Joe Bays' Dom Portwood: A sidekick with punch

By MARY DeBRUNNER

Pretty much everyone can recall the TPS report memos that sparked Peter Gibbons’ hatred for life as he knew it--a monotonous living hell. One of the most memorable enforcers of the TPS report cover sheets was Dom Portwood, the nice guy everyone loved to hate, always irritatingly polite. From cubicle to cubicle at Initech Corporation, he made sure that everything within the company was running smoothly and exactly as his boss wished; he wanted everything in the firm to run like clockwork.

Joe Bays is the talented actor that gave Dom Portwood his quirky characteristics in 1999’s Office Space. He recently talked with Lumino about his character, his experiences on the set, and what he’s up to now.

Bays heard about the audition for the part of Dom through his agent. After he received the part, it wasn’t another person that inspired his character, but a sociology textbook entitled Man, the Manipulator. This book gave him the idea to pattern his character after the theory of the "nice guy manipulator."

"Dom lived to make [Lumbergh] happy. He wanted to make sure that whatever his boss said was backed up," said Bays.

Although Bays was only on the set for two weeks, he still feels that this project was in one of the most "relaxed and congenial" atmospheres. After having been in a number of films and commercials, as well as making a number of television guest appearances, he still found his experience with the cast and crew of Office Space to be one of the most pleasurable.

He thinks that part of the reason behind the cohesive set relationships was due to the fact that the writer and director, Mike Judge, created an environment where everyone felt very comfortable. Since this was his first live feature film, Judge was just very pleased to be working with so many people. Having doing most of his work with animation, this number of people on the set at one time was foreign to him.

"Everyone was very enthusiastic about going to work," Bays said. "It was really a joy."

The only thing that he regrets about the whole experience was the fact that Office Space wasn’t as well-received when it first came out as it is now. He is glad that it is gaining attention today, but he wishes that more people would have recognized Judge’s talent right when the movie came out.

"We’re all storytellers. It’s just a matter of finding the stories that other people want to hear," he said.

Unlike Portwood and his knack for implementing office regulations, Bays has been "blessed to not work in an office." However, this is not entirely true; he once worked as a supervisor at a marketing research firm in New York. Once he realized that his hard work wasn’t being recognized, he left and continued pursuing his true passion: acting.

While in college, he was once majoring in biology, but realized that he was spending half of his time in the lab and half of his time in the theater. It was then that he decided to choose the latter; acting was really what he wanted to do.

After graduating from college and receiving his Masters degree, he has lived in New York and L.A., and has been acting for the past ten years. He just wrapped his two most current films: Garfield with Jennifer Love Hewitt, which is tentatively due out in March; and Shopgirl with Claire Danes and Steve Martin, due out sometime this summer.

He currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife. Next month they will have been married for 18 years.

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