Idiocracy (Deep Dive Into A Movie That 'Was Too Optimistic')

WEBVTT

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Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, An Bettimore.

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I'm a producer, writer of film
and television and now a podcast producer.

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And despite having every streaming service,
I never know what to watch. So

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anytime I watch something good, I
talk about it on the show. This

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way, you'll never have the same
problem I do. I watched this tonight.

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There's always something good to watch.
Let's get started. Today on the

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show, we are doing a deep
dive on Idiocracy. So Indiocracy came out

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in two thousand and six. I
was in college. I saw every movie

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that came out, and I mean
I literally would go to the theater with

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my buddy Omar shout out to Omar
at noon and we would stay there until

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midnight. We would see every movie
possible. And I think then I saw

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maybe one poster for Idiocracy and that
was it. And I was totally the

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person who would have seen it.
Like a lot of people, I ended

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up discovering it later I think on
DVD probably, and just absolutely loved it

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immediately. As time has gone on, like a lot of Mike Judges movies,

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obviously, like Office Space, people
have discovered Idiocracy and now you see

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it playing all the time, like
now it's in the TNT Saturday at two

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pm slot, and it's just on
a lot. So it was interesting to

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look back because it was extremely painful
making this movie, sounds like for everyone

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involved. And despite that, I
think it's just a great movie and it's

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still really really funny, and it
only gets funnier as time moves along.

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Fast company dot Com I interviewed Mike
Judge on the ten year anniversary of the

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movie. This is a movie,
by the way, the grossed, according

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to fast company dot com, four
hundred and forty four thousand dollars of the

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box office. If by any chance
you have not seen the movie and you're

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listening this anyway, it's very simple
to explain. They basically take the most

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average man on planet Earth. They
show like a chart. At one point

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he's like the middle of the graph, Luke Wilson, and they freeze him

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for five hundred years, and then
he wakes up and he is by far

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the smartest man alive in the future
because we have all become incredibly dumb,

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which, by the way, one
of the maybe one of the great sort

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of montages of all time. The
way that they demonstrate this is they show

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the changing name of food Ruckers.
So it's I'm actually gonna look it up

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because I always referenced this that I
always get it on. So it's starts

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as food Ruckers, and it's it
starts as food Ruckers. That's in twenty

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seventy five, in twenty one fifty, it's foot Buckers, in twenty two

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twenty five it's butt Truckers, and
then in twenty five oh five it's just

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butt fuckers. No, that's how
they demonstrate the passage of time. Anyway,

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So they interviewed Mike Judge on the
tenth anniversary. He said the reason

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that they did some screenings on the
tenth anniversary views because Maya Rudolph was talking

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about it in relation to the election. Obviously it became relevant again with the

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rise of Donald Trump and all that. Mike Judge said. In addition to

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any political similarities to the film,
there apparently was a Fallacio cafe in Switzerland

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with latte's and sexual favors. It's
obviously similar to the Starbucks in the movie,

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which is again one of the hilarious
lines of the movie is Luke Wilson

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is like, we gotta go to
Starbucks and Dak Shepherd says that we don't

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have time for a hand up.
They asked Mike Judge, what would you

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do differently if Idiocy you're made today, and he says, there's things I

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didn't exaggerate nearly enough. Now it
seems like it would be optimistic to think

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they'll even be a country in five
hundred years. I guess the Earth would

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be completely wasted and there'd be some
people living in a bubble on Mars as

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the last colony of humans. They
also asked him about if it was basically

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satisfying that the movie kind of took
on this second life after it was initially

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unsuccessful on its theatrical release, and
he says it's not all that sweet because

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the success is maybe partly because the
world is getting bad. He said,

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Office Space was given a chance in
the theaters and it didn't do that well.

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It didn't do horribly, but it
didn't do great. This wasn't given

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a chance at all, so it
is really nice to see it getting attention,

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although it's usually the tension is more
just about how dumb things are getting

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in mainstream politics, so it's all
very surreal. They also asked Mike Judge

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about the anti intellectualism in the film, and he said, yeah, the

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way I sort of imagined it.
He talked about when he took math in

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junior high, and he said the
math teacher was really disappointed in the test

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scores and just said the only person
who got them all right was Mike Judge.

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Here, and this is Mike Judge's
quote. This is him telling about

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his experience. He said, and
then these guys has turned around like we're

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going to beat the shit out of
you after class. And I literally had

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to run an hide because I'd gotten
everything right on a math test. So

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I was kind of imagining my junior
high taking over the world. There's a

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website called Inverse that also did a
really great oral history of ideocracy that I'm

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gonna quote from here, but depending
on where you'd look, it says the

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budget was around three million. Mike
Judge said that when they were making the

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movie, it was an impossible schedule, an impossible budget. Every day it

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seemed like was at least sixteen hours. It was rough, but DVD sales

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would ultimately become more than twenty times
the film's box office. Part of the

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reason that this whole thing happened where
it was like, they made this movie,

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but they didn't really market it,
and it just seems like everybody was

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pissed off at each other. When
Office Space was done, even though it

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didn't do well right away, Tom
Rothman, who was president of twenty Century

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Fox, so they wanted to do
another movie with Mike Judge. This is

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according to Mike Judge an inverse.
Mike Judge pitched them three or four ideas

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and the one they said is the
big commercial movie you should do is this

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one, which he initially called three
thousand and one. According to Timothy Sorestead,

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who was the cinematographer, he said
that it was a very frustrating process

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for Mike because he had his deal
with Fox, he had done Office Space,

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and he was still doing King of
the Hill. I think it was

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pretty clear by the time he got
around to making Idiocracy that not only did

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he not want to work with Fox, they didn't really want to work with

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him. Mike Judge said they were
gung ho about it. There are always

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battles with the studio and that's kind
of the fun thing to talk about.

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Ultimately, Fox paid for both Office
Space and Indiocracy, So credit to them,

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So Mike Judge really kind of takes
the high ground here. He talks

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about the development process of coming up
with the movie, and he said,

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I started talking to other writers.
Eton Cohen was over at my house and

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I told him about the idea,
and the next day he said, I

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really liked that idea. I was
thinking there could be a fart museum.

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And Mike Judge said, I thought, maybe his head's in the right place

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for this. So initially when they
wrote the movie, Mike Judge said that

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there was no president Camacho. The
country was run by an orating system AI

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that was just super annoying and that
ultimately didn't work. They showed it to

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some actors, people just didn't like
it that much, so he you know,

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they rewrote it and eventually they got
to Camancho Euton. Cohen said that

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he thought it was kind of satisfying
that conservatives thought they were making fun of

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liberals and liberals so they were making
fun of conservatives. So it's a movie

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that you could really watch with anybody
across the political spectrum and they will find

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it funny. Money was a constant
issue apparently on the shoot. Mike Judge

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said there was a meeting where they
argued over a shot that cost three thousand

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dollars and at some point Mike Judd
said, I'll just pay for it.

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I'd rather pay thirty thousand dollars than
ever have this meeting again. One of

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the concept artists also spoke in this
and he said that I put a big,

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frank Gary structure of a woman holding
the Washington Monument like a stripper pole.

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He's just talking about his different ideas. The cinematographer said, the VFX

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company that came in, the guy
that they sent down to excess with us

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clearly didn't know what he was doing. We would ask him what do you

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need from us? And what's going
to go behind here? And he would

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get all flustered and nervous. Quote. They found a VFX company that would

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do it for the price, but
you get what you pay for. We

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were ten million dollars short of what
we needed. The part in the movie

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where they have the it's a movie
of a guy's ass farting that wins all

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the Oscars, including Best Screenplay,
they actually did that for real, Like

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they got two hundred extras they rented
out of theater and they projected up this

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image if this guy's butt farted it, and he said, everybody started laughing,

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exactly as they say in the script. The cinematographer says that Mike Judge

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told him that basically Fox didn't even
want to cut a trailer. But Mike

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Judge says, I gotta keep saying. Fox did pay for the movie.

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It's not like they were really the
bad guy office space. They spent money

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promoting it. It didn't do well
the box office. It caught on its

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own on VHS and ended up making
them a lot of money. So I

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think they looked at it like,
well, what did we do wrong there?

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We spent money promoting it. If
the people are going to find it,

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they're gonna find it anyway, which, by the way, up being

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true. One of the members of
the creative team wrote in the center,

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you know this royal history. It
was a huge stain in my career for

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years before it became a cult classic, and before it was something I was

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really proud of. Honestly, I
had to keep it off my resume for

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years to try and get another movie. The movie was strangely prescient about the

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popularity of the shoes crocs. Mike
Judge said crocs were just a start up

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in Denver. Deborah McGuire, the
costume designers showed me pictures of these things

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and said, yeah, they seem
perfectly horrible and for our world, meaning

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for the movie. And Mike Judge
said, if it's a startup, if

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it's a startup, what if by
the time the movie comes out, everyone's

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wearing them? And the costume designer
said, oh, that's never gonna happen.

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So Mike Judge said, I'm happy
for the movie and sad for the

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world. I guess the movie also, you know, it's if you look

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at the Rotten Tomatoes, it's one
of those things where you can see critics

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have put reviews later. At the
time when it came out, I think

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the reviews were more mixed. You
know. Now it's mostly positive, but

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you can look at you know,
Variety's review and they say that Idiocracy is

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absolutely a satire for its time.
What Judge is less short of here than

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in his previous perfectly pitched live action
comedy Office Space, is how to build

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a complete movie around his key ideas. So that's the review that was written

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at the time. Another review was
written in twenty sixteen. Obviously, like

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way after the fact, after it
was already a cult classic kind of movie.

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The whole film has a drab,
so mambulant rhythm. Intentional or not,

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this is part of its genius,
which again it's I think it all

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worked out the way it was supposed
to. The fact that the movie looks

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kind of shitty, I think it's
part of what it's part of its charm.

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The fact that the vfx are like
super clunky. Again, if it

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was like so slick and they got
every dollar they needed to make it really

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beautiful. In terms of the way
it looked, I don't think it would

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have been as funny. I think
it actually perfectly fits the tone of the

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movie. Apparently, Terry Crews was
in talks with Mike Judge and Fox over

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a possible Idiocracy spin off featuring his
president Camadra character. They came apparently very

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close to doing Idiocracy themed campaign ads
opposing Donald Trump's presidential campaign. It sounds

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like maybe Fox did not give them
permission to do so, but Terry Crews

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told Business Insider the ads would have
featured Camacho wrestling in a cage match against

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the other presidential candidates. So what
a shade of the world was deprived of

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that. All these movies that I've
covered where I've done this kind of deep

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dive are movies that have stood the
test of time, and almost uniformly,

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the making of these movies was extremely
painful, and people were pissed at each

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other. They were like, many
times not happy they even made the movie.

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A lot of times the things that
are great about the movie are things

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that they explicitly tried not to have. So it's just been fascinating to see

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that. Very encouraging if you're a
creative person. So if you work on

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a project and you're like, this
sucks. I hate everybody, like,

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this is all going We're all got
every possible way. Uh it might maybe

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it'll be great, maybe a great
movie. That is the show for today.

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If you're listening to an enjoying the
show, please leave us a five

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star review on Apple Podcasts or anywhere
you're listening. Until next time. Bye bye m