King of the Hell
 | officespace
Aniston and Livingston
Van Redin

No one has to worry about ''Beavis and Butt-head'' creator Mike Judge going Hollywood. When he decided to direct his first live-action motion picture, ''Office Space,'' he had his actors (who include Jennifer Aniston and Ron Livingston) flee Tinseltown to join him in Austin, Tex., the Southern enclave from where he runs his hit show ''King of the Hill.''

''A local news crew [visited the set] and asked Mike, 'Why did you choose Austin?' '' says Livingston, who plays a frustrated programmer seeking revenge on the soul-deadening computer firm that employs him. ''I think they were looking for, 'Austin's got certain great values and a clean look,' but he said, 'Well...uh...it's close to my house.' ''

Judge proved to be as capable a director with three-dimensional actors as he is with hand-colored drawings, but fortunately for his cast he wasn't as controlling as he is when he's holding a pen. ''I wasn't sure about working with an animator,'' Livingston tells EW Online. ''I wondered if he was gonna be, 'Yeah, that was great, but could you maybe move your left arm four inches to the right, and move your shoulder up half an inch?' But he wasn't like that.''

Throughout the shoot, Judge remained downright mellow, and his Texas temperance seems to have rubbed off on his cast. ''You're just trying to make something that somebody can go see for an hour and a half and enjoy themselves,'' says Livingston, 31, about the deceptively simple art of moviemaking. ''It's not rocket science, and it's not like astronauts are gonna die. The worst that happens is that we say a joke and it isn't funny.''


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