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Mike Judge used to fantasize about having a job where everybody left him alone. “After I quit engineering, I thought I’d be a fireman in a place where there weren’t any fires. I didn’t act on that one,” says the writer/director of Extract.

In reality, Judge, the man behind Office Space and Idiocracy, has had many jobs. It seems with each story he tells he reveals another odd employment location: Jack in the Box or various unspecified “cubicles.” But it was his experiences in the entertainment industry that inspired his newest workplace comedy, Extract.

When Judge was around 30, he got a career making gig producing the animated series Beavis and Butt-Head for MTV, which transformed this jack of all trades into the manager of 30 to 90 people. “I started to become sympathetic to my bosses. If you try to be a nice boss you kind of get taken advantage of,” says Judge of the experience.

When the show had become popular enough, Geffen decided to put out a Beavis and Butthead soundtrack. Judge drew the line art for the CD and then hired someone to paint backgrounds. “It’s something you’d normally pay someone $8 to $10 an hour for but since I knew we had some money I threw him a bone and got him a slice of the budget, like $800 or something, and he’s painting it and I hear him going “This is bulls*** man. These guys are gonna make millions of dollars and they’re giving me $800. F*** them, man.” I let it fester and then said something to him and he apologized.” This apology is not a small part of the story. While Judge’s working heroes are beset with obstacles and frustrated by their place in a larger system they can’t control, they never cease to be decent. Well, maybe not all of them, and maybe not all the time.

The protagonist of Extract, played by Jason Bateman, has built a successful extract factory from the ground up. When a buyout from a major corporation seems imminent, an industrial accident wounds a floor manager and a pretty con-artist comes in to make trouble and fleece the company. Meanwhile, Joel (Bateman) is losing a grip on his employees and his marriage, and all his best friend can do is hook him up with drugs and an amateur male prostitute to seduce his wife. “I feel this is the same character who was in Office Space, but now he’s running the place,” says the writer/director.

Judge says he had a few ideas brewing about a really good-looking sociopath. While the character played by Mila Kunis is based on a real person (only sketchily defined by Judge in the interview) it seems two experiences formed the girl that eventually appears onscreen. When Judge was in school he had a job as a teacher’s assistant in a physics class. “There was this girl—you had to have 16 out of 18 to pass and when I told her she got 14 she had this entitlement and told the professor I’d told her the wrong place for the final. She had no problem with me possibly getting fired just so that she wouldn’t have to retake.” And then he adds, “Also, I was in a camera store and I was asking someone about a lens and a really hot girl came in and suddenly it was like everything was thrown out of whack.”

The script for Extract was originally pitched when Judge was still under contract with Fox. After the menial box office success of Office Space, he pitched Extract to unsupportive voices, who then put their money towards Idiocracy. After production, Idiocracy was buried in small markets and never saw the full throttle release it deserved. Funny enough, both box office bruisers have become cult hits of a stature that couldn’t have been predicted. Fans have even gone as far as to lobby for products that appear in the film. Milton (Stephen Root’s character in Office Space) obsessively protects his red Swingline stapler, and after having retired red staplers for years, public demand inspired Swingline to begin producing them again.

The wealth of support Judge’s past films have gained on DVD make them an interesting long-term investment. After Jason Bateman’s successful turn on Arrested Development, producers were able to raise 60-70% of their budget through private equity. Miramax put up the rest when they picked the film up for distribution.

When asked if he sees himself in his protagonists he said, “I’m usually kind of the protagonist—at least the last three—well, up to a certain point.”