i want you to hit me as hard as you can... In the year 2006
Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest reigned supreme at the box office while the
Boston crime saga The Departed led to the first and only Oscar for director Martin Scorsese.
But in the 15 years since then, one other film has also become a cultural milestone due to its
weirdly prescient views of the future. A film so neglected in its initial release that the
studio didn't even bother to make a trailer for it. Dubbed the smartest stupid movie ever made,
Idiocracy was barely a box office blip when it was quietly released in September 2006.
Why was this film from renowned creator Mike Judge tossed aside and left to die by the studio?
Mutilate your thirst as we find out what the [ __ ] happened to this movie!
Mike Judge is no prophet, just an average guy. Born in Ecuador and raised in New Mexico,
Judge would later graduate from University of California San Diego with a degree in physics.
But after working several menial jobs in his chosen field he found himself getting bored.
So he did what every person does when they don't like physics anymore, become a bass player for
the Shamu band at Sea World in San Diego and follow that by touring with blues musicians
Anson Funderbergh and Doyle Bramhall. At this point Judge had also started messing around with
animation, even purchasing a 16 millimeter camera to make his own animated shorts.
This led to the creation of Frog Baseball, based on a conversation he once overheard where two
people actually discussed such a thing. Judge thought to himself, who the hell would do that?
How about Beavis and Butthead! This short, which aired as part of the MTV series Liquid Television,
was so popular that it led to MTV signing Judge to create the now iconic series Beavis
and Butthead. The show aired nearly 200 episodes in the span of just five years with many critics
accusing the show of being responsible for the dumbing down of America. you're a stupid dumbass.
That controversy didn't matter as Beavis and Butthead has become one of television's
longest lasting properties with a successful theatrical film in 1996 a new season in 2011
and more soon to come. Judge would make the leap to live action with Office Space,
based on his animated Milton shorts, another case of the creator taking inspiration from real life.
The character was based on an actual man he had worked with in his engineering days.
Judge noticed that no one would ever talk to the man so one day he stopped and said hi
and that simple gesture gave the man the audience he had been waiting for to unload all of his
frustrations including a threat to burn the building down if they moved his desk again.
Even though we now think of Office Space as a modern classic, it was actually a blink and
you'll miss it affair. Even before its release the studio showed very little faith in the film,
telling Judge he needed to amp up the energy and get rid of the gangsta rap.
Leading up to its release in February 1999 the marketing left a lot to be desired
with Judge and several cast members absolutely hating the theatrical poster of a man covered
in post-it notes, making it look more like an ad for Big Bird or Office Depot, not a comedy film.
Office Space would only make 10 million dollars in theaters. One studio head reportedly told Judge,
nobody wants to see your little movie about ordinary people and their boring little lives.
Even though Office Space crashed and burned theatrically it quickly gained a following on
home video, particularly with viewers who could sympathize with its eerily accurate depiction
of nine to five cubicle life. Because of that eventual success 20th Century Fox was anticipating
Judge's next project. It took a few years but eventually Judge pitched his idea for Idiocracy.
The concept of a society that gradually gets dumber is actually not a new one,
previously explored in stories like Cyril M Kornbluth's 1951 short The Marching Morons.
But Judge credited his inspiration for the idea to a trip he once had taken to Disneyland. While he
and his daughter stood in line waiting for a ride two nearby women, each with children in strollers,
began arguing loudly and screaming profanities. This prompted Judge to think, is this the future
Walt Disney had envisioned for his theme park? He also thought about the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey,
contemplating a different futuristic setting where instead of the monolith and everything
being pristine and advanced, what if it was the Jerry Springer show and giant Walmarts?
When Judge sat down to write the script, which was then titled The United States of Uhh-merica,
he used his own school experience as a guideline. When a teacher would be disappointed in the
classes test scores and point out the Judge was the only student who did well, the other school
kids would be furious and say we are going to beat the [ __ ] out of you after class. So when writing
the movie he essentially imagined his junior high class taking over the world. Once the production
got rolling the film's cast came together quickly with Luke Wilson as ordinary guy Joe Bauers,
later known as Not Sure, a remarkably unremarkable army librarian selected for a suspended animation
experiment that goes wrong. He's joined by SNL regular Maya Rudolph as prostitute and future
first lady Rita, Dax Shepard as avid tv watcher and lawyer Frito Pendejo, and Terry Crews as
President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, a role he auditioned for several times,
even telling the casting director, if you could find anyone better than me for this role,
cast him immediately. The movie, tentatively retitled 3001, filmed around Texas in 2004.
According to the cast and crew it was a relatively straightforward and fun shoot,
but behind the scenes judge was dealing with headache after headache from the studio.
The budget was only a few million dollars but they were nickel and diming him,
refusing to pay for several visual effects shots. This resulted in Judge asking his friend Robert
Rodriguez to do some of the shots, which the filmmaker kindly supplied free of charge.
Another hassle Judge experienced was making sure his futuristic movie actually seemed like it was
set in the future, which meant choosing wardrobe that could be plausible 500 years from now.
One day the production's costume designer brought in some clunky footwear that was made of plastic.
Judge thought, look at these stupid plastic shoes, you'd have to be an idiot to wear them!
He was wary of using them in the film out of concern they could actually become popular by
the time it was released but he was assured that could never happen. Cut to two years later and
Crocs were everywhere! Another time Judge wasn't far off from reality was when he shot two minutes
of just a bare butt for the movie within a movie titled simply Ass. The crew went to a reform
school and used 250 students for a scene where a packed movie theater audience can't stop laughing
at this quote-unquote film. Judge assumed he would have to direct the crowd since a movie
featuring just a flatulent butt surely wouldn't make any sense without context. To his surprise
and dismay the audience all started laughing without direction and couldn't stop. Judge turned
to his director of photography and pondered why they were even bothering to make Idiocracy when
they could just release this. But the film's true challenges came after production wrapped.
Test screenings began in March 2005 yielding some pretty terrible results. The cast and crew
reconvened for reshoots to address some of the problems and the second round of test screenings
garnered much higher results. Judge and the studio butted heads over how to market the movie.
Judge felt burned by how Fox mishandled Office Space and didn't want the same fate for Idiocracy.
He said the studio was treating it like some kind of deep what if time travel was real movie
and not what he said it actually was, the story of an average guy who winds up in a stupid future.
With Office Space a newly minted cult hit and Beavis and Butthead still popular, you might think
Fox would have launched a heavy marketing campaign to let the world know something new was coming
from Mike Judge. And yet for months, silence. Idiocracy sat on the shelf for over a year and no
one involved with the film knew what was going on. Judge speculated that with Office Space the studio
spent millions on advertising only for the film to fail theatrically but become a hit on home video,
and perhaps the studio was thinking the same thing would happen with Idiocracy,
so why spend money to promote it? Others claim that Fox was simply disappointed because they
were under the impression that Idiocracy was going to be dumb yet funny like Beavis and Butthead,
and instead what they got was a funny movie that makes fun of the dumb. But the consensus seems to
be that Fox got cold feet when the companies that had allowed their brands to be used in the movie
got wind that their brains were actually being mocked. Welcome to Costco, i love you. While
making the film the studio's lawyers actually told judge to make fun of several big name brands as a
way to get them all to agree, as opposed to only choosing one or two and having them feel like they
were being singled out. This led to the creation of the red light district scene. Allegedly
prior to the movie's release several of these companies complained to Fox about their depictions
and not wanting to hurt potential future sponsorships, the studio agreed to bury the movie.
Just months before the film's release Judge was interviewed by Esquire magazine about his career.
During the interview Judge was waiting for Fox to call and allow him to show the reporter the
trailer for Idiocracy. The call from the studio never came. In fact no theatrical trailer was
released prior to the film hitting theaters, no press screenings were given to reviewers,
there were no ads of any kind save for a single theatrical poster, something a former marketing
head at Fox said he had never seen before. Idiocracy was released on only 130 screens
in September 2006, with many accusing the studio of giving it a theatrical release
purely to fulfill a contractual obligation. Fox even went so far as to label the movie Untitled
Mike Judge Comedy on popular ticketing sites like Moviefone and Fandango, creating confusion for
people that may have actually been looking for Idiocracy. With all of that working against it,
it's no wonder the film only managed to take in less than half a million dollars in its
entire theatrical run. The movie that the studio clearly wanted to fail did just that.
But then something happened. Critics who were denied an early screening finally saw the film and
began praising it, hailing it as the most potent political film of the year. Variety critic Robert
Koehler called it daring, saying it was one of the few films with any ideas. With the movie getting
a quick turnaround to home video, people were finally able to see Idiocracy. And see it they
did, as it amassed over 9 million dollars in home video rentals. For most movies that would be where
the story ends, but for Idiocracy that's only part of the story. When Judge sat down to write
this movie he exaggerated to such extremes that he never thought they would actually come true,
at least in his lifetime. When asked about this in a recent interview he commented, I'm no prophet,
I was off by about 490 years. There have been countless videos made comparing a certain
political leader's speeches to those by President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.
Fox even shut down the possibility of Terry Crews reprising his role as President Dwayne Elizondo
Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho for a series of fake campaign ads before the 2016 U.S. election.
The studio feared the comedic videos would be viewed by some as attack ads. Even the
movie's jokes that seemed outrageous, like the secretary of state being sponsored by Carl's Jr.
I'm the secretary of state brought to you by Carl's Jr. practically became prophecy
when the actual CEO of Carl's Jr. was nominated to become the United States secretary of labor.
But it's not just political aspects that have made Idiocracy so relevant. Its depiction of
a society reliant on pictures for communication mimics the growing obsession with emojis. The film
shows a world where curse words are no longer taboo but used as powerful marketing tools,
which seems familiar. Much like the movie's omnipresent fluid Brawndo we would actually
come to see COVID testing sites shamelessly sponsored by big name stores and drink companies.
Even a show like Ow My Balls or a clash between phallic monster trucks don't seem like they
would be that out of place on one of today's countless cable channels and streaming services.
Corporate mega mergers like the movies ATT Time Warner Taco Bell have practically become reality,
look no further than Disney's acquisitions of giant brands like Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel and
Idiocracy's owner 20th Century Fox. perhaps most outlandish of all was the movie's concept of
coffee shops that also offered sexual favors. Damn I could really go for a Starbucks you know. Yeah
well i really don't think we have time for a hand job Joe. Who would imagine that would become a
real thing? And yet there's the real-life Fellatio Cafe located in Geneva Switzerland. Sure it's not
Starbucks but are we really that far off? In 2017 Mike Judge was being interviewed on the Sony lot
by the New York Times. Tom Rothman, head of Fox at the time of Idiocracy's release, interrupted them
to admit that Idiocracy's failure was entirely his fault, to which Judge quickly replied, I agree.
Rothman said that Judge and the film were ahead of their time and perhaps the movie was made 10 years
too early. The past few years have seen a rise in comparisons between Idiocracy and the real world,
even the respected Time magazine published an article titled We Have Become an Idiocracy.
The term has become so much more than just the title of a great movie,
it's now used regularly when something moronic happens and the press dubs it an Idiocracy moment.
Three years after Idiocracy, Judge would return to directing with the comedy Extract,
which he financed independently after learning his lessons dealing with studios. Otherwise he's
been busy with the short-lived animated show The Goode Family, creating the hit HBO series Silicon
Valley, and more adolescent debauchery with new Beavis and Butthead material. Mike Judge has said
that with Office Space it was such a sweet success when it found an audience after the fact, but
with Idiocracy he doesn't feel that same sense of pride because that film's success has come at the
expense of the dumbing down of America. After all, he never dreamed he was making a documentary, and
yet here we are. Thank you for watching, if you like what you see please subscribe to our JoBlo
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