Work still sucks – Remem­ber­ing Office Space at 20

In the past 20 years, come­dies set among the claus­tro­pho­bic cubi­cles of the mod­ern office have become com­mon­place. From Ricky Ger­vais and Stephen Merchant’s The Office (and its US name­sake), with David Brent and co exud­ing bleak bon­homie before yet anoth­er prat­fall, to Gra­ham Linehan’s appeal­ing bunch of side­lined eccentrics in The IT Crowd, the strange, famil­iar beasts of the cor­po­rate world have found their nat­ur­al home on the small screen.

Before all of them, though, there was Office Space. Released in 1999, Mike Judge’s first live-action film is a por­trait of a soft­ware com­pa­ny and its employ­ees as ren­dered by the director’s unique­ly warped com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty. Like many oth­er cult come­dies of its era, the film tanked at the box office, bare­ly recoup­ing its bud­get. How­ev­er, steady home video sales via word-of-mouth rec­om­men­da­tions even­tu­al­ly won it the fan­base it deserved.

Judge, cre­ator of Beav­is and Butthead and King of the Hill (with Greg Daniels), based the film on his own 1991 Mil­ton ani­mat­ed shorts cre­at­ed for Sat­ur­day Night Live. Mil­ton Wad­dams was rel­e­gat­ed to a sup­port­ing role in Office Space, but Stephen Root’s unfor­get­table per­for­mance ensured the char­ac­ter and his cher­ished red sta­pler a place in pop-cul­ture his­to­ry. Peer­ing from behind bot­tle-bot­tom glass­es so thick that Root need­ed con­tact lens­es to see, the peren­ni­al­ly thwart­ed Mil­ton is just one of the sev­er­al work­er drones endeared to us by Judge’s inim­itable per­spec­tive: one kinder, per­haps, than oth­er cor­po­rate chron­i­clers, but just as searching.

As with Judge’s under­rat­ed Idioc­ra­cy, there’s a warmth to the satire of Office Space, and an implic­it acknowl­edge­ment that we are all, in the end, fel­low trav­ellers in the same leaky boat. Some of us, how­ev­er, are bail­ing out rather more water than oth­ers. It’s this dawn­ing real­i­sa­tion that moti­vates pro­gram­mer Peter Gib­bons (Ron Liv­ingston) – aid­ed and abet­ted by his embit­tered col­leagues, Michael Bolton (David Her­man) and Samir Nagheenana­jar (Ajay Naidu) – to exact a qui­et revenge.

When his ther­a­pist dies of a heart attack short­ly after hyp­no­tis­ing him, Peter’s new­ly acquired insou­ciance wins him plau­dits at wretched soft­ware com­pa­ny Initech, let­ting him in on the secret that Michael and Samir are short­ly to be, in HR par­lance, ​‘let go’. This shared rev­e­la­tion sparks a scheme, inspired by, of all things, Super­man III: small amounts of mon­ey will be imper­cep­ti­bly removed from Initech’s account by a com­put­er virus, grad­u­al­ly build­ing up to the for­tune of the trio’s dreams. The plan works a lit­tle too well, leav­ing our trio with a major prob­lem on their hands.

Judge’s com­mit­ment to depict­ing the bland­ness of every­day bureau­cra­cy didn’t go down well with boss­es at 20^th Cen­tu­ry Fox, iron­i­cal­ly enough. For them, Office Space was too dull, too fix­at­ed on the dingy, cof­fee-ringed mun­dan­i­ty of the work­place to pull in a wide audi­ence. They were right – at least in the short term – yet it’s those same traits which ulti­mate­ly earned the film its cult sta­tus. The in-jokes, the pet­ty rival­ries, the sheer grind­ing bore­dom: it’s all instant­ly recog­nis­able, and weird­ly cathar­tic to see realised on screen.

The cast­ing played a big part in this. Liv­ingston is ide­al­ly suit­ed to the role of Peter, embold­ened by his new inner calm, while Her­man and Naidu make an indeli­ble impres­sion as his hap­less co-con­spir­a­tors. Bolton, per­ma­nent­ly enraged by the fail­ures of his office equip­ment (“PC Load Let­ter? What the fuck does that mean?”) and trau­ma­tised for life by the name he shares with a cer­tain titan of adult con­tem­po­rary music, is giv­en many of the best lines.

Diedrich Bader’s slack­er neigh­bour, Lawrence, is anoth­er sup­port­ing play­ers who lends the film its charm, while Jen­nifer Anis­ton – Judge’s one con­ces­sion to the exec­u­tive demands for more famous names to be added to the cast – brings her own brand of humour to the role of like­able wait­ress, Joan­na. Then, of course, there’s Gary Cole as Bill Lum­bergh, Peter’s smarmy douchebag of a boss who oozes self-impor­tance from every pore.

The com­bi­na­tion of sur­re­al humour and bare­ly repressed rage is potent through­out – one mem­o­rable scene unites our heroes in a Mafia-style hit on an erring print­er, Liv­ingston prowl­ing like a capo behind the oth­ers as they deal blow after blow, egged on by the Geto Boys’ ​‘Still’ on the sound­track. It’s this lega­cy that lingers in Judge’s cur­rent sit­com, Sil­i­con Val­ley, while the enthu­si­as­tic recep­tion for Boots Riley’s recent Sor­ry To Both­er You hints at the time­less­ness of a com­bi­na­tion of wit and right­eous anger at the iniq­ui­ties of cor­po­rate life.

As rel­e­vant as ever 20 years on from its ini­tial release, Office Space will be fun­ny until the robots final­ly replace us all. And when that day arrives, let’s see if they’ll come in on Saturday.