Until recently, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris were best known for their work in commercials and music television (view work here). The husband and wife team directed videos for R.E.M., The Smashing Pumpkins, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Offspring, among others, and worked on television programs like MTV’s “The Cutting Edge” and HBO’s “Mr. Show.” Since the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, however, Dayton and Faris have been better known as the directing team behind the breakout comedy “Little Miss Sunshine.”
CSB’s Blake Ethridge and David Austin had a chance to chat with Dayton and Faris a few days after “Little Miss Sunshine” was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Picture category (among others). Old pros who finish each other’s sentences, Dayton and Faris were most obliging, and cheerfully discussed about the film, the nomination of “Little Miss Sunshine,” and their future projects.
Blake:
Congratulations on the Producers Guild and the Oscar nominations. Will we be seeing Greg Kinnear drive you in the van to the red carpet?
Valerie Faris:
(laughs) If we can avoid it, we will. I know actually it sounds like a joke but Fox was suggesting we all arrive in the Golden Globes in a van.
Jonathan Dayton:
We appreciate their enthusiasm but, … It’s so tricky, you know. I really hope we can kind of take the softer road here. Not such a hard sell as we enter award season. It’s something that bugs me every year. I’m not by any stretch a close follower of the Oscar race. Occasionally, usually, one film or two mount a really obnoxious campaign that you can’t avoid if you live in LA or New York.
Valerie Faris:
We hope that we won’t be a part of that.
David:
I think we will only ask you one question about it, because I’m sure you’re getting a million questions about the nomination, but the one we did want to ask was that obviously compared to epics, comedies don’t get nominated that often, but every now and then there is a surprise. We were wondering what puts a film like “Little Miss Sunshine” or like Capra’s “It Happened One Night” over the top with Academy voters?
Jonathan Dayton:
God, good question and if you have the answer I think there are a lot of studio heads who want to talk to you.
Valerie Faris:
I mean I love that it’s, you know Capra and us, Woody Allen and then Alexander Payne. We’ve been asked this question about why we think people responded to this film and it’s really hard other than the fact that we loved it. And it is very reassuring that something we felt so strongly about actually got that kind of response. It does make us feel a little more sane.
Jonathan Dayton:
I think what people respond to hopefully in our movie, and certainly in some of those others, is that they’re not pure comedies, that there’s a humanity and that maybe people feel a little more connected to their lives. The films speak to them emotionally as well as just being funny. So our film certainly is a comedy but we always felt that what was special about it, what we loved about it, was that it was more than that. It was about our obsession with winning and it was about family life.
Valerie Faris:
And basically having all your hopes and dreams dashed and still going on. I feel like so many people can relate to that (laughs). I think that laughing, it deserves to be valued.
Jonathan Dayton:
Especially in these times.
Valerie Faris:
That’s how we felt, like if we can make people laugh and a good, hearty, belly laugh, the deeper the laugh the better, then I feel like that’s an accomplishment and it’s nice that in a way this nomination shows there is value in it.
Jonathan Dayton:
It’s funny because there was such a glow after all the events of yesterday morning and then by the time Bush came on to address the nation I was so severely depressed. It was just so dark.
Valerie Faris:
I think that’s why Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are so essential right now. It is such a painful time and it’s so unbearable, for us anyway and I think for a lot of people, and the fact they can make us laugh while informing us of what is going on. I laugh at that show but sometimes it’s painful what you’re laughing at, but it’s relevant to your experience. Anyway, that’s a much longer answer than you ever hoped for. (laughs)
Blake:
When you were initially pitched the script you didn’t sound like you had that interest in it. What happened that changed your minds or was the moment where you thought “this is the script that we want to make our first feature”?
Jonathan Dayton:
You know what? We loved it from the beginning. I think that what happened though …
Valerie Faris:
The storyline.
Jonathan Dayton:
… was when we heard the logline, when we heard that you should read this script, it’s about a…
Valerie Faris:
… a quirky family …
Jonathan Dayton:
… and a cussing grandfather who take their daughter to a beauty pageant, I mean that was the last thing we wanted to do. But it was reading the script and meeting these characters that made us fall in love right away.
Valerie Faris:
Really from the first line of the script, we were kind of hooked.
Jonathan Dayton:
The first line of the script. It’s not so much the first line of the movie, but the line is: “There are two kinds of people in this world - winners and losers.” And we just felt like, alright, this film is funny and it’s about something and we had to do it.
David:
I understand even at that point, once you decided you wanted to do it, you had a lot of problems coming down the road… it took five years to produce it?
Valerie Faris:
Yup. It was four years until we got the green light. We went through a certain period of time at a studio, and I think it was not an obvious film, for one, in how to market it. Because the storyline is nothing you haven’t seen before, and because it’s an ensemble piece and there’s no one star that could sort of be put out front on the poster and the movie could be sold around that personality. So it really was a hard sell for a business endeavor, you know? It didn’t make sense in that way and it was a risk. I think what’s great is the producers who were working with us for four years and seeing how committed we were to it and how much we loved it, they decided to take that risk. Really it wasn’t until Sundance that we… (laughs) … we felt pretty good when we got this cast, we thought, “wow, this is such an amazing group of people, such a great ensemble.” But you just never know. There really aren’t any guarantees and that’s the problem I think with the studio system is that they try for guarantees but they just don’t really exist.
Jonathan Dayton:
When you make a film for less money you can take those risks, they’re not as great. We were very fortunate that things turned out well this go-round. But really the fact it was a low budget movie gave us a lot of freedom.
Valerie Faris:
I guess all we can hope for is that now that we’ve done well with this one it won’t take four years to get the next risky project made. Because this is the kind of film we want to make and it’s not going to be just like “Little Miss Sunshine” but smaller films where the voice of the script or the writer is interesting to us and the characters are interesting. Those are riskier films. You have to trust the material which is just not the way the system works really.
Blake:
After seeing it over ten times in the summer the resounding response from audiences was “this is the kind of movie we always wish Hollywood would make, but never does.” I think that really contributed to the success of it. I was curious, on the DVD you mention there are some deleted scenes and longer cuts and I’m curious of what some of the deleted scenes were and if we will see any of those on a later extended DVD release?
Jonathan Dayton:
Well, I think that there will be something. I’m not here to officially announce anything but I hope that with all that’s happened with the movie that they’ll be this extended version. There’s just little bits of the dinner scene that got cut out.
Valerie Faris:
We spent so long working on the script and rewriting little things and really did a lot of the editing in that process. So the cuts we made on the edit of the film are less significant but mildly interesting, I guess. There were some scenes, whole scenes that we shot, that didn’t work and then we re-shot them. One major one, that’s the pier scene, was originally shot on surf boards out in the ocean. So that’s something we will probably include. The script was so tight that we really did stick pretty closely to it when we shot it and then there’s just little things that came out during the editing.
David:
Going back to what you were saying before you were talking about what kind of movie you would want to do for your next project. Do you have anything in mind? I mean have you been looking at scripts and thinking about particular projects?
Valerie Faris:
We have been.
Jonathan Dayton:
We have a film that we’re pretty close to closing a deal on with Tom Perrotta who wrote “Little Children” and he wrote the novel that Alexander Payne adapted into “Election.” We love his work. It’s different from “Little Miss Sunshine” but it does have that same mix of humor and humanity, and it’s funny.
Valerie Faris:
It’s taking on very interesting issues. That’s probably the closest thing to happening, but all of the things that we’re working on are really in the script stage. We’ve been reading scripts but it’s very hard to find a script that you feel is just right for you. You know, ready to go.
Jonathan Dayton:
We’ve been speed dating. We’ve been reading a lot of scripts and I think the way it’s going to work for us is to start with these smaller ones.
Valerie Faris:
And you build them from the ground up a little bit more.
Blake:
With the success of “Little Miss Sunshine” do you see more quality studio releases instead of just the usual teen popcorn-fare remakes that have been coming out?
Jonathan Dayton:
Well, it’s funny because a lot of our friends - you know living in Los Angeles, chances of you being friends with someone who is in the business are pretty great - and all our friends hate us because a lot of them are writers and they’re always going “you would not believe how many times studio execs describe how they want something like Little Miss Sunshine!”
Valerie Faris:
Whatever that is!?!
Jonathan Dayton:
Yeah. It’s so funny that that same script sat for four years and no one would touch it, so it’s pretty ironic. I think that what I loved about this is that it was truthful that the way people really live is funny (laughs). When something is truthful it’s not only funny but it’s somehow affirming. You feel a little more connected to your life. When I watched George Bush I feel like I’m crazy because he’s saying things that I know are…
Valerie Faris:
They’re clapping and you think, am I crazy?
Jonathan Dayton:
… you know these things not to be true and yet there’s this grand public charade, and so when a film that everyone can go out and see seems talks about life as you experience it, it is very validating and hopefully that is what “Little Miss Sunshine” does. So many films do it, but if that can be something that people try for more then I’m happy.
Valerie Faris:
I think that one thing that did really excite us and that we had never experienced was seating in the theater and watching a movie, particularly our own movie, and laughing with a bunch of people. That collective experience, the group experience, I just think that are healing powers in laughing together and the contagiousness of that kind of laughter. So I guess we’re sorta hooked on that. We may not be able to make the same kind of laughs but as a goal that’s something to strive for. It was so much fun just to feel like “wow people are leaving the theatre having had a good laugh.” And what more can you ask for?
David:
I know you two have worked together as husband and wife for a long time doing music videos and commercials. I’m curious how it was different working on a feature length film with, I assume, a much larger crew, and how you divided up the labor, and how you solved the creative disagreements.
Jonathan Dayton:
It’s crazy because our crew on the feature was actually smaller than many of our commercial productions.
Valerie Faris:
And a lot of the same people actually.
Jonathan Dayton:
Even though we were first time feature directors, the fact that we’d been shooting for twenty years made it a pretty easy transition. There were other challenges. Just working with this level of actor was something we were really excited about. There was certainly no clear division of labor and we really share every decision. But, on the set, we were both running around covering various things and there are two heads, maybe one and half brains, but two heads, and we can’t work very fast.
Valerie Faris:
I think it would be hard if we had just started working together, but we worked together before we were a couple - we really established all our work habits first, that was really how we got close to each other - but it’s always hard when people ask us because we don’t really know how we divide our duties, we just problem solve together and cook up ideas together.
Blake:
On the DVD, you mentioned there is a reference to the Smashing Pumpkins “1979″ video. I was curious what that was, and thinking it was either the part with Olive in the tire or the part later on with Dwayne where he finally speaks.
Jonathan Dayton:
Well, Olive in the tire was a little thing, but it’s when they buy the porn mags, the price of the porn mags is 1979. Very subtle (laughs).
Valerie Faris:
Yeah, it’s kind of silly, I’m a little embarrassed by it. Jonathan won on that one.
Jonathan Dayton:
Yeah, and I’ve been paying for it ever since.
David:
Having done all that work in music television and with videos, were you more involved in the actual music in the film than the average director?
Jonathan Dayton:
That’s a good question. I don’t know how other directors approach that but, man, we were very involved …
Valerie Faris:
Very involved!
Jonathan Dayton:
… and because, I think, of our backgrounds we wanted to have the music before the film was made. You know, usually you score a movie after it’s done, but we spent years looking for the right music, and we worked with this woman Anne Litt, who’s a DJ here in Los Angeles, and we went through a number of bands over the years …
Valerie Faris:
… just to find music that seemed to capture the tone of the movie. It wasn’t even so much that this was the music we were going to use in the film, but we just were looking for music that felt like the movie to us, and when we heard DeVotchKa it felt like it had all the right qualities the movie should have. We weren’t sure we were going to use them for the score but then, as we were cutting, it worked. But I think whenever you’re working on a film, we like to have music that sort of inspires you and helps you to think about the tone of the movie.
Blake:
One of the questions I always ask is if either of you have a personal favorite film of yours that you feel is underappreciated that you feel people should rush out and see?
Valerie Faris:
The one that pops into my mind, and we’ve talked about it before, and I think a lot of people know about it but it is just one of the funniest, greatest films, is “Gates of Heaven.” That movie we love so much, and I know it actually has been championed by Werner Herzog, and Errol Morris is a a well known filmmaker, but that film of his is one of my favorites. That would be my top of the head choice.
Jonathan Dayton:
I watched “Coming Home” recently, and certainly that was not underappreciated in its day, but I think it’s forgotten now …
Valerie Faris:
Especially now.
Jonathan Dayton:
… and I feel like it’s such a good film that means so much in today’s political landscape. Jon Voight and Jane Fonda, and Hal Ashby directing.
Valerie Faris:
Especially now in these times, it’s very interesting, because when, hopefully, soldiers start coming back from the war, it’s going to be a lot to deal with, what it means to come home after that.
Jonathan Dayton:
It tells the story of a guy coming back from Vietnam …
Valerie Faris:
… so it’s definitely relevant. I think it won an Academy Award for best picture, didn’t it? (”Coming Home” was nominated for Best Picture and Director, and won Best Actor, Actress and Screenplay). So it’s definitely not underappreciated, but maybe just needs to be revived because it is so great. All Hal Ashby films though, … “Shampoo” is another huge favorite of ours, but everybody knows that one, it’s no secret.
David:
We’ve discussed politics a little, and I’m curious, considering you are looking into a Perrotta book, I’m curious if you’re interested in doing something more explicitly political, a more explicitly political comedy.
Jonathan Dayton:
Well, maybe slightly more explicit, but I think the best films are those that carry a political message but you’re not feeling proselytized to. I feel like you need to see these ideas manifest in life, not on someone’s shirt sleeve.
Valerie Faris:
And as long as it’s on an absolutely personal, intimate scale, that’s the kind of political film that we like, where you see politics but in the context of someone’s life. Not taking a grander look at the whole thing, that might be too much for us anyway to take on, we do like sort of smaller scale, more intimate stories. But I don’t think you can remove politics from personal stories. Even people who say “I’m not a political person,” you just can’t avoid being a political person. If you choose not to be involved that’s a choice you’re making.
David:
More the Hal Ashby/Shampoo model where it’s integrated but the film focuses on a characters life?
Valerie Faris:
Exactly, it’s woven in there
Jonathan Dayton:
In “Shampoo,” it’s so great because it takes little potshots, it’s such a great movie.
Valerie Faris:
And “The Graduate.” All the classics, but “The Graduate” does it in such a powerful way. These two competing world views, Benjamin’s and his parents’, and it’s always more interesting because then you’re emotionally involved in this discussion as opposed to making it an intellectual discussion.
David:
Or overly strident where it’s not personal at all.
Valerie Faris:
Exactly, save that for television and the pundits.
Jonathan Dayton:
It was nice talking with you guys.
Valerie Faris:
Hopefully we’ll be talking again with our next, hopefully it won’t be five more years until our next one comes out.
Blake:
And hopefully on February 25th, we’ll get to see you do a victorious Olive dance on the stage.
Valerie Faris:
(laughs) Yeah, we’re practicing those moves. Not really.
Jonathan Dayton:
It’s funny because our film celebrates rejecting competition and not looking at life as a contest.
Valerie Faris:
We’re doing our victory dance now.
Jonathan Dayton:
All the different award shows, we’re very happy and honored to be part of the discussion but we’re …
Valerie Faris:
We’re trying very hard not to feel like we’re in a competition. It’s not easy.
Jonathan Dayton:
We’re trying not to be in a beauty pageant.
Blake:
Just the whole experience of the film, the journey from 2001 to now, has probably been an incredible experience, so any awards would be icing on the cake.
Valerie Faris:
Exactly, we feel like we’ve won so many times over with this film.
Jonathan Dayton:
We were happy at Sundance.
Valerie Faris:
And that still really is one of the highlights of this whole experience, being in that audience, twelve hundred and some people, and having them respond. It was our first time seeing it with an audience - that’s a hard experience to top.
Blake & David:
Congratulations and good luck. Congratulation regardless.
Notes:
Little Miss Sunshine also won the SAG award for Best Ensemble Cast the night before this interview was published.
* “Gates of Heaven” (IMDb Profile), “Coming Home” (IMDb Profile), “Shampoo” (IMDb Profile) and “The Graduate” (IMDb Profile) are all currently available on DVD.
* My first real exposure to “Little Miss Sunshine” was coming out of an advanced screening for Neil Burger’s “The Illusionist” last year and seeing the audience strolling out of the “Little Miss Sunshine” off the charts with joy and giddiness. I rarely see audiences leaving a theatre in such a euphoric state. No sooner had I made a mental note to see the film than out of nowhere James Faust (senior programmer for the AFI Dallas Film Festival - formerly Deep Ellum Film Festival) tackled me and told me “Blake, you have to see this movie the first chance you get… your life depends on it!!!” That was the only time in my life that anyone actually tackled me in order to recommend a movie (talk about hyping a movie up). Needless to say, I caught the first screening I could get into and even then it exceeded all my expectations. (Blake)
* Alan Arkin’s character in “Little Miss Sunshine” to me always felt like an older version and continuation of his character Bean from the great Richard Rush film “Freebie and the Bean” (which happens to be playing at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown on March 31, 2007). (Blake)
Related Links:
::: Little Miss Sunshine IMDb Profile
::: Little Miss Sunshine Official Site
::: Little Miss Sunshine Official MySpace Profile
::: Jonathan Dayton IMDb Profile
::: Valerie Faris IMDb Profile
::: Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris Commercial & Music Video Work
::: Little Miss Sunshine Tag on Flickr
* 
