Friday Film Noir
Election (1999) is a marvelous and refreshing dark comedy directed by Alexander Payne and written by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor. The film is set during a contentious student body presidential election at a suburban Omaha high school. Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), a well-liked and dedicated history teacher, finds his professional and personal life unraveling when he decides to sabotage the campaign of the pathologically ambitious and overachieving student, Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon). Believing her to be unfit for office and personally disliking her intensity, he persuades Paul Metzler (Chris Klein), a popular but simple-minded football player, to run against her.
The film was shot on location in and around Omaha, Nebraska, director Alexander Payne's hometown. The school scenes were filmed at Papillion-La Vista High School, and many of the students seen in the film were actual students from the school. The screenplay is based on the 1998 novel of the same name by author Tom Perrotta, who was inspired to write the story after the 1992 U.S. Presidential Election. Reese Witherspoon fully committed to the role of Tracy Flick, employing method acting techniques to maintain the character's intense and grating personality even when the cameras weren't rolling. The film explores themes of unchecked ambition, compromised ethics, and suburban discontent. The film received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
