“Office Space” at 20: an oral history

I love this movie.....one of my favorite scenes

 

And this one too.......

 

"UNO, DOS, TRES, QUATRO, SINCO, SIES...!"

 

The two perfect "slacker" lifestyle philosophy book end movies...

Office Space & The Big Lebowski

Add your own if it strikes ya'.

Wish they'ld make more comedies like those two.

 

At work we have a notification that goes off to alert us of production changes. It says "You've been missing a lot of work lately.... I wouldn't say I've been missing it Bob". Good stuff (The other is "I'LL BBQ YO ASS IN MOLASSESS!").

Here's an enjoyable clip:

 

Mmmmmmmmm......"Waiting"?...maybe?

Takes place in a restaurant called, Shenanigans......

 

Not a good movie, IMO:

Waiting: Special Edition (2005)

 

Perhaps a bit dated now but I loved this one after later discovering it in high school. And by college, it seemed like everyone was quoting it on a regular basis.

 

It's Caddyshack for those of us who don't play golf.

 

Mike Judge is like, cool or something huh huh. Great cast for this movie.

 

Ron Livingston is a sadly undervalued actor. And of course Stephen Root can do no wrong.

 

F'n A!

 

Both appeared in “Boardwalk Empire”.

 

Just once I'ld like to catch that movie in reruns on cable that hasn't been edited to hell & back.

I'll have to get the DVD or BD to get the full brunt of the humor. I'ld like to see what they show when one of the waitresses' grabs or exposes her privates and the response from one of the guys is "It's so angry!"

 

We bought the DVD, back when Blockbuster was getting rid of all their doubles, dirt cheap...so...yeah.... she shows something.... funny.....

 

recent rap music discussion in one of Stevehoffman forum threads made me think of this

In the car rapping

 

The Bobs.

 

Like Spinal Tap, I thought this was a "documentary".

I was an engineer working for a govt contracting company, and Office Space was spot on.

 

There's nothing I don't love about this movie.

 

I love that line because it's so simple and short, practically a throwaway line, yet it gives us insight into who Milton is. If you think about the line, he is saying that he saw 2 squirrels outside his window having sex, which he describes as "they were married." It tells us that he is a virgin and likely grew up in a strict religious household. So much characterization with one line.

It takes good writing to explain so much with so little. I'm reminded of a classic Simpsons moment when Marge opens up a cabinet and discovers a family of possums in it. When she explains it to Homer, he simply says, "I call the big one Bitey." That line tells us that not only is Homer aware that a family of possums has been living in the closet, but that he has had a previous altercation with the largest one.

 

A transcript of Gary Cole interviewed for NPR's Fresh Air by Dave Davies (no! not that the Kink-y guy)

DAVIES: I want to talk about "Office Space," which is a film - a 1999 film by Mike Judge which, you know, some of our listeners may not have seen or heard of and many others have seen many times and can repeat dialogue from. I'm in the latter group. You play the boss, Bill Lumbergh. How did you get the role?

COLE: I got a - just a - it was pretty standard - I got it from my agent and Mike Judge who's doing this script. I had not met Mike before that, I don't believe. But for Lumbergh was unusual because Lumbergh and the character of Milton that Stephen Root played were both in this little - there were two little animated shorts that Mike did a decade before he did the movie. And in them, it was Lumbergh and Milton and it was basically Milton sitting at his desk mumbling to himself and Lumbergh coming up and peeking over the cubicle and, you know, terrorizing him.

And, you know, you watch and you go, yeah, I - of course, I know that guy. I've worked for that guy. Everybody's worked for that guy. And so I didn't assume to do anything else other than that. I just said, well, I can't do it better than that animation so I'm just going to do that. I'm going to rip that off and take it off, you know, walk in there and do that the best I can.

DAVIES: This was a movie that didn't exactly do well at the box office has become this cult hit on video. It's about, you know, the office culture and the things that annoy you and they're, you know, some actors pretty well-known, some not so well-known. Did it feel like something special was happening when you were making this film?

COLE: Yeah. Well, I knew when I saw the animation. I said well, that works. I mean, that just flat out works because even though it was an animation, like I said, I said I recognize that guy. I recognize his cadence. I recognize that snarky kind of passive-aggressive attitude. And that's what I went in to mimic when I auditioned for it. And when we were all doing the movie, we all recognized that Mike Judge was a very gifted writer and director and an animator as well.

And the way he shot the movie was so specific. I mean, he was a - down to the minutest of details, he knew what he wanted, you know, seemingly all the time. So we all knew that what we were working on was really good, but no one had any idea that it would have any kind of a - you know, you never know if a movie will break through or if it will have any kind of a lasting impact, but, you know, that's what happened.

DAVIES: Do people repeat these lines to you when you see them on the street?

COLE: Well, that's why we all, you know, and we all compare notes because now, because the movie's lasted - sometimes we see each other because there's been reunions and what not. A year after the movie came out - and like you said, it didn't do well in the theaters, so we thought, well, this movie died, you know. It did its five weeks and it's gone. You know, it might - maybe somebody'll see it on a shelf and rent it.

But a year after that, I was doing a play in Chicago, so I was on the street a lot. I was walking to and from the theater. I lived right by there. And people start shouting out, did you get the TPS reports? Uh, yeah. Without even stopping me - just saying the lines to me. And I was dumbfounded. I was - I thought this movie tanked, you know, what happened? That was right at the time when DVDs had started to peak and I think, you know, the way people consumed movies changed. In other words, a movie wasn't necessarily a failure if it didn't do well in the theater. It could have a life after that, and "Office Space" was one of those films.

 

Ummm....yeah, you're gonna have to come in on Saturday and Sunday to get through both of those oral histories.

 

Smykowski's rant with the Bob's about engineers has me rolling every time I watch this movie (watched a lot in early to mid 2000s, only see it once every few years now).