For fans of the cult phenomenon that Office Space has become, writer and director Mike Judge has a new film in store that more closely recalls the Miltons, Peters, and Lumberghs than any of his subsequent movies to date. As a borderline obsessed Office Space fan myself, I more than jumped at the opportunity to sit down with a few other area journalists and Judge himself for a quick Q & A on his upcoming comedy, Extract. This time around Judge looks at the imperfections and frustrations of the business world through the eyes of the boss and how the dream of a great job with a nice house and a beautiful wife are sometimes more trouble than they're worth. The following are a few of the questions we had the opportunity to ask regarding the film and also Judge's previous work and some of his perspectives on where he finds his inspiration for characters, his ideas for some of the funniest scenes, and what it's like to work with Jason Bateman.

A lot of your characters are like the everyday man, people we meet in our everyday lives. What is it about them that brings out the comedy for you?

"I was a person who did imitations back in (I think I peaked in) high school. I could imitate the teachers and&ellips; I didn't really imitate celebrities. I imitated people I knew. That stuff was always more interesting. You can turn on the TV and see someone imitating somebody famous. It's kind of rare when someone's imitating somebody that you know. That's a little more&ellips; special, for lack of a better word. So I guess that's part of it. Also, the few times you'd see something like this, like Harvey Pekar comics which I first saw in National Lampoon, I always thought, 'Wow, that'd be really cool to see something like that animated.' He's this guy who did American Splendor and he wrote about [the VA hospital where he worked in Cleveland] and this great stuff about the people he worked with and I just loved it and to me that was way more interesting than a superhero comic book&ellips; and I'm not sure why. I guess it's the way I'm wired. I also saw it as something that not a lot of people are doing; that's the other thing. I thought: you know, find a niche: rather than try to do what everyone else is doing, and not be as good, why not try something that's different?"

Do you think it's a realistic movie then? "Yeah, I think it's fairly realistic in movieland as that goes. I think pretty much everything going on could possibly happen. Same thing with Office Space, maybe. You know, I have worked in factories before, not extract, but I worked in a place that made guitar amps and bass amps. I worked in a place in Albuquerque that stuffed those snack machines that go into all the cubicles, so I have a little experience."

For people who are unfamiliar with your work or may have heard about your movie but aren't really sure what to expect, how would you sell the movie to viewers potentially?

"Luckily that's not my job. I actually think they've done some pretty good trailers and I would say I like the idea because it's like Office Space but this time it's sympathetic to the boss, the guy who owns the place. And you know I have people all the time saying, 'When are you gonna do another Office Space type movie?' So I think that's probably the best way to try to sell it."

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