Original UK TV movie of MAX HEADROOM: 20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE finally makes it to DVD Author: Robert Saint John Official Site: Transformer

20 years into the past... it was 1985, and the pre-Post Apocalyptic future was so bright, I had to wear shades. I decided to take a long vacation from life-as-I-knew-it-then in Ohio, sold everything I owned, and went to live in the UK for a few months. I had lots of big red hair and an attitude (I`ve since lost the former), and everything interesting in the Gothic Rock scene was happening in not-so-merry old England. Cynicism was the rule of the day, AIDS was becoming a global epidemic, Reaganomics and Thatcherism were ensuring that the rich got richer while the poor got poorer, The Bomb was probably going to fall any day now, and the Japanese appeared poised to purchase whatever scraps would be left. It was in this dystopian setting, late one evening at the Kit-Cat Club in London, that I got a glimpse 20 minutes into the future.

The TVs in the club had just finished the screening of a video of an actual autopsy, and the speakers were pounding away The Sisters of Mercy, Specimen, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and other bands beginning with "S". At some point the video finished, and TVs tuned to the still-somewhat-new Channel Four. Or was it "Network 23"? It was hard to tell from what was on the screen. Static. Shaky handheld video. A reporter... "E. Carter"? More static, then feeds from security cameras. High-end computer vector graphics and global positioning data. Back to Carter. He`s shooting some sort of disturbance. A fire in an apartment? Then he`s rushed by some thugs and the camera tumbles over! Is this for real? No. It transitioned and was obviously a drama of some kind, but different than anything else I`d seen on TV. Tight, shaky-cam shots. Dark smoky rooms with bright lights slicing through venetian blinds. A film noir style, like a small screen version of BLADE RUNNER. Soon I realized that the music had stopped playing, someone had turned up the TVs and the whole club was instead transfixed upon the action unfolding on the screen. I hadn`t yet happened upon William Gibson`s novel Neuromancer, so this was my introduction to the genre that would become known as Cyberpunk. This was the world of Max Headroom.

MAX HEADROOM: 20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE tells the story of Edison Carter (Matt Frewer), an investigative reporter who has discovered a dark secret within the ranks of his employer, Network 23. Carter`s world is one where the giant multi-national corporate conglomerates rule, the public is little more than demographics for advertisers, and television shows like Carter`s own highly rated "What I Want to Know" show keep the people -- the "blank generation" -- sedated from the world crumbling around them. When Carter and his studio controller Theora (Amanda Pays) get a little too close to the truth about Network 23`s new "blipvert" advertising format, network president Grossman (Nickolas Grace) faces a dilemma: the truth behind blipverts can`t be exposed, but Carter`s show is their highest rated program. Bryce (Paul Spurrier), the network`s head of R&D proposes that Carter be disposed of and replaced with a computer generated version. Circumstances get out of hand, however, and both Carter and his peculiar new CG counterpart, Max, manage to only further complicate matters for Grossman and Network 23. MAX HEADROOM: 20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE was the combined creation of writers/directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, scriptwriter Steve Roberts, and producer Peter Wagg. It was commissioned by Channel Four as a one-off television movie to introduce the UK to Max, a wisecracking, stuttering but somewhat amusing "computer generated talking head" who would soon be hosting Channel Four`s avant-garde music video show, THE MAX HEADROOM SHOW. In reality, Max himself was not computer generated, but rather actor Frewer with makeup and costume appliances, mixed with extremely clever video and audio trickery. Like many icons of the 80s, Max took off and became a brief worldwide sensation, as a spokeshead for Coca-Cola, host of his own talkshow (THE ORIGINAL MAX TALKING HEADROOM SHOW for Channel Four and Cinemax in the US), a Newsweek cover story, and co-artist with band Art of Noise for the single and music video, "Paranoimia". A VHS of 20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE was released in the UK and the US in 1986, and remains the only official home video release of the telemovie in these regions.

In spring of 1987 the drama of Max and Edison Carter picked up where it left off with MAX HEADROOM on the ABC television network in the US, still retaining some of the main cast members, production crew and the setting of the original telemovie. The show was hailed by critics, took home three Emmy Awards, and to this day is often cited for having predicted technological and societal trends such as high-intensity advertising, real-time television ratings, reality television, computer viruses, and an omnipresent video surveillance society. Unfortunately, it never seemed to find its audience on American screens, due in part to ABC’s erratic airing schedule. Only 14 episodes were produced (one of which was never broadcasted) and Max and all his incarnations faded into obscurity a year later. The series has occasionally shown up in reruns over the past 15 years on cable networks such as Bravo, Sci-Fi Channel and TechTV, but for the most part remains a memory. Although there`s a great deal of interest amongst fans in seeing the works released on DVD (not to mention a lively bootleg market), the current rights holder, Warner Brothers, has announced no plans to release either the film or the series to home video. In 2005, there was a glint of hope from a Japanese distributor, Transformer, who apparently specializes in obscure low-budget genre films such as GALAXY HUNTER, PUPPET MASTER: THE LEGACY, and H.G. WELLS` THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (the C. Thomas Howell version, not Tom Cruise). Through the UK distribution company All3Media International, Transformer secured the original UK telemovie MAX HEADROOM: 20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE, and released it a Region 2 DVD to the Japanese rental-only market in September 2005. On November 25, 2006, the DVD was re-released to the Sell Only market at a list price of 3,990 yen (about $35.00 US), and is now easily obtainable through online retailers such as CDJapan and Amazon Japan. For the foreseeable future, it appears to be the only available legitimate release of any of Max Headroom`s incarnations on DVD.

Sadly, this DVD release is somewhat of a mixed bag and somewhat bound to disappoint, considering the anticipation associated with an official release and the price, even by Japanese standards. First, the disc is as vanilla as vanilla can be. The contents are limited to the original 58 minute movie with no extras whatsoever. The image quality is somewhat noisy and grainy, often complicated by the heavy amount of actual video screen shots used throughout the film. What passed for edgy in the new age of video in the 80s now looks rather painful to watch, especially in the opening scenes. The presentation also suffers from an overall darkness and lack of contrast, likely due to the content itself and perhaps exacerbated by different black setup values between the west and Japan in the transfer process. The 2-channel audio is exceptionally clean in both the original English language version and the Japanese overdub (if you listen carefully, you can still here the original audio underneath, and I must admit that it`s amusing to see Max speak Japanese). The disc comes in a standard clear Amaray style DVD case with no additional inserts. The big question for many, however, is whether the DVD makes for a suitable replacement that will let us throw out our old Karl/Lorimar Video VHS tape. The answer is definitely "yes". Despite the issues, it`s still much cleaner than any VHS copy or the various flavors of bootlegs floating around. Then there are those in the US (let alone the rest of the world... it has been 20 years, after all!) who may never have even seen this particular version, the one that started it all. The story itself holds up well and even if the anachronisms -- huge video cameras, tape instead of disc, punk rock haircuts, a score by Midge Ure from Ultravox -- tend to date it a bit, MAX HEADROOM: 20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE still comes off as an engaging hour with an unusually prescient look into our present.

Details Transformer Catalog No.: TMSS-34 Release Date: 11/25/2006 Retail Price: 3,990 yen Running Time: 58mins. NTSC Format, Color Region 2 DVD Layers: Single-sided, single-layered Aspect Ratio: 4:3 Standard Region Code: 2 Subtitles: Japanese Audio Tracks: English - 2ch Stereo; Japanese - 2ch Stereo