Election's Alternate Ending

As we were watching Election on Wednesday, my colleague Matt alerted me to something I’d had no idea about: the film’s creators had originally provided a different ending. A really, really different ending.

It went like this:

Which is, yes … shockingly different from the conclusion the filmmakers went with! [Warning: From here, I should say, there will be intense spoilers about that ending.]

The ending that ultimately made the cut is, I think, tremendous: It almost single-handedly elevates—even, you could argue, redeems—Election, transforming it from a high-school soap opera into something that more strictly resembles a sweeping morality play.

The official ending is twofold: First, it finds Mr. McAllister catching a glimpse of Tracy, years after they both left Nebraska, in Washington—just down the street from the White House. She has graduated from Georgetown; she’s now an aide to Mike Geiger, a Republican representative; she’s leading exactly the kind of life you would expect Tracy Flick to be leading. When she and Mr. McAllister cross paths—she’s across the street getting into a limo with Geiger—she looks in his direction, with an expression of triumph on her face, but he’ll never know whether she actually saw him.

And then: He can’t resist. As the limo pulls away, heading away from the White House up 16th Street … he throws his cup of soda at it. The drink explodes on the back window of the car. He runs away. He is just as petty as ever. And she, once again, has won.

Watch the whole glorious scene for yourself:

And then there’s the very last scene: We find Mr. McAllister back in New York, where he works in the educational department at the Museum of Natural History—he guides tours for kids, basically. In the museum, surrounded by dioramas depicting early man, he asks a question: “So will that make this an igneous rock, or sedimentary? What’s the difference between igneous and sedimentary, anyway?”

The hand of a girl shoots up, eager and insistent: the next Tracy. Tracys, the movie suggests, here in this monument to the inevitability of evolution, are everywhere. And they will win, in the end. Darwinism is on their side.

Compare all that, then, to the ending that director Alexander Payne et al almost appended to Election: one that finds Tracy and Mr. McAllister reconciling, awkwardly, via that most idealistically American of rituals: the purchase of a new car. This ending features Tracy, having just graduated from Carver, confessing to Mr. McAllister that she is scared about what the future might hold. This ending, in short, humbles Tracy, and defangs her. It finds her confessing, actually, exactly the thing Mr. McAllister would want her to confess.

Which is all to say: It’s a very, very good thing Election’s creators went with the ending they did.