Looks like you could use a cupcake! More than 25 years removed from 1999’s Election, writer/director Alexander Payne is providing an update on the sequel, which has been teased for a few years now. Considering the source novel, Tracy Flick Can’t Win, got its own sequel, it seemed only fitting that Payne’s movie – which put Reese Witherspoon in an entire new clique as far as Hollywood went – would follow suit. So what’s going on with the Election sequel?
Alexander Payne recently spoke to MovieWeb about where the sequel to Election stood, and it’s both a positive and negative update. “Jim Taylor, my co-writer, and I hadn’t thought about a sequel until Tom Perrotta wrote this fine book, ‘Tracy Flick Can’t Win,’ and it whetted everybody’s appetite. Reese Witherspoon’s, mine, Jim Taylor’s, the producers, the studio. The only trouble was that I just can’t go back to high school. I just can’t do it. So Jim and I have reconceived it differently, and we’re working on it actively.” Tracy Flick Can’t Win found the title character turning to education after a botched law career, jockeying for the position as principal.
As touchy as politics can be (especially now), Payne seems to be looking to avoid any overt statements with the Election sequel, just as he did in 1999. For him and Taylor, it’s not about the Saturday Night Live route but letting the politics come about organically through comedy. “Maybe what gives legs to a political film is that the filmmakers aren’t really interested in the politics. They’re interested in the people, in the human comedy. But here’s where it does become a political satire or commentary, and not just about contemporary politics, but again, eternal politics: people act out their individual psycho-dramas in the public arena. You certainly see it now with this hyper, you know, psychiatrically damaged, narcissistic pattern. You see that being played out in public. You choose interesting characters, like Tracy Flick, who is kind of an eternal symbol of blind ambition.”
Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor would end up earning a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for Election, well ahead of Payne becoming a two-time winner, which ties him with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. It also fared well at the Independent Spirit Awards, but it was Witherspoon who truly left her mark, earning her first Golden Globe nod as well as a National Society of Film Critics for Best Actress.
Would you Pick Flick if it meant a sequel to Election? Cast your vote in the comments section below!
