LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE - 2005
Directed by Valerie Faris (r.i.p.) and Jonathan Dayton, Written by Michael Arndt, Starring Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Alan Arkin, etc.
Sometimes I don't know why I see movies anymore.
This Afterbirth is going to be about the movie, as well as the article on it by Josh Horowitz in Filmmaker magazine entitled, "Super Freaks". And a little background.
By amazing twists of fate, extreme luck, and great sex, I went to Sundance Film Festival this year. Not with my first feature, no, but with my then-new boyfriend, who works in the Music Industry. I posed as a fluid member of Rufus Wainwright's band and collected tickets to as many movies as I could. My two top choices were The Science of Sleep and Little Miss Sunshine. I ended up seeing Half Nelson, Sherrybaby*, and The Illusionist. (Half Nelson was phenomenal, and I saw it a second time two days ago. Writing an Afterbirth on it would be one big worshipy blow job, so I will leave it at "phenomenal".)
I am so glad I saw Half Nelson instead! Little Miss Sunshine wasn't bad, but it was nothing, and that's worse. I left the theater feeling like I should just stay home and watch Harold and Maude until my eyes bleed, and save my ticket fare.
In my latest issue of Filmmaker, I was saving the review of Little Miss Sunshine for post-viewing. I swerved into a coffee shop and dug in. Now, here is a movie that it's best to be aware of its history. Everything I discovered in this article was so obvious:
1. The script had been put of for years, gone from studio to studio, rewrite after rewrite. Of course it had! This is the kind of movie everyone was trying to make after The Royal Tennebaums. Trying. This movie was trying too hard. For meaning, for humor, but I'll get to that later.
2. The film had multiple endings. When the credits rolled, I blinked. Really? That's it? You want me to swallow that?! Fuck you. Did they just drive off into the sunset? Fuck you. Fuck fuck fuck you.
3. The directors' chief influences were, ironically, Harold and Maude, The Graduate, Five Easy Pieces... Faris said these movies have "the kind of humor that comes out of characters and situations rather than jokes." Oh my god, yes, you're right Valerie, yes. But the situations aren't ladden with AWKWARDNESS in those movies. Those movies are genius, every filmmaker wants to make Harold Maude, that kind of dead pan humor. The scenes in Little Miss Sunshine were manufactured and awkward. And it IS funny, I laughed a whole lot. But it was covering my eyes with embarrassment for these characters, especially the last scene, in the pageant. That scene is retarded, in every sense of the word. This movie will never be like those perfect films that the director claims to imitate. That's just it. Imitation. Fuck! Why do people think that putting wacky fucked up characters in wacky fucked up situation, a great movie makes? Are audiences that easy to manipulate? This movie was as predictable as the directors' obvious desire to be UNpredictable. You put a failed suicide case on screen, and in the end, every thing's okay and HE'S spouting cheery life advice to a teenager. Ohmygod this movie had no balls. This movie was ball-less.
...hhh. okay.
What really bothered me was Toni Collette's character, the only one in the film without crisis, without gain, loss, goals, besides I guess keeping her family together. Greeeeaaaattttt. Just where we want our girls. And this movie is about a little girl in a beauty pageant?! This is fertile fucking ground to say SOMETHING, ANYTHING about gender and sexuality. So I read in this article, and they start talking about characters, how every person in the family is rebelling in one way or another, and I'm thinking oh good they will answer my questions about Sheryl's character... and Faris says: "Even Sheryl, who I wouldn't normally call a rebel, when she's faced with the pageant has to decide, Do I support my daughter regardless of what is going on here?"
I went to Valerie Faris's house and stabbed her in the heart. Then I burned down Michael Arndt's house while he was sleeping.
This is Sheryl's rebellion, her struggle. The other characters face career failure, public defaming, heroin addictions, loss of dreams, I could go on. But Sheryl. Her struggle is the one that everyone in the family also faces. Oh my god. They admitted it right there in print and they deserved what I wish I did to them.
This begs the question: Why does it have to say anything about gender and sexuality? Does every movie have to change your life? Yes. It has to say something more about these subjects because it presents an opinion in the girls of the beauty pageant. In the conversation about body image. And Sheryl is the only adult female actress. I'm not saying she has to be neo-fem, make her pathetic, make her abusive, but make her have a voice of some kind. Please. And every movie should change my life, because I gave up part of it to watch it. Why else are we making movies.
I could have left the theater at peace. But I cannot make excuses for films with shitty crappy shit crap characters. Not Sundance movies, not independent films. No. The performances saved it. If you don't want a lead character, if you truly want an ensemble cast, then make every single character important to me.
And stop trying to be Hal Ashby, it's never gonna happen.
My advice for a pageant movie (call me trendy): Donnie Darko, Drop Dead Gorgeous.
My advice for offbeat humor, you guessed it: Harold and Maude.
*Do not ever see Sherrybaby ever, if you value cinema and your time.
POST SCRIPT...
I wrote this afterbirth a few months before the Oscars. I spent all of February avoiding conversations about this film. Then I would talk about it only by incorporating the word shit cleverly within its title, a barely remarkable task. By the weekend of the Oscars, the bottle of my pent up opinions effectively burst, driving away family, friends, and co-workers who did not share my belief (and none of them did). Come Oscar night, I was thankful for two things:
1. My boyfriend hated the film as well, otherwise that would have been one perfectly good relationship come to close and
2. At least it didn't win fucking Best Picture.
