'Office Space' Cast Reunites in Austin for 10th Anniversary

Yes, that's a printer on the red carpet for the 10th anniversary screening of Office Space at the Paramount Theatre in Austin on Sunday night. The guys swinging baseball bats are the same ones you saw attacking the printer in the 1999 movie -- Ajay Naidu and David Herman. We like our red carpet scenes lively here in Austin.

Mike Judge, who wrote and directed Office Space (and played the manager at Chotchkie's), appeared at the event with nine other actors who played major characters in the movie -- everyone except Ron Livingston and Jennifer Aniston, essentially. The theater was sold out, and watching Office Space with 1,200 people who've seen it before was amazing and hilarious. Everyone frequently contributed cheers, whoops and applause for certain actors or memorable bits of dialogue ("Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately." "I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Bob.").

After the movie, which most of the cast stayed and watched, Judge and the actors took over the Paramount stage for a goofy but entertaining Q&A session. Judge revealed what "TPS" stood for -- Test Program Set, from his days as an engineer -- and outed cast member Todd Duffey (the flair-bedecked waiter at Chotchkie's) as a former regular on Barney and Friends. Herman revealed outrageous (and untrue ... I think) claims about Stephen Root. And Naidu was persuaded to re-enact his breakdancing moves from the film.

The one disappointment in the evening happened when a technical glitch made it unable to screen a clip from Judge's upcoming film Extract. He told us beforehand that the clip included Jason Bateman and "Ben Affleck with his Dazed and Confused hair." I'm hoping we'll get another chance to see that clip next month, when Office Space screens again at the Paramount during SXSW. The festival co-sponsored the event with Fantastic Fest ... and later that night, announced that the two fests would also collaborate during SXSW to present a series of midnight movie premieres.

Here are two more photos I took during Sunday night's Q&A -- first, Mike Judge and Gary Cole:


Other cast members in attendance included Stephen Root (Milton), David Herman (Michael Bolton), Ajay Naidu (Samir), Kinna McInroe (Nina "Just a moment"), Todd Duffey (Brian the waiter), and Diedrich Bader (Lawrence):