'Office Space' became beloved because it hit home

Stephen Root feels boxed in during 1999’s “Office Space.” (Twentieth Century Fox/MovieStillsDB.com)

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"Office Space"
Released Feb. 19, 1999
Directed by Mike Judge
Where to Watch

The moment I fell in love with "Office Space" was when Peter (Ron Livingston) walks into his job at Initech Monday morning. He pauses wearily to look at the office door's metal handle before attempting to grab it and is immediately greeted with a small spark of static electricity. 

I was working at a movie theater when "Office Space" was released in early February 1999. It remains one of my favorite jobs ever; while it was part-time and the pay was low, many of my co-workers became lifelong friends, and I genuinely loved being around something I loved. I previously worked full-time at a small community newspaper, but I was miserable there for several reasons. One of which was the static spark I received every time I walked into the building.

That moment is just one of several sprinkled throughout "Office Space" that resonated with me, and eventually, millions of other people who became fans. 

The opening minutes of "Office Space" establish the mind-numbing routine endured by its characters. Peter and his co-workers Michael Bolton (David Herman) and Samir Nagheenanajar (Ajay Naidu) drive into work individually, each stuck in a traffic jam where the view never changes and the buildings around them look identical. Peter finally makes it in, receives the aforementioned static shock for his trouble, and is immediately hassled by multiple supervisors. Peter forgot to add a cover sheet to the TPS reports for Initech. This company values boring presentation over efficiency, and it's enough for several people to stop by his cubicle to remind him about office policy. 

Samir and Michael have their own issues. Samir is in a constant battle with the office printer and fax machine, along with the cultural insensitivity displayed by co-workers. Michael Bolton is plagued by being … well, named Michael Bolton, which might be the cruelest fate suffered by anybody in the 90s. Other co-workers include Tom (Richard Riehle) and Milton (Stephen Root), who have utterly undefinable job responsibilities at Initech. A bewildered consultant asks Tom, "What would you say … you do here?" 

It's a job where nobody's going anywhere, but they have nowhere else to be, so they keep showing up.

It's all supervised by Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole), a fashionable advocate for JCPenney's with sleepy monotone delivery that belies his employees' exploitation. A pair of outside consultants are brought into Initech to downsize the workforce, but Lumbergh's already made up his mind on several employees. While Peter is miserable about the job, he attends a hypnosis session where the host dies midway through the process, leaving Peter in a state of subconscious apathy. Now Peter is casually working on getting fired while living the comfortable life he wants to lead, but his behavior has unexpected results.

Director and writer Mike Judge based "Office Space" on his experiences working as an office temp, which he originally developed into a short animated film, "Milton." That short gained enough attention to lead Judge to create the popular MTV series, "Beavis and Butt-Head," in 1993, and Fox's "King of the Hill" in 1997. Twentieth Century Fox signed Judge to turn "Milton" into a feature film, but Judge decided to expand the cast of characters and make Milton a supporting player.

However, when it came to casting the lead actor as Peter, the studio was interested in actors like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who were at the time newly-minted stars after 1997's "Good Will Hunting." Judge pushed back against the studio's plan as he preferred Livingston after his audition. 

"What most actors did was play it like, 'This place is bullshit, and I deserve better, and I'm going to get out of here,'" Judge said in an oral history of "Office Space" for The Ringer. "To me, the attitude was, 'I'm actually lucky to have this job.' It makes the fact that I don't like it more depressing because I didn't think I deserved better. Ron played it like that."

Judge eventually won his battle to keep Livingston, and the marketable star casting went to Jennifer Aniston at the height of her fame from the "Friends" television show. Aniston played Joanna, the perpetual chain restaurant waitress in constant need of more "flair," another nod to the monotonous corporate lifestyle experience portrayed in "Office Space."

While Judge's satirical vision accurately captured the modern workplace's banal aesthetics, "Office Space" lacked the kind of heightened wacky characters or plot that make a studio comedy marketable. The movie poster featured a man covered in Post It notes with the tag, "Work sucks," which didn't capture the film's vibe. 

"This looks like an ad for Office Depot," Judge told The Ringer.

Audiences responded in kind. "Office Space" debuted in eighth place at the box office, and it never got better, losing audiences and screens before it vanished six weeks later with a total gross of $10.6 million. The TV remake of "My Favorite Martian" was more popular in theaters.

"A shapeless comedy of little merit," said Ian Nathan in his review for Empire. 

But like many movies profiled here, "Office Space" found its audience thanks to word of mouth after cable TV airings and DVD sales. The Internet was expanding into our everyday lives, and quotes from "Office Space" proved to be the kind of reliable coded language we could share to make friends out of virtual strangers. 

The cast and crew began to realize the movie had some legs as well.

"It was about a year later," Cole said during a 20th-anniversary panel during the Austin Film Festival. "I was in Chicago doing a play, and I was walking around a lot because I was living right next to the theater, so I was on the street a lot. And people at first weren't stopping me, but they were shouting the dialogue at me. They were shouting across the street, 'Did you get the TPS report?" I was kind of surprised. I thought, 'Didn't this movie go away in four weeks?'"

"It was perfect the way it happened because part of the reason the movie's had such an enduring appeal is everybody feels like they discovered it and introduced it to their friends," Livingston told The Ringer. "It's not something that was shoved down your throat or that you were told you were supposed to be excited about. Everybody discovered it on their own."

My discovery happened working at a multiplex, where I could pop into one of the 12 screens at will and watch movies 15 minutes at a time while keeping an eye on the audience. It's an experience not unlike flipping channels at home; something captures your attention for a moment, and before you realize it, you watch the rest of it. It gave me an early appreciation for many cult comedies of that era, including "Office Space," "Rushmore," "The Big Lebowski," and the original "Austin Powers," that bombed early but found popularity nonetheless because I was exposed to them regularly. Once these movies arrived on the small screen, many others followed the same path.

Decades after its release, "Office Space" continues to find new fans because corporate office culture hasn't changed much. People still end up in jobs they don't want, working under bosses that push their buttons. Judge's tone and style let all of us see ourselves in the environment of "Office Space" and laugh at it as we were sharing happy hour drinks with co-workers. 

As an early fan, watching Peter walk away from a "real job" into something else because it made him happier was like seeing a reflection.

Next Week: "Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai"