471 - Play It Again #17 - Office Space

Ryan Droste knows the score. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and ask him virtually any question about sports or professional wrestling. He’ll be able to tell you who racked up the points, when they did it, what the weather was like, how much the athlete got paid to do it, and who he slept with at the hotel afterwards. But his knowledge doesn’t begin and end with sports trivia; he’s also the Cedar Valley’s foremost expert on all things Bruce Springsteen, as well as an avid moviegoer and expert Xbox 360 gamer. These days he earns a living as one of the area’s greatest substitute teachers, teaching those little bastards everything from how to work the classroom DVD player to how not to fight in the lunch line.

Ryan’s selection is “Office Space,” Mike Judge’s 1999 comedy about the horrors of middle-class white collar hell.



“Office Space” is a film that plays perfectly off of one of the most basic human facts. A fact that ties us all together. The simple fact that at one point in our lives, we’ve all hated our jobs.

It’s a simple concept really. Everyone hates going to work, why not make a movie about it? Well, “Office Space” took that idea and made it into a modern day classic. The concept itself sounds like it’d be worth about 20 minutes of material, which is of course if it didn’t have a modern day comedic genius as its director. I’m talking of course about Mike Judge, the man responsible for television’s “Beavis and Butt-Head” and “King of the Hill.”



“Office Space” has spawned more one liners than Arnold Schwarzenegger and The Rock. Combined. Dialogue from this movie that I’m sure most of you have repeated (possibly numerous times): “F*ckin-A”, “Show her my O-Face”, any Michael Bolton jokes, adding a “yeahhh” on to any sentence, or just dropping the term “pieces of flair.”



The main character, Peter (Ron Livingston), goes with his overbearing girlfriend to a hypnotist to become happier. The problem is, due to the session abruptly (and fatally) ending, Peter is never awakened from the hypnotic state. This causes him to do whatever makes him happy, regardless of the consequences. He does things all of us have wanted to do but most likely didn’t have the nerve to. He hates his job, so he just decides to stop going. He wants to ask out the cute waitress at the local restaurant, so he just does it without any reservation. He plays video games at work, right in front of his boss. And perhaps most importantly, in one of the movie’s most symbolic scenes, he beats the shit out of a copy machine. You know, the one at work that never works. We’ve all been there.



Some of the most memorable scenes of the movie are brilliantly intertwined with gangsta rap music playing in the background. Everyone knows white, middle-class, suburbanites listening to rap music is funny. We just don’t talk about it. This film plays off of that perfectly. Whether it’s Michael (David Herman) rolling up his car windows nervously and turning his rap-blasting stereo down as an African-American passes his car, Peter walking down the hallway like a bad ass with “Damn it feels good to be a gangsta” playing in the background, the three main characters dancing poorly while drunk in the apartment, or taking a baseball bat gangland style to the aforementioned copy machine.

“Office Space” is a timeless classic that will live on for all generations. Why? Because hating your job is an American tradition. Everyone always has, and everyone always will. F*ckin-A. - Ryan Droste