Election
1999 · 103 min
Directed by Alexander Payne. Written by Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor. Starring Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Klein, Jessica Campbell.
A high school teacher meets his match in an over-achieving student politician.
Critics 93% · audiences 79% · streaming on fuboTV, Paramount+, Kanopy · $15 million in the US and Canada on its first run · about 2.9 million tickets sold, 1.1% of the country · 1 Oscar nomination
What they said about Election
- 1999
Brandishes the sort of intelligent wit and bracing nastiness that will make it more appealing to discerning adults than to teens who just want to have fun.
— Witherspoon, Variety
How it got made
Producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa sent director Alexander Payne an unpublished manuscript from novelist Tom Perrotta called "Election" in 1996.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. The novel's rights were sold to Payne in January 1997. It was officially published in March 1998.
The novel was inspired by the following two key events: the 1992 United States presidential election, in which Ross Perot entered as a third-party candidate (a move echoed by Tammy Metzler), and 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.
The film uses several 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 (Mr. McAllister, Tracy, Paul, and Tammy).