Writer/Director Mike Judge's new comedy Extract follows the life of an extract plant owner (Jason Bateman) whose personal and professional life undergoes an upheaval after an accident occurs at the factory. Judge is no stranger to workplace comedies, having written and directed Office Space, and told ComingSoon that Extract was inspired by his own experiences as a boss.
For years, I didn't come into this business until I was pushing 30, so I'd worked so many jobs. I'd never had anyone work for me, I was always the employee, and that's kinda what Office Space was about. When Beavis & Butt-head happened, I went from never having anybody work for me to having, like, 30 to as many as 90 people working for me, and I suddenly started becoming sympathetic to the bosses I had had, and just going, "God, these people don't appreciate anything; you try to be nice to them and they just take advantage of you..." Extract's kind of like a companion piece to Office Space, it's the inverse of it.
Judge not only wrote and directed Extract, but he also appears in the movie as a factory employee, which Judge admits was also an accident.
I screwed up in this one because I said early on when people at Miramax were asking me if I was going to be in it, I said, "Oh, maybe I'll play that guy." I described him as having a really big mustache and I wanted him to be really skinny but with a little belly. So once I said that, I think the casting people kind of got a little lazy and didn't look as hard for that role because by the time, I don't know, we had people reading it that sounded like Elmer Fudd, kind of almost like cartoonish blue collar people so I said, "All right, I'll [do it]." I didn't want the guy to look like I look.