Film: Blood and guts in high school

In his brilliant satire, Election, Alexander Payne takes a subversive, intelligent look at the American obsession with success. But why won't he leave Omaha? By Liese Spencer

Bored by an afternoon of interviews in his hotel room, director Alexander Payne is in courtly mode. Would I like a peach, he wonders, before jumping up to pluck some from the Carmen Miranda table decoration and wash them in an ice bucket. The fruit looks delicious but tastes of nothing.

Happily, the film he's here to talk about is just the reverse. Shot on location in Payne's hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, Election may not have the airbrushed bloom of other Hollywood High School movies, but its tart satire certainly doesn't lack flavour.

Based on a novel by Tom Perrotta (which was, in turn, partly inspired by the 1992 presidential race), Payne's deliciously twisted farce follows the election for student councillor of George Washington Carver High School.

Fiercely ambitious poster-maker, muffin-baker and all-round overachiever Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) is running unopposed until teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) spitefully decides that democracy would be better served if the sociopathic go-getter had some competition. Enter nice but dim football jock Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) and a dirty tricks campaign which includes everything from sexual scandal and ballot-box sabotage to a wildcard candidate in the form of Chris' lesbian sister, Tammy (Jessica Campbell).

Funded by MTV and starring 23-year-old wunderkind Witherspoon and Ferris Bueller alumnus Broderick, Payne's movie could easily be mistaken for another dumbed-down teen flick. But beneath its glibly entertaining surface of freeze-frame farce and faux-naive narration lurks a darker drama. Payne has fashioned a refreshingly grown-up satire on power politics, about winning and losing, ambition and disillusionment.

So he finds it somewhat vexing to have Election constantly "lumped in" with other, less sophisticated diversions. "Just because my film happens to be set in a High School, I get asked about Varsity Blues and Cruel Intentions all the time. I couldn't care less about those movies. I don't see the similarity between them and Election at all," he moans, `Why can't people compare my movie to Zero de Conduite?"

Election may not exactly match the anarchic brilliance of Jean Vigo's 1933 classic, but it certainly has a subversive intelligence and originality missing from many of today's teen-pleasers. Payne's speciality is hypocritical double-speak. When McAllister tells the popular Chris "it's time to give something back", what he really means is "defeat that ruthless bitch who had an affair with my colleague and got him sacked". But the director doesn't flinch from gross visual gags as well. In one scene, Broderick's conscientious but frustrated Teacher of the Year is shown beating off his insomnia with a spot of cheerleader porn.

No character is wholly good or bad but most of them wind up looking rather pathetic. "They're all so sad," agrees Payne. "That's how I feel about people in general. I love them but I hate them. I'm repulsed but I feel compassion."

The same wicked misanthropy fuelled Payne's first feature. The story of a pregnant glue-sniffer, Citizen Ruth poked fun at both pro-choicers and pro-lifers. Payne's prickly debut may not have done well at the American box office (the film was never released here) but it proved that in the simple-minded, self-censoring world of Hollywood, here was one director who was not afraid to attack a few holy cows in the name of irony.

"American film tends to be so unambiguous," says Payne. "There aren't many film-makers interested in doing satire these days and, of those, there aren't many that do it well. It's rare that you have a genuinely interesting comedy director like Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, or even Woody Allen. Film-makers are somehow afraid of comedy. I'm the opposite. I'm afraid of straight drama. Maybe I'm still adolescent. Perhaps that's why I still need irony to hide behind."

What Payne doesn't hide behind is glossy production values. Like Citizen Ruth, Election is shot in a determinedly bleak-looking Nebraska, full of ugly suburban houses, florescent school corridors, seedy motels and tacky shopping malls.

"It's a reaction to how sleek everything is in American cinema. Whatever the film's about, whether it's starring Julia Roberts, Al Pacino or Susan Sarandon dying of cancer, it's always so beautifully-lit, so rich and warm. Everyone lives in these impossibly upper-middle class houses, with the open kitchen and the sport-utility vehicle car. When I was preparing for Election, I'd watch other movies set in High Schools, and they'd always have these high ceilings and hardwood floors and venetian blinds with sun streaming through them. That's garbage, you know?

"Too many film-makers make films based on watching other films and just accept those conventions," he continues. "In the moment of making a movie what I shoot has got to be based on what I see around me." Payne ensured authenticity by filming Election at a working school. During the week, the film crew would be shooting in one room while class was going on next door. When the bell rang for the next lesson, they'd have to wait while the whole school shuffled off for its next lesson. Teachers played teachers and students played students.

"I like to shoot in real locations," says the director. "I like shooting in Omaha because I'm from there. I understand it. It's a place where buildings mean something to me. LA is not mine. Omaha is mine and I can show it. Also, I get nice weather in Omaha, it's always changing. In Election you see wind. You see the actors' hair being blown about, their coats billowing. It's nice to see the elements on film."

While movies such as Cruel Intentions and Ten Things I Hate About You are plundering the literary canon to lend their teen dramas a little added depth, Payne works the other way around, crafting literate satire from the simple drama of everyday suburban life. "The byword for the production was ba-na-li-ty," says Payne, spitting out every syllable. When Broderick's teacher sets off for a "romantic" tryst with his neighbour's estranged wife, he may see himself as a dashing Italian gigolo, but what Payne shows us is a small man in shirt sleeves arranging cheap flowers in a miserable motel room, before indulging in a last-minute douche.

For all his high-minded mundanity, Payne counts himself lucky to have the common touch. "Thank God, you know, because it's just luck that what occurs to you as good and honest and true also appeals to others. Nor does that continue forever. If you look at the careers of popular directors, there's normally only about 10 years, maybe 15, when they're in touch with the Zeitgeist. Before and after that they are ignored or forgotten. Of all those great American directors of the Seventies, only Spielberg has really survived. Coppola has kind of come and gone. Arthur Penn. Michael Cimino. Jack Clayton - there were 10 years or so when he really made great pictures - but now, who cares about Jack Clayton?"

For the moment, however, this looks like Payne's time. Isn't he tempted to high-tail it out of Omaha and spend the next decade making expensive, escapist fantasies?

"Since Election I've been offered a lot of Hollywood projects but I don't like anything'" he says. "The biggest movie I was offered was Charlie's Angels. It's going to be Columbia Pictures' big summer release with Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz and maybe Catherine Zeta Jones. It was a ton of money but I just couldn't do it." Forget big-budget cherry-picking or peachy-keen teen movies, Payne prefers to stick with the prickly pears.

`Election' opens today