Idiocracy

[Karnage 0]

Watched this movie on DVD yesterday and after reading about the whole story behind it's distribution, its a real shame to know that this movie was only released in SIX theatres....two years after it was completed. Hopefully this Mike Judge film experiences the same revival as Office Space did on Home Video and DVD. The movie is far from perfect but I wouldn't be surprised if it was because of cutting prior to its extremely limited release. Who knows, maybe if it really becomes a hit on DVD, we may see a director's cut or something down the line.

 

Idiocracy is hilarious and some scenes really make you think about how eerily possible this future really is.

[bob_barron 0]

Is there a site where you can read about its troubled distribution history?

[Karnage 0]

http://www.austin360.com/movies/content/mo...1idiocracy.html

Was 'Idiocracy' treated idiotically?

Mike Judge's new Austin comedy finally sees the light of day, if minimally

By Chris Garcia

AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILM WRITER

 

Can it really be that bad?

 

Fox Studios seems to think so. It's been sitting on Mike Judge's comedy "Idiocracy" for almost two years, allowing no one to see it, not even reviewers, finally releasing it Friday, September 1, in a piddling seven cities — Austin, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and Toronto — with no plans to open it wider. Not even New York will get to see the latest from the Austin creator of "Office Space" and television's "Beavis and BUTT-head" and "King of the Hill."

 

20th Century Fox

(enlarge photo)

 

'Idiocracy'

 

In the new movie, Luke Wilson plays Army Pvt. Joe Bowers, who has been put in deep-freeze hibernation as part of an Army experiment. Things go awry and Bowers doesn't wake up for 500 years. America has changed for the worse, becoming so dumbed-down that this average Joe stands out as the smartest person in the world. (Imagine drawling, laid-back Luke Wilson as the smartest guy in the world. There's a punch line.) Maya Rudolph, Justin Long and Stephen Root and David Herman of "Office Space" co-star.

 

A large, worried cloud started hanging over the finished film in late 2004, several months after it was shot at Austin Studios with a considerable number of local crew and extras. Fan mumblings grew into unofficial rumors, culminating last month with a report on MTV.com that the film's release had been postponed indefinitely.

 

Fans of Judge's irreverent humor, particularly his 1998 satire of corporate culture "Office Space," went into cyber-fits. But none of their alternately puzzled and apoplectic Web postings shed light on what was delaying "Idiocracy's" release.

 

Calls to Judge's assistant, his manager and Fox last week yielded little insight. We learned that Fox is doing zero marketing for the movie — no trailers, posters, television spots or even press kits for media outlets. In response to the snub, Judge is refusing to publicize the movie and wouldn't speak to us. Someone close to Judge grumbled, "Fox dumped the film."

 

A Fox representative disagreed with that. The handling of the movie "was an executive decision from the chairman," she said. "It's not that we are treating the film coldly."

 

Asked why there is no marketing, no previews and only a limited release, she repeated, "It was an executive decision." That's all she had to say.

 

It sounds like deja-boo. Fox famously underestimated "Office Space," putting wimpy marketing muscle behind it. Despite good reviews, the comedy tanked in its theatrical run, only to explode as a major cult hit on video, DVD and cable.

 

"'Idiocracy' was supposed to be different," writes Brian Raferty in the June issue of Esquire magazine, in an article exploring Judge's travails with Hollywood. "He filmed it two years ago, but once photography was finished, the real problems began: So-and-so executive hasn't had a chance to see it, so everything was put on hold. Then Fox started nickel-and-diming him over a few special-effects costs. Finally, once the movie was totally finished last fall, Judge and the execs started to BUTT heads over the marketing, especially the trailers."

 

"I've never experienced anything like this," Judge told Raferty.

 

If anyone would know what's going on with "Idiocracy," Hollywood snoop Harry Knowles would. But the captain of Ain't It Cool News didn't return our calls. Still, one of Knowles' critic minions who goes by Quint posted this on the site: "I've heard it's crazy-insane funny, and I've heard it is very flawed, even hard to sit through."

 

And someone who claims to have seen "Idiocracy" during the film's post-production wrote a mini-review on The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com). Titled "Not close to 'Office Space'!," the July 31 posting reads in part:

 

"There was so much bathroom humor, I wondered why they didn't say it was more like 'Beavis and BUTT-head,' because the movie will obviously appeal more to a less-mature audience. I did enjoy it. At times I was laughing myself to tears. I just don't think that this film was up to par with what Judge is truly capable of. . . . I was just hoping it to be a film I would like to see more than once."

 

But "Idiocracy" co-star Terry Crews, who plays the president of the United States, had a good feeling after the film wrapped in July 2004. Though he hadn't seen the finished product, Crews told the American-Statesman, "It's really, really funny the way things go down. Believe me."

http://asap.ap.org/stories/859107.s

The mystery of 'Idiocracy'

Shhh, we're (not) marketing the new movie from the creator of 'Office Space' and 'Beavis.' RYAN PEARSON reports.

 

In the dystopian future of the new Mike Judge movie "Idiocracy," marketing is everywhere. Brightly-colored advertisements are plastered over everyday clothes and even on courtroom walls. One member of the president's Cabinet repeatedly mutters "brought to you by Carl's Jr." because he gets paid every time he says it.

 

In the here and now, marketing for "Idiocracy," which stars Luke Wilson and "SNL's" Maya Rudolph, has been nonexistent.

 

The studio behind it, 20th Century Fox, is refusing to speak about its strange release Sept. 1 into some 130 theaters in seven metropolitan areas, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston. It's not out on the East Coast or in San Francisco. There was no trailer, press junket, or major ad campaign. No mention even on the Fox movies Web site.

 

On its opening weekend, "Idiocracy" made $177,000. By comparison, the badly-marketed "Office Space" was in more than ten times as many theaters and made $4.2 million when it opened in 1999.

 

Judge's manager says that in response to Fox's approach, the Austin, Texas-based writer-director won't talk about the movie either. Publicists for Rudolph and Wilson said the actors likewise were unavailable for interviews.

 

Filling the void of concrete information with speculation, movie blogs and online bulletin boards are buzzing about what happened to the latest silly satire by the creator of "Beavis and BUTT-head," "Office Space" and "King of the Hill."

 

Here are the top four theories, in descending order from least to most likely, as determined by asap:

 

___

 

IT'S BAD, SO EVERYONE DISTANCED THEMSELVES FROM IT

 

Critical reaction to "Idiocracy" has been mixed. The LA Times praised it as "merciless and spot-on" and a "pitch-black, bleakly hilarious vision of an American future ... bespoiled by rapacious corporations and ... dumbed-down by junk culture." On the other hand, Entertainment Weekly gave it a "D," with its 87-word review ending with "Ow! My brain!" Harold Vogel, author of "Entertainment Industry Economics," notes that when movies are truly terrible, or sucked dry by studio meddling, directors distance themselves and the work becomes "an Alan Smithee film." Vogel said that doesn't seem to be the case with "Idiocracy" because it is in several major markets and is still touted as a Judge movie.

 

___

 

CORPORATE AMERICA KILLED IT OFF

 

"Idiocracy" is filled with riffs on corporate culture: Costco has a law school and one store is approximately the size of a small state. Starbucks sells erotic lattes for men. Carl's Jr.'s slogan is "F you, I'm eating." So could the giant companies have pressured Fox to downgrade the film's release to minimize embarassment? Unlikely, says "Idiocracy" production designer Darren Gilford, who worked with artists to create the logos and stores. "Fox was diligent enough legally to make sure that they were covered," he told asap. "There was a very formal clearance procedure we had to go through. We knew that going in and we addressed it early on."

 

___

 

IT'S A PLOY TO BUILD UNDERGROUND BUZZ

 

Perhaps Fox and the players involved are intentionally not talking about the movie in order to build word-of-mouth buzz among the film geek types, and a wider release is planned. "Sometimes they just don't know how to market something," notes Tom Beaver, who was an extra in "Idiocracy" and watched it on opening night in Los Angeles.

 

"Because it's being handled so weird, it's almost better underground press for the movie," notes Gilford, before dismissing this take on buzz-building, which he calls the "conspiracy theories."

 

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THERE WAS AN ARGUMENT, AND FOX IS DOING THE MINIMUM TO FULFILL JUDGE'S CONTRACT

 

Money usually heals all wounds in Hollywood: Despite disagreement over a director's vision, studios will often happily market bad movies in the hopes of earning their money back. Filmmakers, in turn, will agree to whatever release or marketing plan concocted by the studio in order to ensure their movie is seen by as many people as possible.

 

Gilford and Vogel say the most likely explanation for Idiocracy's odd release is that a deep, painful disagreement between Fox and Judge led the studio to fulfill the bare minimum of its contract, which likely contained some type of clause requiring release of a certain minimum size or in certain cities.

 

"Things can be negotiated. Every contract for every movie is a little different," Vogel said. "It may be some of the contractual stipulations that it has to be released by a certain time or in a certain way."

 

"I assume there's something going on that I don't know about or that nobody will ever know about," Gilford says. "I'm really proud of it. I think it's funny. And I'm just so surprised that they just haven't done anything with it. ... It's shocking to me. It's mind boggling."

 

___

 

A Fox publicist told asap staff reporter Ryan Pearson the studio had photos of "Idiocracy" but wouldn't "service them" for this article.

 

___

 

 

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/st...1866608,00.html

Idiocracy

Tapping the anti-corporate mood ... Idiocracy

 

 

It looks as though Mike Judge, the satiric mastermind behind Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill and Office Space, just got punked again. By his own studio. For the third time.

 

Seven years ago, 20th Century Fox dumped Judge's anti-corporate cri de coeur Office Space, but it became a bona fide smash on DVD, one of the studio's biggest sellers that year. Last year Fox unceremoniously cancelled Judge's animated hit King of the Hill, perhaps the most socially precise comedy on American television, before giving it a last-minute reprieve.

 

Article continues

Now it's the turn of Judge's second feature, the splenetic, pitch-black satire Idiocracy, which wrapped nearly two years ago. Fox didn't screen it for critics, ran no print ads or trailers, and dumped it on 130 screens nationwide. Apparently the lesson of Office Space's success went entirely unlearned.

 

Knowing Judge's sterling track record as an American satirist, I had to find out what went wrong. Usually a film eliciting such utter contempt from its own backers is a disaster. Far less often, it's a masterpiece.

 

The plot: in the future, the educated and intelligent will be massively out-bred by moronic A-type prison-fodder and Nascar idiots, to the point that all knowledge of engineering, agriculture, medicine and literature will be lost to misty memory. Luke Wilson plays ordinary Joe Bowers, chosen to be frozen by the military in 2005, who accidentally wakes up in 2505 to find a broken-down, thuggish America where language has become a patois of football chants, hip-hop slang and grunts denoting rage, pleasure and priapic longing, where citizens are obese, violent, ever-horny and narcotised by consumerism, TV and fast food. Everything's branded, and people have names such as BMW, Mountain Dew and Frito. TV features the Violence Channel (its signature show: "Ow, My Balls!") and the Masturbation Channel ("Keepin' America 'batin' for 300 years!"). The President's a Smackdown champ and porno superstar, and there's a mulleted wrestler on the billion-dollar bill. And everyone in the future thinks that Joe Bowers, suddenly the smartest man on earth, "talks like a fag".

 

There is venomous anti-corporate satire throughout the movie, remarkable mainly because Judge names real corporations. I was astounded - and invigorated - by the sheer vitriol Judge directs at these companies, who surely now regret permitting the use of their licensed trademarks. Like fast-food giant Carl's Jr, which in 2006 sells 6,000-calorie burgers the size of dictionaries under the slogan, "Don't Bother Me, I'm Eating". In Idiocracy, this has devolved into "Fuck You! I'm Eating!" And every commercial transaction has been sexualised: at Starbucks you can get coffee plus a handjob (or a "full body" latte).

 

Idiocracy isn't a masterpiece - Fox seems to have stiffed Judge on money at every stage - but it's endlessly funny, and my friends and I will be repeating certain lines for months (especially while eating), a sure sign of a cult hit. And word got out fast: I saw it last Saturday in a half-empty house. Two days later, same place, same show - packed-out. There's an audience for this movie, but its natural demographic barely knows it's out there.

 

Behind the movie's satire lie long-term social changes like the stupidisation of the American electorate over 30 years through deliberate underfunding of public education, the corporate takeover of every area of public and private life, and the tendency of the media - particularly Fox News - to substitute anti-intellectual rage and partisan division for reasoned public debate.

 

Some will argue that Fox has also given us some of the best television of the last 15 years - true - and that if quality sells as well as garbage, then the bottom line is served either way.

 

So why was Idiocracy dumped? Perhaps because it taps a growing anti-corporate mood in the nation; perhaps because it expertly satirises the jingoistic self-absorption that now passes for public culture. Or perhaps because more people are sick of the modern America that Fox energetically helped to build than the Fox corporation itself is ready to admit.

[devo 0]

Damn, I wanna see this.

[Guest Greg Valentine]

I think the quote from Quint describes the movie pretty well. The movie has a smart, intriguing concept and a few genuine laughs. The sight gags are great and the commentary on things like Starbucks, Costco, and the state of television 500 years in the future are hilarious and scary. On the other hand, the acting, pacing, and script are absolutely dreadful. Luke Wilson is absolutley boring and Maya Rudolph's character is really unlikable. The love angle in the movie is terribly forced and out of left field. It feels like Mike Judge had a great idea but so much of it was lost in the editing room. You'll know what I'm talking about it if you've seen it. I would not be opposed to watching a director's cut with a commentary as I would love to know what the heck went wrong but as for the cut available on DVD right now, I would not recommend it.

[NoCalMike 0]

I remember hearing about this movie a long time ago. I think I even saw a teaser trailer with a release date, and then it all but vanished, fast. Then about a week ago a buddy of mine I haven't seen in a few years called me up, we hung out, and he told me he saw a flick called "Idiocracy" and I was amazed that he was able to find a copy. I guess most major video stores have copies of them now, so it shouldn't be long before the DVD Buzz starts, that is, if the movie generates any buzz.

[notJames 0]

Eh. It was okay, I guess. Nothing I'd go out of my way to see again.

 

Your mileage may vary.

[Guest Vitamin X]

And someone who claims to have seen "Idiocracy" during the film's post-production wrote a mini-review on The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com). Titled "Not close to 'Office Space'!," the July 31 posting reads in part:

 

"There was so much bathroom humor, I wondered why they didn't say it was more like 'Beavis and BUTT-head,' because the movie will obviously appeal more to a less-mature audience. I did enjoy it. At times I was laughing myself to tears. I just don't think that this film was up to par with what Judge is truly capable of. . . . I was just hoping it to be a film I would like to see more than once."

 

I think that's my sentiments on the movie as well. It was terribly annoying, and really stupid, not in a Beavis and Butthead way either, which is funny BECAUSE it's stupid, but in a way that makes people seem like just the most retarded thing ever. If they had made people more realistically stupid, or even a future in which there'd be less technology because everyone is retarded (It didn't make sense how there were all these technological advancements and yet everyone was acting and thinking like a blithering idiot).

 

It had way more potential given the plot, I have no idea what happened with this movie.

[strummer 0]

Maya Rudolph's character is really unlikable.

 

Big suprise

[Insanity 0]

I thought it was funny. It's worth renting at least.

[LivingLegendGaryColeman 0]

I thought it was funny. It's worth renting at least.

 

Agreed. I was surprised by it and thought some parts were really funny. Plus, Terry Crews should be President.