Exclusive | Did MTVs Buzz predict the future? A new documentary thinks so

The year was 1990.The Berlin Wall had fallen.

The Gulf War had begun.Nirvana was on their first major tour.

And something called the internet was creeping from university campuses into bulky home computers.If you remember that moment in time, you also remember MTV, the pop culture juggernaut where music, sex, politics and youth culture slammed together at dizzying speed.And that’s partly because of Mark Pellington, one of the main engines behind MTV Buzz.Subversive and loud, MTV Buzz helped launch RuPaul’s career and raise Gen X awareness of voting rights, safe sex and even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.And Pelligan, the show’s co-creator with prolific producer-director Jon Klein, is finally ready to talk about it.This summer in La Brea, Pellington premiered “This Is Buzz,” a documentary that traces the show from an obscure experiment to a cultural time capsule — something his friend, U2’s The Edge, called “prophetic of where things were going to go.” The film asks if TV can still be relevant to culture, and examines what’s lost when a fractured internet replaces a single, solid hub as the nexus of youth.

It also confirms what we already know: When it comes to the invention of cool, Gen X did it best.Just listen to Pellington, the son of Indianapolis Colts legend Bill Pellington, describe an early encounter with Madonna when he was shooting graphics for MTV’s famous mid-commercial mini videos in the 1980s: “She said she liked my Beastie Boys ‘Get Off My Dick’ t-shirt, so I gave it to her, right off my back, in 1985,” he shared. In part because of Pellington and Klein’s familiarity with celebs and rock music, MTV wasn’t worried about Buzz appealing to the network’s mainstream advertisers, including Coca-Cola and Nike — at least not at first.“MTV thought they were going to get a nice little pop culture television show,” Pellington, now 64, told The Post from his home in Los Angeles.“And we gave them something, as th...