November 9, 2009

Broderick, ‘Election’ wind down Virginia Film Festival

By Ted Strong, Charlottesville Daily Progress

Matthew Broderick was witty and kind after his film “Election” played at the Culbreth Theatre on Sunday night.

“Election,” a 1997 movie, tells the story of a high-school civics teacher whose life spirals downward as he runs a student election that Tracy Flick (played by Reese Witherspoon) is desperate to win.

During the Virginia Film Festival event, when a fan gave up halfway through asking Broderick if he saw “Election” as a tragedy, with an “I don’t know what I’m talking about,” Broderick encouraged the question, then agreed.

“Yeah, I think that’s true,” he said. “It is a miserable look at America and that people that step on the other guy tend to win.”

But it’s also a cult classic, according to the festival’s Web site.

The movie certainly contains some memorable scenes: for example, a teacher seducing Flick with the Commodores’ “Three Times a Lady” and Diet Mug Root Beer, and a wheelchair-bound student candidate for student body vice president telling voters, “And even if I can’t really stand up for you, I will.”

Broderick again declined to crush a fan when University of Virginia first-year student Matt Hensell asked him, in the middle of the Q&A section, to autograph a copy of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

“I decided to take a chance and hope that he wouldn’t knock me down in front of all those people,” Hensell said.

Broderick signed “with best wishes.”

Asked whom he modeled himself after to pin down the role of a stereotypical civics teacher, Broderick said he didn’t have a specific teacher in mind.

“Something about a short-sleeve, button-down shirt with a tie seemed to do most of the work,” he said.

Broderick, who was wearing jeans, sneakers and a jacket, appeared on stage after the movie with Ron Yerxa, who produced the flick.

Yerxa and Broderick also discussed the fact that the movie’s ending was shot after the rest of the film, when it was decided the first ending didn’t cut it.

The ending that eventually ran was perhaps less true to the book on which the film was based, but more in keeping with the humor of the movie, Broderick said.

Part of the new ending is set and was filmed in Washington. It almost turned out very badly, the two said.

In one scene, Broderick is running down a street near the White House, and filmmakers wanted the shot to go as long as possible, so they told Broderick to simply keep running at the end of the scene.

He did — and ran into a park across the street from the presidential mansion, he said.

“Every homeless man and hot dog vendor and whatever turned out to be security … swarmed into action,” Broderick said.

“That was one of the potentially bad moments in producing … when we thought Matthew might be shot by the Secret Service,” Yerxa said.

And Broderick told about working with Alexander Payne, who directed “Election,” as well as “Sideways”: “He’s hilariously funny, actually, and he’s from 1958, his personality. And he’s of Greek … He’s a Greek person. You know them. I don’t know what that means. He likes moussaka a lot. He’s very, very bright. He might seem quiet at first, but he’s not quiet, he’s just like his movies.”

Sean and Karin Reed of Charlottesville said they really enjoyed Broderick and Yerxa’s talk.

“I thought it was really funny and candid,” Karin Reed said. “It made me laugh.”

Her husband agreed: “The two of them were quite a show.”

Sunday was the last day of the four-day annual film festival.