Q: Is this perhaps your least social commentary project? It’s so specific to the characters and the situations?

MIKE: I guess it is. I don’t really think about those things, but eh, yeah, it is kind of specific and based on real characters.

Q: If you look at “Beavis & Butthead” talking about youth at that time and how it dealt with the small town mentality, “Office Space” dealing with the workspace and “Idiocracy” dealing with the future—

MIKE: Yeah, to me I was just thinking as far as the setting and the characters… the factory, the blue collar workplace in general, have their own unique set of characters in the same way that cubicles do. I wanted to do something like that. I worked in factory settings a couple of times… and um, I wanted to do another workplace comedy looking at those characters and starting writing a couple of stories. Mila [Kunis]’s character and the thing about the gigolo. And then I just decided to put the world in the point of view of the boss this time. I worked so many jobs. By the time I got into animation and whatever I was pushing 30. I had so many jobs. I always had employers. I never had anybody working for me. Suddenly when “Beavis & Butthead” happened I had 30 to 90 people working for me. And I just became very sympathetic to my old bosses. I was thinking, half of these people don’t appreciate anything. Take advantage of me. You try to be a nice boss and that doesn’t work. So I thought that would be funny. Especially with someone like Jason Bateman playing a guy who has to babysit all these people.

Q: David Koechner’s [character] felt like a real character to me. I pretty much know people who are like that… Was that based on real experience of someone you knew in your past or was it a compilation of people?

MIKE: Yeah, it’s a bit of a compilation. But there was this one woman when, uh, my ex-wife and I had this place out here actually. We’d come out in the summer. We had a gated community by the beach. There was only one way out. And this woman would just stop you. She would park herself in the window of your car… She single-handedly brought down the property value for me by, I dunno, hundreds of thousands or maybe a couple million… She basically gave you the choice of being rude or listening to her for an hour and a half. She was a master of making you think the conversation was winding down. Stick around for a little bit more. It’s just maddening. I’ve also known other people in my life where you can’t get off the phone and I just kind of wanted to recreate that experience in the movie… For some reason I really like watching those MSNBC prison documentaries partly because I think I can go, ‘Man, I’m glad I’m not in prison.’ Like a horror movie, you know, you get all those kind of emotional experiences in a movie. So I wanted to create a super annoying character where you think, ‘Man, I’m glad I’m not in that car!’ That’s how I was looking at it.

Q: What is your fascination with dumb people? They seem to appear in everything of yours?

MIKE: You know, I don’t completely know the answer! I think that I find it interesting, I guess. I feel dumb myself sometimes even though supposedly I’m not. I was thinking of that movie “Badlands” by Terrence Malick, a movie I’ve watched so many times. I love that movie. After the third or fourth time I watched it I realized, Martin Sheen’s character is just a dumbass. To me that’s a lot more interesting watching that kind of killer than a guy on a cell phone who goes [Imitates clichés movie psycho killer in a singo song voice] ‘You have exactly five minutes… The girl will get it!’ I don’t really know why. I guess… I’ve watched “Badlands” dozens of times. And yet those action movies with killers you watch once in theaters, maybe have a good time, and then forget about it. I haven’t figured that one out.

Q: Is there any hope for American business with those people in the workforce?

MIKE: I think so. I kind of exaggerated a little bit for comedy’s sake. But um, I also wanted it to feel like, you know, it’s possible to have a company with just 75 people and have it work. On “Beavis & Butthead,” I had 30 to 90 people working for me at any given time. You know, we’d have our problems but work them out. I think the place we shot [the film] in at the factory was about the size, about the number of employees, I was imagining. This guy, who owned the place, was very close to what I wrote. You’d think it was his life story. He’s like Jason Bateman, same age, similar look… the owner was wearing the same kind of clothes as Bateman. The same haircut. Literally. The guy had started as a model in college… I think it’s better for everybody, you know, the shareholders, the corporate thing off somewhere, you’re disconnected, but the good thing, the employees can go complain to the boss and the bad thing is employees can go complain to the boss.

Q: I wanted to ask you about, what I call the Mike Judge Easter Egg. You always pop up in your films in disguise, usually with a character with a handlebar mustache. Do you do that strictly for the fans?

MIKE: I really did it both times out of necessity. Well, in “Idiocracy” only my voice is in there. The mustache is really, um, a coincidence. In “Office Space,” it was something I had written at the last minute. I had read a bunch a people for the part, but couldn’t find somebody that could get it. They were trying to make the guy sound silly and goofy. But I really just wanted the guy to be passive-aggressive – really wants her to wear more pieces of flair but just didn’t want to come out and just say it. That was a really simple thing to me. I finally just said, well, I know how to do this. I actually auditioned myself, I got a camcorder so I can look at it. So they aren’t deliberate cameos, in this film [“Extract”], I screwed up in this one. Miramax asked me if I was going to be in it. I said, ‘Maybe I’ll play that guy with the mustache.’ I described him in the script as having a mustache, being really skinny but with a port belly. Once I said that I think the casting people got lazy and didn’t look very hard. Because by the time we did readings sounded like Elmer Fudd. Almost like cartoonish blue collar people. So I said alright, I’ll do it. I didn’t want the [character] to look like I look, so there you have it. Sorry, long answer.

Q: The factory you said you recorded in, did they make flavored extract or did they make something else that you had to re-dress?

MIKE: They basically did bottled water, flavored water and stuff like that. We had to run our bottles and our labels through their mechanism. It was fairly easy for them to adjust it… I love watching that machinery work which is partly a reason of why I did this film. I was really happy to see with what I had written wasn’t so far off from reality.

Q: Do you ever have specific actors in mind when you start writing character parts in your films?

MIKE: Not very often. In fact, well with this, I started writing it a long time ago and I hadn’t thought of anybody. Then after I started watching “Arrested Development” I did a re-write thinking about Jason. With “Idiocracy” I was thinking of Luke Wilson when I did a re-write. Um, other than that actually, I was thinking of Benicio del Toro for President Camacho. Benicio wasn’t [interested] anyway, Terry Crews came in it was just one of those times where it wasn’t how I imagined it but he just stole the part. He just did something with it that I liked, a lot.

Q: What was it then about Jason Bateman and Luke Wilson in their respective parts that you identified with?

MIKE: I guess both of them in different ways just how they react to certain things, react to crazy things. In “Office Space” also I was imagining a young Bob Newhart or Charles Grodin. With “Idiocracy” I was imagining somebody almost blue collar, somebody that you could believe could be in the Army and I think Luke has that… sometimes it is a hard thing to describe. But I like to find people that are fun watching react to certain [situations].

Q: What inspired you though to cast Gene Simmons in that cameo?

MIKE: [LAUGHS] Ahh, it’s funny. I didn’t realize how recognizable Gene was from his TV reality show. I thought, the only time I had seen him without his makeup was from “Politically Incorrect.” He has that voice, almost Robert Evans. I had written in the script, A Guy That Looks Like Gene Simmons with a Ponytail and a Suit and Tie. When we were reading for that, a lot of good actors wanted to do that. And yet something is not quite there. Then our producer John Altschuler said, ‘He has to be a running sore of a human being.’ And I said, ‘Well, Gene Simmons.’ Ok, it didn’t go quite like that. But we said, let’s give Gene a read. What I didn’t realize is that people in the audience would go, ‘Ohhhh, it’s Gene Simmons!’

Q: Why the title “Extract?” Does it have more thematic meaning?

MIKE: People pointed that out, ‘Extracting himself from this and that.’ But I didn’t think about any of that. But I actually am kind of interested in food flavoring. [LAUGHS] I dunno, when I was writing it and people would ask me about what it was about, I’d say, ‘A guy who owns a factory makes vanilla extract’ and they’d start laughing. So I figure I am one step ahead.

Q: You know, “Beavis & Butthead” always ended up with something insightful to say in spite of where they were coming from. What do you think they would have to say about “American Idol.”

MIKE: [LAUGHS] That would be fun to have them watch that actually. As a whole, I don’t now. I was addicted to “American Idol” although I didn’t watch it this year. But um, but I would have to really sit down and channel Beavis and Butthead. To me, the best Beavis & Butthead stuff was when they were just sort of talking about anything. You know, random. Except I’d like to think they came up with some insightful stuff.

Q: They came up before the whole defining internet generation...

MIKE: Yeah, we did an episode in 1993 just when the internet was starting to balloon. Of course it was about them trying to get porn and not succeeding. I dunno, but that’s what is tricky about a cartoon. I’m not doing that anymore, but… “King of the Hill” the world changes so much. Do we give them a cell phone now, or an episode where they buy a computer?

Q: Last time you did a comedy of this type you had resistance with studio heads. How was this time with delving into a working man’s company?

MIKE: Well, from the time I had a script I just decided I’m not going to give it to a studio. I gave it to Jason Bateman. Then I gave it to my producer partners. And we said let’s see if we can get private equity. And that’s exactly what we did. About a year before we actually starting making it, we had financing in place, and somebody lost money in the mortgage crisis, and then Jason had to go make “Hancock.” So then a year later we got it together again. The schedule roll worked out. And then Miramax came in with the last bit of financing – maybe I think 3 million of the 8 million budget – for domestic distribution. It was really set up in a way where we could own it and control it. Usually in the casting process, somebody like Dustin Milligan will come in and read the gigolo and be perfect. And then you have to deal with [Imitates anal retentive producer], ‘Hmmm, he’s okay, but how this person who gets more attention in magazines and…’ It is just so nice to just make the movie and not have to deal with those kinds of battles. Think about the stuff that counts. It’s hard enough as it is.

Q: The subplot in your movie about getting the gigolo to sleep with his own wife is one of the funniest subplots I’ve ever seen in a movie. I was just wondering what inspired you to develop that and at what point in the writing process did it become a marriage to the main story premise?

MIKE: Well it actually kind of started out as that. In fact, I realized it was only worthy of a subplot and the rest came out later… It came out of a conversation with two friends of mine – a long time ago like in 1999 – and we talked about the Howard Stern Show where he’d do that thing where [the guy] is married and the stripper is in there, or whatever, and telling him his wife has cancer. We’re talking about how he’s never going to cheat on her, the only way is if she died or if she cheated. And I thought maybe this was a messed up moment, that logic for a moment makes sense until you stop… I started writing that not knowing where I was going with it. I also had something about Mila’s thing, a separate thing. Sometimes it’s just little bits to see if I can work something out, and then I decided to make it all happen in this workplace comedy.

"Extract" is now playing in theaters everywhere.