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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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...
@@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.
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 !
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
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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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
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!
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 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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
@@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'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.
@@cultofdis, that's hilarious. In the most Irish way possible. (That's a reference. To something a politician said, in fact. it's pretty obscure, though.) You clearly don't understand suffering, The Buddha, enlightenment, or the path. If you think life is anything other than pain _you_ haven't experienced enough life yet. Or maybe you're living the life of the Buddha before he started seeing life as it really is. Fsck. Even the plants kill each other. Did you know? I hope God gets a good laugh out of my life. I hope everyone else gets a good laugh out of it, too. I'm not sure I'm quite detached enough that I'll be able to laugh at God's punchline for me.
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.
@@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
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 UA-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.
dude, the natural comedic timing in your commentary is so good. I'm so conditioned to UA-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!
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.
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.
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.
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."
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...
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
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
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.
I would actually buy a compilation dvd of that pilot if it were available. back in the 80s wehn I learned of the pilot, I was so upset that I missed it. I missed most of the american stuff too since I wasn't living in that country either.
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?
"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 🤣🤣🤣
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!
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.
Thoroughly? So why show the Trump interview? Actual proof of Hollywood's leftwing bias and explained the plot of Max Headroom. Should he not have shown the Clinton and Obama interviews where the truth of their corruption was hidden and buried? Series was cancelled because it is against Hollywood's narrative. Couldn't be made today. Look at Hollywood's and the Media's acceptence of the attrocities committed by CCP/CPC.
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
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.
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.
I was watching this thinking "how haven't I heard about this guy before?", thinking the channel had 500k subscribers. You have under one thousand. This channel is criminally underrated, based on the quality of this video.
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.
@@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.
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.
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
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.
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.
@@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?"
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...
@@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
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 Headroom is a fantastically performed character from Matt Frewer, what I've seen makes me want to watch the short film that was made and the tv series, perhaps I fell into the trappings of what his character was ultimately trying to teach you otherwise but he is just so fascinating that I want to see more of him Your video is fantastic and I love the sheer passion put into it, glad I watched the whole project of yours
You need to watch the early UK Channel 4 drama "20 minutes into the future" to fully understand Max's origins. If it hadn't been for that Max would never have existed. The video is slightly wrong in this fact, the ABC/HBO version was commissioned later
@@JoolsTwo the ABC pilot was a near shot-for-shot remake of the original film, his mistake was in thinking that HBO COMMISSIONED the original film, when in reality it was made by Channel 4. HBO bought the original film after it had been made, so TECHNICALLY it’s an HBO movie but it’s better described as a Channel 4 movie.
@@TheSunshineVault I remember the Channel Four original movie airing on HBO's sister station Cinemax, not HBO proper. The same for the music video program and the later Max Talking Headroom Show.
I have literally been waiting 35 years for someone, anyone to talk about Max Headroom. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one that noticed him. He was ignored by a vast swath of the population. Which seems impossible since he was on MTV when it was the biggest channel in the world. Max was so odd and different. When I saw the actor that played Max in Watchmen I gasped and said "Max!!". Haha
"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.
"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 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
Incredible production of this piece. Its almost jaw dropping in the concept speed required to keep pace. This is a torrent of information and retrospective on what ideologies and concepts were circulating and fought over in 80's America, and the world. Cameron- the articulation of concepts is really a firehose. Thank you so much for the diligence of consideration over this, and the depth of thought. You have helped clarify a long standing misunderstanding of this caricature. Keep being remarkable.
That last part is a perfect summation of Max Headroom. There's a kind of history of characters designed to be outrageous parodies -- RoboCop and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles come to mind -- who got swallowed up by corporate media who made them mainstream and kind of didn't get the joke. Max advertising New Coke? Then making him the people's friend in his TV show? It was all a fundamental misunderstanding of a character who was meant to be pointing at us all and laughing his ass off at all of us. And this was definitely a thing that the Brits (used to) do so well.
Now adays the Brits are too busy being trans continental or some such thing that involves geni talia in a blender before serving bubble and squeak to your overnight guest who crashed on the coach from the confusion of trans-ing from 20-something gay socialite to pudgy wedgy lesbian who likes men but only from behind as they walk towards her(they)[maybe] and the dog is extruding cheeto’s from the north end as it(we) walks south on 3 legs so the party is off since Sam(you guess)(them) look ma I’m on tv stoolsberry when red dots appear in the harden with coco#5 bloody natsee’s jack boots springer jack. She(they/them) love waffles after tea. Cheers
Yeah that's what sellouts say to try to make it seem like they produced something deep and artistic. When in reality they made something the public mostly didn't care about what was then the hackneyed left wing talking points but were impressed with the quasi CGI look. Clearly they failed and when they were offered to sell out and they did. Now they try to act like the guy acting like he's having video stutter is something deep when for most of us he was shilling products on commercials and being parodied by the Muppet Babies.
I'm old enough to remember television before cable came to town and compared to the way media is consumed now, cable looks silly, but compared to what came before, it was the most amazing thing since the light bulb was invented. When I was a little kid we had 4 channels(3 if you lived on the outskirts of town) and no control over what was broadcast. With cable we had 10 times the channels than we did before. Someone who didn't live through it will have no idea how amazing cable was in the early to mid 80s. I'm also old enough to remember the debut of Max Headroom. I remember thinking it was so cool and different from anything on tv. And to be honest, I didn't think Max was computer generated because I didn't know such a thing was even possible.
Spot on, computer I would have 1till early 2000 and that was a secondhand old put togther thing. To get Internet you had to plug into your house phone line. The line would mess up if the phone rang and your Internet would go down. Not that it was very good anyway. As for max headroom. I think most people new it was a real person. Quite good tho for back then. I used to love max. ❤
@@carolevans5285 CRAY had a supercomputer in the 80s that could have rendered SOMETHING like Max. It wouldn't have been as crisp. The maths for generating 3d images were experimental at the time. Phong shading required more computing so you would have very obvious triangles making up the contours of his face. Think lawnmower man, that quality. Too expensive a computer for not much gain. Remember lawnmower man came out in the 90s when that kind of power was becoming available to us lowly plebs instead of science types.
This video is amazing. Sometimes I feel like the only one who remembers Max! I obsessively watched as much of him as I could find. I was young (born '81) so some of it went over my head. I knew he was an extremely cool take on the times, and futuristic in outlook, but I very much understood how subversive he was. I knew he was saying things that were not supposed to have light shone of them. A loose cannon. I did feel like he was an ally in that regard. And he was justifiably frustrated for being trapped in a TV. One bit of silly media he's in that you didn't mention was the single 'insomnia' that I had on vinyl and replayed constantly :)
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.
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!"
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.
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.
This video makes me realize how Max Headroom was so ahead of its time. That small bit you mention at 10:35 about the blipverts, sadly shows how that shows fictional future has indeed come to pass. Anyone noticed how UA-cam has been inserting non-skip-able blipverts over the past year? These have become so common, I actually pressed the skip button a few times not realizing that short spider-man blipvert was actually part of the video!
Nope. It/subconscious programming/ads was a big concept in 1950s sci-fi. People also give big props to They Live for the same thing, which came out three years later than Max. But They Live is ostensibly the same film as Halloween 3 in that sense, which beat them both. But again, this is three decades after the whole idea came up in the paranoid red scare years of the fifties. And non-skippable ads are the polar opposite of the idea of blipverts. Cheers.
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.
I enjoyed this, but having lived through the Max Headroom era, including watching the full ABC series as it was originally broadcast, two repeated errors really bugged me. One was that most of the (white male in a dark suit) late-night talk show hosts depicted here are from decades AFTER Max, many of them from the 2000s. So they could not have inspired his satire. During the 80s there were only 1, 2 or maybe 3 late night talk shows to choose from at any given time, on the major broadcast networks. And only some networks ran one after another (e.g. Carson, then Letterman). Most 80s talk show hosts did not wear dark suits, as you can see when you pick out Carson or Letterman and discard all the 90s or later hosts in this video. The other problem is that the 80s was still in the era of broadcast network TV, not cable. Most people did not even have cable in the 80s - it was a luxury limited geographically to cities and financially to the upper half of the middle class. (You can even see this in the rotating channel dial of the Max Headroom TV which features a UHF range). It wasn't until around 1990 that 50% of US households had cable. In the 80s, cable either brought you broadcast TV from further away, or specialty channels that mainly featured sports, ethnic/foreign language content, or (for a premium) movies. The Network 23 of the Max Headroom show was a broadcast network, not a cable network. (Character Blank Reg also ran a pirate broadcast network from his van).
@@RedArmada Yeah, this video feels like a meta joke that I'm not getting. It kind of misses the mark, just enough to be weird, but not far enough away to just turn it off. This is the Max Headroom of Max Headroom videos.
If he had search-and-replaced "cable" with "broadcast" it would've been even more accurate and more to the point. Broadcast had even more pressure to be acceptable to everybody and be even more of a force for an unexamined status quo.
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
My mum and her friend blagged their way backstage when he performed live - she said back in the day they really didn’t know if he was CGI or not, even though that tech wouldn’t have been feasible, but he was just a man and it kind of broke the illusion! I was always baffled by her copy of max headrooms guide to life on the bookshelf, and whenever I asked her to explain again who exactly he was, I didn’t get it. I do now, so thank you!
Mara Wilson recommended I watch this. So good. I hope you’ve spent the time since actually writing the next Max Headroom show. Seems like you’re the man for this job.
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."
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.
I like how “I’d rather tap dance.” is highlighted at the beginning and that in and of itself is a joke I didn’t get until after watching through the video and hearing that Max, in his origin story, doesn’t have feet. Great video, all around
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.
You know, the late night talk show was a product of the BROADCAST age rather than the cable age, and it persists today in this putatively post-cable age (even though, where I am, we still have broadcast, cable, and streaming).
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.
A almost 100% perfect video! Loved the style, the depth, the theme, the edits... the only thing I critique is that he left out the infamous "Max Headroom Incident" from November 22, 1987. It was one of the most fascinating hijacking of a public proadcasting station ever and it wasn`t a coincidence that whoever were the perpetrators used Max Headroom as their format. So... 97% perfect ;)
@@penangtv6108 Me too actually! Not being from the US I had no idea what this figure was supposed to be - I actually had no idea until I saw THIS video to be precise...
Brilliant piece, mate. Although you don't mention it, I always thought the "Max Headroom incident" was parody performance art way ahead of its time - like, it was a bit mocking the way corporations had adopted this clearly satirical caricature. There was so much info and footage i'd never seen before in this video; I can't wait to spread it around.
I was too young to remember Max, but I do remember Matt Frewer being in a little bit of everything back in the day. After watching this documentary, I get the feeling Jim Carrey may have modeled all of his characters on Matt. They even have identical voices.
Absolutely stellar piece! From the research to the narration to the amazing production elements, this is an epic college thesis in a 38-minute video! I truly don't understand why this video doesn't have millions of views. Even people who never heard of Max Headroom would be entertained and informed by this. Thank you for the time and energy you invested in this fun project. It is appreciated!
Your Words Are Perfectly Ensconced in what 'Should Be Our Awestruck Realization' of How Accountably Poynient and Truly Worthy' Your Obviously Experiential and Educated Words Are! _ Thank You' Exactly👍
"Headroom" is also an audio term used to describe how much volume is available before distortion occurs. People back then would likely know more about headroom and analog audio than hard drive space and computers, so the term was an easy way to connect the ideas
Not here in the UK where is was made, Max Headroom sign was in every town, every multi-story car park - we laughed when we saw the Max Headroom scene happen.
I always took it in that sense - like the character has masses of available leeway before breaking up. Of course, that’s largely what Max Headroom (6metres) means as well. But as a video character with a blaring voice, the audio analogy was particularly fitting.
@@AethentheboredYou think that once he's used up all his headroom he can't get any louder. But that's because you didn't give him MAX HEADROOM. When you do that he can shout as loudly as he likes!! haha Let's call it even shall we? lol
@@Aethenthebored Anyway that's not good working definition of how headroom is applied. You leave headroom in situations where a sound MIGHT get too loud (eg where Max suddenly starts shouting). For a soft voice per se you would try and leave MINIMUM headroom, to reduce noise. So actually, no I don't like your analysis so much.
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
@@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.
Many people (myself included) consider the ‘New Coke’ debacle not so much an accident as part of an actual bait-and-switch plan to change the formula from sugar to HFC without incurring the backlash and having to admit it and go back to sugar. Producing Coke with HFC was significantly cheaper in a number of ways than it was with sugar and switching the formula twice over a 3 month period insured that all the sugar-based Coke would effectively be gone and no US consumers would be the wiser, now having nothing to compare ‘Coke Classic’.
Came here to say the same thing. They basically made Pepsi for 3 months and then switched to the fake sweetener. Fortunately, we can buy the original formula in the Mexican cokes now. Well, not the real original formula, just the one without the cocaine in it. It’s amazing how nasty the hfc coke is when you compare them side by side, the sugar formula doesn’t leave your mouth feeling pasty and gross like the hfc version does.
@National Socialism ... and highlighting how impressive Max Headroom was in that he could do the same while also being amusing, satirical and articulate.
Coke was using HFCS years before New Coke. It's the reason The Old Cola Drinkers of America invented Jolt! Cola "all the sugar and twice the caffiene." The switchover to New Coke gave Jolt! the boost it needed for nationwide distribution. Coke was losing market share with young consumers to Pepsi. They figured the younger cola drinkers preferred the sweeter, less carbonated taste of Pepsi to Coke's more carbonated, acidic taste. Coke didn't count on older customers throwing conniption fits over "their" drink being pulled. Their displeasure was seen in the deluge of letters sent to Coke HQ in Atlanta. So they brought Old Coke back sharing the shelves with New Coke. New Coke limped on for a couple years before it was shitcanned.
I had no idea. I recall the taste test wars. The reality is, soda made me fat and I didn't like it. So at age of 12 I gave it up. My parents didn't understand, but I knew I needed to reclaim my health. Imagine all the cavities caused by sodas, the diabetes, the overweight grossness, strokes, and heart disease. But hey, only the tobacco companies were sued! The Russian/CONVID/CLIMATE/GREEN PASSPORT should be able to monitor sugar/corn-syrup intake too! Ahh full Russian Control is coming! Russia Russia Russia!
But some of the best talk shows are cable. Jon Stewart and even more so Trevor Noah get past the softball/forbidden topics that Network TV won't even go near. And I'm not just talking politics. I've seen some personalities tell stories never found on daytime talkshows. Much the same for Conan Obrien.
@@jht3fougifh393 really? Jon Stewart hand selected Trevor because of his unique perspective. He asks uncomfortable questions. I believe Conan has been "left out" because of his unique blend of zany slapstick and questions nobody else will ask. Sam Bee is similar but more one sided.
They developed one of the most important character of all: Blank Reg - the guy who recognized how damaging any information about him was stored in the corporate computers. And today all our personal data is gathered and shared by Big Tech. Bravo to you Blank Reg.
Remember the young lady who is tried, convicted, and sentenced by a computer with two diskettes (one for defense, one for prosecution)? As she is hauled away she screams, "Blank is BEAUTIFUL! Blank is BEAUTIFUL!"
Also, Blank Reg was played by the ultimate Hey! It's That Guy! of the 80s and 90s: William Morgan Sheppard. The man was a character actor's character actor, with something just shy of 200 IMDB credits, and one of the tiny handful of actors to have credits on all of Star Trek, Babylon 5 and Doctor Who.
as someone who grew up terrified of max, i really appreciate this. it was only doubled by how utterly evil matt frewer was as roger de carnac in 'robin of sherwood', my favourite ever TV series.
I wore a Max Headroom sweatshirt to school in West Germany in 1988, and thought I was the bees knees for it. Adult me, now living in America, looking back and understanding is laughing and crying at the same time. This was an excellent look into something that was a part of my upbringing, for better or worse. I look forward to more in-depth essays from you. Mahalo.
![[UA] NAVI vs MOUZ | BO5 | IEM Rio 2024](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/CMBYk0cbGoA/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.
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
ua-cam.com/video/dz7rK3Eks4s/v-deo.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.
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?
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. ua-cam.com/video/jjeUuakHsLw/v-deo.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
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
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...
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 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.
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.
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 UA-cam even slightly as broad in scope as this video, what are you talking about?
@@TheSunshineVault ua-cam.com/video/NVcRWOhXmh4/v-deo.html
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.
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
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.
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
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
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. 💣
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.
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.
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 UA-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?
Max Would be hugely popular today. Bitterness is much more accepted these days.
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.
>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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
"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.
@@cultofdis, that's hilarious. In the most Irish way possible. (That's a reference. To something a politician said, in fact. it's pretty obscure, though.)
You clearly don't understand suffering, The Buddha, enlightenment, or the path.
If you think life is anything other than pain _you_ haven't experienced enough life yet. Or maybe you're living the life of the Buddha before he started seeing life as it really is.
Fsck. Even the plants kill each other. Did you know?
I hope God gets a good laugh out of my life. I hope everyone else gets a good laugh out of it, too. I'm not sure I'm quite detached enough that I'll be able to laugh at God's punchline for me.
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..."
@@louisduarte8763I have Premium and it still got me
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
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 UA-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"?
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.
dude, the natural comedic timing in your commentary is so good. I'm so conditioned to UA-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!
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”
@@robert2690 yes
Yea, that's where this analysis kinda lost me. Max became Jack Sparrow.
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
"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!@! "
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."
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.
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.
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.
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!
You vastly overestimate the technical knowledge of the average person in the 80's.
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.
I would actually buy a compilation dvd of that pilot if it were available. back in the 80s wehn I learned of the pilot, I was so upset that I missed it. I missed most of the american stuff too since I wasn't living in that country either.
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?
"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
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
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.
Thoroughly researched, thought provoking, couldn't have been better content... You have set a high standard to follow there!... new subscriber :)
Thoroughly? So why show the Trump interview? Actual proof of Hollywood's leftwing bias and explained the plot of Max Headroom. Should he not have shown the Clinton and Obama interviews where the truth of their corruption was hidden and buried? Series was cancelled because it is against Hollywood's narrative. Couldn't be made today. Look at Hollywood's and the Media's acceptence of the attrocities committed by CCP/CPC.
02:48 The narrator claims that 1985 was 54 years ago....
@@MudballDon 0:24 the video’s ‘date’ is shown on screen for the first time, and mentioned quite a few times after that, it’s not a mistake.
@@TheSunshineVault ah, the conceit is that this video we’re watching was produced in the future? I didn’t catch that.
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.
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.
I was watching this thinking "how haven't I heard about this guy before?", thinking the channel had 500k subscribers.
You have under one thousand. This channel is criminally underrated, based on the quality of this video.
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.
This was an incredibly interesting breakdown of the Max Headroom character, keep up the great work like this!
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.
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
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 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.
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
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
"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
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.
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.
Max Headroom is a fantastically performed character from Matt Frewer, what I've seen makes me want to watch the short film that was made and the tv series, perhaps I fell into the trappings of what his character was ultimately trying to teach you otherwise but he is just so fascinating that I want to see more of him
Your video is fantastic and I love the sheer passion put into it, glad I watched the whole project of yours
The MaxH series is on Netflix
You need to watch the early UK Channel 4 drama "20 minutes into the future" to fully understand Max's origins. If it hadn't been for that Max would never have existed. The video is slightly wrong in this fact, the ABC/HBO version was commissioned later
@@JoolsTwo the ABC pilot was a near shot-for-shot remake of the original film, his mistake was in thinking that HBO COMMISSIONED the original film, when in reality it was made by Channel 4. HBO bought the original film after it had been made, so TECHNICALLY it’s an HBO movie but it’s better described as a Channel 4 movie.
@@TheSunshineVault I remember the Channel Four original movie airing on HBO's sister station Cinemax, not HBO proper. The same for the music video program and the later Max Talking Headroom Show.
@@TheSunshineVault But the series ran on ABC. The first season was great, the second season blew chunks.
I have literally been waiting 35 years for someone, anyone to talk about Max Headroom. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one that noticed him. He was ignored by a vast swath of the population. Which seems impossible since he was on MTV when it was the biggest channel in the world. Max was so odd and different. When I saw the actor that played Max in Watchmen I gasped and said "Max!!". Haha
Headroom today would be dodging jabs like a boxer!
Huh. I've been waiting "54 years since 1985". Hasn't everyone?
Born in 83, grew up before and with the internet and have never heard of this person.
@@TobiMcTobeface sure, in the year 2039 that we’re living in, shown on screen for the first time at 0:24
I remember tripping on acid and ...... max headroom was an important entity in the late 80's
"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.
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 UA-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 UA-cam shorts make people stupider!
10:47 OMFG that was just genius, I tried the skip button and all... 😅🤣👌
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.
Incredible production of this piece. Its almost jaw dropping in the concept speed required to keep pace. This is a torrent of information and retrospective on what ideologies and concepts were circulating and fought over in 80's America, and the world. Cameron- the articulation of concepts is really a firehose. Thank you so much for the diligence of consideration over this, and the depth of thought. You have helped clarify a long standing misunderstanding of this caricature. Keep being remarkable.
Cameron Is a genius
A firehose pointed at teacups. An apt metaphor indeed.
i literally cant believe this guy only has 2k subs. this is one of the best productions ive seen on YT in a long long time
So basically, the British made a joke and the Americans didn't get it. What's new?
That last part is a perfect summation of Max Headroom. There's a kind of history of characters designed to be outrageous parodies -- RoboCop and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles come to mind -- who got swallowed up by corporate media who made them mainstream and kind of didn't get the joke. Max advertising New Coke? Then making him the people's friend in his TV show? It was all a fundamental misunderstanding of a character who was meant to be pointing at us all and laughing his ass off at all of us. And this was definitely a thing that the Brits (used to) do so well.
Now adays the Brits are too busy being trans continental or some such thing that involves geni talia
in a blender before serving bubble and squeak to your overnight guest who crashed on the coach from the confusion of trans-ing from 20-something gay socialite to pudgy wedgy lesbian who likes men but only from behind as they walk towards her(they)[maybe] and the dog is extruding cheeto’s from the north end as it(we) walks south on 3 legs so the party is off since Sam(you guess)(them) look ma I’m on tv stoolsberry when red dots appear in the harden with coco#5 bloody natsee’s jack boots springer jack. She(they/them) love waffles after tea. Cheers
Bro but what’s that outro song
Just found it nvrmind ua-cam.com/video/1p_Xy9GxZgs/v-deo.html
@@prepperjonpnw6482 did you have some kind of transphobic stroke?
Yeah that's what sellouts say to try to make it seem like they produced something deep and artistic. When in reality they made something the public mostly didn't care about what was then the hackneyed left wing talking points but were impressed with the quasi CGI look.
Clearly they failed and when they were offered to sell out and they did. Now they try to act like the guy acting like he's having video stutter is something deep when for most of us he was shilling products on commercials and being parodied by the Muppet Babies.
I'm old enough to remember television before cable came to town and compared to the way media is consumed now, cable looks silly, but compared to what came before, it was the most amazing thing since the light bulb was invented. When I was a little kid we had 4 channels(3 if you lived on the outskirts of town) and no control over what was broadcast. With cable we had 10 times the channels than we did before. Someone who didn't live through it will have no idea how amazing cable was in the early to mid 80s.
I'm also old enough to remember the debut of Max Headroom. I remember thinking it was so cool and different from anything on tv. And to be honest, I didn't think Max was computer generated because I didn't know such a thing was even possible.
Spot on, computer I would have 1till early 2000 and that was a secondhand old put togther thing. To get Internet you had to plug into your house phone line. The line would mess up if the phone rang and your Internet would go down. Not that it was very good anyway. As for max headroom. I think most people new it was a real person. Quite good tho for back then. I used to love max. ❤
Guess you remember the "The Tommy Hunter Show"
@@serenegreene6984 Never heard of it. I had to look it up to find out that was a Canadian show. I'm sure it was great.
Yeah its crazy that so many people today think "rabbit ears" are just appendages on bunnies used for hearing
@@carolevans5285 CRAY had a supercomputer in the 80s that could have rendered SOMETHING like Max. It wouldn't have been as crisp. The maths for generating 3d images were experimental at the time. Phong shading required more computing so you would have very obvious triangles making up the contours of his face. Think lawnmower man, that quality.
Too expensive a computer for not much gain. Remember lawnmower man came out in the 90s when that kind of power was becoming available to us lowly plebs instead of science types.
This video is amazing. Sometimes I feel like the only one who remembers Max! I obsessively watched as much of him as I could find. I was young (born '81) so some of it went over my head. I knew he was an extremely cool take on the times, and futuristic in outlook, but I very much understood how subversive he was. I knew he was saying things that were not supposed to have light shone of them. A loose cannon. I did feel like he was an ally in that regard. And he was justifiably frustrated for being trapped in a TV.
One bit of silly media he's in that you didn't mention was the single 'insomnia' that I had on vinyl and replayed constantly :)
"Trust me... Trust me... Trust me..."
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.
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.
This video makes me realize how Max Headroom was so ahead of its time. That small bit you mention at 10:35 about the blipverts, sadly shows how that shows fictional future has indeed come to pass.
Anyone noticed how UA-cam has been inserting non-skip-able blipverts over the past year? These have become so common, I actually pressed the skip button a few times not realizing that short spider-man blipvert was actually part of the video!
A head of its time, in every way!
In other words a talking head of his time? Lol.. How did I miss that pun before?
Nope. It/subconscious programming/ads was a big concept in 1950s sci-fi. People also give big props to They Live for the same thing, which came out three years later than Max. But They Live is ostensibly the same film as Halloween 3 in that sense, which beat them both. But again, this is three decades after the whole idea came up in the paranoid red scare years of the fifties. And non-skippable ads are the polar opposite of the idea of blipverts. Cheers.
@@halfvader8015 yep subliminal advertising and the blipvertisment has been around as long as motion picture
If Halloween 3 had Roddy Piper and less of that annoying jingle,, I would have liked it better.
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.
I enjoyed this, but having lived through the Max Headroom era, including watching the full ABC series as it was originally broadcast, two repeated errors really bugged me.
One was that most of the (white male in a dark suit) late-night talk show hosts depicted here are from decades AFTER Max, many of them from the 2000s. So they could not have inspired his satire. During the 80s there were only 1, 2 or maybe 3 late night talk shows to choose from at any given time, on the major broadcast networks. And only some networks ran one after another (e.g. Carson, then Letterman). Most 80s talk show hosts did not wear dark suits, as you can see when you pick out Carson or Letterman and discard all the 90s or later hosts in this video.
The other problem is that the 80s was still in the era of broadcast network TV, not cable. Most people did not even have cable in the 80s - it was a luxury limited geographically to cities and financially to the upper half of the middle class. (You can even see this in the rotating channel dial of the Max Headroom TV which features a UHF range). It wasn't until around 1990 that 50% of US households had cable. In the 80s, cable either brought you broadcast TV from further away, or specialty channels that mainly featured sports, ethnic/foreign language content, or (for a premium) movies. The Network 23 of the Max Headroom show was a broadcast network, not a cable network. (Character Blank Reg also ran a pirate broadcast network from his van).
Cool, thank you for clarifying those things.
Dude, this isn't actually about max headroom. It's about about how bad Jimmy Fallon is...
@@RedArmada On On Max Headroom: The Most Misunderstood Joke on TV: The Most Misunderstood Joke On UA-cam
@@RedArmada Yeah, this video feels like a meta joke that I'm not getting.
It kind of misses the mark, just enough to be weird, but not far enough away to just turn it off.
This is the Max Headroom of Max Headroom videos.
If he had search-and-replaced "cable" with "broadcast" it would've been even more accurate and more to the point. Broadcast had even more pressure to be acceptable to everybody and be even more of a force for an unexamined status quo.
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
My mum and her friend blagged their way backstage when he performed live - she said back in the day they really didn’t know if he was CGI or not, even though that tech wouldn’t have been feasible, but he was just a man and it kind of broke the illusion! I was always baffled by her copy of max headrooms guide to life on the bookshelf, and whenever I asked her to explain again who exactly he was, I didn’t get it. I do now, so thank you!
I thought he was computer generated too. We didn't know what was feasible, because so few of us owned or knew how to work computers.
Mara Wilson recommended I watch this. So good. I hope you’ve spent the time since actually writing the next Max Headroom show. Seems like you’re the man for this job.
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."
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.
I like how “I’d rather tap dance.” is highlighted at the beginning and that in and of itself is a joke I didn’t get until after watching through the video and hearing that Max, in his origin story, doesn’t have feet. Great video, all around
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.
You know, the late night talk show was a product of the BROADCAST age rather than the cable age, and it persists today in this putatively post-cable age (even though, where I am, we still have broadcast, cable, and streaming).
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
A almost 100% perfect video! Loved the style, the depth, the theme, the edits... the only thing I critique is that he left out the infamous "Max Headroom Incident" from November 22, 1987. It was one of the most fascinating hijacking of a public proadcasting station ever and it wasn`t a coincidence that whoever were the perpetrators used Max Headroom as their format.
So... 97% perfect ;)
"An almost" NOT 'A' almost
@@billkeithchannel so…. wouldnt that just make the comment 97% meta?
Was looking for this comment. So ironic as a video of this tv hijacking incident was the first time I'd heard of Max Headroom.
@@penangtv6108 Me too actually! Not being from the US I had no idea what this figure was supposed to be - I actually had no idea until I saw THIS video to be precise...
@@ArtOfficialKreations I have literally no idea what your comment is supposed to mean...
Brilliant piece, mate. Although you don't mention it, I always thought the "Max Headroom incident" was parody performance art way ahead of its time - like, it was a bit mocking the way corporations had adopted this clearly satirical caricature.
There was so much info and footage i'd never seen before in this video; I can't wait to spread it around.
I was surprised the max headroom incident wasnt mentioned at all in this video!
10:48 "Wait a second, did YT find a way to get past my adblo--ohh, I see what you did there..."
I'll be darned. I had actually clicked on the "Skip Ad" button and assumed it worked. :^D
I was too young to remember Max, but I do remember Matt Frewer being in a little bit of everything back in the day. After watching this documentary, I get the feeling Jim Carrey may have modeled all of his characters on Matt. They even have identical voices.
Absolutely stellar piece! From the research to the narration to the amazing production elements, this is an epic college thesis in a 38-minute video! I truly don't understand why this video doesn't have millions of views. Even people who never heard of Max Headroom would be entertained and informed by this. Thank you for the time and energy you invested in this fun project. It is appreciated!
Your Words Are Perfectly Ensconced in what 'Should Be Our Awestruck Realization' of How Accountably Poynient and Truly Worthy' Your Obviously Experiential and Educated Words Are! _ Thank You' Exactly👍
"Headroom" is also an audio term used to describe how much volume is available before distortion occurs.
People back then would likely know more about headroom and analog audio than hard drive space and computers, so the term was an easy way to connect the ideas
Not here in the UK where is was made, Max Headroom sign was in every town, every multi-story car park - we laughed when we saw the Max Headroom scene happen.
I always took it in that sense - like the character has masses of available leeway before breaking up. Of course, that’s largely what Max Headroom (6metres) means as well. But as a video character with a blaring voice, the audio analogy was particularly fitting.
@@michaelhoste_ yep. Theoretically, if he has actual "max headroom" in audio terms: he would also have the loudest voice on television and radio.
@@AethentheboredYou think that once he's used up all his headroom he can't get any louder. But that's because you didn't give him MAX HEADROOM. When you do that he can shout as loudly as he likes!!
haha Let's call it even shall we? lol
@@Aethenthebored Anyway that's not good working definition of how headroom is applied. You leave headroom in situations where a sound MIGHT get too loud (eg where Max suddenly starts shouting). For a soft voice per se you would try and leave MINIMUM headroom, to reduce noise. So actually, no I don't like your analysis so much.
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.
Many people (myself included) consider the ‘New Coke’ debacle not so much an accident as part of an actual bait-and-switch plan to change the formula from sugar to HFC without incurring the backlash and having to admit it and go back to sugar. Producing Coke with HFC was significantly cheaper in a number of ways than it was with sugar and switching the formula twice over a 3 month period insured that all the sugar-based Coke would effectively be gone and no US consumers would be the wiser, now having nothing to compare ‘Coke Classic’.
Came here to say the same thing. They basically made Pepsi for 3 months and then switched to the fake sweetener. Fortunately, we can buy the original formula in the Mexican cokes now. Well, not the real original formula, just the one without the cocaine in it. It’s amazing how nasty the hfc coke is when you compare them side by side, the sugar formula doesn’t leave your mouth feeling pasty and gross like the hfc version does.
@National Socialism ... and highlighting how impressive Max Headroom was in that he could do the same while also being amusing, satirical and articulate.
@National Socialism And it was amusing and articulate (witty, you could even say) - also fundamental to its nature.
Coke was using HFCS years before New Coke. It's the reason The Old Cola Drinkers of America invented Jolt! Cola "all the sugar and twice the caffiene." The switchover to New Coke gave Jolt! the boost it needed for nationwide distribution.
Coke was losing market share with young consumers to Pepsi. They figured the younger cola drinkers preferred the sweeter, less carbonated taste of Pepsi to Coke's more carbonated, acidic taste. Coke didn't count on older customers throwing conniption fits over "their" drink being pulled. Their displeasure was seen in the deluge of letters sent to Coke HQ in Atlanta. So they brought Old Coke back sharing the shelves with New Coke. New Coke limped on for a couple years before it was shitcanned.
I had no idea. I recall the taste test wars.
The reality is, soda made me fat and I didn't like it.
So at age of 12 I gave it up. My parents didn't understand, but I knew I needed to reclaim my health.
Imagine all the cavities caused by sodas, the diabetes, the overweight grossness, strokes, and heart disease.
But hey, only the tobacco companies were sued!
The Russian/CONVID/CLIMATE/GREEN PASSPORT should be able to monitor sugar/corn-syrup intake too!
Ahh full Russian Control is coming! Russia Russia Russia!
Love this. One thing bugs me: the late night talkshows weren’t on cable, they were on network tv, and a pre-cable relic.
Thank you! There's been talk shows nearly from the beginning of broadcast TV. Jack Paar would be surprised he was on something called "cable TV". 😉
But some of the best talk shows are cable. Jon Stewart and even more so Trevor Noah get past the softball/forbidden topics that Network TV won't even go near.
And I'm not just talking politics. I've seen some personalities tell stories never found on daytime talkshows. Much the same for Conan Obrien.
@@rjonboy7608 I feel bad for Jon Stewart's name being alongside the others.
@@jht3fougifh393 really? Jon Stewart hand selected Trevor because of his unique perspective. He asks uncomfortable questions. I believe Conan has been "left out" because of his unique blend of zany slapstick and questions nobody else will ask. Sam Bee is similar but more one sided.
They developed one of the most important character of all: Blank Reg - the guy who recognized how damaging any information about him was stored in the corporate computers. And today all our personal data is gathered and shared by Big Tech. Bravo to you Blank Reg.
I have often said, "Blank Reg was right - about EVERYTHING."
"Remember when we said 'no future'? Well, this is it!" - Blank Reg
RIP Blank Reg
Remember the young lady who is tried, convicted, and sentenced by a computer with two diskettes (one for defense, one for prosecution)? As she is hauled away she screams, "Blank is BEAUTIFUL! Blank is BEAUTIFUL!"
"Filling your empty lives with mindless dreck. Coming up...more of the same!"
~Blank Reg
Also, Blank Reg was played by the ultimate Hey! It's That Guy! of the 80s and 90s: William Morgan Sheppard. The man was a character actor's character actor, with something just shy of 200 IMDB credits, and one of the tiny handful of actors to have credits on all of Star Trek, Babylon 5 and Doctor Who.
My takeaway from this: Steven Colbert stole Max Headroom's shtick.
As did Space Ghost: Coast to Coast
as someone who grew up terrified of max, i really appreciate this. it was only doubled by how utterly evil matt frewer was as roger de carnac in 'robin of sherwood', my favourite ever TV series.
I guess I’m lucky that this is my first time that I remember hearing about him
I wore a Max Headroom sweatshirt to school in West Germany in 1988, and thought I was the bees knees for it. Adult me, now living in America, looking back and understanding is laughing and crying at the same time. This was an excellent look into something that was a part of my upbringing, for better or worse. I look forward to more in-depth essays from you. Mahalo.