Max Headroom

Max Headroom is a fictional artificial intelligence (AI) character, known for his wit and stuttering, distorted, electronically sampled voice. He was introduced in early 1984. The character was created by George Stone, Annabel Jankel, and Rocky Morton in the mid-1980s, and portrayed by Matt Frewer as "The World's first computer-generated TV host", although the computer-generated appearance was achieved with prosthetic makeup and hand-drawn backgrounds. Preparing the look for filming involved a four-and-a-half-hour session in make-up, which Frewer described as "grueling" and "not fun", likening it to "being on the inside of a giant tennis ball."

Max Headroom debuted April 1985 on BBC's Channel 4 in the cyberpunk TV movie Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future. In the movie, Edison Carter (portrayed by Frewer) is a journalist fleeing enemies into a parking garage, crashing his motorcycle through the entrance barrier reading "Max. headroom 2.3 metres". Like Carter, Max openly challenges the corporations that run his world, but using commentary and sarcastic wit rather than journalism. According to his creators, Max's personality was meant to be a satirical exaggeration of the worst tendencies of television hosts in the 1980s who wanted to appeal to youth culture yet were not a part of it. Frewer proposed that Max reflected an innocence, largely influenced not by mentors and life experience but by information absorbed from television.

Subject ID: 26802

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Max Headroom is a fictional artificial intelligence (AI) character, known for his wit and stuttering, distorted, electronically sampled voice. He was introduced in early 1984. The character was created by George Stone, Annabel Jankel, and Rocky Morton in the mid-1980s, and portrayed by Matt Frewer as "The World's first computer-generated TV host", although the computer-generated appearance was achieved with prosthetic makeup and hand-drawn backgrounds. Preparing the look for filming involved a four-and-a-half-hour session in make-up, which Frewer described as "grueling" and "not fun", likening it to "being on the inside of a giant tennis ball."

Max Headroom debuted April 1985 on BBC's Channel 4 in the cyberpunk TV movie Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future. In the movie, Edison Carter (portrayed by Frewer) is a journalist fleeing enemies into a parking garage, crashing his motorcycle through the entrance barrier reading "Max. headroom 2.3 metres". Like Carter, Max openly challenges the corporations that run his world, but using commentary and sarcastic wit rather than journalism. According to his creators, Max's personality was meant to be a satirical exaggeration of the worst tendencies of television hosts in the 1980s who wanted to appeal to youth culture yet were not a part of it. Frewer proposed that Max reflected an innocence, largely influenced not by mentors and life experience but by information absorbed from television.

Later, Coke (Coca-Cola) would use him as the spokesman for 'New Coke'.

Subject ID: 26802

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