Many years ago (many, many years ago), when I was working at my first radio job (OK, Gerald Ford was in the White House…happy now?) a fellow announcer pulled me aside one day, took me into the production room and revealed a dirty little secret (mind out of the gutter, please). In those days, when we did our audio production, we would master onto reel-to-reel. Once you had a satisfying take, or had cut and pasted (literally, with like, you know, an actual razor blade and some splicing tape) your session into that perfect 30 second commercial, you would then transfer the audio onto a cart (sort of like an 8-track) that the DJs would then be able to play on the air. Now, we would all use (and re-use) the same work tapes on the reel to reel. What my co-worker had been doing for some time was listening back to the previous jock’s raw production session, and saving some of the more amusing outtakes onto a blooper reel. I picked up on this, and over the years I would compile cassette collections of outtakes for the amusement of my friends.
More often than not, what made an outtake a “keeper” was the boundlessly creative use of profanity and the degree of verbal self-abuse that perfectionists tend to heap upon themselves. And of course, there’s something intrinsically hilarious about listening to a dulcet-toned broadcast professional launching into a tirade that would make a Tourette’s sufferer blush, in perfectly metronomic pentameter. Over the years, I’ve heard (and said) it all myself-which is why I was somewhat ambivalent when I first saw this on YouTube:
It’s all “been there, done that” to me, but that particular collage of blue-streaked verbal self-flagellation by a Mr. Jack Grabney, (aka the “Winnebago Man”) has for some reason captured the imagination of many YouTube fans over the years and spawned its own devoted cult of personality. I think it’s safe to say that most people would take a look, have a chuckle and leave it at that. However, for filmmaker Ben Steinbauer, that was not enough. For his documentary, Winnebago Man, he wanted to dig deeper and discover the back story. So why would he bother anyway? Would anyone really care? After all, the YouTube clips were taken from VHS copies that had already been circulating amongst “found footage” festival curators and private enthusiasts for years, long before the term “viral video” had entered the lexicon-and certainly prior to YouTube’s existence. For all anyone knew, Grabney was long in his grave. It took the assistance of a private investigator and substantial digging, but Steinbauer discovered his quarry was above ground; indeed way above ground-living the hermit life in an isolated mountain cabin.
Any attempt to summarize further risks spoiling the mildly surprising twists and turns that ensue in this slight yet engaging film. In some ways, it’s more about the filmmaker than his subject; especially when it depicts Steinbauer wrestling with his own motivations for making the documentary in the first place. Is he ultimately exploiting Grabney, who alleges having no idea of his cult celebrity prior to the posting of the outtakes on the internet? Or is Grabney playing him like a violin? I was reminded of Ross McElwee’s 1996 documentary, Six O'Clock News. In that film, the director chose several people at random (most of them beset by personal tragedies) who were featured in TV news stories in an earnest attempt to reveal the living breathing human beings behind the sound bites (while attempting to remain sensitive to their feelings and as unobtrusive to their lives as possible). McElwee encountered the same conundrum as Steinbauer; how do you make a statement about an exploitative and self-aggrandizing media (or web culture) without in essence coming off to be as equally exploitative and self-aggrandizing yourself? Discuss?
Part deux: Better than life
Video killed the radio star And then committed suicide -Doug Powell, “Empty Vee”
Speaking of viral video stars, the original maven of the matrix has returned. The belated release of ABC-TV’s late 80s one-season wonder, Max Headroom on DVD earlier this week has given sci-fi geeks a nice little lift from the midsummer doldrums (well…some sci-fi geeks…hey-why is everybody looking at me like I’m some kind of a nerd?). In case you spent the 80s in a coma, or you’re too young to remember, “Max Headroom” was a fictional, computer-generated TV personality who was created (somewhat ironically) via a blend of live-action camera, prosthetics and old-school animation techniques. First appearing in 1985 on Channel 4 in the U.K. as the host (or “programme presenter” as our friends across the pond like to say) for a weekly, MTV-style music video/variety show, the hip, irreverent and oh-so-sardonic Max was indelibly brought to “life” by the comic improvisations of square-jawed Canadian actor Matt Frewer, backed by a pool of clever and wonderfully off-kilter writers (think-if Robin Williams had been the voice of HAL).
The original one-hour pilot that kicked off the British variety series in 1985 provided a back story for the character, and was quite an impressive production. An imaginative mash-up of Brazil, Network and The Parallax View, it is set in a dystopian metropolis some “20 minutes into the future” and concerns an investigative journalist (Frewer) who works for a media conglomerate called Network 23. He is hot on the trail of his own employers, who have developed a secretive video technology called the “blipvert” that can deliver a huge cache of subliminal advertising to unwitting TV viewers in a matter of seconds; such a huge amount of information, in fact, that some people have an adverse physical reaction (OK, they explode-don’t worry, not necessarily a spoiler). A shadowy conspiracy thriller ensues. Whilst fleeing some would-be assassins, he runs smack into a parking gate arm (emblazoned with the warning “Max Headroom”). Through a subsequent plot development soon thereafter, his memory and persona gets downloaded into a computer program, which then transmogrifies into the “Max” we know and love.
I remember first seeing the British pilot here in the states on Cinemax, which kicked off the domestic version of the variety series (only a handful of installments, which aired back in 1986). Unfortunately (most likely due to legal snafus) that original pilot is not included in the DVD set; if you scrounge around secondhand stores and yard sales you may spot the odd VHS copy (I found mine for $3 at a Hollywood Video a couple years ago when they were liquidating VHS inventory). I recommend catching it, if you haven’t.
What is included (thank the gods) is the entire 14 episode season that aired on ABC in 1987, a long-coveted cult item. The reworked U.S. pilot episode follows the same basic storyline (although not quite as gritty and technically accomplished as the original) and sets up the character dynamics for the series. Frewer reprises his dual role as investigative TV journalist Edison Carter and his alter-ego, Max. Also retained from the original pilot are the lovely Amanda Pays (as Edison’s producer) and the delightful William Morgan Sheppard as “Blank Reg”, the Mohawk-sporting pirate cable channel entrepreneur. The always dependable Jeffrey Tambor was recruited for the U.S. series to play Carter’s boss.
Something else retained for the U.S. series (and much to its benefit) was a good portion of the original British production and writing team. As I’ve been working my way through the episodes over the past week, it amazes me how truly subversive the show was for U.S. network television; especially with its strident (and unapologetically leftist) anti-corporatist, anti-consumerist message. With hindsight being 20/20, it’s not so surprising that it was yanked after one season. Sad as it is for me to say, you would just never see a show like this on American television now that so dared to challenge the status quo (the The X-Files had its moments, but cloaked them in horror-show silliness, more often than not). Some of the storylines are also quite prescient, including the advent of social networking, cyber-crime, and the inevitable merging of the technocracy with the idiocracy (which any casual perusal of YouTube will confirm). Perhaps what resonates most significantly in hindsight is the show’s depiction of news as infotainment and an insidiously corporatized media (still dismissible as paranoid fantasy 23 years ago). Worth ch-ch-ch-checking out.
. In that film, the director chose several people at random (most of them beset by personal tragedies) who were featured in TV news stories in an earnest attempt to reveal the living breathing human beings behind the sound bites (while attempting to remain sensitive to their feelings and as unobtrusive to their lives as possible). McElwee encountered the same conundrum as Steinbauer; how do you make a statement about an exploitative and self-aggrandizing media (or web culture) without in essence coming off to be as equally exploitative and self-aggrandizing yourself? Discuss?
on DVD earlier this week has given sci-fi geeks a nice little lift from the midsummer doldrums (well…some sci-fi geeks…hey-why is everybody looking at me like I’m some kind of a nerd?). In case you spent the 80s in a coma, or you’re too young to remember, “Max Headroom” was a fictional, computer-generated TV personality who was created (somewhat ironically) via a blend of live-action camera, prosthetics and old-school animation techniques. First appearing in 1985 on Channel 4 in the U.K. as the host (or “programme presenter” as our friends across the pond like to say) for a weekly, MTV-style music video/variety show, the hip, irreverent and oh-so-sardonic Max was indelibly brought to “life” by the comic improvisations of square-jawed Canadian actor Matt Frewer, backed by a pool of clever and wonderfully off-kilter writers (think-if Robin Williams had been the voice of HAL).
, Network 
and The Parallax View
, it is set in a dystopian metropolis some “20 minutes into the future” and concerns an investigative journalist (Frewer) who works for a media conglomerate called Network 23. He is hot on the trail of his own employers, who have developed a secretive video technology called the “blipvert” that can deliver a huge cache of subliminal advertising to unwitting TV viewers in a matter of seconds; such a huge amount of information, in fact, that some people have an adverse physical reaction (OK, they explode-don’t worry, not necessarily a spoiler). A shadowy conspiracy thriller ensues. Whilst fleeing some would-be assassins, he runs smack into a parking gate arm (emblazoned with the warning “Max Headroom”). Through a subsequent plot development soon thereafter, his memory and persona gets downloaded into a computer program, which then transmogrifies into the “Max” we know and love.
had its moments, but cloaked them in horror-show silliness, more often than not). Some of the storylines are also quite prescient, including the advent of social networking, cyber-crime, and the inevitable merging of the technocracy with the idiocracy (which any casual perusal of YouTube will confirm). Perhaps what resonates most significantly in hindsight is the show’s depiction of news as infotainment and an insidiously corporatized media (still dismissible as paranoid fantasy 23 years ago). Worth ch-ch-ch-checking out.