The ingenious bit comes from the fact that ‘Max’ was actually a flesh and blood actor in very painfully applied makeup, his footage cut-up and edited in a way to make him appear to stutter, re-iterate and jump ahead in his speech, something that is common practice today but at the time was quite bizarre and hypnotic.Ī conceptual success, Wagg and company decided to create his ‘origin story’ with a full TV pilot movie. UK’s Channel Four commissioned ‘The Max Headroom Talking Picture Show’ which featured character actor Matt Frewer as the ingeniously fake CGI character ranting on videos. It boggles the mind how a corporate sponsor could star in a series about TV mind control plots set into motion by evil gigantic corporations. Max Headroom was a very unique program that is still ground-breaking to this day. The influences of Max Headroom can be seen in the Matrix Trilogy Matrix Trilogy, Batman Beyond and the recent film from Office Space and Beavis and Butt-head creator Mike Judge‘s film, Idiocracy. Jeter and of course William Gibson (who was set to write for Max Headroom had it not been canceled). The ideas contained in the program carried over into the work of then-contemporaries Mick Farren, K.W.

The series was set in a dark reality where the excesses of entertainment and corporate power lead to a world where society was made of sheep-like consumers living in their own filth while the planet withered away around them. 3000.Originally a bizarrely high-priced marketing campaign created by Peter Wagg of Chrysalis Records, CBS decided to develop their creation into the first cyberpunk television series, Max Headroom. Among his directorial credits are the 2002 hit Drumline and the 2004 Bernie Mac comedy Mr. Stone had already directed a lot of classic hip-hop videos (like A Tribe Called Quest's 'Bonita Applebum,' Public Enemy's '911 is a Joke,' The Roots' 'What They Do') but the commercial helped push him into feature filmmaking.

It debuted during Monday Night Football in December 1999.

'True' hit the film festival circuit, and was discovered by ad agency DDB, which contracted Brooks to remake the film as a beer commercial. In the film, and the ads, he played one of the 'Whassup?' guys (the first to appear onscreen he has a beard), surrounded by a bunch of his real-life friends. The ads were based on 'True,' a short film directed by filmmaker Charles Stone III. The campaign for Budweiser was simple, silly, and endearing: a bunch of guys call each other on the phone just to say 'what's up?' and the question gets louder and more incoherent with each utterance. 'Whassup?' was as inescapable in the early 2000s as 'Where's the beef?' was in the 1980s.

Max headroom coke commercial