Did You Know The Guy Who Created Bevis and Butthead Was Psychic?
Mike Judge Can See The Future
Because of my job I had to read more than 1 screenplay a day for a period of years. I’ve read brilliant ones and I’ve seen the worst garbage ever penned. A few stood out as brilliant but 1 predicted the future so accurately, I almost get cold chills thinking about it.
If memory serves, I first saw the script for IDIOCRACY in 2003, maybe 2004. I wasn’t a big Beavis and Butthead fan but recognized the satirical creative thing he accomplished with OFFICE SPACE and I was curious what the more evolved Mike Judge would come up with.
Judge, who produced, directed, and gets “Story By” credit, but the film’s writer is credited as Etan Cohen. I’m sure Mike Judge gave Etan the full credit even though “Story By” infers it was Judge’s concept and Judge is known as a prolific writer.
The version I read was very similar to the movie. I’m not certain if it was Judge’s first draft prior to Etan’s pass on it, or if the version I read was Etan’s and he was so new at that time Judge’s name just made everything easier when casting as it was presented to me as “A Mike Judge Project”.
Etan (not Ethan) is now a pretty juiced writer in Hollywood, but back then he was a TV writer who worked for Judge primarily. He later went on to write another brilliant script TROPIC THUNDER among many others. Tropic Thunder was one of the most creative, innovative projects I’ve seen come out of Hollywood in my career. You can always tell how ‘HOT’ a project was based on the cast and Tropic Thunder had an insane cast. It was also a much better movie, but enough about Tropic Thunder.
How Judge and Cohen Saw The Future
The central premise of IDIOCRACY is reverse Darwinism. That smarter/more focused people only having 1.2 children due to other interests and other goals, while the dumber/less motivated are having 6+ has caught up with society. After a few generations (500 years)things would have started trending the other way.
To illustrate the average drop in IQ the writers use the mechanism of a very average soldier and a prostitute being frozen and waking up 500 years later. His pedestrian intellect in 2005 is part of the reason he is picked to be frozen as he isn’t all that useful in 2005 given his painfully average intellect. She was just for sale and unlucky I guess. But in 500 years they are the equivalent of an offspring parented by Stephan Hawking
and Albert Einstien.
If you remove the terrible wardrobe and goofy set dressing from IDIOCRACY, you get a core that is based on people becoming stupider and no longer connecting with science or reality to a certain degree.
People have devolved into moronic bags of meat who believe whatever authority tells them. The court system has become a joke as has most infrastructure. Mountains (seriously, mountains) of garbage shadow skyscrapers. Skyscrapers that are literally tied to the next building over to keep them from falling over.
Language has become more of a pigeon version of English with use of less than half the vocabulary we use now. It has also incorporated grunts.
The President in the film is a former pro wrestler whose cabinet is made of relatives, inlaws and a former mistress. Could you imagine a US President who was a pro-wrestler?
It was a very funny script, less funny movie, and as I sit here trying to make light of it, not so funny concept when you look at the parallels.
In the last 5 years, we have had the President of the United States suggest swallowing light and drinking aquarium cleaner could kill a living virus in a human. Three (that I know of) tried it, 2 people died. I’m unaware if they had any children.
Also, we all saw people argue that a face mask designed to keep airborne germs from either entering or leaving a human doesn’t work. I assume most of those people have both air and oil filters on their car and a mask looks like a human filter to me, but what do I know?
There is also one central company that supplies almost all of the people’s needs. They sell everything and have become the economy for the most part. I wonder if they started out by selling books?
Are you getting creeped out yet?
One good thing that hasn’t happened yet, is water isn’t as scarce as we now fear. No one drinks it because it’s “what’s in the toilet”, and humans have moved to a 100% energy drink, fluid consumption lifestyle. Which, could also never happen.
The energy drink is such a central part of the people’s lives they had begun watering plants with it. This is a problem, but I’ll leave some spoilers in case you watch the film at some point.
Below is the opening scene of the film and the trailer attached. If you haven't seen the film and have read this far, take a look. Sets it up pretty well.
One of the reasons you dont see this on cable very often is the way people in 2505 categorize how the lead speaks. Throughout the film, they say he talks “Faggy”, which is not how you describe anything in 2022. Otherwise, I have a feeling you would see this everywhere.
The Simpsons famously made a lot of predictions through the years that hit. Some were spot on, but nothing ever had the top to bottom pinpoint accuracy of IDIOCRACY.
