journal features

movie review - Office Space

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 1999.02.28

This flick's about three software engineers working for a software firm with a typically vanilla 'tech' name, a typically brain-dead cast of management, and no discernable organization. Their clients are the financial industry. This whole setup hit uncomfortably close to home, as my fiancée noticed (and started elbowing me). The character Michael, in fact, wore the type of clothes I used to wear - eg. short sleeve dress shirt w/ tie, and had the same haircut I used to sport....

The layoff and meltdown scenes in particular are funny, but I enjoyed the entire thing.

Strongly recommended. A favorite.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton