Max Headroom FAQ
Prototype of the Alt.Fan.Max-Headroom Faq.
version 1.00 – Thursday, 26th September, 1996
1.Who is he?
Max Headroom was the shiny guy who stuttered and made jokes in a number of different series. An 80’s icon to many and the series was pretty much the first cyberpunk in popular culture.
2.Where did he come from?(The History)
Ok here is the timeline as far as I know.
Channel 4(a Uk terrestrial TV channel – C4) decides to create a pretend
computer host for a music video show.
C4 decides to make a short film about how the computer host is “born”,
but in scripting this turns into a 60min film.(rumours of a 90min film)
C4 shows the film and the music video show to critical acclaim.
C4 brings out the posterbook of the film.
Art Of Noise produce “Paranoimia” with Matt Frewer as Max. It rises
into the UK top 20 hits.
Coca-Cola uses Max in their “New Coke” ad’s. Released March 1986, May
1986, and July 1987.
March 1987: Lorimar (an american network) picks up the rights to make a series and starts by creating its own version of the film, but as a 60min show with mostly american actors (only 3 of the original cast, Matt Frewer, Amanda Pays and William Morgan Sheppard, are in it). Also the plot is changed from the British version (Blank Reg doesn’t appear til later in the series, Bryce switches sides at the end, etc).
15 episode series is made and 13 episodes are shown. (US version of the film is the first episode of course). Series is cancelled despite some quite good critics reviews.
ABC has a scriptwriter’s strike about a month later and shows the 14th and 15th show as fillers. Possibly due to fan mail instead/aswell.
(next bits are especially hazy)
Matt Frewer goes on to make a Max Headroom chat show (with, as I remember, people like Sting coming on), and some Xmas specials etc.
C4 brings out “Max Headroom’s guide to life” book.
The end of an era.
- The shows made:
British telefilm – “20 Minutes Into The Future”
American Series:
(1) Blipverts 3/31/87
(2) Rakers 4/7/87
(3) Body Banks 4/14/87
(4) Security Systems 4/21/87
(5) War 4/28/87
(6) Blanks 5/5/87
(7) The Academy 9/18/87
(8) Deities 9/25/87
(9) Grossberg’s Return 10/2/87
(10) Dream Thieves 10/9/87
(11) Whacketts 10/16/87
(12) Neurostim 4/28/88
(13) Lost Tapes [Shown about 1 month after official end by ABC in the U.S.]
(14) Baby Grobags [Shown about 1 month after official end by ABC in the U.S.]
Unproduced:
(15) Theora’s Tale
(16) The Trial
(17) X-Max
Special Shows:
The Max Headroom X-max Turkey (C4 X-mas special)
The Max Talking Headroom Show
3.How did they raytrace him?
They didn’t. Max is in fact a heavily made up Matt Frewer, with some video effects for the stutter, against a blue wall.
3a.So what about the computer bits then?
In the british film, all of the “computer graphics” were line drawings on acetate, by the same team who also did “Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy”. However by the time the American Series was shot the Amiga computer was being used for screen graphics. And no one knows what was being used by the time of the chatshow.
4.What have the actors also done?
Amanda Pays has most recently been in “Solitaire for Two” and some TV movies. Max Headroom fans will probably enjoy The Flash series and films where she plays a very similar role to Theora.
Matt Frewer has been in “Lawnmower Man II”, “Generation X”, and loads of other films, he is also the voice for the new Pink Panther animated series, and in “Gargoyles”. New news is that he going to be the voice for a character in Disney’s latest animated film, “Hercules”.
William Morgan Sheppard was the villan in the Elvira film (don’t know the name), and he has also popped up as 2 different aliens in the TV show “Babylon 5”.
5.Where can I find the series on tape/laserdisk?
The most often asked question in the newsgroup (apart from “Would anyone like to make some cash” or other spams – see appendix A2).
The sci-fi channel in America runs the Max Headroom series every so often if you don’t mind the logo and the adverts. There used to be released Columbia Video’s with 2 episodes a tape, but the only place you might find them is if you get lucky at a 2nd hand shop or car boot sale.
Recently there have been rumours of a re-release of some of the episodes on laserdisk in Japan, but I don’t know any more…
I recently saw a message from someone in the chat section of the Sci-Fi Channel web site (www.scifi.com) mentioning that he had picked up some new laserdisks of the first 6 episodes of the series (2 episodes per disk) and a used copy of the original UK Max film. He gave the web address for a distributer called Sight & Sound at 【現在デッドリンクのため削除】.
Although others that may have the laserdisks can be searched for at Yahoo/Entertainment/Movies/Laserdisk.
Any other stuff/Merchandise?
Yes, there was quite a lot of merchandising, but so much has disappeared now.
The scripts for episodes 2 3 5 10 and Theora’s Tale (unproduced), are available from Script City 【電話番号削除】.
“Max Headroom’s Guide To Life” – (Adapted for Ordinary People by) David Hansen and Paul Owen for Corgi books (ISBN 0 552 128325).
Max Headroom Annual 1987
A MAD magazine with Alfred E. Neuman as Max on the cover.
The single “Paranomia” with Art Of Noise – Now availabe on their “best of” album.
There are also some coffee cups out there and numerous posters.
The Max Headroom computer game for Commodore and Spectrum 48k.
6.Any web sites?
PERSONAL
【現在デッドリンクのため削除】
COMMERCIAL
Sci-Fi Channel (Dominion):
【現在デッドリンクのため削除】
There used to be a site at 【削除】 (actually an Internet Service Provider in New York), but it seems to be down all the time now.
3/ Where you can get stuff???
I WANT WANT WANT series 2 on video (PAL) – I can give you the item codes
for Australian PAL versions of series 1. I also WANT WANT WANT copies
(sound or video) of the Coke adverts. You can buy some of the scripts from
“Script City” in the US, including Theoras Tale (They’ve only got about 5
scripts).4/ If you want to go nuts you could include CUTS from the scripts – the
Steve Roberts scripts have a fair bit of detail in them.5/ There are a couple of “Net23” screensavers around for PC (the Net23
logo bounces around a bit)6/ I made up an audio tape of Max speaking from the video show he hosted,
it runs for about 1.5 hours & has variable quality. Anyone want some WAVs
for it? Anyone want to post WAVs of the Coke adverts??7/ List of good Max lines??
Appendix: Misc questions in the newsgroup.
A1: Max was created on an Amiga!
No he wasn’t. See section 3, and 3a. Yes some of the US series graphics were done on amigas though.
A2: Free cash?
Ignore these spams. And try not to follow up to it with a 1 line flame and keep the entire original post.
A3: New series of Dr. Who/anything else posted to all alt.tv groups
Usually nothing to do with Max.
C: Credits
Matt Haswell M.Haswell◎tay.ac.uk
Andrew Williams awilliams◎daikin.com.au
Joe Struss jastruss◎iastate.edu
