Pete's weekend movie roundup: Awesome Interview with Mike Judge, plus: Extract review, John Fogerty, Alfred Hitchcock

Pete sits down with the creator of Extract, Office Space, King of the Hill, and Beavis and Butthead

Smart American comedies are a very precious commodity these days. Which is why the debut of a new feature from writer-director Mike Judge should make everyone who reads this go buy a ticket this week to see Extract, an amiable and likeable film with lots of laughs and peppered with Judge's unique brand of social satire and human observation. Extract tells the story of Joel (Jason Bateman, well-deserving of a leading role after resurrecting his career via Arrested Development), owner of a flavor-extract company in early stage mid-life crisis due to his balancing a mostly sexless marriage and a passionless career.

Judge is best known as the creator of Beavis and Butthead (he voiced both characters) and King of the Hill (he voiced Hank Hill and Boomhauer) on TV, and for the 1999 film Office Space, which, along with the Big Lebowski, has the strongest cult following of any comedy since This is Spinal Tap. Like Office Space, Extract is set in a workplace, but this time looks at the job from the perspective of the owner. I loved the movie, though its decidedly more laid back than Office Space, so fans of that film may go into Extract with too-high expectations

Extract's appeal comes from an entirely winning cast (Ben Affleck is particuarly delightful as a bartender who thinks pills and pot solve all problems, while Gen Simmons of Kiss is a scene stealer as a ball-busting attorney) and Judge's approach to the comic situations. The action and conflcit in the film is much more low-key than in most Holywood comedies, the kind that Judge finds more irritating than entertaining. "When I watch movies and TV, I'm always frustrated by the endless access to money the characters seem to have," Judge told me during an interview at the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco last week. "That's always bugged me. Even when I was a kid, my sister had all these Nancy Drew books and Nancy was always jumping on a plane to go solve the case somewhere, and I'd think, 'Where did she get the money for that?' "

I don't want to give too much away about Extract, except to see that I found it to be one of the most amusing and pleasant experiences I've had at the movies this year. A few references and scenes were so perfectly written and directed that I asked Judge for some specifics in his writing process.

Diablo: When I was a kid, there was a store in town called Gemco, a department store that had just about everything. In Extract, "Gemco" is repeatedly mentioned as the big-chain business in town that Joel's employees could go work for. Curious why you wrote that into the script.

Mike Judge: Party of it comes from a guy I knew when I spent a summer working in a factory, who kept saying, 'I could go get me a job at JC Penney'. But, specifically on Gemco, when I was in college, at UC San Diego, I knew a guy who worked at the Gemco store. He used to always say how great it was, that he could get me a job there if I wanted one. So I kind of put those two together.

Diablo: There was a movie last year called Pineapple Express that I kind of hated. It was stoner comedy that seemed to give its self credit as an instant classic just because it had a couple of pot smoking characters. There just wan't anything particularly original, or funny, about it. But there's a pot-smoking scene in this movie that was unlike anything I had ever seen, in which Jason Bateman is high, paranoid, and threatened by a psycho pot dealer. Were you specifically trying to beak some new ground in the stoner comedy subgenre?

Mike Judge: (Laughs) That's exactly right. Now I didn't see Pineapple Express, even though the trailers looked funny, because I was already working on Extract, and I just didn't want to know what they were doing with it. Now, I don't smoke pot—I'm allergic to it, I get completely paranoid and sick from it. And again, this scene was connected to a guy I knew at UCSD. My friend hd this roomate, and as soon as you walked into his room he pulled out this huge bong and said, "OK! No bullshit! You're smoking pot right now! Come on!" I had never seen a guy like that in a movie, this kind of macho-jock stoner.

The actor who plays the drug dealer, Matt Schulze, is really good in that scene. We shot that scene for about three long days and he and Jason and Ben were just fantastic. They were smoking this stuff called, like Wacky Weed, that's like a prop. It has no drug effect. Anyway, they were doing these long days, and we finished and Matt went out and won the Malibu Triathlon the next day.

JOHN FOGERTY: I've always been a big fan of East Bay native John Fogerty. Raised in El Cerrito, Fogerty is the singer and lead guitarist of the seminal late 60s band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, which recorded some of the era's greatest hits at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Alas, the breakup of Creedence is one of rock's saddest stories, as Fogerty, the band, and the owners of Fantasy Records had a nasty end. One of Fogerty's lesser-known works is the first solo album he recorded after the breakup, titled the Blue Grass Rangers. Fogerty played all the instruments and sang on every song on this 1973 collection of traditional country and bluegrass covers. Thirty-six years later, he has released The Blue Grass Rangers Rides Again, and the 12-song cd is a gem of the genre, and features guest vocals by Bruce Springsteen and Don Henley and Timothy B. Scmitt of the Eagles.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: Just got the new fall schedule for Palo Alto's Stanford Theatre, and its a gold mine for Alfred Hitchcock fans. Double features of all the big classics through October 1. And while I'm at it, I'll be interviewing the star of Hitchcock's The Birds ,Tippi Hedren, at the Orinda Theatre, before a screening of that horror masterpiece. Ticket sales benefit Hedren's Roar Foundation in Southern California. Click here for the info!

Posted at 05:23 PM in Pete's Popcorn Picks | Permalink