Terry Wogan interviews Max Headroom

A classic interview from the 1980s

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• BBC
• terry
• wogan
• max
• headroom
• matt
• frewer
• 1980s

[Rimsa]

Was that the real shape of his head or is it makeup?

[DoctorRad]

@Rimsa Below the hairline it's all makeup, sunglasses and a plastic suit. I believe above the hairline is a latex prosthetic 'hairpiece'.

[Crabpeople1]

The Max Headroom clip is prefilmed though, because you can't do those weird voice distortions in real time. Still, they all went with it so well it almost seems like they found a way to do that somehow.

[DoctorRad]

@Crabpeople1 - I'm not 100% sure that's the case though. I don't think there's any actual stuttering - which would have been difficult to do with 80s technology - just pitch bending and sampling. That would have been possible in real time in the 80s.

But now I watch it again, it does look like the Max side may have been pre-recorded, but the exchange around 5:24 when Terry laughs and Max says "We're having a nice time aren't we?" looks improvised to me.

[ianuk2008]

No matter what you all say, I was brought up on MAX, this is great

[mlechman]

@TheWeirdnessIsMe That cracked my @ss up! Too funny!

[fuelyournews]

what a CHARACTER MISS HIM!!!!

[Locus0mega]

@DoctorRad All in all, I'd say the whole thing was staged, Tel's not his usual fluid self, and why bother flying in an actor & his make-up guy just to appear on a screen? Similarly, due to the style of Max, why bother with a live feed? And there was certainly no international delay. Basically a good vocoder could alter his speech real-time, you'd just need a tech to alter pitch etc, then you don't need the vid tech to replay a 'stutter', as was one of Max's trademarks.

[TDproductions7]

@12161euclid

Well there a coke commercial of his where he is a game show host and at one point he says "Blinfold please!" and they just appear on his head. So it's probably something in his programming. Andyesimatotalnerdsowhatdontju­dgeme

[NellJSmith]

@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! :)

[StormsongK]

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.

[Saternalius]

Matt Frewer was a shit Sherlock Holmes though. Almost as crap as Robert Downey Jr.

[yintan1]

The exchange was live. Not that complicated, just a blue screen. The sound effects and stutters were added during the final editing of the complete Wogan show.

[tiffinypie]

I love Max . and I'm American :))