Q: How did the Beavis and Butthead short for Extract come about?
Mike Judge: I think we were just in a meeting talking about different things to do and somebody suggested them watching a scene and commenting about it on the couch. I couldn’t quite figure out how to do that. I had already animated this stuff, I had this footage of them kind of Masterpiece Theater style. So I thought of them talking about it as a really important film.
Q: Did Jason Bateman know about their obsession with his last name?
Mike Judge: Not when I did it but he really liked it. They played a cut down version of it on Letterman. I think there was stuff Letterman would’ve liked that was cut out of it, but Letterman actually just raved about the movie when Bateman was on there. After Bateman was off, he talked about it again and before.
Q: He’s been a huge supporter of yours.
Mike Judge: Yeah. He never said much about King of the Hill or Office Space but definitely Beavis and Butthead, which was a big deal at the time. It was really nice because it was at a time when everybody was coming down on the show. There were a few people like him, which was really huge because he would talk about it in interviews and stuff. It was just initially like, “Oh, this horrible stupid show.” Then he said he was a fan and then Stephen King I think, Bernando Bertolucci was just raving about it. That really helped. It kind of made people go, “Okay, wait a second. We’ll go back and take a look at the show.”
Q: Did you get to meet Bertolucci?
Mike Judge: No, I wish.
Q: Have you found out the most random people turned out to be fans?
Mike Judge: Yeah, there’ve been a lot of those. Patrick Stewart would bring it up on talk shows which was really nice. I heard Marlon Brando was really into it.
Q: I read that he did Butt Head. Did you ever see it? Is there footage of that?
Mike Judge: No, I just heard Johnny Depp, when they were doing Don Juan De Marco that Johnny Depp would be Beavis. Yes, Butt Head is now 70. Whatever you say.
Q: Do you look at stuff that gets railed against now, like violent video games, and think that was you 10 years ago?
Mike Judge: It’s always something but I feel like Beavis and Butthead came at a time when I don't know what it was. The wall had just come down. There wasn’t enough going on. Suddenly, even before it went on the air, I remember there was some Connie Chung special and she was talking about the horrible state of television violence. It went to commercial on her saying, “And MTV has even gone so far as to name one of their new shows… Beavis… and Butt Head.” Just like oh my God, it’s just rock bottom. So I think it was like a scapegoat just served on a silver platter before it even went on the air. That’s why it was always really nice when somebody like Letterman wasn’t afraid to say he liked it.
Q: Do you ever feel like bringing them back?
Mike Judge: Yeah, actually this time it was kind of fun. Definitely things will come along. I had a thing where there was a rat that just came into my kitchen. I just came home and a rat just pooped everywhere, ripped open bread. I just wanted to kill this rat. It made me mad. I bought one of those Victory old school rat traps and I just started thinking Beavis and Butt Head versus a rat would be really good. They’d set the trap and forget and then go, “Oh, cheese.”
Q: Could it be more viral on the web instead of a TV show?
Mike Judge: I’ve thought about it. Actually doing that made me think it would be fun to do something with them again. Maybe something start out small. I also went back and looked at some stuff I had written. It was actually while I was writing Idiocracy with Etan Cohen and he used to write on Beavis and Butt Head. We were riffing on some stuff, I looked at some stuff I’d written on my own. There’s just a lot of things that would be fun to do that we never did. I would love to have them working tech support. You’d call and get them.
Q: Would they move to
Mike Judge: There was actually another separate project where we were thinking Chris Elliot moves to
Q: Is that still possible?
Mike Judge: Yeah, I’m a big Chris Elliot fan.
Q: And we don’t even remember the kids in Caddyshack.
Mike Judge: I know. When you look at that movie, the plot’s about Michael O’Keefe and the girl that gets pregnant. All you remember is
Q: Are the Hills something you think about doing in any other format?
Mike Judge: I haven’t. At the very beginning when I was pitching the show, at one point I thought maybe we should just do this live action. At the time, they specifically wanted me to do an animated show following The Simpsons. It’s funny, there was a time in there when animation, especially cell animation, was just poison for a while. Then Family Guy became huge and now everyone wants animation again. Something always comes along and then everyone just changes their wisdom. It seems like we’re in a pretty nice golden age again. Even though it never really went away, it seems like there was a long time between Chuck Jones and the end of the whole Warner Bros. things until The Simpsons. I’m sorry, but I just can’t get into Scooby-Doo on any level, not as a hipster, not as anything. I used to really like the Charlie Brown TV specials. In fact, that was a big influence on at least the way I animated Butt Head. I was thinking of the way Pigpen had this filth that animated around him. I wanted Butt Head’s head to kind of look like that.
Q: I don’t know if you’d work with Fox again, but what about a King of the Hill movie?
Mike Judge: I would work with Fox again under the right terms but it’s weird. King of the Hill, I don't know if it lends itself to a movie the way The Simpsons does or the way Beavis and Butt Head did. Whatever reason it is, it’s the same reason you wouldn’t make a Bob Newhart show movie or an Andy Griffith. The Simpsons was more cinematic to begin with just in the way they went crazy with the animation. King of the Hill is a little more inspired by classic television, Leave it to Beaver, Andy Griffith. I really liked The Simpsons Movie and I hadn’t seen the show in a while so it was nice to get back and see those characters again.
