Election

Hey, Do You Remember...?

Christopher Schrader

Tv & Film, Comedy

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2018

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The HDYR gang is off to the polls with a look back at Alexander Payne's subversive comedy Election. Nearly every step of the way, the film (and the novel it was based on) faced the same problem - the perception that it was a more run-of-the-mill teen comedy. The marketing department wasn't sure how to sell the movie and as a result, the film tanked at the box office.

In the years since its release, Election's reputation has continued to grow. It's influenced other writers, directors, actors, and even some fairly notable politicians. How does it play twenty years later? How much has changed? And how much has remained eerily the same?

Topics include: the real life events that inspired the novel, the surprising and charming story of how Chris Klein was cast in the film, the original choice for the role of Tammy, how this film masters the difference between showing vs telling, the total lack of any wasted screen time, and so much more!

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About The Show

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, do you remember election?
0:06.6	Hello and welcome to Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the roast into glasses to see how it holds up.
0:32.0	I'm Chris.
0:32.8	I'm Donna.
0:33.6	And I'm Carlos.
0:34.5	And today we're revisiting election.
0:53.1	Yeah. And I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting election. Back in 1992, a pregnant student was elected homecoming queen at her Wisconsin high school,
0:59.0	but members of the administration weren't too thrilled about that outcome, so they burned the ballots and announced a different winner instead.
1:05.4	The ensuing scandal made national news, and coupled with that year's roller coaster of an election cycle,
1:10.5	where Ross Perrault
1:11.5	emerged as a disruptive third-party candidate, writer Tom Perada had all the inspiration he needed
1:16.6	for his novel, election. It wouldn't hit shelves until the spring of 1998, but the film rights had
1:22.2	already been sold prior to its publication. MTV Films was a brand new entity, and the whole ethos behind the company
1:28.3	was that they could sidestep the traditional Hollywood system and give emerging visionaries
1:32.6	a direct line to a younger audience that was maybe hungry for material that felt more authentically
1:37.5	counterculture. As you might imagine, elections seemed like a very natural fit. But at every step,
1:43.1	the film kept running into the same challenge
1:45.0	the novel faced, the expectation that it was a more traditional teen comedy. The author had trouble
1:50.7	getting anyone to take the premise seriously, and by his own admission, director Alexander Payne
1:55.5	was one of those people. After being assured that it was actually a very adult story masquerading
2:00.3	as something lighter,
2:01.4	Payne's interest was piqued and he fell in love with the novel's subversive humor.
	...

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