Reference.com

Little Miss Sunshine

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

Little Miss Sunshine is an Academy Award-winning comedy-drama film about a family's road trip to a children's beauty pageant and was the film directional debut of the husband-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. The film was produced by Big Beach Films on a budget of US$8 million. The film starred Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin and Alan Arkin.

The film's screenplay was written by first-time writer Michael Arndt, and after directors Dayton and Faris initially settled on studio Focus Features, the film was later funded by one of the producers when the studio dropped the film. Many of the actors' roles had been chosen by the directors, and although the role of Frank Ginsberg was initially supposed to be played by Bill Murray or Robin Williams, the role went to Carell. Filming occurred over thirty days in Arizona and Southern California in the summer of 2005. A large portion of the film focuses on the family vehicle, a Volkswagen T2 Microbus, and many of the problems associated with the vehicle were based on Ardnt's past experience on a family trip. The film's pageant used actual contestants from prior pageants, and the directors held their own pageant to learn more about the process before filming.

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2006. Its distribution rights were bought by Fox Searchlight Pictures for $10.5 million plus ten percent of the revenues of the gross, reportedly one of the biggest deals ever made in the history of the Sundance Film Festival. The film had its wide release in the United States on August 18, 2006, and had its continental European premiere on August 12, 2006 at the 2006 Locarno International Film Festival. The soundtrack was released on July 11, 2006 and included tracks from DeVotchKa, Rick James, and Sufjan Stevens. The DVD was released on December 19, 2006 that included deleted scenes and four alternate endings.

Little Miss Sunshine received generally positive reviews, earning a 92% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 80/100 from Metacritic and had total international box office gross receipts of $100.2 million. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won two: Best Original Screenplay for Michael Arndt and Best Supporting Actor for Alan Arkin. There was also some controversy over the producers' credits at the Academy Awards, which allowed only three of the five producers to receive the award for the film. It also won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature and received multiple other awards and nominations. The film was dedicated to Rebecca Annitto, the niece of producer Peter Saraf and an extra in scenes set in the diner and the convenience store, who was killed in a car accident on September 14, 2005.

Plot

Sheryl Hoover (Toni Collette) is an overworked mother of two. Her brother Frank (Steve Carell) is a homosexual Proust scholar, temporarily living at home with the family after having attempted suicide in the wake of a failed relationship. Sheryl's husband Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a Type A personality striving to help support the family as a motivational speaker and life coach. Dwayne (Paul Dano), Sheryl's son from a previous marriage, is a Nietzsche-reading teenager who has taken a vow of silence until he can accomplish his dreams of becoming a test pilot. Richard's father, Edwin (Alan Arkin), recently evicted from a retirement home for snorting heroin, lives with the family; he is close to his seven-year-old granddaughter Olive (Abigail Breslin).

Olive learns she has qualified for the "Little Miss Sunshine" beauty pageant that is being held in Redondo Beach, California in two days. The parents and Edwin, who has been coaching her, want to support her, and Frank and Dwayne cannot be left alone, so the whole family goes. Because they have little money they go on an 800-mile road trip in their yellow Volkswagen T2 Microbus.

Family tensions play out on the highway and at stops along the way, amidst the aging VW van's mechanical problems. When the van breaks down early on, they learn that they must push the van until it is moving at about 20 mph before it is put into gear, at which point they have to run up to the side door and jump in. Later, the van's horn malfunctions and begins honking continuously. The family suffers setbacks: Richard loses a big deal that would have jump-started his motivational technique business; Frank, in a convenience store buying pornography at Edwin's request, encounters the ex-boyfriend whose actions had prompted his suicide attempt; Edwin dies from a heroin overdose during the family's stay at a motel; they smuggle the body out of the hospital and take it illegally to California because they are in a hurry and they are not allowed to leave it behind for a while. Dwayne discovers that he is color-blind, which means he cannot become a pilot (a realization that prompts him to break his silence); and Sheryl's obsessive manner impels her to attempt to keep everyone, including herself, calm and sane.

The climax takes place at the pageant, which features young hypersexualized girls with teased hair and capped teeth, wearing adult-like swimsuits and evening wear, and performing elaborate dance numbers. Olive, untrained in beauty pageant conventions, is evidently out of place. Recognizing that Olive is a fish out of water whose feelings could really get hurt, Dwayne and Richard want to withdraw her from the competition; Sheryl nevertheless insists that they have to "let Olive be Olive" and participate.

In the talent portion of the pageant, the hitherto-unrevealed dance that Grandpa Edwin had choreographed for his granddaughter is revealed: to the tune of Rick James' "Super Freak," Olive scandalizes and horrifies almost all of the audience and pageant judges with a burlesque performance that she joyfully performs, as oblivious to the subtext behind the dance as the other contestants were to the provocative costumes and heavy makeup they were wearing. When the pageant director approaches Sheryl and Richard to insist on the immediate removal of Olive from the stage, they, along with Frank and Dwayne, instead join Olive on the stage and dance alongside her.

The family is next seen outside the hotel's security office. They are free to go on condition that Olive never takes part in a beauty pageant in California ever again. They pile into the van and, with the horn still honking, smash through the barrier of a toll booth that the pageant official had stopped at, laughing together as they go. The movie cuts to black with the horn, still broken, sounding as the family heads back to their home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Cast

(in order of appearance)

Main cast:

Supporting cast:

Production

Casting

When choosing the cast for the film, directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris were assisted by casting directors Kim Davis and Justine Baddely who had worked with them on previous music videos. When choosing the role of Richard Hoover, Dayton and Faris stated that they had initially settled on Greg Kinnear and went though several actresses before deciding on Australian actress Toni Collette for Sheryl Hoover. Casting directors Davis and Baddely traveled to every English-speaking country to search for the actress to portray Olive Hoover, and the directors finally chose actress Abigail Breslin through an audition when she was six. Paul Dano who played Dwayne, was cast two years before production began and in preparation for portraying his character, spent a few days taking his own vow of silence. Alan Arkin, who portrayed Edwin Hoover, was initially considered too young for the role.

The role of Frank Ginsberg, the suicidal uncle, was originally written for Bill Murray, and there was also studio pressure for Robin Williams. The directing duo chose Steve Carell for the role a few months before filming began, and in an interview revealed: "When we met with Steve Carell, we didn't know he could do this based upon what he had done. But when we met with him and talked to him about the character, the tone of the movie and the way we were approaching it, he was right on the same page with us". Although known to Comedy Central viewers for many years as a correspondent on the highly-rated satirical news program The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Steve Carell, at the time he was cast for Little Miss Sunshine, was a relative unknown in Hollywood. According to an article in Entertainment Weekly, the producers of the film worried that he wasn't a big enough star and didn't have much acting experience. However, between the time the film was shot (summer 2005) and its release a year later, Carell became a success as the star of the high-grossing film The 40-Year-Old Virgin and the leading character of the NBC television series The Office.

Script

The script was written by Michael Arndt and was originally about an East Coast road trip film from Maryland to Florida, but was shifted to a journey from New Mexico to California due to shooting issues. Arndt gave the screenplay to producers Ron Yexra and Albert Berger to find a potential directors. The producers met directors Dayton and Faris while producing Election and in turn gave the script to them to read in 2001. The directors commented later on the script stating: "This film really struck a chord. We felt like it was written for us." The script was purchased from first-time screenwriter Arndt for only $150,000. The film was pitched to several studios, and the only interested studio was Focus Features (previously USA Films) who wanted to film it in Canada. After the studio attempted to have the film be more centered on the character Richard Hoover, and Arndt disagreed, he was fired and replaced by another writer. A corporate change brought in a new studio head and Arndt was rehired when the new writer left after four weeks of rewriting the script. After two years of pre-production, Focus Features dropped the film in August 2004. Marc Turtletaub, one of the film's producers, paid $400,000 to Focus Features to buy back the rights to the film and for development costs, allowing Little Miss Sunshine to then be filmed.

Once the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2006, several studios bid on the film, and Fox Searchlight Pictures won, offering $10.5 million, plus ten percent of all the gross revenues. The deal occurred less than a day after it premiered and was reportedly one of the biggest deals ever made in the history of the Sundance Film Festival. The previous year's festival had the film Hustle and Flow receive $9 million from Paramount Classics and in 1999, Happy, Texas received $10 million from Miramax Films.

Filming

The film was shot over thirty days in sequential order in Arizona and southern California in the summer of 2005. Post-production was completed four days before its screening on nine screens at the Sundance Film Festival, where it had its premiere.

Volkswagen T2 Microbus

Five different VW Microbuses were used for the family car as some were modified for various filming techniques. When preparing for the scenes that would be shot within the vehicle, the cinematographer used a basic video camera and shot from various angles inside the van to determine the best locations to shoot from. Many of the problems associated with the VW Microbus that were included in the plot (a broken clutch, a stuck horn, and a detached door), were based on similar problems that writer Arndt experienced in a childhood trip that involved the same vehicle.

While filming the scenes where the family pushes the van to get it started a stunt coordinator was used to ensure the safety of the actors. In an interview, actor Greg Kinnear jokingly described how the scenes were filmed when he was driving: "I was going like 50 miles an hour in this '71 VW van that doesn't have side air bags. Basically you'd wait for this huge camera truck to come whizzing in front of us with the camera. 'Okay, go!' I mean, it was insanity; it's the most dangerous movie I've ever made. Don't listen to Paramount and their Mission: Impossible franchise — it's a joke." While filming the scenes in the van, the actors would at times remain in the vehicle for three or four hours a day. For scenes in which Alan Arkin's character was swearing excessively, Abigail had her headphones on and could not hear the lines. Only when she saw the film did she know what was being said. On July 25, 2006 Fox Searchlight Pictures invited VW bus owners to a screening at Vineland Drive-In theater in Industry, California. Over sixty VW buses were present at the screening.

The pageant

All the girls acting as participants in the beauty pageant, except Abigail Breslin, were veterans of real beauty pageants. They looked the same and performed the same acts as they had in their real-life pageants. To prepare for filming, the directors attended several pageants in Southern California and put on an actual pageant with the assistance of a coordinator to learn more about the pageant process. A mother of a contestant in the film revealed that the film overplayed practices that the contestants go through: "Most pageants aren’t quite like that, with shaving the girls’ legs, spraying them with fake tans and putting on so much makeup."

When Focus Features initially wanted to film in Canada, the directors opposed it, believing the costs of flying all of the pageant girls and their families would be too excessive. The contestants and their families instead spent two weeks filming in a hotel near Santa Monica. To make Breslin's character the "plump" figure as shown in the film, she had to wear a fat suit during filming. For Olive's final scene involving her dancing routine, Breslin spent two weeks preparing with a choreographer.

Release

Box office

Little Miss Sunshine was initially opened in seven theaters in its first week, earning $498,796. It had the highest per-theater average gross of all the films shown in the United States every day for the first sixteen days of its release. On July 29, 2006, the first Saturday after its initial limited release, Little Miss Sunshine earned a $20,335 per-theater average gross. Beginning with its third week of release, Little Miss Sunshine remained in the list of top ten films measuring domestic box office performance until its eleventh week of release, when it dropped to eleventh place. The highest position it reached was third, which occurred in its fifth week of release. The largest number of theaters the film appeared in was 1,602. Internationally, the film earned over $5 million in Australia, $3 million in Germany, $4 million in Spain, and $6 million combined in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Malta. As of January 15, 2008, Little Miss Sunshine has had gross receipts of $59,891,098 in the U.S. and $40,383,927 internationally for a total of $100,275,025.

Critical reception

The film has a "91% fresh" rating based on 186 reviews from critics at the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes with consensus calling it a "A moving, delightfully funny satire." At the website MetaCritic, the film earned a favorable rating of 80/100 based on 36 reviews.

Michael Medved gave Little Miss Sunshine four stars (out of four) saying that "…this startling and irresistible dark comedy counts as one of the very best films of the year…" and that directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the movie itself, and actors Alan Arkin, Abigail Breslin, and Steve Carell deserve Oscar nominations. Joel Siegel issued a rarely-awarded 'A' rating, saying that "Orson Welles would have to come back to life for this not to make my year-end Top 10 list." Breslin's depiction of Olive Hoover has also moved many critics, with USA Today's Claudia Puig saying, "If Olive had been played by any other little girl, she would not have affected us as mightily as it did."

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a C rating, calling the characters "walking, talking catalogs of screenwriter index-card data." Jim Ridley of The Village Voice called the movie a "rickety vehicle that travels mostly downhill" and a "Sundance clunker." Anna Nimouse of National Review writes that the "film is praised as a 'feel-good' film, perhaps for moviegoers who like bamboo under their fingernails. If you are miserable, then Little Miss Sunshine is the film for you."

Awards

Academy Award producers controversy

There was some controversy concerning how many producers should receive an award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their work in producing the film. In 1999, the Academy decided that up to a maximum of three producers are eligible to be included in an award for a film. However, the Producers Guild of America (PGA) has not set a limit of producers that can be honored for a film. In the case of Little Miss Sunshine, there were five producers (Marc Turtletaub, Peter Saraf, Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa, and David Friendly) and the Academy did not want to include Berger and Yerxa. The two producers were responsible for finding the script, choosing the cinematographer, assisting in the re-shoot of the ending, and helping bring the film to the Sundance Film Festival. Producer David Hoberman, commented on the support for honoring all five producers, stating "If there are five people actually involved in producing a movie, there's no reason why someone who's made a good enough film to be nominated for an Academy Award should be precluded from being rewarded for the work they did." However, Lynda Obst who was affiliated with an Academy Award producer committee, also commented: "By and large, five people don't make a movie. If this is an exception, then it's a sad situation. But you don't destroy a rule for an exception."

At the Academy Awards, producers Marc Turtletaub, Peter Saraf, and David Friendly were able to appear on stage to accept the award for Best Original Screenplay, while the PGA honored all five of the producers. Albert Berger, reacting to the Academy's decision while at a panel for the film, stated "No matter what the academy decided, we produced this movie." In June 2007, the Academy announced that they would allow exceptions for films that had more than three producers in the future, stating "The committee has the right, in what it determines to be a rare and extraordinary circumstance, to name any additional qualified producer as a nominee."

Wins

Nominations

  • Academy Awards:

    • Best Picture
    • Best Supporting Actress - Abigail Breslin
  • American Cinema Editors:

    • Best Edited Feature Film - Comedy or Musical, Pamela Martin
  • BAFTA Awards:

    • Best Picture
    • Best Director - Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
    • Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Abigail Breslin
    • Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Toni Collette
  • Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards:

    • Best Picture
    • Best Comedy Movie
    • Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role - Alan Arkin
  • Chicago Film Critics Association Awards:

    • Best Picture
    • Best Screenplay, Original - Michael Arndt
    • Best Supporting Actress - Abigail Breslin
    • Best Supporting Actress - Toni Collette
    • Most Promising Director - Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
  • Costume Designers Guild Awards:

    • Excellence in Costume Design for Film Contemporary - Nancy Steiner
  • Directors Guild of America Awards:

    • Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures - Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
  • Golden Globe Awards:

    • Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
    • Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy - Toni Collette
  • Gotham Awards:

    • Best Ensemble Cast - Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin and Alan Arkin
    • Breakthrough Award - Abigail Breslin
  • Grammy Awards:

    • Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media - Various Artists
  • Independent Spirit Awards:

    • Best Supporting Male - Paul Dano
  • London Film Critics Circle:

    • Best Film
    • Best Screenplay - Michael Arndt
  • MTV Movie Awards:

    • Best Movie
    • Breakthrough Performance - Abigail Breslin
  • Satellite Awards:

    • Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
    • Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy - Toni Collette
    • Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Alan Arkin
    • Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Abigail Breslin
    • Devotchka for the song "Til the End of Time"
  • Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards:

    • Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role - Alan Arkin
    • Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role - Abigail Breslin
  • Vancouver Film Critics Circle:

    • Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Steve Carell

Score and soundtrack

The score for Little Miss Sunshine was written by the Denver band DeVotchKa and composer Mychael Danna. Performed by DeVotchKa, much of the music was adapted from their pre-existing songs, such as "How It Ends," which became "The Winner Is" "The Enemy Guns," and "You Love Me" from the album How It Ends and "La Llorona" from Una Volta.

Directors Dayton and Faris were introduced to DeVotchKa's music after hearing the song "You Love Me" on Los Angeles' KCRW radio station. The directors were so impressed with the music that they purchased iPods for cast members containing DevotchKa albums. Mychael Danna was brought in to help arrange the pre-existing material and collaborate with DeVotchKa on new material for the film. The Little Miss Sunshine score was not eligible for Academy Award consideration due to the percentage of material derived from already written DeVotchKa songs. The DeVotchka song "Til the End of Time" did receive a nomination for a 2006 Satellite Award as Best Original Song. Both DeVotchKa and Danna received 2007 Grammy nominations for their work on the soundtrack.

The soundtrack also contains two songs by Sufjan Stevens ("No Man's Land" and "Chicago"), and songs by Tony Tisdale ("Catwalkin'"), and Rick James ("Super Freak"). The soundtrack reached number 42 on the "Top Independent Albums" and 24 on "Top Soundtracks" in 2006. According to one of the film's DVD commentary tracks, "Super Freak", the source music danced to by Olive during the pageant competition, was introduced during post-production. Arndt's screenplay had called for Prince's song "Peach"; during filming, the ZZ Top song "Gimme All Your Lovin'" was used. Two additional songs in the film that were written by Gordon Pogoda — "Let It Go" (aka "If Cupid Had a Heart") and "You've Got Me Dancing" (the latter of which he co-wrote with Barry Upton) — are featured during the pageant scenes near the end of the film.

Track # Title Performer Length (M:SS)
1 "The Winner Is" DeVotchKa 3:04
2 "Til the End of Time" 3:56
3 "You Love Me" 4:02
4 "First Push" 1:05
5 "No Man's Land" Sufjan Stevens 4:47
6 "Let's Go" DeVotchKa 3:21
7 "No One Gets Left Behind" 1:14
8 "Chicago" Sufjan Stevens 6:07
9 "We're Gonna Make It" DeVotchKa 2:32
10 "Do You Think There's A Heaven" 1:23
11 "Catwalkin'" Tony Tisdale 1:38
12 "Superfreak" (Rocasound Revamp) Rick James 4:13
13 "La Llorona" DeVotchKa 3:24
14 "How It Ends" 5:39

DVD release

The DVD was released on December 19, 2006. It includes a dual-disc widescreen/full screen format, two commentary tracks, four alternate endings, and a music video by DeVotchKa. In its first week of release, DVD sales totaled $19,614,299 and it was the sixth-most sold DVD of the week. For the first sixteen weeks of the DVD's releases, gross sales were $49,152,435.

References

Further reading

  • Arndt, Michael. Little Miss Sunshine: The Shooting Script. Newmarket, 2007. ISBN 1557047707.

External links



Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Wednesday March 12, 2008 at 17:44:20 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation