Pop Culture Shock participated in a Virtual Q/A session with Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill) to talk about his new film, Extract, which comes out on Blu-Ray and DVD on December 22nd, and is what he describes as his own little sequel to his live-action cult-classic, Office Space. Extract is about Joel (Jason Batemen) who has built an empire of vanilla extract and his troubles. His bartender friend, is a drug pusher. His wife (Kristen Wiig) leaves him sexually frustrated and his neighbor Nathan is the most annoying person on the planet. Joel hopes to sell his company off to the highest bidder until an accident on the clock puts that in jeopardy. You know these characters, and you know these situations. Judge again is able to recreate a small town world that’s familiar and is filled with funny and odd characters. Here is a full review of the Extract Blu-Ray.
ON EXTRACT’S STORY AND CHARACTERS
While so many other comedies tend to shoot for these big company stories, you tend to reside in settings with small town folks as the main characters (King of the Hill, Office Space and now Extract) what draws you to these small town stories?
Mike Judge: I would say my stuff resides in suburbs of big towns also, or small towns that are near big towns. I guess that’s because I’ve mostly lived in places like that — Albuquerque NM, Richardson TX, etc. I think that a lot of writers in film and TV in the past have tended to come from NY or big east-coast cities, and there have also been great stuff written about really small hick towns, and so I feel like I can maybe bring a different perspective on things with a suburban setting.
Did you always have Jason Bateman in mind for the lead role?
MJ: I started writing this a long time ago – I think it was shortly after Office Space came out. I originally wasn’t thinking of any actor in particular, just writing it. Jason had done King of the Hill and I always liked him, but when I saw him in Arrested Development, I thought he would be perfect for this, and when I rewrote it and finished it, I was imagining him as the lead. It’s a similar character to what he did in AD, but I think Joel is a little less slick or something. Jason was the first actor I gave the script to and he said he liked it and wanted to do it, so it was him from the get go.
- Read More
- Comments Off
“Avatar definitely had a purpose and will always have a very special place in my heart because it was the one film that I got to shoot for two years. Usually, we only shoot for three months and you have this amazing time with the cast, and the director, and the crew. And then the film lives forever for you guys, but our experiences of shooting that will only live for three months, and sometimes we feel cheated. Working with an amazing director like James Cameron, and working with Sam Worthington who I just — he’s one of the most selfless actors I’ve ever met. We’re literally like brother and sister now. But not incestual!”
The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the 21st Century Limited Edition HC. $250 if you can afford it.
“I’m a renaissance man, a guy who is upset about what’s going on — people getting these chips put in their brains that control them — and is one of the guys trying to stop it… It’s intense, I guarantee it. It’s a movie by [writers and co-directors] Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the guys that did ‘Crank’ with Jason Statham. And I also worked with Gerard on [the upcoming Guy Ritchie film] ‘RockNRolla,’ so that’s great, it makes it smoother when you get to know people. It’s definitely going to be a great sci-fi film.”
“…When I looked back over the comic books, all of the different iterations of Iron Man and Rhodey that there have been, the one thing that seemed like it was always there was this friendship. There was a real friendship and underlying kinship. I was always asking, ‘Where did it come from? What’s it based on? How tenuous is it, now that Tony is kind of a free agent and Rhodey is a military man? How does that work?’ That’s what drove my questions about our relationship for the whole movie.”
