Little Miss Sunshine: Difference between revisions
| Line 38: | Line 38: | ||
* '''Sheryl Hoover''' - Sheryl is Richard's wife and the mother of Olive and Dwayne. |
* '''Sheryl Hoover''' - Sheryl is Richard's wife and the mother of Olive and Dwayne. |
||
* '''Frank''' - Frank is Sheryl's brother and a once-prominent [[Proust]] scholar. Frank, in the beginning of the film, had been released from the hospital after a suicide attempt. |
* '''Frank''' - Frank is Sheryl's brother and a once-prominent [[Proust]] scholar. Frank, in the beginning of the film, had been released from the hospital after a suicide attempt. |
||
* '''Edwin Hoover''' - Edwin, usually called "Dad" or "Grandpa", is Olive's grandfather. Edwin is addicted to [[ |
* '''Edwin Hoover''' - Edwin, usually called "Dad" or "Grandpa", is Olive's grandfather. Edwin is addicted to [[heroin]], but still inspires Olive by teaching her dance moves and a "can do" philosophy. |
||
==Soundtrack== |
==Soundtrack== |
||
Revision as of 19:52, 29 December 2006
| Little Miss Sunshine | |
|---|---|
 Movie poster for Little Miss Sunshine | |
| Directed by | Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris |
| Written by | Michael Arndt |
| Produced by | Michael Beugg (executive), Jeb Brody (executive), Marc Turtletaub, Peter Saraf, David Friendly, Ron Yerxa, Albert Berger |
| Starring | Greg Kinnear Toni Collette Steve Carell Abigail Breslin Alan Arkin Paul Dano |
| Distributed by | Fox Searchlight |
Release dates | July 26, 2006 |
Running time | 101 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | USD 8 Million[1] |
Little Miss Sunshine is a Golden Globe nominated dramedy film directed by the husband-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. The film has had high praise and acclaim, including winning the Best Feature - World Cinema Audience Award at the 2006 Sydney Film Festival, and even a standing ovation at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. Distribution rights for the film were bought by Fox Searchlight Pictures for $10 million,[1] which is reported to have been one of the biggest deals ever made in the festival's history.[2] The movie was released in the United States on July 26, 2006,[3] and had its continental European premiere on August 12 at the 2006 Locarno International Film Festival.[4]
Plot summary
Template:Spoiler Little Miss Sunshine is the story of the Hoovers, a fictional dysfunctional family from Albuquerque, New Mexico. The characters are introduced in the opening sequences; Sheryl Hoover (Toni Collette) who picks up her brother Frank (Steve Carell) at a hospital after a suicide attempt. Richard Hoover (Greg Kinnear), a manic go-getter striving to find a way to sell his motivational nine-step technique to becoming a winner. Dwayne (Paul Dano), angst-ridden, Nietzsche-reading teenage son who has dedicated his life to joining the Air Force Academy in order to become a test pilot. Richard's father, Edwin (Alan Arkin), recently evicted from a retirement home for snorting heroin, is shown to have a strong bond with seven-year-old granddaughter Olive (Abigail Breslin), and coaches her to perform in a beauty pageant.
After a lengthy expository dinner sequence in which the characters are developed, Olive plays a phone message in which she learns she has qualified for the "Little Miss Sunshine" beauty pageant. Olive runs to the answering machine and learns that she has qualified for the contest's finals that are being held in Redondo Beach, California in two days. After Richard and Sheryl attempt to haphazardly concoct plans for getting Olive to the pageant, they finally decide that they have no choice but to pack all six family members into their yellow Volkswagen Type 2 mini-bus for a two-day road trip.
The bus itself suffers various mechanical defects during the film. The tension between the characters, exposed during the intial dinner sequence, is played out for comedic effect and each character, excepting Olive, suffers setbacks in their personal or professional lives along the way. Richard's home business suffers a downturn, his father dies, Frank meets an ex-lover who is now with a scholarly rival, and Dwayne finds reason to doubt his suitability for the Air Force.
Several comedic situations arise during these crises. A discussion about ice cream and body image provides food for discussion later in the film; Grandpa's pornography collection helps the family out of a jam, and the movie becomes a race to get to the pageant on time.
When the family arrives for the pageant, suffering a final ordeal at the hands of the contest's administration, the family questions whether the trip had been worth it - and whether Olive's goals were worthy ones. The finale of the film involves a memorable and unique performance by Olive in the talent portion, and the denouement shows that the experience of the trip has drawn the family together.
Characters
- Olive Hoover - Olive is a young girl from New Mexico who qualifies for a beauty pageant in Redondo Beach, California. She has instinct to "know the family is at an emotional precipice and she is its connective tissue."[5]
- Richard Hoover - Richard is Olive's father and aspires to market his nine-step motivational technique on becoming a winner.
- Dwayne - Dwayne is Olive's half-brother and has taken a vow of silence until he becomes a test pilot for the Air Force. Dwayne has a strong appreciation for Nietzsche, and can be seen reading one of his books throughout the entire movie. Dwayne is Sheryl's son from a previous marriage, his full name is never mentioned.
- Sheryl Hoover - Sheryl is Richard's wife and the mother of Olive and Dwayne.
- Frank - Frank is Sheryl's brother and a once-prominent Proust scholar. Frank, in the beginning of the film, had been released from the hospital after a suicide attempt.
- Edwin Hoover - Edwin, usually called "Dad" or "Grandpa", is Olive's grandfather. Edwin is addicted to heroin, but still inspires Olive by teaching her dance moves and a "can do" philosophy.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for this film contains songs by Sufjan Stevens, Tony Tisdale, Rick James, and DeVotchKa. The score is composed by Mychael Danna and DeVotchKa.
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 and actors Alan Arkin, Abigail Breslin and Steve Carell deserve Oscar nominations.[6]
Joel Siegel gave Little Miss Sunshine 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."[7] Breslin's depiction of Olive Hoover has also moved many critics, with USA Todays Claudia Puig saying "if Olive had been played by any other little girl, she would not have affected us as mighty as it did."[5]
Dustin Hoffman (an Oscar-winning actor), on the December 22, 2006 telecast of the Tonight Show, while guesting with Abigail Breslin, described her portrayal as: "...one of the best performances that I have seen in my entire life."
The film has a "92% fresh" rating from critics and 96% fresh from users at Rotten Tomatoes[8], and is one of only a few 2006 films to reach the IMDb Top 250[9].
Awards
Box office
- Little Miss Sunshine had the highest per theater average gross of all films shown in the United States every day for the first 16 days of its release.[10]
- On July 29, 2006, the first Saturday after its initial limited release, Little Miss Sunshine earned a $20,335 per theater average gross.[11].
- As of December 27, 2006, Little Miss Sunshine has made an unprecedented $59,433,889 in the U.S. and $86,415,209 total internationally.[12]
DVD info
The DVD was released on December 19, 2006. It includes a dual-disc widescreen/full screen format, two commentaries, four alternate endings, and a music video by DeVotchKa.
Production Information
- Originally written as an East Coast roadtrip movie from Maryland to Florida, it was shifted to a journey from New Mexico to California due to shooting issues.
- The role of the suicidal uncle was originally written for Bill Murray, the studios wanted Robin Williams, but eventually went for Steve Carell.
- Five identical Volkswagen Type 2s were used during filming.
- The movie was shot in sequence.
- The script was purchased from first time screenwriter Michael Arndt for $250,000.
- No filming was done in New Mexico; the Albuquerque scenes were actually shot in southern California. This explains why the family eats take-out chicken in a bucket from Dinah's Family Restaurant, located in Los Angeles.
- In another dining scene, the family looks at menus from Pann's, a well-known family restaurant not far from Los Angeles International Airport. However, the scene actually was shot in another restaurant.
- The scenes that took place in Redondo Beach, California were actually filmed in Ventura, California. There are no freeways that lead to the beach.
- Many of the freeway scenes were filmed on California State Route 14.
- The scene in the gas station was filmed in the Chevron station on Lyons Road in Santa Clarita, California.
- Although known to Comedy Central viewers for many years as a correspondent on the high-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,[13] 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 in the summer of 2005 and its release in the summer of 2006, Carell became a huge success as the star of the high-grossing film The 40-Year-Old Virgin in August 2005 and the leading character of the popular NBC Emmy-winning television series The Office, which premiered in March 2005 and for which Carell won a Golden Globe in 2006 for best lead actor in a comedy television series. In the span of just one year, Carell had become such a star that the producers had gone from protesting his casting to tapping him to do prominent promotion for the film.
- 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.[14]
- Greg Kinnear and Paul Dano also star in the 2006 movie adaptation of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation.
- On July 25, 2006 Fox Searchlight Pictures invited VW bus owners to a screening of Little Miss Sunshine at Vineland Drive-In theater in City of Industry, California. 65 VW buses were present at the event.[15]
- The license plate of Frank's academic and romantic rival, Larry Sugarman (the #2 Proust scholar), reads "lost time", a reference to Marcel Proust's principal novel À la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time.
- Inside the convenience store, the price of Frank's slurpee and the pornographic magazines came to a total of $19.79. Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris had previously directed the "1979" music video by The Smashing Pumpkins.
- Bryan Cranston's character in Little Miss Sunshine has the same name - Stan Grossman - as Larry Brandenburg's character in the film Fargo.
- Paul Dano's character has the same given name - Dwayne - as one of the main characters in the Kurt Vonnegut novel Breakfast of Champions; in addition, the referenced main character has the family name "Hoover."
- A scene shot in Phoenix, Arizona, as the family leaves the area for California, shows the family's bus traveling eastbound on the Arizona State Route 101, crossing beneath the juncture of the Interstate 17 freeway. In reality, they would be headed in the wrong direction.
- Most of the beauty pageant interiors were shot at the Radisson in Culver City . It is across the street from Dinah's, a restaurant where the interiors for the 'ice cream' scene were shot. Ironically, they use menus from "Pann's", another restaurant a few miles away (on LaTijera).
- Screenwriter Steven Conrad did an uncredited draft while the film was at Focus Features. The only thing kept was Richard's trip to meet Stan Grossman. [16]
- In one driving scene, Olive is shown playing with the same happy face puzzle that the main contestant played with in the 2001 HBO documentary Living Dolls: The Making of a Child Beauty Queen.
References
- ^ Broken link, as of 11/17/06.
- ^ Senh Duong, Rotten Tomatoes, SUNDANCE: Searchlight Spends Big For “Little Miss Sunshine”, Jan. 21, 2006. Retrieved 11/17/06.
- ^ Box Office Mojo Broken link, as of 11/17/06.
- ^ Broken link, as of 11/17/06.
- ^ a b Abigail: 'Little Miss Sunshine' highlights her winning ways by Claudia Puig, USA Today, December 22, 2006 section E2
- ^ Michael Medved. ""Little Miss Sunshine"". Retrieved 2006-11-18.
- ^ Joel Siegel (July 27, 2006). "Joel Siegel's Hollywood". Retrieved 2006-11-18.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Little Miss Sunshine at Rottentomatoes.com". Retrieved 2006-11-18.
- ^ "IMDb Top 250".
- ^ "Box Office Mojo". Retrieved 2006-11-28.
- ^ "Daily Box Office". July 30, 2006. Retrieved 2006-11-18.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Little Miss Sunshine at Box Office Mojo". Retrieved 2006-12-27.
- ^ Entertainment Weekly, "Why everyone's buzzing about 'Little Miss Sunshine'"August 3, 2006. Retrieved Nov. 18, 2006.
- ^ Kim Voynar, "Interview with 'Little Miss Sunshine' Directors Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton", last updated 09/12/06. Retrieved Nov. 18, 2006.
- ^ Fox Searchlight Pictures, "Slide show", retrieved Nov. 18, 2006.
- ^ Creative Screenwriting Magazine's, Pursuit of Happyness podcast, retrieved Dec. 28th, 2006.