Idiocracy at 20: From Bomb to Defining American Film — SkimNews
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- Idiocracy marks its 20th anniversary this month, with the New York Times' reader poll of more than 4,000 respondents naming Mike Judge's film the "definitive movie about America" — beating out "The Godfather" and "American Graffiti" for the top spot.
- Etan Cohen, who co-wrote the film with Judge in his mid-20s after working as an MTV intern on "Beavis & Butt-Head," insists the satire "wasn't at all intended to be political" and said, "I just wanted to write the dumbest thing possible."
- Idiocracy's theatrical opening was so disastrous that MovieFone still listed the film as "Untitled Mike Judge Project," and Cohen recalled sitting with only his wife and brother in a theater where "the first thing you heard was all the pens clicking open."
- Tom Rothman, the 20th Century Fox executive who greenlit the film and now runs Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, said the studio found it "extremely difficult to market" because the premise "seemed impossibly far-fetched" at the time and there was "no social media, no influencers."
- Terry Crews, who played President Camacho and now hosts "America's Got Talent," said he had to audition upward of 10 times and that Judge "fought for me" to land the role after larger stars were considered.
- Crews recalled that watching Hulk Hogan tear his shirt off at the 2024 Republican National Convention was when he understood why people call the film "a documentary," and Variety similarly declared after the White House UFC event last summer that "Trump Has Reached Peak 'Idiocracy.'"
- Judge's original concept was titled "3001," and Cohen said the collaboration let them satirize any part of "the culture we thought was going south" — from "Ow, My Balls" on the Violence Channel to crops watered with the sports drink Brawndo.
Why it matters: For a film that drew just three people to its opening day and was deemed "impossibly far-fetched" by its own studio chief Tom Rothman, being named America's defining movie by 4,000-plus New York Times readers marks a stark reversal — and one its creators say they never intended as political commentary in the first place.
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