Mike Judge returns to work

 JOE O'CONNELL, Houston Chronicle

Sep. 1, 2009

Photo by Joe O'Connell

AUSTIN — If you rooted for the employees in Office Space, Mike Judge hopes you'll give the boss a break in Extract.

Judge's latest film stars Jason Bateman as the owner of a flavor extract company who must deal with clueless employees and a listless marriage.

The look of the factory was inspired by the former Adam's Extract plant in Austin (the company is now in Gonzales), but the quirky characters came from Judge's imagination mixed with his own factory experiences.

“I worked in a place in Albuquerque that made honor snacks” (cardboard vending cartons stocked with candy and chips), he said. “A guy came up to me my first day and looked at me very seriously, like he was going to lay some wisdom on me, and said (Judge's voice deepens): ‘I started here too as Manpower, only I did 40 crates a day. I'm full-time now.'”

A version of that odd character who takes his job way too seriously makes it into the film, which Judge calls “the inverse of Office Space but still about the working place.”

“I'd always been the employee,” Judge said from a suite overlooking Lady Bird Lake at Austin's Four Seasons Hotel, where he was meeting with the media about the new film, which opens Friday. “When Beavis and Butt-head happened, I went from never having anyone work for me to having 50 to 90 people at any given time working for me. When that first happens, you want to be a nice boss. Then you get taken advantage of. You have to find a balance there.

“I thought it would be fun to see it from the point of view of the guy who runs the place.”

This is reflected in Extract when Bateman's character runs up against employees endlessly complaining or — in the case of a character Judge portrays — offering inane advice presented as wisdom.

Building a following

Judge conceived the story directly after Office Space came out in 1999, but Fox execs thought Idiocracy, which tells of a dumbed-down future where corporations rule, had more commercial potential.

Neither Office Space nor Idiocracy found big-screen audiences. Office Space instead built a following on video, selling 2.3 million copies between 1999 and 2003.

The video success “was really sweet for me because I had to fight so hard to get that movie the way I wanted it,” Judge said. “After all those battles, having it not do well at the box office was kind of hard to take. I could just hear (studio executives) all going, ‘You see? We told you so.'”

He co-wrote Idiocracy as his last obligation to Fox. “However many years it took for Idiocracy (which was barely released in 2006) to happen, Office Space just kept growing and growing and making more money.”

In his spare time, Judge rewrote Extract with Bateman (from TV's Arrested Development) in mind to star. Judge and his producing partners on the long-running animated sitcom King of the Hill, John Altschuler and David Krinsky, decided to make Extract with private financing out of major studio clutches. Miramax later signed on for domestic distribution.

Filmed in Los Angeles

Extract is the first of Judge's three live-action films not shot in the Austin area, but instead in Los Angeles, a decision he said was purely financial.

His next project, Brigadier Gerard, could well shoot in Central Texas. He will produce, not direct the movie, which is based on an Arthur Conan Doyle short story.

Judge, who grew up in Albuquerque, has called Austin home since the early '90s.

He said he enjoys fishing on his land in nearby Elgin and going out to support musician friends playing in Austin, a city he described as small enough to be comfortable but with everything he needs, including ample advice from filmmaking friends Robert Rodriguez and Richard Linklater.

Judge took a circuitous route to a filmmaking career. He has a physics degree from the University of California-San Diego and worked as an engineer at a string of companies — ­including one in San Diego that had him working on electronic systems for F-18 fighter jets.

He also was a bass player touring with Dallas-based blues artists Anson Funderburgh and Doyle Bramhall. While living in Dallas, he did the first crude animations that resulted in Beavis and Butt-head, characters he doesn't rule out reviving.

“Now with Facebook, I've reconnected with a lot of people I knew in high school,” he said.

“Everybody thinks I based Butt-head on them, or they're afraid that I did. It wasn't anybody in particular, but I get that all the time.”

Joe O'Connell is a freelance writer living in Austin.

Wes Anderson talks about 'Rushmore'

I interviewed Wes Anderson for an article--if memory serves for the San Antonio Express-News. I recorded it and included the full interview in my '90s zine Lost Armadillos in Heat. 

LAIH: You grew up in Houston where "Rushmore" was filmed. And actually shot it in St. John's, your old school. Was that weird?
ANDERSON: People always want to know if it was weird going back to film there. It wasn't because I spent all this time convincing them to let us shoot there. Also we would go there to think about the script and walk around. By the time we filmed there, I'd spent so much time there recently and got re-aquainted with a lot of people there. So it was really a comfortable place to film. We had a screening just for St. John's people. It was odd because people applauded a thing like a house. And they applaud certain extras with real force.
LAIH: How would you describe this film?
ANDERSON: Somebody told me it was a coming of age story, and I guess it is, but I hate to think of it that way. It sounds like a genre. I wanted a school movie. We had this character. Me and my co-writer Owen
Wilson, we wanted to do a character of a kid who loved the school and founded all of these different clubs and societies, but is also a terrible student and is going to get kicked out.
LAIH: Where did that idea come from?
ANDERSON: Putting on the plays is something I did when I was a kid. We went to similar schools. Owen went to St. Marks in Dallas. Both of us had a sort of deluded thing and thought we were going to go to really
good colleges. But we were both bad students and never stood any chance of getting into any of the places we were applying. We did get rejected by all of them. So that sort of figures into it.
LAIH: What did you learn from "Bottle Rocket" that you brought to this film?
ANDERSON: I felt there was stuff I learned on the other one about how to plan a movie and what to expect--how much you have to be totally focused every day. But on the other movie the cast was just a bunch of
friends. This one we had to put together a cast and I didn't really know anybody in the cast. Except for some small supporting roles, all of the main actors we cast like they cast a regular movie.
LAIH: Where did you dig up Jason Schwartzman?
ANDERSON: We did a big casting search all over the place for a year. It was this total hassle. Finally our casting director in San Francisco met this kid and sent him in to me. I felt like within 30 seconds we had something. He was not like anyone else. He was very compelling. And I just liked him a lot personally. I always hoped I'd get to cast someone I'd be friends with.
LAIH: I know he's Talia Shire's son. What is his film background otherwise?
ANDERSON: His background is high school.
LAIH: Who are your filmmaking inspirations?
ANDERSON: A million movies all rolled together. Louis Malle movies. Mike Nichols and Hal Ashby and the 70s guys.
LAIH: Surely "Harold and Maude" was an influence?
ANDERSON: No question. Just the feeling. I used a Cat Stevens song. That's got to be paying respect on some level.
LAIH: What about the music in the film?
ANDERSON: I used British invasion music from the 60s and 70s. I think that's really hard angry rock music, but it's played by English kids in blazers, like school boys. And I think that combo is something like what this kid is. That was my way of analyzing it afterword. At one point I just wanted to use some Kinks.
LAIH: The tone of "Rushmore" is so different. Can you explain what you were trying to do?
ANDERSON: There's a sort of unreality. You don't see a lot of cars from today. There's not any cultural references really. It's just its own little world. So it almost feels like it's not any one particular time. It's a bit of a fable, maybe? The behavior of the characters, the stuff that's happening in the movie is not quite reality. The plays are unrealistically ambitious.
LAIH: What kind of films do you like to watch?
ANDERSON: I like funny movies. "Murmur of the Heart" by Louis Malle is one. "The Rules of the Game" by Jean Renoir. I like movies where there is real affection for the characters. In those movies I feel like there aren't any really bad guys. I think Renoir says something to the effect that everyone has their reasons. You just have to make an effort to understand them. I guess I'm not too into cynical, cool movies right now. I've just seen so many violent, steely or cool movies and I'd rather stay away from that.
LAIH: Talk about your process as a filmmaker.
ANDERSON: It starts with the way you want the movie to feel, the setting, the kind of feeling of the characters and the way they'll interact, and less the story. Once you're making the movie, you're not affected by that anymore. You're just into the world and have to follow your instincts.
LAIH: What about the collaborative writing process?
ANDERSON: We talk for months. While that's going on, one of us will write a scene and hand it to the other, and they'll make marks and hand it back, act out things, add things. As it goes along we write more and
more and we start to figure out if we need a scene. It sort of evolves that way, just the two of us hashing it out.
LAIH: How do you see your style of directing?
ANDERSON: I like on the set for everyone to feel like friends. I like to be very private with the actors. I like for us to rehearse scenes very privately and quietly. That's probably because I feel self-conscious "directing" in front of a group of people. Lots of people who worked on Rushmore worked on "Bottle Rocket," the head of
every department, so there are lots of friends on the set.
LAIH: Do you plan much in advance?
ANDERSON: I like to plan as much as possible. I think the more you can have ideas for things, the more you can really make an effort to find a new way to do a scene. It becomes more dense if you really make an
effort, like you're writing a novel, if you focus on the detail in advance. It's hard to make that stuff happen spontaneously. You've really got to plan it, I think.LAIH: Do you storyboard?
ANDERSON: Yeah, I do it twice, in fact. I storyboard it once and then go back and do it neatly. You find some things you had sketched out when you go back and go, I thought I had this thought out, but it's
sort of half-baked. It's a pain because it takes forever, but you get it all more specific.
LAIH: The narrative arc of "Rushmore" is all over the place, yet that seems to work. How do you explain that?
ANDERSON: The stuff we get excited about are unexpected turns to the story. Also, we'll have ideas and you have to somehow get there.
LAIH: Tell me about Max Fischer. Is he a good guy?
ANDERSON: I think some people feel we made a character who is not always very appealing. But I have just a good feeling about that character. He does some almost unforgivable stuff, but I feel like he's redeemed. I have a personal feeling for the character like it were someone I knew. I hate it when someone says they find him unlikable. We try to push him, but I don't want him to be a bad guy.
LAIH: How did you get Bill Murray interested in the film?
ANDERSON: We just sent him the script. A week later he called and said he wanted to do it. Really all we talked about in your first conversation was this movie "Red Beard" by Kurosawa, that Bill was a big fan of. He had an idea that "Red Beard" had something to do with "Rushmore." I never quite understood what the connection was.
LAIH: What was he like?
ANDERSON: Working with him was really great. He's really funny and he's just such a good guy. He made a real effort to support this movie. It's a small movie. It's the kind of movie, if someone tried to modify it
and make it more palatable or to fit into a certain slot, it would just go to pieces. He was a good defender of the movie. You can settle for things and Murray wasn't interested in us settling for anything. I'm not either and it's good to have somebody like that involved.
LAIH: I love the plays in "Rushmore." Did they pose any problems?
ANDERSON: For the war play, if you don't get it right have to wait an hour and a half while they set up all of these charges again. We had to do the whole scene in one day according to our schedule. There's one shot where this plane flies across the stage bombing it. If we hadn't got that right, it would have been two hours to line up all the charges again. We got lucky and got the shot right. It was a fun day because all of these kids dressed up for Vietnam. It felt like there was a play happening (enthusiasm in voice). When we were filming, It felt like it was an EVENT day.
LAIH: What's next?
ANDERSON: Owen and I are working on this script set in New York. It's about a family there.
LAIH: Tell us again how you got started.
ANDERSON: Owen and I were both at UT. We did a play in a playwriting class that I wrote and that Owen acted in. Before we finished school there we started writing the "Bottle Rocket" script. After that we went to Dallas and made a short version of it. The short was supposed to be a feature but we ran out of money." With "Bottle Rocket," not that many people got to see it in the theater. Most people saw it on video. There wasn't much of an event to the release. I sort of regretted it. So I want to do everything I can to let people know about this movie.

Hanging out in a topless bar with 'Varsity Blues'

A report from Joe O'Connell (1998)

A two-day shoot in a topless bar officially ended when "Varsity Blues" director Brian Robbins asked the stunning, almost-naked blonde on stage to repeat her gyrations one last time for the film's cast and crew.

The cameras sat idly by as teen heartthrob James van der Beek and Scott Caan (yes, that's James Caan's boy) hooted and clapped along with nameless extras and weary technicians. The scene was so real it could have been in, well, a movie.

And elsewhere around Austin this same broiling summer day other cameras were busy. Directors Robert Rodriguez and Mike Judge were filming "The Faculty" and "Office Space" respectively. As summer burned into fall and fall cooled into winter, these film sets were replaced by ones for Sundance-bound "A Slipping-Down Life," Tom Arnold star vehicle "Just Sue Me," "Texas Funeral" and on and on.

The bottom line is, if you're always wanted to see your face lighting up the big screen, but don't have training, a sparkling smile or an agent, you can still leap into film heaven, Texas extra style and make about $50 for your trouble. The process is simple. Call the Texas Film Commission's production hotline (512-463-7799), send in a photograph and wait by the telephone like an anxious teenager.

Both "Varsity Blues" and "The Faculty" shot all-night crowd scenes in high school football stadiums, so most extra hopefuls didn't have to wait long this past summer for "the call."

But the about 50 extras who showed up at 7 a.m. at the Landing Strip topless bar for the "Varsity Blues" shoot knew their chances were much better for the ultimate payoff--actual, though likely fuzzy, face time on screen.

The trade off is tedium mixed with a heavy dose of sweat. Filming proves a process of hurry up and wait, and when the cameras do roll, the air conditioner is turned off to extinguish unnecessary noise.

Since "Varsity Blues" is an MTV production, many on the crew, including those in extras casting, came straight from "Austin Stories," the network's aborted attempt at a sitcom. Other crew members knew each other from the sets of such other recent films as "The Newton Boys."

In this scene, high school football players go to a topless bar and catch their attractive English teacher moonlighting on stage.

Female extras are dancers and waitresses, while males are assigned seats around the stage as club patrons. The confusion comes in separating reality from make-believe. Many of the women portraying dancers are experienced performers from area strip clubs, one works in the mortgage field.

A menacing bouncer dressed in black with his long hair slicked back suddenly ejects one of the rowdy football players from the stage. Other extras shy away from him when the camera isn't rolling, but this is a carefully planned look for a Dallas actor trying to break into the big time.

At their tables, extras pretend to drink from empty beer bottles as a machine called a Lightning Flash pumps 40,000 watts of strobe light at them and at mirrors that ring the stage. They are told looking at the lights could be dangerous, but find completely avoiding the flashes impossible.

Machines cloud the air with insubstantial, almost odorless smoke meant to represent the output of hundred of cigarettes. Crew members don white masks, but extras are left to tough it out and whoop it up again and again for the dancers on stage.

By mid-afternoon, the heat in the nightclub, which features the cockpit of an airplane "crashing" through the wall into the bar, is unbearable. Between shots the air conditioner comes back on, but barely makes a dent in the smoky blaze. Caan and van der Beek retreat to the only cool area of the building--the restrooms.

Meanwhile, extras spent breaks lolling around the Landing Strip ticket booth, behind which were posted Polaroids of people who have been banned for the topless bar for life. The reasons were sadly scrawled underneath each photo: “exposed self” said one, “went home with a customer,” said a shot of a dancer. I was entranced by a shot of an obviously drunk and angry tree trunk of a man being forcibly posed for a photo with the aid of two beefy men. Underneath, the obvious: “Started fight.”

Back on the set, the same scene is shot again and again from different angles. Late in the day the camera is turned toward a pair of thirtyish men in business suits at a table to the right of the stage. One is taking a day off from his life in real estate but confesses a burning desire to write screenplays. The other is between temporary jobs.

When the assistant director signals the cameras to roll (Robbins, best known as Eric on television's "Head of the Class," watches through a monitor in the next room), the men break into wide grins and clink their bottles together before taking big swigs of imaginary beer. On stage the blonde dancer swings from a pole as the strobe lights flash. For this one moment, they are all stars.

This free-lance article originally appeared in the San Antonio Express-News. All rights retained by the author.