Election (1999 film)

Jim McAllister is a civics teacher at a suburban Omaha, Nebraska, high school. One of his students, Tracy Flick, is an overachieving senior he resents. Dave Novotny, a fellow teacher and Jim's best friend, lost his job and his wife after Tracy's mother discovered Tracy was having a sexual relationship with him. While Jim felt Dave needed to suffer the consequences, he is also bitter that Tracy emerged unscathed.

Tracy announces she is running for student body president and informs McAllister that they will be spending time together, since he oversees student government. Appalled by this and that Tracy is running unopposed, McAllister encourages Paul Metzler, a popular football player, to enter the race. Paul, sidelined with a broken leg, finds his candidacy gives him purpose; it also infuriates Tracy, who resents Paul's popularity and privileged upbringing, being the son of a concrete magnate.

Tammy Metzler, Paul's younger sister, is dumped by her girlfriend, Lisa Flanagan, who becomes Paul's girlfriend and campaign manager. Tammy exacts revenge by running for president on a nihilistic platform that student government is a sham.

The three candidates make their campaign speeches to the student body. Tracy draws polite applause while Paul receives a warm reception, despite giving a halting and lackluster speech. Tammy delivers a defiant address in which she denounces the election and vows to dissolve student government if she wins. Tammy's speech rallies the students to a rowdy standing ovation, but it also gets her suspended from school.

Tracy sees that one of her campaign posters has come unstuck from the wall. She tries to secure it but accidentally rips the poster apart. In a fit of rage, she destroys the other candidates' campaign posters and discards them in a dumpster, unaware that Tammy sees her. When McAllister confronts Tracy with his suspicion that she removed the posters, Tracy feigns innocence and threatens to sue the school. In a ploy to get expelled, Tammy claims she vandalized the posters and produces them as proof, having retrieved them from the dumpster. Tammy is expelled, her name is struck from the ballot, and her parents enroll her in a private Catholic school for girls, much to her delight.

The day before the election, Jim visits Linda Novotny, Dave's ex-wife. Jim has previously suggested they rent a motel room together, and Linda later kisses him and they have sex. Linda asks Jim to rent a motel room for an afterschool rendezvous, but she fails to show. When Jim drives to Linda's house to find her, he is stung by a bee, causing a severe allergic reaction on his right eyelid. He returns home to find Linda and his wife talking. Knowing his encounter with Linda has been exposed, he spends the night in his car.

During the election, Jim oversees the tally of the ballots, despite being sleep-deprived and disfigured from the bee sting. After the ballots are counted, Tracy wins by a single vote—cast by Paul, who thinks it would be dishonorable to vote for himself. During the ballot-counting, Jim spots Tracy dancing gleefully in the hall after one of the student vote-counters surreptitiously signals that she won. Jim secretly disposes of two of Tracy's ballots and declares Paul the winner. When a janitor discovers the ballots in the trash and shows them to the principal, Tracy becomes president and Jim is forced to resign. Jim's wife, angry at him for his tryst with Linda, throws him out of their house.

Divorced and humiliated, Jim leaves Nebraska and fulfills a longtime dream of moving to New York City, where he becomes a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and begins dating a new woman. Tracy attends Georgetown University, while Paul enrolls at the University of Nebraska. Tammy finds a new girlfriend at her all-girls school.

McAllister encounters Tracy during a trip to Washington, D.C., when he sees her getting into a limousine with a Republican U.S. representative. Disgusted that Tracy's success is the result of her cut-throat nature, McAllister impulsively hurls a cup of soda at the limo as it drives away. McAllister later speaks to a group of elementary school students at the museum, refusing to respond to the raised hand of an overeager girl who reminds him of Tracy.

Producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa sent director Alexander Payne an unpublished manuscript from novelist Tom Perrotta called "Election" in 1996. Payne was initially uninterested in directing a high school movie, but changed his mind after he read the manuscript. "It was set in a high school, but it wasn’t a high school story, per se. Also what attracted me was the formal exercise of doing a movie with multiple points of view and multiple voice-overs," said Payne.[3] The novel's rights were sold to Payne in January 1997 and it was officially published in March 1998.

The novel was inspired by two key events. The first was the 1992 United States presidential election, in which Ross Perot entered as a third party candidate (a move echoed by Tammy Metzler). The second was a 1992 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.[4][5]

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.[6]

The film was primarily shot on location around the Omaha metro area in the fall of 1997,[7][8] most notably in Papillion, Bellevue and the Dundee neighborhood. Papillion-La Vista Senior High School portrayed the fictitious Carver High School with many of the background extras being actual enrolled students at the time. Minor scenes were filmed at Younkers in Westroads Mall, the Old Market and the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium.

Election was not a box office success as it grossed only $17.2 million against a budget of $8.5-$25 million.[1]

Election was released on DVD on October 19, 1999 and Blu-ray on January 20, 2009. A special edition Blu-ray was released by The Criterion Collection on December 16, 2017, with a 4K restoration of the film.[23]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Election (1999 film)

• Election at IMDb
• Election at AllMovie
• Election at Rotten Tomatoes
• Election at Metacritic
• Election at Box Office Mojo
• Election: That’s Why It’s Destiny an essay by Dana Stevens at the Criterion Collection
• Ann Hornaday, "The 34 best political movies ever made" The Washington Post Jan. 23, 2020), ranked #16