Election (1999 film)

Election
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Alexander Payne
Produced by	Albert Berger David Gale Keith Samples Ron Yerxa
Written by	Alexander Payne Jim Taylor
Story by	Tom Perrotta (novel)
Starring	Matthew Broderick Reese Witherspoon Chris Klein Jessica Campbell
Music by	Rolfe Kent
Cinematography	James Glennon
Editing by	Kevin Tent
Studio	MTV Films
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	April 23, 1999 (1999-04-23)
Running time	102 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$8.5 million
Box office	$14,902,041

Election is a 1999 American comedy film adapted from a 1998 novel of the same title by Tom Perrotta. The plot revolves around a three-way election race in high school, and satirizes both suburban high school life and politics. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, a Golden Globe nomination for Witherspoon in the Best Actress category, and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Film in 1999.

It stars Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, and Chris Klein and tells the story of Jim McAllister (Broderick), a popular high school history and civics teacher in suburban Omaha, Nebraska and one of his students, Tracy Flick (Witherspoon), around the time of the school's student body elections. McAllister's involvement with various school-related functions masks his frustration with other aspects of his life; Tracy is an overachiever whose obsession with getting into a good college masks a vindictive and manipulative personality. When Tracy obtains a nomination for class president in the school election, McAllister believes she does not deserve the title, and tries his best to stop her from winning.

While it failed to become a major box office success, home video and DVD releases were more lucrative. Following its release, the movie has received various rankings; Election is ranked #61 on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies and #9 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies, while Witherspoon's performance as Flick was ranked at #45 on the list of the 100 Greatest Film Performances of All Time by Premiere Magazine. The film was rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for strong sexuality, sex-related dialogue and language, and a scene of drug use and was rated '15' by the BBFC for "some moderate sex and references".

Plot

Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) is a high school teacher in the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska whose enthusiastic involvement at school masks his frustration with other aspects of his life. Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) is an overachieving senior with a secret vindictive and sexual side. Earlier in the year, Tracy had an affair with another teacher, McAllister's best friend Dave (Mark Harelik). As a result, Dave was fired and divorced by his wife Linda (Delaney Driscoll); Tracy walked away without reprisal or punishment.

One day, Tracy announces that she is running for student body president, which horrifies McAllister, who is in charge of organizing the school's student government and truly despises Tracy. Set to run unopposed, McAllister decides to teach Tracy a lesson in humility by introducing another candidate. Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) is a polite and popular football player at the school. Paul is unable to play football his final year due to a broken leg, leaving him depressed. McAllister convinces him to register for the election, giving him new purpose. This serves to bring out Tracy's vindictiveness, as she is jealous of Paul’s ease at being successful and popular.

Meanwhile, Paul's younger sister Tammy (Jessica Campbell) is dumped by her sweetheart, Lisa (Frankie Ingrassia), who says that she is heterosexual and was just "experimenting". Lisa doesn't waste time in "getting over" Tammy, giving Paul a blowjob having asked him to drop her home from school one day. The two become an item (Paul claiming that they would "go to her house [after school] to fuck" and swim in the hot tub) and election partners, in part to anger Tammy. In retaliation, Tammy decides to run for president as well, with a platform that student government is a sham. During a school assembly to hear their speeches, after Tracy draws only polite applause and Paul gets a strong reaction, Tammy delivers a defiant speech in which she denounces the election and that she will dissolve the student government if elected. This rallies the student body to a standing ovation. Fearing the student body will vote for Tammy and thus the dissolution of the student government, Tammy is suspended and kicked out of the election.

While at school one night over the weekend, Tracy tries to fix one of her posters, but accidentally tears it. In a fit of uncharacteristic rage, she destroys all of Paul's campaign posters. She tries to dispose of them at the power plant, but is observed doing so by Tammy. The next day, when confronted by McAllister, Tracy claims innocence and threatens legal action against the school. Tammy "confesses" to Tracy's crime after witnessing her disposing of the refuse by the town factory. She is then transferred to a private parochial school for girls, which was the original objective of her false confession.

Later, McAllister, who is secretly attracted to Linda while helping around her house, kisses her spontaneously the day before the election. Linda asks Jim to rent a motel room for a later rendezvous and he leaves school during a class to prepare the room, but when he arrives later to pick her up, she isn't there. He returns home to find Linda and his wife talking together. Knowing he's been caught, he spends the night in his car outside Linda's house.

The next morning, McAllister oversees the counting of the election ballots at school. During this, he calls Linda several times, professing his love for her, after a bee sting. Jim's wife kicks him out of the house when he tries to apologize. After all the ballots are counted, Tracy has won by one vote (Paul voted for Tracy, feeling she was more qualified and viewing it was too arrogant to vote for oneself). After seeing Tracy dancing around excitedly in the hall, McAllister deduces that she found out that she won before it was announced. McAllister secretly disposes of two of Tracy’s ballots then demands a recount, naming Paul as the winner. When a janitor discovers the two discarded ballots and presents them to the principal, McAllister resigns from his job.

Divorced and humiliated, McAllister leaves Nebraska, ultimately choosing to fulfill a longtime dream of moving to New York City, becoming a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History, where he meets a new woman. Tracy gets accepted into Georgetown University, while Paul gets into the University of Nebraska. Tammy loves her new school, where she has met her new girlfriend. Jim ends recounting the one final time he saw Tracy. After witnessing her get into a limousine with a politician, McAllister is reminded of his friend Dave and what Tracy has done to get where she is. Jim hurls a soda cup at the limousine, then makes a quick getaway. The final scene of the film shows Jim asking questions to some children he's giving a tour to at the Museum, all the while deliberately ignoring an overeager girl, the only one of the group who could answer, as she reminds him of Tracy.

Cast

• Matthew Broderick as Jim McAllister
• Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Enid Flick
• Chris Klein as Paul Metzler
• Jessica Campbell as Tammy Metzler
• Phil Reeves as Walt Hendricks
• Molly Hagan as Diane McAllister
• Colleen Camp as Judith Flick
• Nicholas D'Agosto as Larry Fouch
• Mark Harelik as Dave Novotny
• Delaney Driscoll as Linda Novotny
• Frankie Ingrassia as Lisa Flanagan

Pre-production and direction

Much of the film was shot in and around the Omaha area including Dundee, Elkhorn, Bellevue, Carter Lake, and Papillion. Other scenes were filmed in New York (including the college scene, which was actually filmed at Adelphi University in Long Island) and Washington D.C. Production shut down for about a month when a freak fall snowstorm hit Omaha in October 1997, knocking down trees and power lines.

Omaha locations used during production include:

• Papillion La Vista Senior High School serves as the setting for George Washington Carver High School. Payne had initially aimed to use Millard North High School in Omaha, but the School Board of Millard found the script too obscene and inappropriate. The setting was then moved to Papillion-La Vista High School which explains why the background noise from the school can be heard during much of the film, by actual teachers and students, because filming took place during school terms.
• The Godfather's Pizza where Dave visits with Tracy is located at 7920 S. 84th St. in LaVista.
• The parking lot where Jim throws away Tracy's nomination signatures in a dumpster was filmed on the corner of N. 50th St. and Underwood Ave. The Carl S. Baum Druggists building in the scene is currently a Subway restaurant.
• Linda's house is located at 683 Parkwood Ln.
• The Metzler house is located on S. 187 Cir. along the Shadow Ridge Country Club south of Elkhorn.
• Younkers is located in the Westroads Mall.
• The soccer field at Brownell-Talbot School was used for the Immaculate Heart soccer game.
• The American Family Inn (also credited as Rodeway Inn) is located at 1110 Fort Crook Road in Bellevue.

Direction

The novel's rights were sold to director Alexander Payne in January 1997. Payne had become a fan of the novel by Tom Perrotta on which the film is based. The novel was inspired by two key events. The first was the 1992 Bush vs. Clinton election campaign, in which Ross Perot entered as a third party candidate (a move echoed by Tammy Metzler). The second was an incident at Memorial High School in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in which a pregnant student was elected homecoming queen, but staff announced a different winner and burned the ballots to cover it up.

Within the text of a newspaper article in the film, the following can be read: "If you've paused the film in order to read this entire article, your time would be better spent renting Citizen Ruth from your local video store, which was another Payne film. Do you know how hard it is to write these fake few stories for newspaper movie props? I've got better things to do."

For the school assembly scenes, Payne had to use special effects to make the gym look full. As Payne said on the commentary, some students learned that being an extra wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and that left the assembly scene lacking in students. Payne filmed a select group of students sitting in different spots for multiple takes, and then (using digital editing) filled in the blanks to make it look like a packed gym.

The film uses a number of stylized techniques in its storytelling, particularly through the use of freeze frames, flashbacks and voiceovers, which allow sections of the narrative to be delivered from the points of view of the four main characters.

According to commentary by Alexander Payne, in the scene where Jim watches pornography in the basement, the basement was left unaltered.

The film was originally shot with an ending close to the one found in the novel, with Jim McCallister working in a car dealership, where Tracy visits him before leaving for college. After testing poorly with audiences, the ending was eventually reshot. The original ending was unseen until the accidental discovery of an early VHS workprint of the film at a flea market in 2011.

The original ending surfaced on YouTube but Paramount Pictures has since had it removed claiming copyright infringement.

Casting

Several actors were cast in place of Broderick, Witherspoon, Klein, and Campbell and turned it down because of the high-risk content and creative differences.^{[citation needed]} Thora Birch was cast as Tammy Metzler, but left due to creative differences with Alexander Payne. Many of the remaining cast members were scouted on location, including the janitor that appears at the beginning and end of the movie. He is an actual janitor that works for the director's offices in Omaha, Nebraska. He was formerly a janitor at Duchesne Academy. He has since retired.

Also, the casting director of the movie is the football player that appears in the adult movie that McAllister watches. Many local Omaha students and teachers were used in the film for the roles of students and teachers. One in particular was Chris Klein, who would end up becoming a mainstay in Hollywood and star in other movies. Payne found him when he was scouting schools for locations to shoot and a teacher at one of the schools introduced him to Klein. Witherspoon had been acting in moderately well-received films in the early 1990s. Nicholas D'Agosto, who appeared towards the end of the film as committee chairman Larry Fouch, was just a student at Creighton Preparatory School in Omaha, the same high school Payne attended, when he did this movie. He would go on to college at Marquette University in Milwaukee before moving out to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career.

Outside references

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand earned the nickname "Tracy Flick" within the New York Congressional delegation before her January 2009 appointment by NY Gov. David Paterson to fill Hillary Clinton's U.S. Senate seat, according to The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

External links

• Election at the Internet Movie Database
• Election at AllRovi
• Election at Box Office Mojo