Max Headroom Pepsi Commercial

Pepsi Max Extreme Sport Commercial.

On Thursday, April 4th, 1985, a blast of dystopian satire hit the UK airwaves. Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future was a snarky take on media and corporate greed, told through the eyes of investigative journalist Edison Carter (Matt Frewer) and his computer-generated alter-ego: an artificial intelligence named Max Headroom.Set in a near-future where global corporations control all media and citizens are hopelessly addicted to dozens of TV channels, the movie follows Carter — working for the mysterious Network 23 — as he discovers that network executives have created a form of subliminal advertising known as 'blipverts' that can actually kill. While tracking the story, Carter is flung into a barrier marked 'Max. Headroom — 2.3m.' Desperate to maintain ratings with its star reporter, the network enlists a young hacker to download Carter’s mind and create a virtual version of the journalist. But things don’t go quite right. The result: the stuttering, sarcastic Max.20 Minutes into the Future kicked off an extensive franchise, and Max became a singular '80s pop culture phenomenon that represented everything wonderful and horrible about the decade.

Max hosted music video shows; Max interviewed celebrities; Max hawked New Coke; Max Headroom became US network television’s very first cyberpunk series. Max was inescapable — and then almost just as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone.Thirty years after the premiere, I spoke with the writers, directors, producers, actors, make-up artists, and network executives that helped bring Max Headroom to life. And it all began, like so many things in the ‘80s, with music videos.

Peter Wagg Producer I was working for a record label, Chrysalis Records. I was basically head of what they called, in those days, 'creative services.' Once MTV started, it totally revolutionized the dynamic of marketing and selling music music videos sort of becoming the most important part of our armory. Fortunately, that fell under my wing.I went to Andy Park, a pal of mine who ran a commercial radio station and became commissioning editor for music at Channel 4, which was a new embryonic TV channel in the UK.

Andy said, 'Hey, what do you think about trying to develop a music video show for Channel 4?' Of course if you looked at MTV, it was a bunch of video jocks, real people, linking and introducing music videos. I thought to myself, well, alright, that's been done. So the starting point for the project was, we don't need a real person: maybe it's animated; maybe it's a character we can create that's some sort of hybrid mix that has a trans-Atlantic accent, that has certain visual attributes, if you like.

It’s like Johnny Carson meets Terry Wogan in England.So, the first person I enlisted was a guy called George Stone. George Stone CO-CREATOR / WRITERI worked for an ad agency. I was a writer and radio producer and commercial maker, I suppose, and we had a number of clients that were record companies. I was interested in what we'd call the 'landscape of television,' if you like.We had the show title first: Max Headroom.

I mean, there was a list of about 40 — one of them was called 'The Tube,' I think. I did it one weekend, and Max was the one that won. 'it's all sound, it's all vision, it's filling your head full of music and sound.' Peter Wagg PRODUCER When I asked him, 'Why Max Headroom?' He didn't really have an answer. So I said, well, I suppose it is 'maximum headroom.' I mean, it's all sound, it's all vision, it's filling your head full of music and sound.George Stone CO-CREATOR / WRITER It's a joke that's very specific to Britain, I think.

There is a huge firm that specializes in car parks, and their height restriction notice is 'Max. Headroom, 6.5 feet,' or whatever. From this single piece of signage, you had this title which everybody knew. As a consequence of Max Headroom, national car parks spent about 3 million pounds changing all their signage to 'maximum height'.Peter Wagg PRODUCER I started to look around at animation folk, and of course Rocky and Annabel and Cucumber Studios, at that time, for me, were the most cutting edge. Annabel Jankel CO-CREATOR / DIRECTORThe original idea that was pitched to us was to put graphics — not computer graphics, because it was in the very early days — but some kind of graphics between music videos to kind of jazz it up a bit and give some kind of backbone to what otherwise would just be a bunch of unrelated music videos.Rocky Morton CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR I said to her that, you know, this is a really boring idea. We’re taking these music videos, which are really incredible, and then linking them together with stupid bits of graphics. It’s just not interesting.I thought, maybe I should go with the whole idea of it being boring.

What’s the most boring thing I could do just to annoy everybody? And the most boring thing that I could think of to do, which would really go against the grain for the MTV generation was a talking head: a middle-class white male in a suit, talking to them in a really boring way about music videos.And I thought, 'Oh yeah, I’m on to something here. This is really dull and uninteresting.' George Stone CO-CREATOR / WRITER We were talking about it, and Rocky said, 'I think he should be a man. And I think he should be computer-generated.' That set me off on the whole narrative: Network 23, '20 minutes into the future,' Blipverts, and everything else.

It all came from that moment.We thought, well why don't we, as a part of this show, produce every week a five-minute kind of info-burst drama, almost like a credit sequence, but which tells the story of how this computer-generated character came to be.Annabel Jankel CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR George came up with a great storyline with most — if not all — of the characters in place. Nobody really knew what Max would look like or how he would develop. 'We were talking about Bell's Theorem, action at a distance, artificial intelligence, and everything else.' Rocky Morton CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR I came up with the idea that he already had a show as a real person. He was late for his show one night, and had an open-top sports car.

He went into the parking structure, went through the barrier, and hit his head on it, and he was basically knocked into a coma. In order to get him on air that night, they had to, sort of, download his brain, reconstitute him as a computer model of himself, and put him out on air.George Stone CO-CREATOR / WRITER So what you have in the character is a consciousness — fully human, totally amnesiac — whose first experience to the world is exposure to 30,000 simultaneous channels of television. That's where the character comes from. He is a fusion of every evangelist, every sports reporter, everything you see on TV. And from his perspective he sees no difference or distinction between them.Annabel Jankel CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR Peter Wagg wasn’t very interested in the idea of this talking, computer-generated TV host. In fact, he was quite dismissive of it, saying that 'characters don’t travel.' I remember that specifically.George Stone CO-CREATOR / WRITER Peter didn't understand any of it, really.

We were talking about Bell's Theorem, action at a distance, consciousness, artificial intelligence, and everything else. And Peter, for fuck's sake, is just an account man. I mean, it was a different language. He just wanted something easy that he could sell and make work.Rocky Morton CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR I pitched this to Peter and Chrysalis Visual Programming, and they didn’t like the idea. They said, 'No.

Channel 4 isn’t going to like this. They’re going to want, you know, these kind of little graphic-y things to do it.' So I said, 'Well, let me pitch it anyway.'

George Stone CO-CREATOR / WRITER Channel 4 said, 'This is a good story, why don't we make a film of it?' And so the five-minute episodes were strung together into a narrative.

'Go to America, go and pitch this to HBO or Cinemax.' Peter Wagg PRODUCER So now I haven't got a half-hour music video show anymore. I've got a one-hour movie of the week that sets up a 13-part music video show. And nobody wanted to go back to the 13 half-hours anymore. The whole thing had just taken on a whole new level. But I only had enough money to do 13 half-hours from Channel 4.Annabel Jankel CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR The entire production, including the music video shows with Max hosting them, was in the region of about 1 million pounds.

HBO, still in their infancy, had an arm called Cinemax. We said to Peter Wagg, 'Go to America, go and pitch this to HBO or Cinemax.' Bridget Potter ORIGINAL PROGRAMMING VP, HBOWe used the original programming in that era to try to help define the pay TV services. We were looking for something kind of edgy and unusual for Cinemax, which was at that point just beginning to have some original programming.Peter Wagg PRODUCER I walk in, trying to pitch them something called Max Headroom.

We've got no idea what it is, we haven't got any visuals of what he looks like, so it's a bit of a stretch, right?Bridget Potter ORIGINAL PROGRAMMING VP, HBO First of all, I liked the idea. It just all seemed to work and we thought it was pretty interesting for Cinemax. We wouldn't have thought of it for HBO because it was small and dangerous, in a certain kind of way.Rocky Morton CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR HBO said, 'Listen, go back to your hotel room. Don’t leave, and we’ll be back to you within 24 hours. Don’t go to LA.'

They came back and said, 'We want to do this. We’re going to pay for the making of the origin film of how he got to be Max Headroom, and we want to be involved with Channel 4, and we want to be part of this whole thing.' With funding and commitments from HBO and Channel 4 in place, the project started moving forward in earnest. But for the core creative team of George Stone, Annabel Jankel, and Rocky Morton, problems had already begun to surface.Rocky Morton CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR Everybody got really excited. It came close to shooting the movie, and the producer, Chrysalis Visual Programming, said, 'Oh, I think I’ve got a director that can direct this.'

And I said, 'What the fuck? This is our project. Annabel and myself are directing this.' We said, 'Well, okay. We’re not going to make it then, because we own the idea. You have to go and do something else.' Finally we had to release the rights of our own creation to Chrysalis Visual Programming.

But we did get to make the film and direct it.Peter Wagg PRODUCER The difficulty then became trying to get a shootable script. The saddest part of the whole story for me was that I just couldn't get George to write me a script to shoot. And he is a genius. You'll always credit George, Rocky, and Annabel with the creative essence of what we came up with. But I had a producer's responsibility to Channel 4 and to HBO and to Chrysalis co-founder Terry Ellis.Annabel Jankel CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR George had so many brilliant, genius ideas. A lot of it we would just compile and put into essentially a bible that I think made its way into the subsequent American TV series.

But I don't know because I never saw the TV series.George Stone CO-CREATOR / WRITER I recall writing the last draft and being so angry I have a contract that’s never been honored. 'I just met this very weird guy, a fellow called Peter Wagg, and he's got this very, very weird project.' Steve Roberts WRITER My then-agent in London and I were meeting over some other project, and she said, 'I just met this very weird guy, a fellow called Peter Wagg, and he's got this very, very weird project which he doesn’t quite know what it is and what to do with it. And I couldn't understand a word he said, and I can usually never understand a word you say, and I thought I should put you both together so you can talk nonsense to each other.' So I said, 'Well, alright, which pub?' I arrived in my normal condition, which was jeans and a pullover, long hair and I think a ponytail in those days.

He turned up in a suit. So we disliked each other absolutely instantaneously, but we had a pint and liked each other a bit more. And he said, 'Well, we've got this script from George, but unfortunately it all ends up with people shooting at each other with laser guns and deflecting the lasers with hubcaps — it's not what we want, we want something else. We want to try and dig deeper and find out whether this idea has something else going for it.' That's when I got excited, because I began to realize 'Oh, this may be into the artificial intelligence area.' Peter Wagg PRODUCER At the same time, we needed to try and find a Max fellow. Matt Frewer ACTORI was over in England for 11 years.

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This actor friend of mine auditioned for this thing called Max Headroom, and he very kindly said that he didn't think he was right for it, but he knew somebody who was. It was an incredible act of generosity on this actor's part, Bill Armstrong. I've always been very grateful to him for that. 'He seemed like more of a weatherman or a newsman or something.' Annabel Jankel CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR The casting director does a precasting, and I believe he was in the slush pile. I noticed his Polaroid and I thought, 'Oh my god, this guy's got unbelievably well-defined features.'

Matt Frewer ACTORI got called in to do this 10-minute improvisation around six lines of what was then ostensibly Max Headroom dialogue. They just encouraged me to riff around, and it seemed like more of a weatherman or a newsman or something. With their lead in place, the team turned their attention to what would become the most important element of the entire phenomenon: Max’s look.Annabel Jankel CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR We actually did experiment, quite extensively, with computer graphics.

It didn't take too long for us to realize that we had to fake this, because what we wanted was years down the line.Rocky Morton CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR I tinkered around with doing it like 2D, drawn animation, which didn’t really work. Then I tried a hand puppet.

I molded a rubber head, and I put my hand inside and tried to manipulate it with my hand, and that didn’t work. I remember I suddenly said to Annabel, 'The face. The human face.

We’ll just use the actor’s face and just make it appear as if it was computer-generated by putting prosthetic make-up on it, and then shooting it in a certain way; we could make it look like it’s computer-generated.' Matt Frewer ACTOR I gradually realized what I was getting into as plaster of paris head molds were made, and this prosthetics rubber make-up business goo was happening.

You suddenly realize that it's going to be a pretty arduous process creating the look for Max.John Humphreys PROSTHETICS DESIGNER There was no specific design. They just wanted Matt Frewer to look like a computer-generated TV presenter. You got to remember, in those days, what does a computer-generated person actually look like? There was nothing there. So we made a fairly simple make-up really, we just changed his features a little bit, as if the computer generation hadn't quite got it right. But we wanted to keep as near to Matt Frewer as possible because he's a great actor.

He's very animated, very expressive, so you don't want to hide all of that. 'You end up looking like this sort of jack in the box, squirming around.' Matt Frewer ACTOR The Max suit was in two fiberglass pieces, and they screw you into it. Later on we had different versions of the suit. There was the tuxedo suit, there was a sort of golf suit, and then there was a white tuxedo — all equally cumbersome, and they went right down to your elbows, and you couldn't move around. But in a way, you compensate, and it becomes even more computer-generated looking, because you're sort of rocking back and forth to make up for the gestures that you can do with your arms or your feet or whatever.

So you end up looking like this sort of jack in the box, squirming around. The TV gods giveth, and they taketh away. And what they tooketh away, I added.Rocky Morton CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR We’d just made this commercial for a chocolate milk or flavored milk. And in this commercial, we had these moving, very primitive-looking CGI linear backgrounds.

What I basically did was stole that from the commercial, and just put it behind Max.Annabel Jankel CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR We then put him against blue screen. I remember this day particularly; oh my god, were we relieved. We put him against blue screen, we lit him dramatically, with this one light source from one side, and we rotated him. We had our Max. Production on 20 Minutes into the Future got underway with Steve Roberts as the sole writer. The film is credited as being 'From an original idea by George Stone, Rocky Morton, and Annabel Jankel.' Annabel Jankel CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR We shot it where Stanley Kubrick had shot Full Metal Jacket, which was an abandoned gasworks called Beckton Gasworks — which is big, like equivalent of the Staples Center.

Once we scouted that, we realized we had this perfect environment. You couldn't build that production design, and certainly in those days, we didn't have the funds to actually computer-generate anything.Rocky Morton CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR It had this kind of dystopian, sort of futuristic kind of look to it.Annabel Jankel CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR It was really part of the visual zeitgeist at the time, if you think about it. There was Blade Runner, there was Brazil.

There were a lot of dystopian landscapes out there. And it was post-punk as well, remember, and it was still post-war. London was pretty desolate then.Peter Wagg PRODUCER The launch was spectacular. We had the Thursday night slot, which was Channel 4's movie-of-the-week slot, and the 6:00 half-hour episode on Saturday. The way we started the half-hour music video show, there were no opening titles. There were no credits for anybody.

When it came to 6:00, it was just that satellite chssssssss, snow and buzz. And all of a sudden, Max was there. And he's talking in German, and he's telling this joke about lederhosen all in German, he's roaring with laughter during the whole thing, and then the first music video we played was a German music video.

And then Max in English: 'And this week's award for the worst TV commercial goes to.' And a commercial break. We had no idea what the first commercial would be, but it already got the Max Headroom award for the worst commercial of the week. Then at the end, it just went chssssssss and to static again. It was like you'd woken up in Eastern Europe and turned the television on, and you're watching some weird station that you don't understand, and then it suddenly is cut off and gone. Trailer for Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the FutureRocky Morton CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR We did about 12 or 13 of them and that really established the look and the feel of it.

I started to do this kind of stuttering effect on video — we were just looping. Everybody was, like, 'Okay, Rocky.

That’s enough stuttering.' We got to take it so far that, like, the computer is jammed in this kind of In this freeze motion.' Peter Wagg PRODUCER It just caught fire. We'd doubled ratings within three weeks.

We were renewed three weeks into the run.Rocky Morton CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR Anybody under the age of 25 just loved it. And anybody above that age was just completely confused. It was amazing, you know. It was a genuine phenomenon in its time. 'Anybody under the age of 25 just loved it. And anybody above that age was just completely confused.'

Matt Frewer ACTOR For a time it was. I won't say it was infuriating, but it was frustrating — you wanted to go, 'That's me, that's me, it’s not a computer-generated man.' But of course they wanted to swear me to secrecy because otherwise anybody could make a computer-generated man if they knew that it was as easy as putting on all this make-up.John Humphreys PROSTHETICS DESIGNERI have to say, it was being presented as computer graphics, and I had people even say to me, who worked in some big companies in Britain, 'Oh, you'll soon be out of a job, look at this, it's all done with computer graphics!' Matt Frewer ACTOR Over in London, we used, I think they're called haptic lenses, and they're hard lenses and quite a bit bigger than normal contact lenses. They were very painful to wear, and I ended up with severely lacerated corneas.

I don't know if you've ever had a lacerated cornea, but it's the worst pain I think I've ever felt. I was popping painkillers, and it just wasn't working.Annabel Jankel CO-CREATOR / DIRECTORThat's why he then adopted Ray-Bans for some of the shows, and when his eyes healed we could put back in the contacts.Peter Wagg PRODUCER We knew that there's only so long 'Max in between music videos' would last before it ran out of steam. So on the last show, we decided to do Max interviewing somebody. I called around to all my mates at the record labels and said, 'What albums are you releasing around the air date that we had?' My pal at A&M comes back and says 'Well, Sting's releasing his first solo album after The Police.' Matt Frewer ACTOR We introduced live guests into the proceedings, and it kind of evolved into this bizarre talk show format.

It sort of became the rite of passage for various pop stars and film stars to come on and shill their latest project. But in turn they would get roasted by Max. Sting is interviewed on The Max Headroom Show.The variety show version of The Max Headroom Show — complete with a live studio audience — soon followed, with Max facing off against the likes of Michael Caine, Jack Lemmon, and Vidal Sassoon. With two books, trading cards, and a legion of other merchandised tie-ins, Max was everywhere — and every single item was copyright Chrysalis Visual Media. Around the same time, Coca-Cola was looking for help as a reformulation of its flagship product, dubbed New Coke, was flailing.Peter Wagg PRODUCER A guy at advertising agency BBDO in London saw the show, sent a video to BBDO New York, and it went to the creative department. Arnie Blum who was a group head at BBDO, was about to move to a different agency to be group head on Coca-Cola.So he stuck the tape in his bag, and didn't tell anybody.

He arrives at McCann-Erickson, he's on New Coke that's dying, and his first job is 'How do we save New Coke?' Matt Frewer ACTOR That was very exciting because we knew it had the potential to reach a global audience.Peter Wagg PRODUCER I got Ridley Scott to direct the commercials, which was a nice little circle. We did three years with Coke. The Ridley Scott-directed Coke commercials featuring MaxBridget Potter ORIGINAL PROGRAMMING VP, HBO That was just insane! For Cinemax, it was like the biggest thing that had ever happened, that a character that was on Cinemax was on national television as the spokesperson for Coca-Cola. We just couldn't believe our luck at that point.The 'Catch the Wave' campaign garnered praise, national attention, and raised Max’s profile: Coca-Cola senior vice president John C.

Reid later told Newsweek that Coke’s research revealed 76 percent of all American teenagers knew Max after the first series of ads. But it wasn’t enough to save New Coke’s crashing sales. Meanwhile, Wagg lined up another business opportunity as Max’s popularity skyrocketed out of control.Steve Roberts WRITER Stu Bloomberg, who was head of development at ABC Television, happened to be in London the night 20 Minutes Into the Future aired.

At the end of it, apparently he started phoning around and found out who the hell had made it and where they were. And the next morning we were invited to go and see him.Peter Wagg PRODUCER ABC was, at that point, the third-place network. Like New Coke, they needed to make statements, and they needed to try and do something a bit more dramatic to make a sea change.I went to see NBC, and to my great surprise they passed on the whole thing; I went to CBS, and they ended up offering me a movie of the week. Then I met with Stu, and all I got out of Stu was a pilot and six-script order.

But again, I thought let's back a guy I believe in, who's gonna champion the show on our behalf inside the network, and they need us more than we need them. That seemed like a good combination to me. One of the few Max Headroom commercials directed by Rocky Morton and Annabel JankelMax crossed the Atlantic, evolving from a niche cable character to a full-blown, mainstream global phenomenon.

But as the franchise developed, the remaining two members of the creative team that dreamed him up — Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton — were left behind.Rocky Morton CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR They wanted somebody that was going to continue making this stuff, pumping it out, and playing the game. You know, somebody that they could parade around that would toe the corporate line. And we obviously weren’t doing that.Annabel Jankel CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR There was a lot at stake financially, and we were not well-placed enough or well-advised enough to be protected. All sorts of heavy hitters got involved. Coca-Cola, BBDO, a big advertising agency. Ridley Scott had got himself involved. ABC, Chrysalis, the record company — and it all kind of blew out of all proportion.Rocky Morton CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR We had lawyers, and we fought it.

We tried to form a company with Matt Frewer to wrest control away from the producer, but then backdoor negotiations started to happen. We lost control, and it was costing us more and more money in lawyers' fees. By the time it got to America, they made a fortune because they made this whole TV series without us. And they took our 'Created by' credit away on the American series. Michael Cassutt WRITERPhil DeGuere Jr., the executive producer basically took it over. He simply went back to the original movie. I remember passing his office; there was a video player with 20 Minutes into the Future on the screen.

It was kind of reverse engineering the original movie.Steve Roberts WRITER I finally get a phone call saying would I mind coming over to LA for a few days to put it back the way it was before. During that time, Waggie said, 'You know, they're asking me to provide a sample of what we would do as a second episode.' So I vanished back to the hotel and spent two and a half days basically on room service and bottles of various encouraging fluids, and knocked out this 52-page script. And I get a phone call from Peter Wagg saying, 'Well, they've just ordered a series of 13, mate.

You're going to have to stay.' 'What’s my air date?'

They said, 'March 27th.' I said, 'You’re shitting me.' Brian Frankish PRODUCER I went down there, and they went, 'We got to get going, we got to get going.' 'What’s my air date?' They said, 'March 27th.' I said, 'You’re shitting me.' This is in December.

'How many scripts you got?' 'Well, we got a pilot and one.'

You have zero data to start planning ahead with. But we had the English pilot to copy. And the conceptual work was fabulous.Steve Roberts WRITER My job was to find writers. I was stunned shitless because there weren't any. There are an awful lot of people who are very good at standard American television, but nobody who could really grasp this very wild, off-the-cuff idea.Michael Cassutt WRITER September to October of 1986 I was working on The Twilight Zone, CBS revival, along with the obscure George R.R. Steve Roberts was the original guy who came from England.

Everybody else was from Twilight Zone. 'Honey, this is Hollywood. We can do anything.' Brian Frankish PRODUCER Richard Lewis was hired as the production designer. There were some things wrong with the Channel 4 London thing.

For instance, all of their wide shots of the environment were matte paintings. Stuck out like a sore thumb. I went, 'Ah, miniatures.' And Peter Wagg went, 'Can you do that?' 'Honey, this is Hollywood. We can do anything.'

Michael Cassutt WRITER The cast was fabulous. You could write for Jeffrey Tambor. You could write for Amanda Pays, George Coe. I liked the look. I liked the action. It didn't feel chaotic when I saw it on screen, but it was a lot more challenging than standard television on its best day.Image courtesy of Shout FactoryBrian Frankish PRODUCER The playback environment was so complex.

They had all those TV screens that Max appears on. I went, 'Gee, I can’t do this with traditional post-production.' And how are we going to do the Network 23 boardroom with the big screen?

We found the GE Light Valve projector was the only thing that could project digital that big with that kind of clarity. That son of a bitch looked like a B-17 when it rolled on the stage. And the expense was astronomical.

It was something that NASA used.On the first six shows, I went $4 million over budget, and nobody said no.Annabel Jankel CO-CREATOR / DIRECTOR One of the most bizarre things that ever happened was that Rocky and I were in LA, and the ABC version of 20 Minutes into the Future came on. We could not believe our eyes: it was a shot-by-shot identical retelling, with American actors that kind of looked like the English actors. We were flabbergasted that they would do this. They would go to such lengths to recreate props that we'd found in skips and we'd found in old junk shops and things.Neither 'Blipverts', nor any subsequent episode of the ABC series, bears any mention of George Stone, Rocky Morton, Annabel Jankel, or the 'original idea' credit.The show’s quirky brand of cyberpunk struggled in its debut, coming in 26th for the night despite a strong lead-in from Moonlighting. But Max continued to be a cultural juggernaut — and the creative team took advantage, sharpening the TV industry satire with every episode.Michael Cassutt WRITER In my mind it was on my birthday, or close to my birthday in 1987, and there was Max on the cover of Newsweek. My episode was either airing that week or had aired the Friday before. And foolishly I thought, 'Hey, I’m on my way to a real career in television!'

Not realizing that probably my acclaim peaked right then.Matt Frewer ACTOR At the time we thought we were the coolest kids on the block, and we were the hippest show in town, and they would never take us off the air. So we were kind of cockily trying to get away with things, slipping things past the censors and then just kind of boldly holding our middle finger up to the whole business. A commercial for ABC's Max HeadroomPeter Wagg PRODUCER Every week, we'd always deliver the scripts late a) because we couldn't help it, but b) because it gave them less time to read it, and c) we'd always throw in about six things we knew they'd throw out immediately so that we could perhaps drift two or three others through that they'd just missed because they went for the obvious.Steve Roberts WRITER It was vicious in its condemnation of the way television worked.

If you were a fan in those days, you'll remember lines like, 'The ratings are plunging, we're down to 58 million!' And the one says, 'Well, we could go porno early.' Of course we absolutely were biting deep into the bones and ligaments of the hand that was feeding us.

And I don't think they noticed, I truly don't think they bothered to look at it until somebody somewhere said, 'This is the fifth column, these are all probably communists or something.' Michael Cassutt WRITER I'm not one of these people who's going to say they were too dumb to get it. I've been in the network. There are some smart people there.

As I said, Stu Bloomberg was one of the smartest people I've ever run across at that level. He knew exactly what he was doing. In that world too, some of them were probably just secretly enjoying the tweaks because also it wasn't directed at ABC specifically.

We were tweaking the whole industry and any industry we saw coming. The problem was we never had a lot of pushback from the network on anything we were doing. Let's face it, we were out there trying to do Blade Runner every seven or eight days.

And for all my affection and respect for Peter Wagg and Steve Roberts, to some degree they were guys who not only had never done American network television — I'm not sure they ever actually watched it. There was a giant learning curve in terms of the pressures of schedule and money and production.Brian Frankish PRODUCER I was preparing an episode for shooting the next day, and 4 o’clock in the afternoon I called up to the writers, and I said, 'I need the script. I have no script for tomorrow’s work.

Where is it?' And they said, 'We’ll get back to you.' I called them back at 5:30. I’ve got the driver standing by, and the machine picked up. And then the machine picked up at 6:30, and the machine picked up at 7:30, and the machine picked up at 9. And my messages got, 'Where’s the stuff?

Guys, I’m really being pushed against it' to 'Holy shit, we’re really fucked here in this situation. What are my actors going to do tomorrow morning?' to 'Jesus Christ, who are you guys? Don’t you understand what I’m doing?' And the last one was 'I don’t give a shit anymore. I’m lighting my first joint.

Hope you show up with the pages in the morning.' And they played that — someone’s got that tape somewhere, and they played it at the wrap party. Eager to capitalize on Max’s popularity, Cinemax launched a third variety show anchored by the character in the summer of 1987. Was shot in New York and featured Max chatting it up with guests like Penn and Teller, Dr. Ruth, and William Shatner. Fears over Max media saturation didn’t stop the ABC show from getting another season — but there was a catch.Peter Wagg PRODUCER They moved us opposite Miami Vice and Dallas at 9:00 on a Friday, which back in the day meant you were in a graveyard slot.Michael Cassutt WRITER The moment we hit the air, the numbers were far less than they were, and you combine that with budget problems and just production problems — it was not long for this earth.

The second season of Max Headroom debuted on September 18th, 1987. Less than a month later, ABC pulled the plug.Peter Wagg PRODUCERThe president of ABC at the time was Brandon Stoddard. I’m in the edit bay, editing a show, and I get this call, and they say, 'Brandon Stoddard’s on the phone.' And I’m editing a sequence where George Coe, who played the chairman of the board of Network 23 is saying, 'What the hell do they know about television?' It was like, 'I’m about to get a call from the chairman of ABC, to cancel the show.' Matt Frewer ACTORWe got called up on set, and there was supposed to be this big meeting with a producer. I remember going to Jeff Tambor, 'Oh god, it looks like we’re getting pulled off the air,' just as a joke.

Image courtesy of Shout FactorySteve Roberts WRITERI was on location on top of a building in the middle of LA. It was a shot where a helicopter lands, and I think Edison gets out and has a row with somebody. When suddenly, Peter Wagg walked across the roof.

He was white as a sheet. And he just said, 'We’ve got to stop everything, fellows, I’m very sorry.' Brian Frankish PRODUCERI’ll never forget the canceling. I turned to the A.D. And said, 'Don’t release anybody.

Nobody goes home today. We’ll finish the day, and when we’re all done, up on the next block is the Player’s Club up on the 11th floor. They’ve got a big, nice, 1930s bar, and everybody meet me there for drinks.' And everybody came up, and I told everybody we were canceled. I spent $700 at the bar.MICHAEL CASSUTT WRITERWe all showed up there and had the usual drinks. We still had at least one or two episodes yet to air. We kicked around the idea of giving Max a little speech, which they were able to insert into the last episode.

Max's final speech from the episode 'Lessons'MICHAEL CASSUTT WRITERWe had a completed script still in the works, as we couldn’t do it right because it was a holiday thing. We had a Christmas show, written by George R. Martin, called 'Xmas.' 'What is a commercial holiday like in a world that makes a virtue of just rampant commercialism?' We came up with the holiday, 'Xmas,' in which everybody gathers around the TV and home shops. The person in the family or the community that home shops the most is the one who celebrates Xmas the best.

'We had a Christmas show, written by George R. Martin, called 'Xmas.' 'BRIAN FRANKISH PRODUCERThe writers and, actually, the people hiring the writers were not traditional thinkers. That’s one of the reasons why I think we failed and one of the reasons why we were successful. Michael Cassutt and some of the other writers were really trying to throw exciting stuff together. But they didn’t have enough time to really throw the ball and track it as it was flying to the catcher’s mitt.STEVE ROBERTS WRITERMy private view is that Capital Cities, the outfit that ran this whole thing, was run out of New York. I think some top executive’s wife rolled over one day and said to him, 'You know something?

This program is taking the piss out of the way you make your living.' And he probably looked at Max Headroom for the very first time and said 'Can it.'

MATT FREWER ACTORThere was always this awareness that we were always kind of walking on eggshells, but it was kind of cool because we sort of put up on screen what we wanted to put up on screen without it being compromised, without it being homogenized, without it being diluted. We were able to walk away from it without it being packaged into something that they wanted it to be packaged into.BRIAN FRANKISH PRODUCERWe were involved in the passion. We were believers. It was like a religion to us. We gave and we gave and we gave, and it was glorious, wonderful, and we loved what we were seeing. It was a unique time. Everybody who worked on that show had an opportunity to be the best artists that they wanted to be at the time.

And they really gave all of that. 'I was on the cover of Newsweek, and then it disappeared.' MATT FREWER ACTORIt was this bizarre, short, sharp shock over the course of four or five years, where the show seemed to be the biggest thing on the planet: I was on the cover of Newsweek, and then it disappeared.I remembered going to Lorimar, the MGM Studios. I think it was the day after we had the plug pulled. I saw the border security guy, and it was the strangest thing: he pretended not to know me. Because I was no longer worth knowing. I was persona non grata; my parking space had been taken away.

And my nameplate, which is the ultimate insult, of course. A month after the cancellation, in November of 1987, television viewers in Chicago were hit by a 'broadcast signal intrusion' when pirates with footage of a person in a Max Headroom mask. The culprits were never found.Later that year, about a Max-related film that was in development. The title?Max Headroom For President.MATT FREWER ACTORIt was basically going to ride the coattails of the presidential campaign and do it as sort of a reality thing. There was an actor who was president why not a computer-generated man? Like a lot of these things, it never made it to first base.

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One of the later Max Headroom Coke commercialsPETER WAGG PRODUCERAfter Coke finished and the ABC series finished and after HBO finished, there was still some heat. I remember still trying to sell a movie that we never managed to. I got interest, but I never was able to get it over the line, and then I just kind of moved on myself.Two unaired episodes from the series premiered in 1988, although the final episode, 'Baby Grobags,' would never air on ABC.

One year later, Back to the Future Part II signaled the show’s influence with a retro-future arcade that included Max-inspired versions of Michael Jackson and Ronald Reagan, but aside from a few sporadic reruns on cable, the character largely went silent until 2007. Marty visits the Cafe '80s in Back to the Future Part IIROCKY MORTON CO-CREATOR / DIRECTORChannel 4 was switching over to 100 percent digital broadcasts so they wanted to warn their audience, and they thought that Max Headroom — someone who was created for Channel 4, originally — would be the perfect spokesman to do that.MATT FREWER ACTORThe idea being that he was older and grumpier-looking, and was looking back on the good old days of pre-digital.

He had computer-generated liver spots, and was this mean old bastard, really. When I was getting the make-up on, I felt quite nervous. I was thinking, 'God, this is strange,' because it had literally been 20 years since I had put on the Max make-up.

Then as soon as the cameras rolled, I immediately got right back into it, it was the weirdest thing.ROCKY MORTON CO-CREATOR / DIRECTORWe shot it in sort of a classic English retirement seaside town. We used the same process to create the same look, with the prosthetics, and then shot him a certain way and then, you know, sort of did the tweaks in the video edit. Part of Channel's 4 digital switchover campaignToday’s cult shows live on thanks to the passion and dedication of their online fan bases. In many ways Max Headroom was the perfect candidate for that kind of following: quirky and weird, with an unlikely underdog spirit.

But while Max lived in the future, his shows were confined by the pre-internet era.JAMES GIFFORD CURATOR OF MAXHEADROOM.COMThere was never much of an organized fan community. It was very, very scattered until the internet picked up the pieces. There was alt.fan.max-headroom; it was reasonably populated and vibrant in the Usenet days.MICHAEL CASSUTT WRITERThe property was tied up in litigation for, I don’t know, 20 years. That’s the reason those shows were not available from basically 1991 until the Shout Factory did that DVD in 2010. But every now and then somebody would talk to me or Steve about reviving it. 'Max Headroom was judged to be more important than Michael Jackson.'

GEORGE STONE CO-CREATOR / WRITERI recall there was a documentary, a survey of the ‘80s that went out obviously at the end of the ‘80s, in which Max Headroom was judged to be more important than Michael Jackson. Which was good. I think people got it; that was the thing. Max Headroom was coming out of the air, really. And we were in the fortunate position that we were able to synthesize it.PETER WAGG PRODUCERIt was such a moment in time, and it was the combination of so much talent from so many different disciplines and media that just coalesced into the perfect whole. And it predicted so much.

Eminem pays tribute to Max in 2013 with his video for 'Rap God'BRIDGET POTTER ORIGINAL PROGRAMMING VP, HBOIt was way ahead of its time. Peter was very lucky to have come in this door when he did with this project. Because I don’t know what else or where else anything that odd would have taken root. Today, there’d be a million places for Max Headroom.STEVE ROBERTS WRITERWe had a laugh because we envisioned 20 channels — nobody could believe that there were 20 channels. I mean, it was the highest number we could think of. Now we’ve got 500, and nothing but crap on most of them.MICHAEL CASSUTT WRITERMax is a character you can’t beat.

He’s the clever innocent who keeps looking; he’s only a few hours old and so he has all this information, but he doesn’t have any knowledge. That character is always fun and timeless.MATT FREWER ACTORYou kind of go, 'Well, it is a good time for a comeback,' because the whole '20 minutes into the future' business we’ve arrived. We’re here now. And there was a certain kind of naive charm about making all this analog stuff look digital, but the amount of work that went into it nowadays any 10-year-old could throw it together on his laptop.And also the retro ’80s thing.

Bring back the Linda Evans shoulder pads and the Duran Duran make-up, I’m all for that. You can’t have enough hairspray and eye glitter.