The functional route to family dysfunction

“LITTLE Miss Sunshine” may be the best R-rated family film out this summer -- of course, it is also the only R-rated family film out this summer.

The Fox Searchlight release, due to close out the Los Angeles Film Festival next Sunday before its general release July 26, follows the dysfunctional Hoover family after 7-year-old Olive (Abigail Breslin) is surprisingly propelled to the finals of the beauty pageant of the title. The indie film, shot in 30 days for under $8 million, stars Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear as her parents, Steve Carell as her suicidal uncle, Paul Dano as her angry teen brother and Alan Arkin as Grandpa -- a man of many inappropriate habits. Despite its farcical elements, the film aims for realism, examining a family in all its unbeautified complexity. Its aim was true at the Sundance film festival this year, where it sold for a record $10.5 million.

Arguably a couple of dozen curse words and a drug scene or two away from a PG-13 rating, the movie and its message nonetheless have a universal, even heartwarming appeal. That family dynamic was vital to the film shoot as well.

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Staging a kid klatch

FILMMAKERS were shooting a pint-sized beauty pageant last July in a steaming hot ballroom at the Radisson Hotel in Culver City -- it was all balloons, gold Mylar and scurrying cast and crew. Real pageant contestants were recruited as extras for the scene and sat fully coiffed and made up, wearing assorted tiny evening gowns and bathing suits, their parents in tow. Crew members’ kids were present too, in decidedly less-glamorous outfits, watching the proceedings on monitors.

Production designer Kalina Ivanov was introducing her son Charlie, 10. “Welcome to the kid-friendly set,” she smiled. Nearby, a baby slept, oblivious to the surrounding action.

“The film is about a family, a very real family,” noted executive producer Jeb Brody, as a cast member’s youngster wandered by, “and families have been a part of the experience of making the movie.”

It was a tone set by the first-time feature film directors -- husband and wife Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. First assistant director Thomas Smith was aided by second AD Greg Smith, his brother. Brody added, “This hasn’t been a movie where people have been like, ‘It’s 4 a.m., let’s go out and get loaded.’ This has been, ‘Let’s go home, I have to be with my kids.’ ”

Even before filming began, the first goal for the directors was to create that sense of family among the actors. The directors held a week of rehearsals that focused on building familial bonds rather than reading lines and even sent the actors out on a field trip to go bowling. “One week allowed us to create years of family interactions,” said Dayton.

Some actors may have bonded a little too well: Dano, who plays the 15-year-old Dwayne with a mute fury, occasionally had a hard time staying enraged. “It’s been maybe too much fun,” he said of the shoot as it neared its last day. “My character takes a vow of silence for nine months from his family because he doesn’t like them, and these people are too likable, so it was hard to shut them out.”

Fortunately, many scenes took place in an un-air-conditioned VW van near Palmdale, in temperatures over 100 degrees, and misery was slightly easier to create. But even then, “I was sitting next to Alan Arkin for a couple of weeks,” Dano enthused, “so that was great.” The two talked about jazz and traded favorite CDs.

In his trailer awaiting his last scene, Arkin mentioned a cast and crew dinner the previous evening that had been unexpectedly touching.

“I’ve been to a lot of cast parties before, but I’ve never been to one where everybody gets up to speak and starts sobbing,” he said. “And these are people who’ve just known each other for five or six weeks. It’s what it should always be like, and is -- maybe if you’re lucky -- 10% to 20% of the time.”

He had reservations about working with two directors but found the script by Michael Arndt so beautifully written that he agreed to do it. “And they’re terrific leaders,” he said of Faris and Dayton, who have 20 years of experience directing music videos and commercials together. “They have a very clear vision of what they want, and if somebody comes along with an idea that’s exciting, they’re happy to bend and go with it.”

He praised all his costars as well, calling Abigail “kind of a miracle. She doesn’t need any direction. She doesn’t demand extra attention. She listens and contributes and is just one of the team.”

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Respect all around

AT the same time, Breslin was free to be a little girl on-set. She initiated pajama day, which had about three participants showing up in PJs. Converse (sneaker) Friday had a better turnout. She said she was going to be sad when the shoot was over, “but at least you know that it was really fun, and that’s why you’re sad.”

Kim Breslin, her mother, pointed out that while this is her daughter’s seventh film, there was something different about this shoot. “On this set I really felt a deep respect for her as a human being, not just a little girl, and I think that’s hard to find sometimes in movies. For most kids working in film, their character doesn’t have a point of view or a huge contribution to make, and in this movie, Olive really was a valuable member of the family and had as much value as everybody else,” and the actress was treated likewise.

Between takes during the pageant scenes, Collette called the shoot “an amazing experience. I’m not always in love with being at work. I find it really exhausting; it’s just sometimes overwhelming. But this has been nothing but fun. It’s a great group of people, and as you can see, it’s a great atmosphere on-set.” She credited the filmmakers: “They’re just such lovely, down-to-earth people.”

Amid the managed chaos of contestants, a bearded Carell added, “They have a great rapport with one another.” Carell -- who described his character as “the most lovable suicidal Proust scholar that the movies have seen at least in the last 18 months” -- added that having two directors has also been helpful “because they can multitask that much more than they would already. One of them can be talking to the actors about their performances, and the other can be setting the camera angle and lights.”

Sure enough, between setups, Faris conferred with a crew member while Dayton, in a black porkpie hat, raced over from camera to actor to give notes. “People laugh at me because I run to the actors, but it feels good,” Dayton said.

Film days were relatively short because of Abigail’s work restrictions, but, halfway through shooting, the film was still ahead of schedule. The directors gave much of the credit to their cast and crew. Four years of preparation helped too, they said, referring to the time they waited for the film to be greenlighted.

“We had put ourselves through a lot of the staging, so we already had a fair amount to give the actors once they came on the set,” Faris said.

“That’s the benefit of two directors,” Dayton said.

“We’d act them out really poorly,” Faris said.

“In our garage,” Dayton added.

In preproduction, the filmmakers had briefly considered whether to try to cut language and scenes to accommodate a PG-13 rating but quickly realized that would compromise the movie.

“I’d rather think of this as a multigenerational film than a ‘family film,’ ” said Dayton. “I’m hoping that 13-year-olds will connect because it’s true, and 40-year-olds will connect, and 70-year-olds will connect.”