Election (1999)

lol

PANCAKES

i was confusing it with the night court season finale

that shit was b-a-n-a-n-a-s

charles robinson rapin' laroquette with a gavel and a clown wig

Getting raped with a clown wig: C/D

that's a classic "didn't know whether to laugh or to cry" scenario

yes

clown wig started out as a merkin on the end of the gavel but didn't know where to stop

http://www.my-magic-store.com/product/images/clown_wig.gif

Mommy!
Fuck it!

yo 'chuck and larry' isn't like A MILLION MILES from 'citizen ruth' and as fer possible 'they fall in love' ending -- payne and taylor copped out on ending 'ruth' definitively amirite?

it's not a great film.

did it originally end with ruth falling in love with the fetus and making out with it?

in a gay, gay way

ew

homophobic much

i dunno, sexual relations with a fetus is pretty gross no matter how you slice it

er, perhaps "slice it" was a poor choice of words

"Since I grew up without a dad, you might assume, psychologically, I was looking for a father figure. But that had nothing to do with it at all. It was just that Dave was so strong, and he made me feel so safe and protected..."

this movie still brings the lols

how miscarriage is a 'copout' I'm not sure

line latebloomer quoted ftw

meh

what was that whole Happiness/Very Bad Things/Election circa 1999 thing where just like exponentially shitty things happen to people in the suburbs

election is nothing like those other two you munch

I'd be happy to discuss that with you, Whiney, but I'm busy searching for old ILB threads to revive so I can be all, "Baseball? Whatever."

http://bestjamaica.com/images/aloe-vera.jpg

Such a classic. One of the only movies that makes my skin crawl. New Criterion remaster looks fantastic.

total classic

I went to a special screening of Election last night, part of a series called Bechdel Tested that a local rep runs. The details, if you’re interested.

The introductory panel was good. The four women talked about their political careers--the film wasn’t discussed. That was limited to two of the organizers just before they introduced the panel. One of them clearly had major problems with the film: she talked about its casual treatment of rape, and warned that there were “male-gazey” parts. “Feel free to hiss and boo” (verbatim quote), she said, because “parts of it deserve to be hissed and booed” (paraphrase).

I had two reactions. As a fan of Election, I thought that taking such broad farce at face value was a little off-course--it’d be like getting all worked up about the treatment of Russians in Dr. Strangelove. The creepiest character, Dave, is a buffoon writ large: it’s impossible to miss that. I don’t know that there’s a single male character in the film, McAllister included/especially, who isn’t presented as an object of ridicule. (Maybe the one male student who does the first vote count is okay.) The film’s/director’s/writer’s sympathy is with, if anyone, Tammy Meltzer--and even she, in her quixotically romantic reveries, doesn’t escape un-ridiculed.

Put all that aside, though--good points for discussion, before or after the film. It was the invitation to boo or hiss that really agitated the filmgoer part of me. This is a film you’re hosting, and that people have paid $13 to see. With something like Election, older and very well known, the audience is probably going to consist of a few people who haven’t seen it, and a lot of people like me who are there because they have and they like it (with people who are primarily there for the event scattered across both groups). Booing and hissing, if there is any, that’s the kind of thing that could ruin the film for me.

There was a 10-minute break between the panel and the film, and as people milled about, I went up to the host and basically said exactly that. I was kind of nervous: began by saying it was a great panel, and then--one of the panelists had talked about how men are always voicing complaints to her that they would never direct at a man--assured her that I’d be saying exactly the same thing if she were a man. (Truthfully, I’d be much more inclined to complain to a man, because I was aware, and slowed down by, the realization that I was about to engage in that tiresome cliché that begins with an ‘m’ and ends with a ‘g.’ You can believe that or not.) She quietly responded that those were fair points. I wasn’t sure if she actually thought they were fair points or if she just wanted me to go back to my seat.

I didn’t necessarily feel all that great when I walked away, but once the film started, I was glad I spoke up. Sure enough--because some people are stupid, and if you tell them to do x, y, or z then they’ll do x, y, or z, especially if they think it’ll be met with approval from the people around them--there was booing and hissing here and there. Not nearly enough to matter, but anyone seeing it for the first time would have missed some dialogue. Some of the derision sounded a little confused, to say the least. My favourite was the scene where McAlister confronts Tracy on Dave’s firing. Every one of McAlister’s lines is countered and undermined by something much sharper and cutting from Tracy, ending with her threat of legal action from her mom’s lawyer. It was like, “Boohiss--wait a minute...Boohiss--wait a minute...Boohiss--wait a minute.” Or when the dreaded c-word showed up, but voiced by Tammy--a couple of not-very-hearty hisses. Is it actually Tammy saying that, or the male/director saying it by proxy? The people hissing sounded like they might have been right in the middle of sorting that question out. Good art is complicated.

There was a nice ovation for the film at the end. 7/10 on the ovation scale--not thundering, but very deserved, I’d say.

My god

christ

imo panels should not make comments before the movie. for exactly the reasons you stated

I saw this for the first time last week as it happens

It's good

I like the idea of this series in theory, and it is exactly the kind of thing I'd be going to if I lived in TO (or had the time/money/patience to drive 2 hours to attend a screening), but in practice it sounds like it turned into a bit too much of a humourless Mystery Science Theatre 3000, and yeah, I'd be pissed.

The film’s/director’s/writer’s sympathy is with, if anyone, Tammy Meltzer

I agree with this. The film does even occasionally align its sympathies with Tracy, I'd argue.

yeah i always thought the film explicitly sided with Tracy as the hero. i mean, what more do you need than the last scene? jealous, conniving, impotent, pathetic man chucking a milkshake at a successful woman's town car. and then he runs away like the rat he is. i mean, it's obvious

I do not understand why "panel -> drinks -> movie" would make any sense to a thoughtful person as a good run of show. It should be exactly the opposite.

flappy did you not perceive that Tracy's striving-yet-entitled haughtiness and gratuitous ambition might not be the characteristics of a hero

i mean, it's obvious

How did this guy go from such sharp, vicious satires to lame "what's life all about?" movies?

Something else that happened, which I couldn't really hear at the time because there was so much noise: they took the last audience question for the panel, and then, when a guy tried to ask one more question--and decided it would be a good idea to say "Can a man ask a question?" at an event called Bechdel Tested, in a audience that was probably 75% female--he was shouted down.

http://twitter.com/hashtag/bechdeltested?src=hash

Not sure how I feel about this. Questioning had stopped, and it sounded like he was grandstanding a bit. On the other hand, I hate mob-mentality in any context. Like when I was at a Dalton Trumbo documentary once, with Donald Sutherland speaking, and a guy got up and tried to say "But wouldn't you agree that Russia was doing some awful things in the midst of the McCarthy Era...". I didn't know if the guy had something valid to say or not--he was shouted down just as he was getting started, egged on by Sutherland.

Well now I'm confused, surely one or the other of them has to be the entirely sympathetic hero xps

i'm definitely against alcohol in movie theaters, and certainly at a paneled screening

xp well she's very Hillary-esque, and HRC is a hero/ role model despite her problems. I think the film portrays Tracy in the same way- ruthless but not entirely selfish and certainly not as pathetic and apathetic as almost everyone else in the film

I do not understand why "panel -> drinks -> movie" would make any sense to a thoughtful person as a good run of show. It should be exactly the opposite.

The film does even occasionally align its sympathies with Tracy, I'd argue.

Occasionally, I think it does too, especially in her confrontation with McAlister over Dave. Most of the time, though, I'd go with the idea of her as Nixon. (Last night, Tammy suddenly seemed like Trump during her speech in the gym: elect me so I can tear everything down.)

Yeah, panels should go after the movie. Keep any introductory comments under five minutes, don't prime the audience to react a certain way, and have a Q&A afterwards if you want to get the audience involved.

oh yeah clemenza otm re: tammy as trump

Panels after the movie are a much better idea in general, but this panel wasn't talking about the film at all, so beforehand seemed okay. The provocation came from the hosts, not the panel.

Yeah, panels should go after the movie. Keep any introductory comments under five minutes, don't prime the audience to react a certain way, and have a Q&A afterwards if you want to get the audience involved.

― jmm, Monday, February 19, 2018 12:31 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes! i saw agnes varda's VAGABOND last year at a film festival, sold out theater w/ hundreds of people, Beach House presented, only comments beforehand were from victoria legrand: "I really love this movie, and I really love this character. hope you like it, too."

Panels have been a good idea precisely once in history

The Obama Death Panels, obviously.