Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge has built a successful film career on his uncanny ability to draw humor from the most mundane topics.
The brutally funny Office Space, Judge's first live-action feature, tackled cubicle culture and became a cult classic ranking among the top comedies of the 1990s. His second feature, Idiocracy, ventured into a dumbed-down sci-fi future rendered ultimately absurd.
Now Judge heads back to comedy squeezed out of everyday angst with Extract, a movie that follows entrepreneurial antihero Joel (played by Jason Bateman, pictured above), who struggles with a job managing a flavoring factory and a marriage rendered sexless by a stubborn pair of sweat pants.
"I've had real jobs," Judge told Wired.com during a sit-down to talk about Extract, which opens Friday. "I've worked in the cubicle world. I know the desperation that can bring. But there's also comedy there – absurdity all around. There's a lot to mine in that world."
He's found a rich and deeply funny vein in Extract's blue-collar setting, as Bateman's character wrestles with a factory full of nitwits and a midlife crush on a conniving young temp worker played by Mila Kunis.
Written and directed by Judge and co-starring Ben Affleck, Kristen Wiig and Kiss fire-breather Gene Simmons, the movie's surprisingly subtle comedic world rests on the shoulders of Bateman – this generation's best desperate straight man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJSGlq89wsQJudge said the Arrested Development star might be considered the set-up guy for Extract's punch-line moments, but the writer and director thinks Bateman doesn't get enough credit for his own comedic skills.
"(Bateman) always says it's his job to let everybody else be funny," Judge said. "But I think he has incredible comic timing – and that ability to get an audience to identify with him."
Judge hasn't always had it so easy. During writing and production of Office Space – a movie that contains the best fax machine beatdown ever captured on film – everyone in range of his ear told him the cubicle-based comedy was a bad idea.
"I put the creative capital I'd earned off of Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill into Office Space," Judge said. "But, even with those credits, every executive gave me reasons why it wouldn't work. I had to battle for everything in that movie – it was such an uphill fight."
Office Space bombed when it hit theaters in 1999, but generated a passionate following once it arrived on cable and home video. The movie would put comedic catchphrases like "TPS reports" and "he took my stapler" into movie fans' lexicon forever.
Still, amidst its shaky box office debut, Judge heard all kinds of "I told you so" from every front.
"It's been good to see it find its audience since," Judge said. "And the same people who were criticizing Office Space early on were coming back around and looking for ways to work with me again."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVQymypymokWhile working on Extract, Judge was also overseeing production on the final episodes of animated Texas sitcom King of the Hill and the first season of The Goode Family, a short-lived animated series that poked fun at a family of chronically misguided do-gooders. The show struggled on ABC before getting canceled.
As The Goode Family looks for its new TV home, Judge theorized as to why the series failed on network TV.
"I don't know if ABC was the best home for it," he said. "When the show premiered, the reviews were either positive or 'this isn't the time to be making fun of (the politically correct).' We didn't expect the press to come after the show as though these topics were off-limits. In a sense, those reviewers were the people we're making fun of on the show."
While Judge waits to see what's next for his Goode Family, there's ongoing talk of an Office Space 2 and another Beavis and Butt-Head movie.
"People are asking for another Beavis and Butt-Head," he said. "I wouldn't mind revisiting them. So, you never know. I'll see if I can come up with a good idea first."
Image courtesy Miramax
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