Mike Judge

This article is about the cartoonist. For the billiards player, see Michael Judge. For the Roman Catholic priest, see Mychal Judge.

Michael Craig "Mike" Judge (b. October 17, 1962) is an American animator, director, screenwriter, voice actor, actor, producer, and musician. He is best known as the creator and star of the animated television series Beavis and Butt-head (1993–1997, 2011–present), King of the Hill (1997–2010), and The Goode Family (2009).

He also wrote, directed and in some instances produced the films Beavis and Butt-head Do America (1996), Office Space (1999), Idiocracy (2006) andExtract (2009). Judge is also known for his role as Donnagon Giggles in the Spy Kids movie franchise.

Early life and education

Born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where his father worked for a nonprofit organization promoting agricultural development, Judge was raised from age 7 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, the second of three children of archaeologist Jim Judge and librarian Margaret Blue. Judge attended St. Pius X High School before graduating with a Bachelor of Science in physics in 1986 from the University of California, San Diego.

Career

Judge spent time at a defense subcontractor working on the F/A-18 aircraft, writing software for the systems on board aircraft carriers that handled the aircraft.

In the early 1990s Judge was playing blues bass with Doyle Bramhall and was a part of Anson Funderburgh's band for two years playing on 1990 Black Top Records release "Rack 'Em Up".

In 1991, Judge's short film "Office Space" (also known as the Milton series of shorts) was acquired by Comedy Central, following a Dallas animation festival.

In 1992, he developed Frog Baseball, a short film featuring the characters Beavis and Butt-head, to be featured on Liquid Television, a 1990s animation showcase that appeared on MTV. The short led to the creation of the Beavis and Butt-head series on MTV, in which Judge voiced both title characters as well as the majority of supporting characters. Beavis and Butt-head visited Wilson Middle School and attended Highland High School in their series, which are the names of schools in Albuquerque, Judge's hometown. The series ran from 1993 to 1997 and is currently running on MTV (2011- ) and also spawned the feature-length film, Beavis and Butt-head Do America (1996).

In 1997, Judge created King of the Hill for the Fox Network. Many of the show's characters were based on people he had known while living in Texas. Judge voiced characters Hank Hill and Jeff Boomhauer. The show centers on the Hills, a middle-class Methodist family in the small suburban town of Arlen, Texas. It attempts to retain a naturalistic approach, seeking humor in the conventional and mundane aspects of everyday life while dealing with issues comically. The series ran from January 12, 1997 to May 6, 2010 with a total of 259 episodes aired. The show is the third longest running prime time animated series behind The Simpsons and South Park.

In 1999, Judge had a voice cameo in South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, the feature-length film adaptation of the popular Comedy Central series; he voiced Kenny McCormick when he was unhooded towards the end of the film. That same year, he wrote and directed the live-action comedy film Office Space, which was based in part on the Milton series of cartoons he had created forNBC's Saturday Night Live. In the film, he made a cameo appearance as Stan (complete with hairpiece and fake mustache), the manager of Chotchkie's, a fictionalized parody of chain restaurants like Applebee's and TGI Friday's. As of mid-2006, Office Space had sold nearly six million home-video copies.

Since fall 2003, Judge and fellow animator Don Hertzfeldt have run an animation festival, "The Animation Show". "The Animation Show" tours the country every year, screening animated shorts.

In 2005, Mike Judge was presented with the Austin Film Festival's Outstanding Television Writer Award by Johnny Hardwick.

Judge's film, Idiocracy (2006), a dystopian comedy starring Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph, was given a limited release theatrically by 20th Century Fox in September 2006, two years after production. The film was released without a trailer or substantial marketing campaign. In the U.S., the film was released to DVD in January 2007 and later aired on premium-television, multiplexchannels: Cinemax in September 2007 and HBO in January 2008. Since then, it has gained a cult following.

He has made cameo appearances in numerous films, including the comedy Jackass Number Two (2006), in which he can be seen during the closing credits. An extended version can be seen inJackass 2.5 (2007) which was a direct-to-video release. Judge also created a video clip of Beavis and Butt-head ripping into Steve-O for his video Poke the Puss, where the two try imagining if they would like the video better if they were black. The clip aired as a part of Jackassworld.com: 24-Hour Takeover, a February 23, 2008 television special on MTV to coincide with the official launch of jackassworld.com.

Judge's comedy film Extract, in which he makes an uncredited appearance as Jim, a union organizer, was released on September 4, 2009.

His newest animated series, The Goode Family, debuted on ABC and was canceled after one season. It was confirmed on The Goode Family Facebook page that Comedy Central had picked up the reruns of the series, and was to be evaluated for a chance of being renewed for a second season. Comedy Central first aired the series on January 4, 2010. However, the series was pulled off of the schedule shortly thereafter. It was officially confirmed by the production team on The Goode Family Facebook page that the show would not continue on Comedy Central. It was later announced that Judge had begun outlining new episodes of Beavis and Butt-head for MTV's revival of the show.

In 2012, Judge directed the music video (animation by Titmouse) for country music group Zac Brown Band´s Wind.

In 2012, Judge announced that he is developing a sitcom for HBO called Silicon Valley, a single-camera live-action comedy, with King Of The Hill executive producers John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky. Judge will direct the pilot, which he co-wrote with Altschuler and Krinsky, which will be set in Northern California and will address the idea that "the people most qualified to succeed are the least capable of handling success." The pilot will be shot in the spring, and is being executive produced by Scott Rudin alongside Judge, Altschuler and Krinsky and 3 Arts' Michael Rotenberg and Tom Lassally.

Despite his King of the Hill protagonist Hank Hill being identifiable as a conservative and his The Goode Family being essentially a satire of many liberal precepts, Judge avoids discussing his political leanings. The Goode Family has been called a conservative show, and it has been suggested by the conservative site Newsbusters that the show's negative reviews were a consequence of liberal institutions having a poor sense of humor.

In reviewing Idiocracy, Salon stated, "Judge's gimlet eye is so ruthless that at times his politics seem to border on South Park libertarianism." The libertarian Reason seems to agree, comparing King of the Hill to South Park and The Simpsons' anti-authoritarian point-of-view, though it calls the show more populist, noting the disdain King of the Hill seems to have for bureaucrats, professionals and big-box chains.

Still, Judge denies having political messages in his shows, saying in an IGN interview about King of the Hill:

I try to not let the show get too political. To me, it's more social than political I guess you'd say, because that's funnier. I don't really like political reference humor that much. Although I liked the episode ["Hank's Bully"] where Hank's talking to the mailman and he says, 'Why would anyone want to lick a stamp that has Bill Clinton on it?' To me that's just like more of a character thing about Hank than it is a political joke or anything. I don't want to do a bunch of stuff about the war, particularly.==Filmography==

Year	Film	Functioned as					Notes
		Director	Writer	Producer	Actor	Role
1991	Office Space (Milton/Saturday Night Liveshorts)	Yes		Yes	Yes		Also did animation and music.
1991	The Honky Problem	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
1992	"Frog Baseball"	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Beavis, Butt-head, additional characters
1992	"Peace, Love and Understanding"	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Beavis, Butt-head, David van Driessen, additional characters
1993–1997, 2011-present	Beavis and Butt-head	Yes	Yes	executive	Yes	Beavis, Butt-head, David Van Driessen, Tom Anderson, Principal McVicker, Coach Buzzcut, additional characters	Also functioned as creator, character designer, creative consultant, creative supervisor and did musical theme.
1994	Airheads				Yes	Voiced Beavis and Butt-head on the radio
1994	The Head				Yes	Butt-head	The Head/The Date episode
1996	Beavis and Butt-head Do America	Yes	Yes		Yes	Beavis, Butt-head, David Van Driessen, Tom Anderson, Principal McVicker
1997	The Simpsons					Hank Hill	"Bart Star" episode.
1997-2010	King of the Hill			executive	Yes	Hank Hill, Jeff Boomhauer, additional characters	Also functioned as creator.
1997	Space Ghost Coast to Coast				Yes	Himself
1999	Office Space	Yes	Yes		Yes	Stan
1999	South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut				Yes	Kenny McCormick unhooded saying "goodbye"
2001	Spy Kids				Yes	Donnagon/Donnamight
2002	Serving Sara				Yes	Motel manager
2002	Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams				Yes	Donnagon Giggles
2003	Frasier				Yes	Sexual harassment facilitator, Van
2003	Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over				Yes	Donnagon Giggles
2006	Idiocracy	Yes	Yes	Yes			Also wrote story.
2006	Jackass Number Two				Yes	Cameo
2006	Aqua Teen Hunger Force					Aliens	One episode
2007	The Animation Show						Beavis and Butt-head introduction. Judge functioned as animator.
2009	The Goode Family			executive	Yes	Gerald Goode, The Average Guy	Also functioned as creator.
2009	Extract	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
2010	Jackass 3D				Yes	Cameo	Beavis and Butt-head introduction (voice over)
2010, 2012 respectively	The Cleveland Show – Cleveland Live!,Das Shrimp Boot				Yes	Hank Hill
2012	The Wind	Yes					Music video (Zac Brown Band).