Thursday, 13 May, 1999

According to Matthew

High school becomes hell for Broderick in Election

By Stephen Cooke, Halifax Herald

Turnabout is fair play.

That can be the only, karmic explanation why Matthew Broderick, who played a teacher's worst nightmare in the cult favourite Ferris Bueller's Day Off, is on the other side of the desk as a problem-plagued Omaha high school instructor in the dark satire Election from MTV and Paramount Pictures.

Directed by Alexander Payne - the man behind Citizen Ruth, a biting comedy about the pro-life/pro-choice battle starring Laura Dern - Election is an unflinching look at how an annoyingly overachieving student's campaign for school president proves to be civics teacher Jim McAllister's undoing.

McAllister loves his job, and he genuinely likes his students, but something about perky, perserverant Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) drives him around the bend. It's not just the fact that a fellow teacher, his best friend Dave, lost his job over an obsession with her; McAllister feels the Tracy Flicks of the world, who'll do anything and step on anyone to get ahead, need to be be taught a lesson.

When she runs unopposed for president in the school council election, McAllister takes action, beginning a sequence of events that changes his life forever.

Unlike the current crop of teenage high school sex comedies, Election is very adult in its humour and perspective. It doesn't take sides - you often feel sorry for schemer Flick's lonely path in life - and it doesn't pull punches.

"That's Alexander's humour. It's not clowny, it's all supposed to be very real," says Broderick by phone from his dressing room in Broadway's Helen Hayes Theatre, where he's appearing in the thriller Night Must Fall.

"It's sarcastic more than broad, I think. Everybody catches the tone from him, and he's a very funny person too.

"It reminds me of studio movies from the '70s, which were a little more individual. This film really is from Alexander, it doesn't feel like there were 18 writers and 14 executives deciding which version of which writer's thing to use. It's not a film made by a committee."

Broderick was considering the Election screenplay by Payne and Citizen Ruth collaborator Jim Taylor when a chance encounter sealed his decision to play the teacher whose own lessons of ethics and morality are sorely tested.

"I read the script, and around the same time I met Laura Dern at a party," he recalls. "She said, 'Oh, those guys are great, you've gotta see Citizen Ruth', so I rented it, and I loved it. All of that made me want the part more and more.

"Its darkness certainly didn't push me away from it. I just thought it was funny, and a really good script. The first thing I look for is something I like reading. If it's dark, light or whatever, that's usually an afterthought. It wasn't like I was looking for a certain type of film, I just thought it was good."

Filmed on location in Payne's hometown of Omaha, Election perfectly captures a feeling of Middle American desperation, with Broderick aptly cast as a nebbishy everyman drowning in his daily existence.

"When they gave me my selection of ties, I knew something was wrong," he laughs, "and I got one short sleeve shirt. And nothing was all-cotton or anything like that either.

"But it was really a pleasure because very often in movies you play a security guard or a college student, and just happen to have $500 Armani pants on, and things get more and more upscale all the time when you're doing sittings.

"It's nice to be so authentic, ugly as it was. It helps the character a lot."

This is a busy summer for Broderick. Aside from Election and playing the villain every night in Night Must Fall ("It's kind of fun. You kill an old lady every night, and then you go home," he says wryly), Broderick will be back on the big screen on July 23 when he pulls on a grey trenchcoat and black fedora to play the comedic cyborg super-agent Inspector Gadget, against My Best Friend's Wedding's Rupert Everett as the nefarious Dr. Claw.

Unlike Broderick's battle last summer against the computer graphic menace of Godzilla, the actor felt like he was a bigger part of the action this time around.

"The fun part is, the effects are mostly mechanical, like when they attached a special, fake arm to me. The stuff we're reacting to is really happening, so that makes it more fun. It was kind of like doing magic tricks, you try to make the illusion work.

"An amazing amount of care goes into a film like this. I spent two weeks having molds made of different part of my body, and then sculptors work on your hands for two weeks putting on nails and hair. Stan Winston did the effects; it's pretty impressive."