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Office Space is a 1999 American satirical black comedy film written and directed by Mike Judge.[4] It satirizes the work life of a typical 1990s software company, focusing on a handful of individuals weary of their jobs. It stars Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, Gary Cole, Stephen Root, David Herman, Ajay Naidu, and Diedrich Bader.[5]
Office Space was filmed in Dallas and Austin, Texas. It is based on Judge's Milton cartoon series and was his first foray into live-action filmmaking. The film was Judge's second full-length motion picture release, following Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. It was released in theaters on February 19, 1999, by 20th Century Fox. Its sympathetic depiction of ordinary information technology workers garnered a cult following within that field, but it also addresses themes familiar to white-collar employees and the workforce in general. It was a box office disappointment, making $12.2 million on a $10 million production budget; however, it sold well on home video, and has become a cult film.[6]
Several aspects of the film have become Internet memes. A scene in which the three main characters systematically destroy a dysfunctional printer has been widely parodied. Swingline introduced a red stapler to its product line after the Milton character used one painted in that color in the film. Judge's 2009 film Extract is also set in an office and was intended as a companion piece to Office Space.
Peter Gibbons is a frustrated and unmotivated programmer who works at a Texas-based software company Initech. Unable to stand up to his overcritical girlfriend, Anne, he is in love with local waitress Joanna, but is afraid to speak to her. He is friends with co-workers Samir Nagheenanajar (who hates that no one can pronounce his name) and Michael Bolton (who hates having the same name as the famous singer). Other co-workers are Milton Waddams, a meek collator who mumbles to himself and is mostly ignored by the rest of the office; and Tom Smykowski, a jaded product manager who is routinely scared of being fired. The staff suffers under top-heavy, callous management, especially from vice president Bill Lumbergh, whom Peter hates and avoids confronting. Lumbergh takes obvious delight in micromanaging all his staff in a drab monotone way. He repeatedly makes Milton move his desk, and assigns him humiliating tasks, while making Peter work almost every weekend.
Anne persuades Peter to attend an occupational hypnotherapy session led by Dr. Swanson. Swanson hypnotizes Peter and tells him to feel relaxed and stop caring about his job until he snaps his fingers. However, Swanson suddenly dies of a heart attack before snapping Peter out of it. Peter sleeps soundly through the next day, ignoring phone calls from Lumbergh and Anne, who angrily breaks up with him while confirming suspicions that she has been cheating on him.
A pair of business consultants are brought in to help the company downsize, and Peter begins dating Joanna. She works at a chain restaurant where she is required to wear "pieces of flair" (buttons allowing employees to "express themselves"). Her boss hassles her for not wearing more than the required minimum.
Peter eventually shows up to work and casually disregards office protocol, stealing Lumbergh's parking space, violating the dress code, and removing a cubicle wall that blocks his view out the window. Impressed by Peter's frank insights into Initech's problems, the consultants promote him despite Lumbergh's misgivings; however, Michael and Samir are both laid off. Milton is also expected to be laid off, but it is learned that it already happened five years ago but neither Milton nor the accounting department was notified due to a payroll glitch. Accounting is told to just stop Milton's salary payments without telling him. Milton is subjected to further mistreatment, including the confiscation of his beloved red stapler and the constant relocating of his desk, eventually down to the basement.
Tired of being mistreated, Peter, Michael, and Samir decide to take revenge by infecting Initech's accounting system with a computer virus designed by Michael to divert huge numbers of fractions of pennies into a bank account. Peter successfully installs the virus and on Michael and Samir's last day, he steals a frequently malfunctioning printer, which the three proceed to destroy in a field. At a weekend party, Peter hears rumors from a colleague that Joanna had slept with Lumbergh. When Joanna confirms this, a heated exchange leads to them breaking up. Frustrated with her job, Joanna quits in response to another lecture about her lack of "flair".
On Monday, Peter discovers that a bug in Michael's code has caused the virus to steal over $300,000 across the weekend, which guarantees they will be caught. Unable to conceal the crime, Peter decides to accept full responsibility, writing a confession and slipping it under Lumbergh's office door after hours, along with traveler's checks for the stolen money. Peter learns that the 'Lumbergh' with whom Joanna slept was Ron Lumbergh, another software engineer unrelated to Bill Lumbergh. He meets Joanna, who has started a new job at another restaurant. He apologizes, and they reconcile.
The next morning, Peter drives to Initech expecting to be arrested, but discovers that Milton has burnt down the building, destroying all evidence. Peter enjoys a new job as a construction worker with his neighbor Lawrence, while Samir and Michael begin new jobs at Initech's rival Initrode, and Milton, having found the traveler's checks, goes on vacation in Mexico.
Office Space originated in the series of three animated Milton short films that Judge created about an office worker by that name. They first aired on Liquid Television and on Saturday Night Live.[7] The inspiration came from a temp job which he had that involved alphabetizing purchase orders[8] and another job as an engineer for Parallax Graphics for three months in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1980s,[9] "just in the heart of Silicon Valley and in the middle of that overachiever yuppie thing, it was just awful."[10]
Milton was not the only character inspired by someone from Judge's past. During his jobs in Silicon Valley, where he barely made enough to afford his rent, he had a neighbor who was an auto mechanic. Not only did the man make more money, he had flexible work hours and seemed to Judge to be much more content with his life and work than he himself was. The neighbor inspired Lawrence, Peter's neighbor in the film.[12]
The setting of the film reflects a prevailing trend that Judge observed in the United States. "It seems like every city now has these identical office parks with identical adjoining chain restaurants", he said in an interview.[7] "There were a lot of people who wanted me to set this movie in Wall Street, or like the movie Brazil, but I wanted it very unglamorous, the kind of bleak work situation like I was in".[8]
Judge wrote a treatment in 1996, and the script after the first season of King of the Hill. Fox president Tom Rothman was happy with the draft as he was looking for lighter material to balance the event movies like Titanic that dominated the studio's output at the time. He considered it "the most brilliant workplace satire I'd ever read".[11] Despite that, Judge hated the ending and wished he could have completely rewritten the third act.[13]
David Herman was the only actor Judge had in mind for a specific part: Michael Bolton. Herman had been trying to leave his seven-year contract at MADtv, but the show would not let him. So, at its next table reading, he managed to get himself fired by screaming all his lines. Greg Daniels said they could always find a place for him on King of the Hill, where he had been doing some voice work; soon after he read Judge's Office Space script and was delighted with it.[11]
At the first read-through of the script, Judge was pleased with Herman's performance, and felt Stephen Root improved on his own take on Milton, but was not happy with the rest of the cast. He considered abandoning the film, but Rothman said it worked and just needed the right actors.[11] According to Judge, while Fox at first told him to just get the best actors possible since the film's budget would not be large enough to consider bankable stars, the studio soon changed its mind.
In the wake of the success of Good Will Hunting, he was advised to get that film's stars, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Again, he almost changed his mind about the film (Rothman said in 2019 that while A-list stars are often unlikely to take roles in low-budget productions, those films should nevertheless make the effort to attract them). He had agreed to meet with Damon in New York, but then Ron Livingston's agent asked if his client could audition for the lead. Casting director Nancy Klopper was impressed, and after Judge saw the video he told the studio that he wanted Livingston in the part.[11]
Jennifer Aniston was cast to accommodate Fox's desire to have a recognizable star in the film, although they were concerned that her part was so small; the subplot involving her battle with her boss over her "flair" was added as a result and she was written out of the sex-dream sequence, along with dialogue indicating she actually had slept with Lumbergh. However, she had liked the script since she was not getting many other films like that at that point, and she had gone to the same high school as Herman. Kate Hudson also read for the part.[11]
After casting the Indian American Ajay Naidu as Samir, who had originally been written as Iranian, the character was rewritten to be Jordanian, and Naidu worked with a dialect coach to get the accent right. John C. McGinley auditioned for Lumbergh, but was ultimately cast as Slydell. Judge says that after Gary Cole read for Lumbergh, there was no doubt as to who would play him. "He made the character 10 times funnier." A casting search in Texas yielded Greg Pitts for Drew, but no one who could play the Chotchkie's manager, so Judge took that role himself.[11]
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