I miss this guy. The first time I saw him in the 1980's he terrified me. Then the more I saw him the more I really liked him, his wit and style. Thank you for posting this. After seeing this post it reminds me a lot of Jim Carry's personality.
You have to admit it takes a fair bit of skill to make fake hair and a plastic suit that look exactly like primitive 80's CGI, but they did a pretty good job of it.
does it really matter whether it was live or pre-recorded? however they did it, they made it seem totally spontaneous and authentic and its just a joy to suspend one's disbelief watching this. one of the funniest tv interviews ever, probably.
That takes me back! I vaguely (very, very vaguely!) remember this interview, back when I genuinely thought Max Headroom was a very sophisticated computer animation. We were all young once, eh? 😉 Thanks for the nostalgia hit!
Matt Frewer doesn’t get enough credit. Not only for being the character which already is gold but the fact he can improve as the character and not break while the stuttering and effects are going on is impressive.
@DoctorRad Re the stuttering: Matt Frewer (who plays Max), in an interview a couple of years ago, said that the stuttering was partly done by him, but augmented by what he called an artificial "stutter loop" - i.e. there WAS the technology in the 80s, surprising though that may seem. We weren't as backwards then as people think! They also used to either remove intermittent frames or repeat frames to get the "jerky" effect. Not very techy, but effective! :)
Bring Back Max - far better than all these "talent" shows with (or without celebrities) that cost a fortune to vote on. This is one of my favourite bits of T.V. and should be broadcast at regularly on terrestrial TV.
Thanks for posting this. I was laughing along with the audiance in the video. Thers nothing like a good 80's t.v clip. I never knew max headroom had a show.
Geez, these two give blatant backhanded compliments to each other like they've been best friends since grade school. And Terry's subtlety plays very well off of Max's more overt sarcasm.
As a Englishman, born and Bred and living in England I always thought, Terry Wogan never came across as a Irishman who was born and bred in Ireland , and then settled in England! Its a funny old world we all live in ;)
Actually, for a lot of live interviews, like this one, a delay device would be used to make the stutter. You'll notice there's no video stuttering (repetition), just the slight delay. So yes, this was live, although Frewer would have been in an offstage studio.
Amazing I've watched "Spitting image" for the last couple of years I had no idea the Robert Maxwell scetch on ep 1 of the third season was based on this Character:D
Why can't people get this straight? Matt Frewer does NOT play Max Headroom. It's the other way around. Max escaped from the television, found a torso, and created an acting persona called "Matt Frewer". Now, stop getting it confused!
@ JayChristie. No, from what I remember, it was live. Unlike the rest of his stuff which was cut and edited to give that 'buggy' look to it. They ran MH through a gizmo to lower the frame-rate and messed with the audio on his voice live (echo and vocoder type of thing). If you watch his own stuff, it's a lot more 'jittery'.
I watch Max headroom here in the Philippines. Me and my grandmother are talking about him back in the 80's :-) Funny :-) I wonder people will be thinking about Miku compeer to Max
@DoctorRad I've just watched an interview with Matt Frewer which suggests the live-looking video was actually live. Given the standard of Max's material though, I'd expect it was scripted at least. And of course, actors and comedy acts have long been performing pre-canned material to look spontaneous.
I sort of knew it was an actor, but I didn't know how they achieved the look. When reporters were told by the producers he was just an actor, they wouldn't believe. It's so simple, it's just a mask and clever editing, nothing more. Quite amazing how naive people were back then. The irony is, today we can do a fully animated motion capture Max Headroom WAY more amazing than the real one was...
