Movie Spotlight: Working Stiff

The working title was The Entrepreneurs. The script was almost finished when a magazine article used the phrase “working stiff” in reference to David Letterman, and Greg Joyce says a lightbulb went on. The title did more than rename the film. It crystallized what the whole thing had been about all along: the specific desperation of the person who follows the rules, does everything right, and still ends up out of options.

Joyce wrote, directed, and produced Working Stiff, a 2001 workplace comedy in which a corporate filmmaker named Gene agrees, against every instinct he has, to use the company studio after hours to produce an adult version of the sexual harassment training video he shoots during the day. “He’s the perfect character precisely because he’s the last person in the world who would ever get involved in a scheme like this,” Joyce says.

The Character Who Makes It Work

Gene is a by-the-book, don’t-rock-the-boat Everyman. Joyce committed fully to that. “I don’t know if Gene had ever rented an adult film in his life at that point,” he says, “which is why we see him researching them.” The fish-out-of-water comedy is sharpest in the early scenes, when Gene and parts of the crew are genuinely uncertain about what they’ve gotten into. The film earns its premise because Gene’s discomfort is real and the stakes are domestic: he’s trying to save his house.

Suggestive, Not Crude

The approach from the start was naughty without crossing into vulgar, and Joyce is specific about why that distinction matters. “Being suggestive rather than explicit means you have to rely on good storytelling and well-developed characters rather than cheap thrills,” he says. The hardest scene to get right was the first time the crew actually films something. No explicit content, but it had to strongly imply what was happening. Close-ups, creative cutting, and the reactions of everyone else in the room (shocked, lascivious, bemused, cheerful) carry the scene.

Made in Boston

The film grew out of the local Boston scene in ways that reach into almost every corner of it. Joyce held auditions at the Improv Asylum in the North End. One of the theater’s founders plays Buddy. The film’s editor was a Boston filmmaker Joyce had taken courses from. Faculty from Northeastern, Emerson, and the Massachusetts College of Art were involved. Budgeting advice came from a group of local filmmakers who later created Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Before locking the cut, Joyce screened a rough version for Emerson film students. Nineteen out of twenty said they’d recommend it.

Then and Now

Joyce reads the current reviews and compares them to the ones from 2001 and finds them “remarkably similar.” The characters aren’t dated. The ideas aren’t dated. Human nature doesn’t change. The technology looks like 2001. The rest doesn’t. One recent IMDb reviewer called it “weirdly wholesome,” which Joyce says is “a great way to put it” for a film about a guy making an X-rated movie in his employer’s studio.

What to Know Before You Press Play

Joyce’s pitch is honest: “You’re in for a pleasant surprise.” The Providence Journal called it “funny, clever, and a guaranteed crowd pleaser.” An early IMDb reviewer who saw it when it played locally called it a better movie “by far” than most major releases from that year. “It doesn’t feel low budget,” Joyce says. That’s the promise, and based on the people who’ve found it, it holds.

Comedy

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Streaming now on Relay.