W -E http://tv.yahoo.com/yahoo/gist /yfeature.dpg ?feed=ltv/scifi/da ta/&adFsffO9039 9 x Help Bmught ro you by ffiIsTTV Max Headroom runs weekly on *P)l))]liriNBrr lriclxllii r :$;t::.i:7)i1l/dtfKNi iisit )i;iiriilrillllll I LIL ,ra Brqvo Sundays.from Il a.m. to noon ET. By Frank Lovece "Satire," say theater folk, "is what closes on Saturday nights." And even that'sbetter than in the world of television, where (except for in cartoons) it barely opens at all. When satirize government, institutions or society, werre ultimately satirizing the government we choose, the institutions we put up with-and ourselves. And we're a preffy sensitive bunch. There was nothing sensitive at all about Max Headroom (ABC, 1987-88), the visually revolutionary sci-fi adventure series currently running on Bravo each Sunday from 11 a.m. to noon ET (and in a marathon saturday, Sept. 4, from I I a.m. to 8 p.m., then 5 to 6 a.m. early Sunday). Set in a dystopic near-future, it broke ground with its visually rapid storytelling style, requiring an almost intuitive understanding of how to "read" images on the TV screen-with quick, rock video-style bursts and blips of imagery flashing by for the viewer to intuitively make the connections. It's called, for lack of an even more pretentious term, "post-literate narrative." The makers of Max Headroom, using this method selectively as a storytelling tool, were the first to bring it from experimental filmmaking to long-form mass media. It seemed appropriate-the iconic 1980s character Max Headroom was a pretty daring and original of work himself. A supposedly computer-generated, talking head on a TV screen, the cynically smart-ass Max was created by England's Channel Four to serve as host of a music-video show. Max wasn't actually computer-generated, but a heavily made-up actor (Matt Frewer) combined with video distortion and computer graphics. Nonetheless, Max Headroom quickly became an Information Age icon-one into which any pundit, savant or essay-question wrifer could project any theory that had the phrase "postmodern" in it. He starred in a Channel Four TV movie, Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future (1985), which became the basis of the American series two years later-and in the interim, he became a Coca-Cola pitchperson, a guest on an Art of Noise video, and the star ofthe Cinemax talk/comedy series The Origiial Max Talking Headroom Show (1987).

"'Max Headroom' - An Appreciation"

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Page 1: "'Max Headroom' - An Appreciation"

7/27/2019 "'Max Headroom' - An Appreciation"

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http://tv.yahoo.com/y

Max Headroom runs weekly on

*P)l))]liriNBrr lriclxllii r!:$;t::.i:7)i1l/dtfKNi!iisit!)i;iiriilrillllll I LIL ,ra!

Brqvo Sundays.from Il a.m. t

Page 2: "'Max Headroom' - An Appreciation"

7/27/2019 "'Max Headroom' - An Appreciation"

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On the futuristic adventure series tha

as both Max and as TV investigative

The first episode-a condensed and

version of the original two-hour teleinvestigating "blipverts," a form of a

commercials lasting split-seconds. RJapan who were hospitalized after ra

Pokemon TV episode affected their e

and created convulsions? Blipverts did the same-except, this

some people's brains exploded. When Carter is nearly killed try

memory is uploaded into a computer. Add a dash of artificial in

ego Max Headroom is born, with the convenient ability to zip t

Net.

the "cyberpunk" notion of

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Yuybt this dqing adventure series was too smart, too cheekydowner'for TV at the time-it wasn't exactly Nash Bridge^s. Adramas as trrt and, NYPD Blue, Max Headriomhad no i"p-oepisode structure to keep luring repeat viewers.

But there's no question i,t was presciently on-target. Blank Rewhen we said there washo future? Well, this is it."

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