Credits & Contributions
| Official Max Headroom Time |
Contents
Copy, Trade & Other -marks
The formal and legal copyrights and other rights related to Max Headroom have been through a chain of defunct companies, acquisitions, flawed contracts and agreements and generally more legal mess and confusion than any commercial property should have to withstand. An incomplete list of prior rights owners include George Stone, Annabel Jankel, Rocky Morton, Peter Wagg, Chrysalis Productions, Channel Four, Lorimar, ABC, Warner Brothers and possibly many of the original artists, writers and creative team. To the best of my knowledge, all current rights rest with All3Media in the UK, who formally absorbed all of the UK properties from Channel Four/Chrysalis and hold all expired and reverted rights from the US productions by Lorimar and ABC. While I have tried to keep the content of this site within reasonable fair use standards, I appreciate their continuing tolerance of any areas where those limits are exceeded.
All original content on this site, and the site itself, are copyright 2006-2016 by James Gifford. All rights to this content are reserved but may be used by any individual for strictly noncommercial purposes as long as full attribution is given.
Contributions & Corrections
It's only fair to begin by saying the infobanks here are incomplete and less than 100% correct. Both Max and I hate that, but the further you get towards the fringes of Max info, lore and history, the less reliable and less available the data gets. You'd think that after 30 years, almost 20 of it in a world with a world-wide web, all the bits would have floated to the top, waiting for collection or search-engine indexing.
Wrong. Just look at the fragmentary mish-mash of the Max Headroom entries on IMDb and Wikipedia. (As of this writing, the IMDb entry contains a large number of absolutely fraudulent bits... so the problem isn't just omission, but corruption.)
This site, and the underlying project, has what it has and progresses in its search for Maxxiana through the generosity of the community of Max fans, admirers and creators, since the heyday of Max himself. Very little of the material would be here were it not for contributions to the pool of knowledge, mostly unacknowledged, by early fans and even some of the creative team. Much of what I have came from the original online uber-fan from whom I inherited the domain and obligations; what he put up has been endlessly duplicated throughout the web.
A few of us have come along and dug into old-fashioned infobanks - stuff printed on paper made from real trees - and brought the information to the internet audience. Those new bits of data are usually attributed to an original source, and the dogged researcher who found them. The bulk, however, has been floating around the fan community and onto the internet for decades, with any chain of provenance long broken. I see little point in crediting any source for this common pool of factual material. That said, if you spot something on here that has a known creator or source, please do let me know. I have no wish to deprive anyone of due credit or thanks.
But the strange and erratic nature of Max fandom, compounded by the long, strange history of his pond-straddling genesis and mangled rights issues and sudden end, means that what should be simple information to find and assemble is lost in the cracks of creators' files, fan memories and the vault-like archives of the current rights holder.
Contributing to the InfoBanks
If you have any knowledge of any aspect of Max, his world, or his influence... please share it.
- If you spot a mistake or omission here on the site, drop me a note with a correction or addition. Even something you just think is wrong, from old fan-sense... I'd like to know. If you have a factual or verifiable cite for your correction, that would be wonderful.
- If you know something, or have something that would usefully extend the material here, please let me know. There's nothing too small - perhaps you have an old TV program that lists a show date or has a forgotten writeup of a show. A fan-magazine interview with one of the principals. A Max product not yet listed in the gallery. An anecdote about a Max appearance, an encounter with one of the actors or creative crew... a Max grafitti in an interesting time and location. We want it all.
- Do you have a question or thought about Max that isn't addressed here? Let me know. A good question is the best starting point for really new material, and if I don't have the answer, it goes on the list to find out.
Full credit will be given for all new and updated submissions. They will go into the vast pool of online info, but they don't have to go anonymously any more.
So... got anything in a Max vein? Drop me a note, now.
Current Needs & Wants List
Max aficionados are invited to check this list from time to time to see if there's a specific need for their assistance or information they might be able to provide.
- I am reasonably up to speed on MediaWiki, the platform for this rebuild of the site, but I could use some assistance from an experienced code-wrangler to reskin and restyle the appearance. I'm comfortable with Common.css and adding things to LocalSettings.php, but deeper changes (to the frames and navigation, for example) are still on my "Huh?" list.
- NEW: I'd really like to upgrade my efforts into what would be the only complete "dark" theme for MediaWiki, so some deep codewrangling and skinning help would be great.
- Anyone who has any solid information on the first season of UK shows - the first 12 shows with Max as VJ - is asked to please get in touch. If you have recordings of any of these shows, I'd really love to talk with you.
- I am looking for any and all data on the various authorized releases of Max on video. Hard data of any kind is welcome, good images of releases I don't have on the video page gratefully accepted.
Ack-Acknowledgements
The long and scattered history of Max Headroom as a creation and entertainment icon make it nearly impossible to provide uncluttered attributions, credits and copyright notices for the vast amount of material that has been collected and distributed (and re-distributed, and re-re-distributed) on the web. It is part of the intentions of the Max Headroom Project and this facet of it, the Max Headroom Chronicles, to clean up and re-establish as much of those credits and attributions as possible.
In the meantime, let me thank, acknowledge and express my deep appreciation to everyone who's ever brought any item, image or reference to my attention through the internet and its predecessors. Whether I got the material directly from you or through the haze of websites and shared repositories, it has been valuable and appreciated.
The creative team that brought Max into the world and shaped his image has been kind and forthcoming in response to my inquiries about their long-ago bouts of genius and insanity. I will thank each of them in proper turn as the opportunities arise in this rebuild of the infobanks, but for now - Mike, Steve and George: Th-thanks!
Special thanks to Blank Mike, the original proprietor of the first extensive Max Headroom site, for collecting many items that otherwise would have been lost in those early days, and for keeping the t-torch lit until I could come along to take it.
As for Max websites... many have come and gone since the dawn of the web. The vast majority were forgettable, one or two pages of the same partly-correct material and some fan comments. Mike's site was the foundational one and by far the largest and most complete. Other than some faded and long-abandoned remnants here and there, and some newer blog posts, the web is Max-devoid except for three sites, including this one (the lineal heir of Mike's):
- One is Charles McGrew's at rutgers.edu, a true old-school "collection of all the things I'm interested in" page that includes a page of sound clips from the rare Channel Four and Cinemax shows. For some reason, though, he captured only the parts other than the guest interviews. I suspect McGrew hasn't looked at any of his pages in quite some time, and I have captured the audio files for archival purposes. I believe we had a correspondence a few years ago and he was helpful regarding his stash of rare off-air tapes from which he took the audio clips.
- A newer site is a sub-blog of "futuristguy" Brad Sargent. Around 2010 he assembled a site similar in many ways to the previous site here, a many-paged collection of data and lists and Max junk. Like my prior site, it is unfinished in many places and seems unlikely to ever be expanded. However, it contained a number of useful nuggets - lists of shows and Max memorabilia that had eluded me during my last active phase. I appreciate FG's efforts and the leads his postings brought to me. I will do my best to credit those in each proper place. (By the way, Brad... I would have gotten in touch long ago if any of your sites had a contact address.)
- Most of the rest, including such major sites as IMDb and Wikipedia, are regrettably incomplete, fragmentary and laden with errors. Wikipedia's entries on Max and Max things are reasonably accurate, but sparse. IMDb is... so sparse and so laden with accumulated errors as to be an embarrassment. (I hope to correct it all, over time.) The leftover sites found from trolling the search lists are usually brief repetitions of well-known info (like the ABC series episode list) or erroneous items passed from fan to fan. (If there's a discrepancy between this site and any other... I will bet one Fringer credit tube that this site is correct.)
- Which means this is, against all odds and expectations, the last relevant and useful Max Headroom site, the last site standing after many years and many contenders. This long-postponed rebuild is meant to be my gift to the world of Max, his legacy and his fans, and I'm not a little humbled to be his online champion.
Current Credits
Contributors of specific material to this site rebuild, and of specific material taken from the prior site, will be credited here by name and deed.
- Thanks to downunda fan Andrew Williams, who pointed out a forgotten Australian Max parody and provided a trove of first-season audio clips.
- A huge Max shout-out to Simon Kelly, whose meticulous detective work in the UK ferreted out not only the precise dates for the talk and video shows, but re-established for the first time in many years that there were three, not two seasons of those shows - the first season, of videos with Max as VJ, had completely fallen from fan and public memories. The show lists and dates now on this site can be considered authoritative, almost wholly due to Simon's efforts for the www.MissingEpisodes.org forum and corrective entries on Wikipedia.
- Continuing thanks to Peter Scott for his assistance with the "Official Max Time" clock, which I've finally gotten working here under the new platform.
- Blank Chrissy and Raker Lucas, your contributions have not been forgotten. Drop me a note when you see this, old friends!
