Editing Office Space (section)

==Production==

===Development===
''Office Space'' originated in the series of three animated ''[[Milton (cartoon)|Milton]]'' [[short film]]s that Judge created about an office worker by that name. They first aired on ''[[Liquid Television]]'' and on ''[[Saturday Night Live]]''.<ref name="fierman">{{cite magazine | last = Fierman | first = Daniel | title = Judge's Dread | magazine = Entertainment Weekly | date = February 26, 1999 | url = https://ew.com/article/1999/02/19/mike-judge-takes-live-action/ | access-date = 2007-08-16 }}</ref> The inspiration came from a temp job which he had that involved alphabetizing purchase orders<ref name="beale">{{cite news | last = Beale | first = Lewis | title = Mr. Beavis Goes to Work | work = [[New York Daily News]] | date = February 21, 1999 | url =http://www.nydailynews.com/mr-beavis-work-irreverent-animator-s-newest-target-corporate-america-live-action-film-office-space-article-1.839280 | access-date =2013-05-03 }}</ref> and another job as an engineer for [[Parallax Graphics]] for three months in the [[San Francisco Bay Area]] during the 1980s,<ref name=Leckart2014>{{cite magazine | last=Leckart | first=Steven | date=April 2, 2014 | url=http://www.wired.com/2014/04/mike-judge-silicon-valley/ | title=Mike Judge Skewers Silicon Valley With the Satire of Our Dreams | magazine=Wired | publisher=Condé Nast | archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140402203558/http://www.wired.com/2014/04/mike-judge-silicon-valley/ | archivedate=April 2, 2014}}</ref> "just in the heart of [[Silicon Valley]] and in the middle of that overachiever [[yuppie]] thing, it was just awful."<ref name="sherman">{{cite news | last = Sherman | first = Paul | title = Humorist is a good Judge of office angst | work = [[Boston Herald]] | date = February 21, 1999 }}</ref>

[[Peter Chernin]], head of [[20th Century Fox]], where Judge had a deal, wanted to make a film out of the Milton character,<ref name="EW oral history">{{cite news|last=Hunt|first=Stacey Wilson|title=The oral history of 'Office Space': Behind the scenes of the cult classic|url=https://ew.com/movies/2019/01/11/office-space-oral-history/|newspaper=[[Entertainment Weekly]]|date=January 11, 2019|access-date=February 3, 2019}}</ref> inspired by a former coworker of Judge's in Silicon Valley who had threatened to quit if the company moved his desk again.<ref name="NYTmag Judge article">{{cite news|last=Staley|first=Willy|title=The Bard of Suck|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/magazine/mike-judge-the-bard-of-suck.html|newspaper=[[The New York Times Magazine]]|date=April 13, 2017|access-date=February 21, 2019}}</ref> "You don't want to know what he does at home after work", Judge replied. Instead he suggested an [[ensemble cast]]–based film; someone at the studio responded with ''[[Car Wash (film)|Car Wash]]'' but "just set in an office."<ref name="sherman"/>

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.<ref name="NYTmag Judge article" />

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.<ref name="fierman"/> "There were a lot of people who wanted me to set this movie in [[Wall Street]], or like the movie ''[[Brazil (1985 film)|Brazil]]'', but I wanted it very unglamorous, the kind of bleak work situation like I was in".<ref name="beale"/>

Judge wrote a [[Film treatment|treatment]] in 1996, and the script after [[King of the Hill (season 1)|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 movie]]s like ''[[Titanic (1997 film)|Titanic]]'' that dominated the studio's output at the time. He considered it "the most brilliant workplace satire I'd ever read".<ref name="EW oral history" /> Despite that, Judge hated the ending and wished he could have completely rewritten the third act.<ref name="Valby" />

===Casting===
[[File:Jennifer Aniston 2011 (cropped).jpg|thumb|[[Jennifer Aniston]] was cast in ''Office Space'' to feature a recognizable star.]]
[[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.<ref name="EW oral history" />

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.<ref name="EW oral history" /> 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 star]]s, 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.<ref name="EW oral history" />

[[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, [[Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School]] in New York. [[Kate Hudson]] also read for the part.<ref name="EW oral history" />

After casting the [[Indian American]] [[Ajay Naidu]] as Samir, who had originally been written as [[Iranian American|Iranian]], the character was rewritten to be [[Jordanian American|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.<ref name="EW oral history" />

===Principal photography===

Judge made the transition from animation to live-action with the help of [[Tim Suhrstedt]], the film's [[director of photography]], who taught him about lenses and where to put the camera. Judge says, "I had a great crew, and it's good going into it not pretending you're an expert".<ref name="beale"/> [[Principal photography]] began in Texas in May 1998.<ref name="EW oral history" /><ref>Macor, A., 2010. Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids: Thirty Years of Filmmaking in Austin, Texas.</ref>

Several issues arose during filming. By the third day of shooting, temperatures had risen over 100&nbsp;°F (38&nbsp;°C), and smoke from fires in Mexico was filling the sky over [[Austin, Texas|Austin]], making it white. Suhrstedt says that forced the postponement of the opening traffic-jam scene until it cleared.<ref name="EW oral history" />

Studio executives who saw the [[dailies]] were not happy with the footage that Judge was getting. Judge quoted studio executives as stating, "More energy! More energy! We gotta reshoot it! You're failing! You're failing!"<ref name="Valby">{{cite web |last1=Valby |first1=Kate |title=The Fax of Life |url=https://ew.com/article/2003/05/23/fax-life/ |website=EW.com |publisher=Entertainment Weekly` |access-date=10 August 2021 |ref=Valby |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190622041815/https://ew.com/article/2003/05/23/fax-life/ |archive-date=June 22, 2019}}</ref> They also asked for Livingston to smile more. But at that point, only the early scenes had been filmed; Judge told the studio that happier scenes would come later. Livingston says he heard they believed he was on drugs and were considering firing him.<ref name="EW oral history" />

In addition, Fox did not like the [[gangsta rap]] music used in the film.<ref name="Valby"/> Rothman told him he had to take it out, and Judge said after production he would do so if the next [[focus group]] also disliked it. A young man in that focus group said the fact that the characters worked in an office but listened to gangsta rap was one of the things he liked about the movie, and Rothman relented.<ref name="EW oral history" />

The scene where Peter, Michael and Samir take their office printer out into a field and batter it to pieces was inspired by Judge's experience with his own printer while writing ''[[Beavis and Butt-head Do America]]''. He told his cowriter [[Joe Stillman]] that he was so frustrated by it that when he was done with the script he planned to take it out into a field and destroy it while videotaping the process. Suhrstedt says the whole sequence was largely improvised, but Naidu adds that they were trying to do it in a way that evoked how the [[Italian-American Mafia|Mafia]] would do it to someone it wanted to punish or kill; Livingston thus played his part like the "[[Boss (crime)|don]]", circling behind Naidu and Herman while they struck the blows with bat, feet and fists. Years afterward, Naidu says, he met some actual mafiosi in New York who told him that they were huge fans of the film, and the scene was "authentic".<ref name="EW oral history" />

McGinley says the film contains many improvised moments. "It was like [[jazz]] on that set". One example he recalled was when [[Paul Willson]] as Bob Porter cannot pronounce Samir's last name: "Naga ... Naga ... well, not gonna work here anymore anyway." Naidu, for his part, improvised the [[break dancing]], which he did with local friends after shooting his scenes during the day.<ref name="EW oral history" />

The improvisation also helped solve some problems with the script. Originally Bolton was to refer to [[Michael Bolton|the singer he shared his name with]] as a "no-singing asshole". However, Herman recalled, it was decided that the film could not say that since it would imply he did not sing his own songs, so he came up with "no-talent ass-clown".<ref name="EW oral history" />

The Alligator Grill, on South Lamar Blvd, Austin, was used for the interior shots of Chotchkies, Joanna's workplace.<ref name=theringer /><ref>
*https://atxgossip.com/movie-made-in-austin-office-space-filming-locations/
*https://web.archive.org/web/20231019092824/https://1063thebuzz.com/office-space-restaurant/
*https://web.archive.org/web/20011202092627/https://www.alligatorgrill.com/
*https://www.ionart.com/signs-1/alligator-grill
*https://moviemaps.org/locations/11h
</ref>

===Production design===

Judge was very exacting in his demands for how the Initech set looked; he said regularly that it had to seem "oppressive".<ref name=theringer >{{Cite news |last=Kring-Schreifels |first=Jake |date=2019-02-19 |title=Follow the Path of Least Resistance: An Oral History of 'Office Space' |url=https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/2/19/18228673/office-space-oral-history |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190219190920/https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/2/19/18228673/office-space-oral-history |url-status=dead |archive-date=2019-02-19 |access-date=2023-10-04  |website=[[The Ringer (website)|The Ringer]] |language=en}}</ref> The production went as far as [[screen test|screen-testing]] different types of gray [[cubicle]]s; Judge also wanted the cubicles to be tall so that Lumbergh would have to lean in to be seen from Peter's desk.<ref name=theringer /> Considerable effort was also expended to making sure the [[TPS report#In popular culture|TPS reports]] looked realistic.<ref name="EW oral history" />

The glasses Root wore to play Milton had lenses so thick that he had to wear [[contact lens]]es to see through them. Even so, he still had no [[depth perception]]; he had to practice reaching for the stapler and was as a result grateful it had been painted red. [[Swingline]] provided the stapler after the filmmakers could not get permission to use either the Boston or [[Bostitch]] brands from their manufacturer.<ref name="EW oral history" />