Mike Judge has done more than breathe life into his characters -- he has given many of them his voice as well.
Perhaps that's why the 46-year-old writer-director-animator-actor sounds so familiar -- the logy cadence of Butt-Head mixed with the flattened intonations of Hank Hill -- speaking by phone from his home state of Texas about his latest film, "Extract," which arrives in theaters Friday. Starring Jason Bateman, Ben Affleck and Mila Kunis, the shaggy comedy tells the tale of Joel Reynold (Bateman), owner of a flavor extract company, whose plans for success and love go sideways, thanks to an unresponsive wife, a drug-loving best friend, a moronic gigolo, a severed testicle and a beautiful con artist.
Though this story takes a different perspective from his most celebrated film, 1999's "Office Space," sympathizing with the boss rather than the workers, its absurdist observational humor and social satire are certainly from the same family.
"It doesn't beat you in the face, it doesn't beg for laughter," Bateman says of the film.
That approach is consistent throughout Judge's varied, unpredictable and uncompromising career. The first animated film he ever made, a two-minute short called "Office Space" back in 1991, featured characters later seen in the feature film -- Milton, a woebegone wage ape, and his smarmy, passive-aggressive boss. Looking for a venue for his work, Judge "literally just picked up the phone in Dallas and called 411, got addresses to send it to, and probably sent 15 tapes out," he explains.
The response was immediate. After his shorts were featured on the MTV show "Liquid Television," MTV then decided to spin one off into a series called "Beavis and Butt-Head," about two head-banging, emotionally stunted teenage couch potatoes who wreak unintended havoc on just about everyone they encounter. Going to New York to work on the show, he felt completely out of his league. "I'm just this guy from Texas sitting in the recording studio doing this dumb laugh, and these people are staring at me not laughing," he says. "It was like 'OK, I have to just believe in this myself.' "
The mind-set worked. To call the 1993 show a hit doesn't begin to explain the frenzy that followed. The 1996 feature film "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America" (written with Joe Stillman) was equally popular and surprised everyone with what was, at the time, the biggest December opening weekend in history with $20.1 million (made for around $12 million, it would go on to earn $63.1 million at the multiplex).
