Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

The Interview with Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Directors)

The Husband-and-Wife-Director-Team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris is quite known for their performance in doing music videos and commercials. They directed music videos and documentaries for famous musicians such as The Smashing Pumpkins, Macy Gray, Janet Jackson, Oasis and Weezer. Their lists of clients for commercials include VW, Sony Playstation, Ikea and Apple Computers - just to mention a few. Little Miss Sunshine is the couple's first feature film and its a very successful start into a different career path. Some critics already talk about strong Oscar chances for 2007. OutNow.CH met the two Americans in Locarno at the filmfestival where the movie had its European Premiere and was screened on the Piazza Grande.

» Das Interview in deutscher Sprache.

OutNow.CH (ON): Is there any chance in real life for a girl like Olive to be 2nd best in a local pageant and to get to the final contest? The difference between Olive and the rest is so huge.

Jonathan Dayton (JD): In the original version of the script, there was a line where the brother tells Toni Collette - the mother - backstage that they had given her second place because they felt sorry for her. She had done a different performance. It wasn't the same dance that she does and they just thought "oh, poor little girl, let's give her second place, it doesn't matter!".

Valerie Faris (VF): But you know it's interesting we went to a lot of the local pageants and the range of talent was pretty great. You see some girls get out there and they'll probably don't want to be there. We ended up picking girls who were more experienced and professional.

ON: Did you have some stunt doubles or did all the actors run after that van by themselves?

JD: They did it.

VF: No stunt doubles. We had some stunt doubles, just in case - in particular for Olive. She was on the set, but we never used her.

JD: They also pushed the van by themselves. There were no cables. We had a stunt coordinator for safety. He had done The Fast and the Furious, so he was very overqualified. But they really did it.

VF: It was actually important that they do it. It gave them the experience. We shot the whole movie in sequences, so they really got the feeling what the whole journey was. They had kind of the same misery like the family in the film. It was so though and demanding.

ON: You're a Husband-and-Wife-Directors-Team. Isn't it sometimes difficult to separate between business and private life?

VF: We don't separate it that much.

JD: It isn't because we both love our work and we love our family life. It's nice because with Valerie I can talk about our children just as easy as I can talk about our work. It's very, very rare that we say to each other "Let's stop talking about work!" because it's very easy for us to stop.

VF: If our kids ask us to stop talking about work, then we have to listen. That's the hard part. It's maybe harder for them. You should interview them. I thought about bringing one of them. It would be so funny to ask them all the questions. I think they can probably answer all of our questions pretty much like we do. Our daughter figured out this whole story of the movie just from hearing us discussing the script and she knew everything about it. "The person so and so would be good for playing Sheryl" and we ask "How do you know about that" and she said "I know who she is and what she does." You think your kids aren't listening to you when you're talking about the movie, but they are.

ON: What is the main difference between shooting music videos and feature films - apart from the length of the product?

VF: Working with actors. It's so different, really. You know, I think it's similar you're working with crew and you need to have a grasp of the technical side of film making but the creative aspect of it is pretty different... at least on a film like this.

JD: It's nice to explore certain themes and see those themes expressed in many different scenes. Just being able to have a more complex subject matter is great. But I actually feel there are similarities that are probably more...

VF: Well there are some similarities, but in terms of the preparations you have to do for a film it's so much more extensive. If you go in thinking it's gonna be as easy then you gonna get screwed. You really need to know. You need to have thought pretty deeply about it, know all the aspects of it and do your homework. Like the way we prepared for music video shootings. You don't have to go into characters and what's their relationship, what's happening in this scene, what this character wants. There is just so much you need to know going in to shoot a scene in a movie. Going to shot a scene in a video, you don't have actors, you don't have to recreate life. I just think it's very different.

JD: I agree. It's the depth of planning and knowing what's happening. In a video it's just a simple communication and you can explore style. It's funny because in videos we spent a lot more time worrying about style and very quickly on this film in particular we felt that we had really abandoned style. We didn't want any artifice to become between the audience and the actors and the characters. This was film; we wanted you to be in that bus with people.

VF: Commercials too, you have 30 seconds to tell a story. You have to also tell it visually and I think hopefully in the film a lot is told visually. And they're simple images - they're not complex and you don't have to chew on them. Just enter them more.

ON: Everyone is talking about your movie at the moment and the critics like it a lot. It's your first movie, how do you cope with that?

VF: This is easy. The Promotion of the movie is the easy part (laughing).

JD: It's been really nice. I'm not getting tired of it.

VF: It was kind of weird of it happened just over night. But the fact we spent so many years wondering if it's going to be made. We're so tired of ourselves talking about it. We were telling people "We're going to shoot in three month" and then it didn't happen and then "No no no maybe next summer". That was so hard that this part is just easy. I haven't found the hard part of the good news.

JD: In Los Angeles everyone is an actor, everyone is a filmmaker, everyone is a writer - the teacher of your kids, the waiter in the restaurant, everyone. And here we were for so long saying we're going to make this movie and we want it to be this way "Oh we're still working on it". I felt like "Is it ever gonna happen? Is it ever gonna be real? Are we ever gonna have it?" For us sitting here on the other side of the world... it's wild and we're so lucky and grateful. Just having it out of our heads - I don't have to think about it anymore. I can't change it.

VF: It's fun to go out and promote the film, but I'm very eager to move on and start a new project.

ON: In several places Little Miss Sunshine is already treated as a possible Oscar contender. What do you think about that?

JD: Well, it's funny because in a film that makes fun of competitions we don't want to entertain too much the speculation of our film being contender of the Oscars. I certainly would love it if Michael and some of the cast members receive recognition. They're already celebrated in the press which is great and the best part about the Oscars is really being nominated because after that it becomes politics. It's kind of horrifying on some level and it's more than a career move than anything. I would love it if the actor perceived attention because they deserve it. They worked incredibly hard.

ON: What does it mean for you having Little Miss Sunshine here in Locarno screened on the Piazza Grande?

VF: This is the most fun we've had because Sundance was just the pure nerves. We were so scared. We were gonna sell the movie there and it was hard to enjoy the festival in the same way. This is our third festival. There was also L.A. Filmfestival which was our L.A. Premiere. Here it's just so exciting to showing our film in another part of the world and we had no idea how the audience here would take it.

ON: Thank you for the interview.

15.08.2006 / pj