Richard Linklater: This was done by a major studio; it was done by Fox, and it’s your first film. Did you feel like it was a battle? Did you get everything you wanted? Were they assholes?

Mike Judge: Uh, well, all of the above. [laughter] But, yeah, it was very difficult, and there were lots of battles… The big battle was over the music at the end. The Geto Boys song, like “Damn It Feels Good To Be a Gangsta,” and the Ice Cube song, all of that, the studio was like, ‘You can’t…’ Tom Rothman [the then chairman and chief executive officer of Fox] kept saying [in a voice similar to Beavis and Butthead’s Tom Anderson], ‘I just want it to be fun’ [laughter] And I said, ‘Well, that is fun to me.’ I went out on a limb that I probably should not have gone out on, but it worked out in my favor. I told him, I said, “Okay, the next test screening, the next focus group, if they don’t like the music, I’ll take it out,” which I should not have done. You can tell the studio, ‘Just fuck off. No, I’m not gonna do it.” I didn’t do that for some reason, but it worked out great. So, the focus group, is a theater like this, and they take 20 mallrats — I don’t know, they’re all 20-year-olds — and we’re all sitting behind them, and the moderator is trying so hard to just poison it. She goes, ‘So what do you guys think about the music?’ [laughter] And all of them just go, ‘Oh, it was great, it was great!’ And she goes, “Okay, okay, but what about the rap music?” And they all go, ‘It was great!’ And she goes, ‘But maybe there was too much of it? Maybe it was too vulgar?’ And she’s looking for anyone to nod along with her, and then this one kid just told her everything I’d been telling Tom Rothman. He goes, ‘Yeah, I know, but that’s what’s great about it. It’s this angry, vulgar music, but it’s these white guys working in cubicles, and they’re angry, which is why it goes so well with it.’ [laughter] That 19-year-old saved my life and the movie. I looked over at Tom Rothman, and he’s pacing up and down the aisle ways, and he goes, ‘Ehhhh.’ But, I gotta say, to Tom’s credit, he never fought me again on that, and he also funded the movie. It wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t do that.