Director Seth Gordon on ‘Horrible Bosses’

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A sexual-harassing dentist, a manipulative manager of a financial firm and a cocaine-addicted chemical plant owner are the “horrible bosses” in Seth Gordon’s new comedy. The film stars three friends — played by Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day — struggling to work for these tyrants. The friends eventually hatch a plan to kill the people who are making their lives miserable.

According to director Seth Gordon, each boss was based on a former, real-life employer of screenplay writer Mike Markowitz. “I’m grateful that he suffered, because he wrote a great script,” said Gordon.

The bosses are played by Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell and Kevin Spacey. Gordon says having Aniston play the role of the nymphomaniac dentist allowed the film to address a difficult issue with humor: “This was just, I guess, a fun reversal of the relatively serious problem of sexual harassment in the workplace. But swapping the genders and then giving that role to someone you’d never expect to play it was, to me, the funnest approach.”

While the film pushes the envelope on shocking humor, the director says it also portrays a sense of disillusionment in today’s workforce. Gordon explains, “There definitely is a trend among my friends of feeling like ‘We invested in the American dream. We thought that we could get jobs, and work real hard, and one day it would all pay off.’ And then everything imploded. So I think there is, in my mind, a super-charged undercurrent to this film that really questions authority.”

Watch “Horrible Bosses” trailer:

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