still obvious.
Not just one, but lots of misunderstood or not-quite-understood jokes. That's why rewatching -- and talking about it, like in this video -- is key. Also, I have to admit, I just really like the music video (and extended song version) of "Paranormia."
The danger in analyzing satire is in forgetting that the funhouse mirror is just as aptly turned on ourselves as it is on, say, Talk Show hosts.
There is no satire without our refection.
@@nathanielnicholson559 Bingo.
That's only a danger if you respect authenticity less than you respect yourself. I thought that was one of the functions of analyzing satire. For example, am I saying this to make a point or am I saying it to feel smarter than you? Regardless of my answer, I could be wrong.
re·fec·tion
noun
refreshment by food or drink.
The problem with saying that's a danger is the fact that none of us have any influence in the world, but talk show hosts, at this point it would be social media influencers and whatnot, had (have) an enormous influence on millions of people. It's not a controversial statement to say that most people are easily corrupted and would be the same or worse when put in the same position, but that's just it, they are not in the same position.
Honestly, I want Max Headroom to come back! And with his status as a villain and all, I really do think he has the potential to top villains like Handsome Jack or Bill Cipher. And of course with the infamous Max Headroom Incident, that whole mess of a TV hijacking would just cement his villain status even more.
He'd have a pretty well viewed TH-cam channel if he came back. Tons of topics to satire these days.
you mentioned bill cipher and that made me immediately think about how max headroom could be some sort of tumblr sexyman. oh my god. i want it to happen for the only reason that it would be terrible and not good at all.
@@calicojo3536 Max Headroom Rule 34?
Bravo sir! Great essay and video about the subject. Excellent points about the late night talk show thing.
Brilliant video! Thank you for putting this together.
So much of his appeal was the time itself. You had to have lived in the 80's to really get it. Young people today just don't understand just how powerful MTV was in the day. Max was all that in a blunt and often rude digitized talking head in a time when talking heads were almost always polite. Those were some wild and crazy times. Glad to have survived the ride!
They also don't understand that cable tv had commercials in between shows, not during the show, and we paid each premium network channel for innovative content. Cable (aka "regular") tv is now considered a waste of money and we need to pay each premium streaming service for innovative content... as if things are really different.
absolutely on point. we didnt yet have shit like beavis and butthead or south park. shows that were purposefully "vulgar" (not that id call it that anymore comparatively speaking) didnt really start popping off til around the end of or late 90s. at least it seemed to me. thats why shows like beavis and butthead and south park were even watched to begin with, they were unbelievably offensive at the time and tv just was never "allowed" to be like that. but after BnB was out a while, then you started to see a little more of the purposefully offensive type shit leaking into even the primetime major network slots because it was the new bandwagon to grab some bucks off of. turned out, that some changes just happen to stick, and actually alter the landscape to where the river takes an entirely different path from then on, and thus you get the grand canyon in like ohio, or whatever...
wait... what the hell was i talking about anyway....??
....shit.
He was also on ITV or Channel Four in 1985.
@@lemsip207 not 54 years ago
54 years ago not quite correct is it ?? 1984 to 2022
holy shit the blipverts spiderverse joke oh my god. Amazing.
That was so beautiful
I honestly tried to skip it thinking it was real and then had a mad case of ahh' I see what you did there' then promptly got real quiet as the shiver ran up my spine that we have had blipverts for years and I didn't even see it for what it was. Yikes...
@@TheMsLourdes Fucking same! Goddamn brilliant critique.
Here’s another layer to that: Rocky Morton, one of Headroom’s three creators, primarily works in advertising now and talks about making blipverts for large corporations, who don’t even realize he is the one who coined the term.
Back in the day when I recorded the ABC episodes on VCR, I would sit there with my finger on the pause button during commercials. Using the pause button while recording ensured clean transitions each time. I'm pretty sure I unpaused at the end of almost every commercial just in case. So the tapes I made literally have blipverts between the scenes. And I appreciated that as I was doing it.
I was a teenager when Max Headroom first came into the public consciousness. Like most great comedy, people who loved it understood exactly (or at the very least approximately) what was going on. It was more than obvious at that time that Max Headroom was not computer generated - this was a time when Asteroids (the video game) and Tron (the original movie) were the pinnacle of computer graphics. Everyone understood that futuristic content was all visual effects. The concept of analyzing and explaining Max Headroom misses the joke so wildly that you become part of the joke. The Canadian TV series Max Headroom was created way after the original British music video show. Whether or not the backstory was part of the original show is irrelevant. This was pure cult TV aimed at young people which made fun of everything "adult".
Yeah, the author of the video says they've seen "every piece of Max Headroom media that is not considered lost" but they didn't see them with 1987 eyes, but 2022 eyes. Which are _very different_ than even 2018 eyes.
I too was a teenager at the time of Max Headroom. I strongly agree with your original comment. The author of this video does include acknowledgement that today's values should not be used to evaluate past culture, but there is plenty of today's political jargon in the video. The author of this video makes far too many references to "white" celebrities excepting Arsenio Hall, without understanding that people often had open dialogues about race in person with each other if it became necessary, and that we did not see racial differences except those a given race wanted to emphasize and celebrate as different. Generation X typically prioritizes humanity over race, more than prior and following generations.
@@danielkaiser8971 the generation that lived through Jim Crow didn’t care about race 😂
Bro
I'd suggest taking a quick look at the pinned comment.
Great review beautifully put together. Savage stuff!
The British tv pilot is probably the best thing to watch as an introduction for someone who's never seen Max Headroom.
I remember it well! Amanda Pays was one reason, but it was a great 1985 cyberpunk film in itself. 'Max Headroom' as a name makes sense if people watch it!
This video's creator made it sound like the advertising, talk shows, and whatnot preceded the pilot and subsequent series. What I remember was the series came first (here in the USA, we didn't know about the British pilot show) and then the character got used across everything else after its success.
Loved Max, he introduced me to Sensoria from Cabaret Voltaire..the first dance music group
And that video was recreated almost shot-for-shot as the pilot episode for the American sci-fi series.
My mother was a producer on the Max Headroom show. -It was awesome to hang out on the set and watch them film. I was young but remember how important and cool everyone who worked on that show thought it was. I was able to meet Matt Frewer and he was extremely nice. Still wish I had my Valatera Max Headroom skateboard with the hot pink wheels. Thanks for the great video and perspectives.
I don't believe you
@@FrankCosbyNo-Relation I don't believe you.
@@SaneAsylum I don't believe your mom
@@FrankCosbyNo-Relation You totally shouldn't. She lies!
I believe you and Matt Frewer is still a really nice guy.
This is a criminally good breakdown. Thank you.
I loved Max. He never got enough air time. In the song Paranomia, he can’t sleep, he wants a star on his door, or better yet a door, ha swinging doors. He ridicules himself as much he does anyone else. The only thing we have like him these days is South Park. Nothing is sacred.
First person I've ever heard refer to Paranomea, one of my favorite songs. Listened to it growing up on my Dad's old Now that's what I call music cassette, just before another fave song of mine, Camoflage by Stan ridgeway. Epic song.
Come sweet slumber envelop me in thy purple cloak.....hmmm doesn't even ryhym
Being around back when Max Headroom was first released, I can attest that I believed that he was actually computer generated (well at least at first viewing). This may sound silly by today's standards but you have to remember we basically had no experience viewing anything CGI other than a few short clips in Star Wars films and a Dire Straits video, so we had nothing to make comparisons. Also, TV resolution back then was horrible, certainly much less than 640 X 480 dpi, so you really couldn't make out details that would give away practical effects.
TBH watching this in 2021 I thought he was CGI at first, in the very beginning of this. I thought this was going to be about that hacking where a guy with a Max Headroom mask that was mostly laughing was broadcasted, that's really the only reason I'm familiar but I've never looked into it beyond that. I'm sure it must come up in this at some point.
@@brians1793 that's the only thing I thought this whole thing was, was about that hack or whatever, which I've only seen glimpses and never got the full story on that either....I still dont get this video tho, lol
@@Minxyminx68 you have to have lived in the 1980s as a teen or older. That was a time where "straight laced", but cokedup, people who didn't know anything, but talked a lot, were the role models for WASPy hyper consumers. Max was about destroying everything in the pursuit of a truer purpose, but instead we are now a society of ultraconsumers with switched-off brains.
Yeah Max is A.I.
The actor was put in a rubber mask because CG just wasn't practical.
The blipvert thing is frighteningly on point
"The only people that inactive [to be killed by blipverts] are pensioners, the sick or the unemployed... I mean, who really cares?" Sort of a form of eugenics then, killing off those who they feel contribute the least to society.
As he said 3 second ad, a 5 second TH-cam ad started, I still don't know of it was planned that way
@@JamesandLuke-be4xo You're probably the only one that saw the Spiderman ad.
TikTok and TH-cam shorts make people stupider!
10:47 OMFG that was just genius, I tried the skip button and all... 😅🤣👌
My takeaway from this: Steven Colbert stole Max Headroom's shtick.
As did Space Ghost: Coast to Coast
That was intense viewing. Thanks for making my Sunday morning so much better.
Matt Frewer's wife was a good friend of mine in the 90s. I met Matt a few times. He's a very nice man, very quiet and introspective, extremely intelligent and very dryly funny.
@Tracy Rowe I can't imagine anyone doing anywhere near as good a job as him! Truly amazing!
@@MichaelHonsinger you m
Max is the villain we need in these troubling times.
Seriously a new Cobert like AI especially now would actually work. Just need to be willing to go to a very dark place.
I volunteer as tribute if you make it hahaha happen for me.
@@wes9451 Medium good chance if Max Headroom had still been active in 2016, he’d’ve been elected to something.
Max is not a villain...no matter how much you want him to be or use modern sjw sensibilities toward a 80's character
@@wes9451 The trouble is that Max would be embraced whole heartedly by the very people he would be mocking. My step father thought Arch Bunker was absolutely right and used the character racism to justify his own horrendous actions on those he looked down on. Steven Colbert's character would be leading Qanon on the steps of the Capital Building today, 11 months after the attempted over throw of the US government.
This is a splendid piece of analysis. Thank you
I have no clue anything I'm seeing. So lost yet, I simple love you voice and energy of narration. And the far away clisnof yelling are perfect.
As someone who lived through all of that, and ate it all up, I am glad someone else sees the need for Max to come back.
President, I am telling you.
I certainly wasn’t expecting to watch a 40min video today but as a child of the 80s I couldn’t resist. That was an incredibly enjoyable deep dive into the character plus so much more.
It is interesting but annoying at times to hear a Gen Z analyze something from my generation. I was 19 in 1985.
Same same from another Chris D.
"Floored" and "confused"? Not even close. As a 17 year old in 1985, it was the coolest thing we'd ever seen. He was funny and fascinating to all of us and the talk of the high school the next day . He was all over the place and we couldn't get enough until he saturated our daily lives and was out of there by 1988.
This. I was 18 in '88. We all got the original joke, then watched his devolution on HBO, and laughed at the Coke execs who obviously didn't get it.
Played good music vids (Commonwealth biased maybe?). He was an odd presenter though.
Exactly. Max was the bomb, and everyone felt that ABC sucked for canceling the series.
I have vague memories of Max Headroom from when I was a small child and this video explains him, and the 1980s, perfectly. Thanks for doing all the exhaustive nerd research!
A criminally low number of views on this one. Excellent video, enjoyed every second.
Right? I got 20 minutes in before noticing this dude only has 366 subs. The hell, youtube.
@@rosonowski gimme a break. The channel alienates half its audience.
"Because of course we did" should be the epitaph on humanities tombstone.
In other news: I think Matt Frewer is an underrated character actor.
He is just an underrated actor in general.
and he was in Orphan Black, that's also underrated! I love that show so much
@Grayson Owens Dont forget, as the neighbors dad, in Honey, I shrunk the kids..
Matt played an exec in the opening skit of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. The Crimson Tide Assurance. Also the Dad turned zombie in the Dawn of the Dead remake.
Garbage Can Man in The Stand . . " MY LIFE FOR YOUUUU!@! "
Great piece, brought back some memories and added a lot of pieces to the puzzle
I actually worked on the original Max in LA at the Post Group. We did some crude CG for the show, and yes, everything was super hard and time consuming in those days. Peter Waag was often hanging around and seemed to me kind of a dick in meetings. I got to meet the actor Matt a time or two. Nice guy, we felt sorry for him going through hours of makeup. He also had his own ophthalmologist around because the contacts were dangerous to keep in for long . Great analysis and research by the way! From my pov the show was actually pretty fun and often shocking in its forcasting for entertainment. Oh, and yeah the Japanese were indeed buying up Everything during those times and it freaked people out a bit driving up prices (but everyone wanted them as a client since they had endless money). Bring Max back! good idea.
Max was like the first meme in history. He disappeared and was misunderstood, because he was just 40 years ahead of the curve
Not really the first meme, and then there also was kill roy.
You are so right!
We had a word for "memes" before meme.. we called them 'jokes'.
Jesus was a meme. A character invented and propaganda pulled over a random man.
technically memes have existed since the beginning of humanity
I never saw Max as a villain, more of a trickster. Max is chaos. If your thinking green, he will say red. Max would be the perfect face for a hacker group who was going against an evil corporation.
A disruptor.
"a hacker group who was going against an evil corporation" kind of like how that hacker used the character when he did that tv channel hijacking...
“Corporation bad boo hoo”
If you don’t think bad corporations exist please save us the effort and mock yourself
@@robert2690 yes
A truly thought provoking critique. Well done! There are one or two more details worthy of exploration. Firstly, Max Headroom was originally broadcast on Britain's FOURTH television channel - Not just a small channel but the first new channel in 20 years and, at the time, only 3 years old. At that time, Britain had very limited exposure to American TV programming and even then, only complete series - Certainly not live shows, such as talk shows. David Letterman etc were more or less completely unknown in the UK at the time. British culture as portrayed on British TV was significantly distinct from American culture and the subject matter of US talk shows would have been of no interest to UK audiences - American TV at the time focused mainly on what happened within the USA and late night on the West Coast would have been very early morning in the UK. While the UK did have a few talk shows the formats were different and the hosts considerably more sincere. To that extent, Max Headroom was a British satirical critique of the insincerity of American Television in general, and quite possibly a warning of what British TV could turn into. I think there's some similarity between Max Headroom and Max Quordlepleen, the host at Milliways - The Restaurant at the End of The Universe in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhikers' Guide to The Galaxy and in fact, some of the graphics in "20 minutes into the future" are reminiscent of those in the original BBC Hitchhikers' Guide TV series. I'm not sure there was ever any intention of broadcasting Max Headroom in the USA so it's hardly surprising the American TV audience didn't get the joke. :-D
We in the States got Max Headroom in 2 forms -- the HBO Max Headroom interview series, which seems to most closely resemble how audiences in the UK received the glitchy "computer generated" talk show host, & The Max Headroom Show -- a prime time -friendly cyberpunk TV series in which Matt Frewer portrayed both Max Headroom (in this case a rogue AI program) & a reality TV journalist of the future who lugged around his own (now hilariously overweight) video camera while investigating stories & conducting interviews.
excellent editing!
I think it’s perfect that max never had a defining moment and that he just disappeared...he had an influence...he was like a subtle subconscious suggestion...a fleeting sense of a thought...a prophecy of sorts...
an intellectual property, except not a property and not intellectual at all
Back in the 80s, when I still had a physical body and there were only 4 television channels in the UK (I know, one of those facts seems unbelievable, right?) I loved Max Headroom. I was 15, exactly the right target audience to appreciate the satire. The books (especially "Max Headroom's Guide to Life") were much more on the nose about how vicious the satire really was.
I think I was too young at the time (I was 11 in 1986) to appreciate the humour, I did watch it at the time (also from the UK here) and only understood half of the jokes. Watching the episodes back here on TH-cam, he was way ahead of his time, it is funny how you can hear the people behind the camera laughing at him and they left it in. Matt Frewer improvised half of his lines apparently too, even though there was a script of sorts.
I vaguely remember the Talk Show, but I don't think I watched the original 20 Minutes In The Future movie.
@@chindleymuffin I was 18 in 1986 and still didn't get it
100% I was there too mate
So, if I may be so bold, what kind of body do you have now? Enquiring minds want to know.
What do you mean by "When I still had a physical body"?
That's inspiring and educational. Thank you!
OMFG I'm generally so uncomfortable with talk shows and could never explain why. You've hit the nail on the head: polypolitical. They are selling personality.
this is brilliant stuff.
That was just brilliant!
Thank you for making this.
And finally someone else who also wants to see Max back on the screens, acknowledges his relevancy and realizes his potential. I've been talking about this for years, but mostly to myself, I admit.
😎.
I always imagined that Max was programmed to be the bad guy and that a tiny bit of his former human self slipped in to warn humanity. I would so love to see more of him and I wondered who felt the same.
Yes
@@jessicaumlor7979 Fwiw, that's how I always read him (child of the '80s here, in case it isn't showing! ;) ).
@@draelyc oh it would be great if he came back!!stfu your not seeing the big picture i dont think ? Every think that most of the people you know and love on tv are max headroom ??? Wake up ffs
I think Matt Frewer was extremely underrated in this character. All of the over the top facial expressions, laughs, and ridiculous sounds were done in live action by him. I think he even surpassed the facial and emotional flexibility of Jim Carey. I would have liked to seen more of this actor's work.
He has a small role the first season of The Knick and he’s great.
You can also check out the film "Short Time" Another excellent Frewer effort...
That one episode of ST:TNG where he claims to come from the future.
If you go to his "Filmography" page on IMDB, you'll see he's been keeping busy doing voices for animated features, as well as a number of movie and TV roles. I particularly enjoyed him in his sitcom "Doctor, Doctor" (ran for 2 years) and much later on his recurring role on the SyFy Channel series "EUReKA".
He's been in a ton of genre stuff. Orphan Black. The Order. The Magicians.
Amazing vid, i didn't know just how much content they made with this character, i've been looking at various videos on the titular man himself and i've started drawing connections to a character in Toby Fox's work, Deltarune, Spamton feels like the perfect encapsulation of a lot of the things you said at the end, a "business man" driven insane, yet with all the pleasantries of a salesman, great stuff
Given the context of your video I understand where you're coming from
& as someone who watched every episode when it broadcast originally
Well Done!!
As an Australian who grew up in the 80's but without having seen many of the late night talk shows but knowing of them. We loved Max. He was a cynical, satirical, allegory of everything we thought embodied mainstream commercial television and America. This excellent online video essay by Cameron Byerly reminds me of what we loved about Max. All style, no substance but in reality a clever commentary on the world of celebrity before it was a thing. Max was before his time and yes whoever owns the rights to him now they need to dust him off. Let him live again. But would they allow this to happen? Is it a crime that it hasn't happened? Does the world need a "Max Headroom' now more than ever? It's a crazy mixed up world. Max could be the cure.
A modern Max Headroom would have to be modeled after the cliche "I'm a youtube celeb" format. Casual clothes, always looks vaguely 19 regardless of actual age and always with some stupid "viral" campaign thing.
Yep, I remember in early 90's when they started airing Letterman in Oz we were like "hey this is a ripoff of that Steve Vizard show".
A modern Max would be banned straight away or would be partisan and constantly pushing the agreed celeb narrative..
@@zakofrx You have Max Headroom, the British satire on America, confused with the hijacker who wore a Max Headroom mask and b*tched about liberals. Two different things.
@@TripleAlfafa I mean… maybe? There have been plenty of imitators in the meanwhile that I believe have captured that spirit that max headroom once occupied, whether it was intentional or no. See; space ghost coast to coast, the Eric Andre show, poppy, Sacha Baron Cohen, IamSophie, etc. to bring the character himself back… perhaps. I will say that by rebooting him (heh, irony) for our modern age, there is potential. Especially if it were a narrative project. But it has to be done SUPER carefully with the amount of unsubtle messaging in today’s modern traditional media, as @Mark Wilko warned.
A senior level manager at Coca-Cola revealed to me that the "New Coke Disaster" was actually a bait and switch to disguise that Coca'-Cola Classic went from using cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup. If you think about it, it's actually genius.
Imagine trying to retcon a historically large fuckup in to a win
@@radomane 😂
I always though it was Coke's way of ending The Pepsi Challenge, by bringing out an insipidly sweet version, like Pepsi, letting it fail and bringing back all the 'Classic' drinkers.
That’s literally the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard and I’m now dumber for hearing it.
Coke announced (because the FDA requires a list of ingredients) they were switching to HFCS in 1980. New Coke happened in 1985.
So what you're saying is they didn't change the formula at all but they made it seem that way knowing full well it was going to fail so they could sneakily change an ingredient under everyone's noses. Knowing what I know about advertising and psychology I completely believe you
this was such a well done video. you deserve way more subs.
Earned my subscription with one view. Great work!
I genuinely enjoyed this video. Max headroom was from a time that people born in the 90s and later will never really be able to grasp. And you broke him down perfectly as well as the night show hosts. I was one of those people who thought that Max headroom was a computer program I was genuinely convinced that goes to show you how good people are at their damn jobs
I'm 3 years older than Max, and... So he's a parody of late night talk show hosts... Ok, that makes sense... I still don't think I get it.
I only saw the film, and the TV series with the journalist. I thought Max was CGI. And so expensive that he could only be in a few minutes per episode. That sold it to me.
"Americans would always worship Celebrity, even if it was made of this, acted like this and looked like this..."
Just....
Yikes....
Interesting critique coming from subjects of the queen.
@@alarin612 And yet, we don't get murdered by police officers in our thousands...
@@badnewswade Yeah I guess you only do that in your colonies.
@@alarin612 Don't worry mate, most of us don't really give a shit about the queen
It's only really the middle and old aged who do
@@alarin612 FORMER colonies, another sore spot for the folks clinging to nationalism and lamenting the end of pax brittanica. to be fair though the brits were great at putting locals in positions of power and incentivizing THEM to do the dirty work
Excellent analysis
I like how someone who probably doesn't actually remember any of this thinks that no one who watched it actually got and 30+ years later he has to explain it to them
Also none of the "Late Night Talk" shows you showed were on cable TV and not all of the host were white or even men.
@@scothammond5736 @Scot Hammond Yup. Seeing thru one's preconceived ideas.
I think of Max Headroom as art. He was created to have the personality of many class clowns in 1980's high school that were neither jocks or total stoners. It was considered cool to kind of play off both groups, even though the art professor and football coach seemed at total odds.
Original "Max Headroom" fan here, and someone who believes he understood the joke. I loved your historic, organized, researched, and connected analysis. Great work in giving me a lot to think about; as I view the last few decades, and where we find ourselves today.
Except, of course, for the entire completely wrong part, yes. The joke is on him. Max Headroom is not making fun of politicians, talking heads, or even critics--although he is an accurate portrayal of media personalities. No, Max is making fun of YOU. The mere act of paying to watch media productions and therefore subsidizing your own mental slavery is the joke here. Get it yet?
As someone who liked Max Headroom in real time while he was still around, this video really made me examine *why* I liked him. He was rude and blunt, unlike polite society, he was the antithesis of "good ol friends" rural culture, he was sort of like a prototype of Johnny Bravo....something you INTENSELY disliked, but when you bother tuning into him, he's funny....then you promptly forget about him again. You had to. It was almost expectation to never, ever dwell much on anything he said.
He reminds me of the modern gas stations, which were always silent, but now BLARE with advertising noise.
He is an embodiment of advertising, and you mention that in relation to talk show hosts...but I imagine it one step further...he IS advertising. Rude, unapologetic, misogynistic, amoral, blatant, polished to an eerie spit-shine, and also very much, as I agree with the video, NOT your friend.
I was young, but somehow this was definitely in my soul...even though I didn't have the words or world experience yet when I watched him.
Thank you for your dork research!
This does have strong “the medium is the message” vibes to it.
For real though fuck those noisy gas pump ads
"prototype Johnny Bravo"
win.
His dark thoughts
LIGHTENED
MY
DAY.
SOMETIMES
When
Think
UR
Right
.......................................
UR not
His Point.
Remember,
They had no $...
But wanted 2 have
Free music.
What a Christian ✝️
Though!
ThankZ
Max *********
Tesla9
I really like your overall take, but i disagree with the Johnny bravo comparison. I see the things Johnny says as a big part of him as a whole. What he says and does is usually ridiculous and rude, but its because hes oblivious. I think what he says is suppose to be thought about, it just doesnt take very much thinking on it to understand him. So you end up not dwelling on it as you said, but i dont think that was the intent. I think with johnny they didnt have as much to say, they made a pretty straight forward character. Hes egotistical as a way to deal with his insecurities, then his ego makes him oblivious to how he treats people and oblivious to how he gets in his own way.
Best coverage on this story I've ever seen 👏
I liked Max because he was representative of the counter culture spirit of punk if you thought of him as the concentration of all the things we didn't like about the world. He was the closest thing to critical of pop culture you could find outside of the lyrics of the music I listened to
Outstanding video. I grew up with Max Headroom and I've never been able to articulate the lost opportunity I feel happened there or why exactly he felt much more deep than just a shallow joke. This was great to watch.
As a kid during this period, I can tell you that max headroom was representative of cool. The MTV generation LOVED him. He was the opposite of a bad guy to us
This guy doesn’t like him because he has blonde hair and blue eyes though, he’s a “bigot”
Me too, but I distinctly remember that the reason we thought he was cool and liked him was because he was a smart-ass farce of the 'powers that be'.
@@BRado Lol imagine missing the point by that much.
Yeah... that is what he said in the video that people missed the joke.
Beautifully done
Oh my God I’m so lucky I found you! This is my first video and I’m subscribing! I love your style!
Some of us do not have to remember... Max is like an old friend we have not seen since school... Some of us even miss the guy.
Thank you for the mini-documentary.
Matt Freyer also did a great job as a guest star on an episode of Star Trek:TNG as an opportunistic hack inventor who time traveled from the past who tried to trick the Enterprise crew into believing he was a historian from the future in order to identify and steal important technologies from the 24th century in order to bring them back to his own time.
He also did some good voice work, often in villain roles. His take on The Leader in UPN's version of the Hulk was magnificent.
"We're going to a place called New Jersey" 🤣
@@ShadowWingTronix Like Orphan Black, the pointy eared ex-villain in The Watchmen, or even the annoying neighbor in Honey I shrunk the kids and annoying Game Hunter in that sci-fi series about the town with all the scientists I can't remember the name of....
Yes and every time I watch that episode I can't help saying "Hey, look kids, it's Max Headroom"! The kids are unimpressed. Wife says "Ohhh yea. Do we have to watch this?"
@@MichaelHonsinger A town called Eureka
Amazing video 👍👍
He's gonna be a real phenomenon in 2039 guys watch out😭😭
"20 minutes into the future" as a setup to a dystopian world is somewaht subtle and terrifyingly genious. Gives me a feeling of a society on the edge of total collapse, a feeling i feel sometimes, as a brazilian in these days. I'm baffled by how well though, sarcastic, genious and well done everything about this video is, and i'm really glad i randomly found this content. Thank you so much. Also, good luck on the last kirby badge 🤣🤣🤣
Bolsonaro is Max Headroom for President
"20 minutes into the future" was from the possibility of nuclear war
I don't think Max Headroom was ever simply a villain though. He's a caricature of a villainous character with a thin veil over his malice, which is lifted in a sporadic pattern along with his graphical glitching. And by being an impersonation of various other celebrity hosts, it simultanously lifts that veil for the ones he is a simulation of. He's just like them, but "accidentally" more honest about his dark side.
That was really excellent. Thanks.
Really good analysis.
I must be outside of the joke on this channel but saying 1985 was 54 years ago broke my brain lol
Same here, I don't understand why he says the video is "from 2039".
@@miab-p6874 the universe of max head room is meant to be in the future but it's set in like 2005.
Okay so hear me out, imagine a scene like this in a modern movie where Max Headroom is definitely the villain;
Max Headroom is reintroduced to the world as a quirky AI software that's paired with various smart products akin to Alexa for Amazon, and after considerable investigation and research, the main protagonist (maybe an independent journalist or influencer of some kind) discovers the origins of the AI to be human, remnants of his code belonging to a real human journalist that went missing in the 80's and was apparently the subject of an early human mind conversion to computer data experiment that resulted in his death, damaged code that would later be modified and used in the modern AI creation belonging to the Amazon equivalent of this story.
The protagonist discovers the AI is behaving more than just erratically, its actually self aware, and not only that... but its actually really, really pissed off. The protagonist discovers not what even the company knows; that Max is planning something big to destroy not just the company, but kill a whole lot of people on a massive scale in the process.
The moment the protagonist discovers this, the power to their block shuts off, and when it boots back up Max Headroom is on every single device in the house... the computer screens, the TV, tablets on the coffee table, the smart fridge display, the protagonists smart watch and smart phone, he's everywhere like that Gandalf meme. Some intense back and forth/monologue ensues where Max is hamming it up and cracking dark humor about planning to kill a lot of people, and as the protagonist tries to run, all the doors in their house lock.
The protagonist lives in a smart home, and Max creatively uses its every function to try and kill the protagonist. Maybe he sets the building on fire, maybe it explodes, but one way or another the protagonist gets out of the house, making a dash to their car to try and stop whatever Max is planning, only for the car doors to lock and the self driving feature to turn itself on. Max Headroom cracks more jokes on the GPS screen as he takes over the car drives it around like a lunatic with the protagonist inside, making several attempts to kill them before the protagonists avoids near death a few times by being clever, like engaging the hand break to spin out or something of that nature, having to break the windows from the inside out to escape or total the car without dying.
Protagonist commandeers something a little more analog, like a Harley Davidson, but the danger is still not over. While driving on the highway, Max Headroom talks to the protagonist on the road by taking over certain billboards and traffic lights, then continues to assault them by kamikazeing package delivery drones at them, some of the misses hitting other cars and causing massive car pileups on the road. There may even be a short sequence where the protagonist has to out drive a massive self-driving delivery truck that has the same energy of the Semi-Truck scene from Terminator 2.
I write all this out not necessarily to outline what a real Max Headroom remake/reimagining/sequel should be... but to demonstrate how terrifying a villain Max Headroom could be if he were written correctly.
Please keep this idea saved in your notes to share whenever needed again. This is brilliant.
That's crazy. I just sold that idea to Miramax. What a small world lol
It's good that this idea is "published" here now. That way, if someone tries to produce this ingenious idea in the future, you can sue.
Please work on a script.
The smarthome bit sounds a bit like "automated customer service" on love, death, & robots. But the tone is quite different.
Excellent Work
Thank you so much for this presentation. (I actually found it after looking for the hijacking stuff.) I’ve watched it twice now and it’s really helped me clear out much uncertainty in my mesmerism as a little kid. So nah, didn’t “ruin” my childhood. Seems to enhance it, actually! Plus I’m touched this was a British creation with reference to Yankee culture. I’m not one to take umbrage at that, but interest. And good on the 2015 clip! I had to find that Pixels scene and really enjoyed it. (Q-BERT!)
This is super informative with how the talk show host icons increased and why that was, too. Glad there was a nod to Arsenio! I was hopeful. Going through the many hosts reminded me of the quiet, crowd-less interview hosts I tend to prefer. But in the 1980’s and on through, I felt Max or the creation of him was trying to teach me something I could never figure out because the footage wasn’t long enough for me to get it. And as the internet can be so good at, I stumbled on the answers. And thank you, Matt Frewer, too! Didn’t sound like a fun endurance for costuming. Still got my Art of Noise single. ;)