This comedy has one of the best scripts to come along in a few years. It’s a small indie film, so it’s not going to make blockbuster money. But don’t let that fool you. You can learn a lot from studying this script.
Comedies are almost always underestimated because they’re all about making people laugh. How hard can that be? Very. If you can make people laugh on the page, Hollywood will pay you huge sums of money. Most writers think comedy comes from good jokes. That may be true in a stand-up routine, but it’s not true in the movies. In the movies, you have to tell a comic story that lasts about two hours. If you start from the gag or the joke, you have no chance of writing a funny script.
The key is to find the right comic structure by which you can tell your two-hour story and on which you can hang the jokes. One of the reasons movie comedies are so hard to write is that there are so many comic story structures, all of which sequence in a different way. If you don’t pick the right comic structure for your idea, or if you don’t know the story beats of your form, you’re in big trouble. And no amount of jokes is going to make any difference. Without the right comic structure, even the best jokes won’t be funny.
Little Miss Sunshine uses one of the oldest comic structures, the comic journey. This form goes all the way back to Don Quixote and is really a combination of the comic and myth forms. Part of the success of this combination is that these two genres are in many ways opposites. The myth form, using the journey as its main technique, wants to be big, heroic and inspiring. Comedy is about cutting things down to size, finding the falsely big and poking a hole in it. So in a comic journey story, the myth sets up the laughs (puffing up the characters), while the comedy provides the punchline.
The downside of combining these two genres is that it causes you all kinds of structural problems. The biggest has to do with the episodic quality of the story. Characters on a journey encounter a number of unique opponents who are usually strangers. This means that every time your hero goes up against a new opponent, that’s an episode. In effect, a mini-story. String too many of these together and you get a very bored and tired audience.
Comedy exacerbates this episodic quality. With rare exception, whenever you do a joke or a gag, you are stopping the narrative drive so the audience can see the character knocked off his pedestal. String too many of these together and your story stops dead in its tracks.
Obviously one of the keys to a successful comic journey story is finding techniques that can give you a strong narrative line. Little Miss Sunshine uses two techniques that are especially valuable: the endpoint and the family.
Near the beginning of this script, writer Michael Arndt tells the audience the endpoint of the comic journey. What’s more, the characters will be going on a single-line journey. This apparently simple technique is crucial because it gives the audience a line, literally, on which to hang the events and the gags. Instead of becoming impatient with what happens next, the audience can sit back and enjoy the ride – and the jokes. You have already promised them where they are going to go. In effect, you are letting them laugh.
In journey stories with a single hero, all the opponents in the story must be new and they must be strangers. But in Little Miss Sunshine the writer sends an entire family of six on the road. That means that the main opposition is among people the audience knows and it is an ongoing opposition. Instead of a succession of unconnected events, the story has a steadily building conflict. That makes the jokes funnier and it lets the writer build to the funniest gag of all when the family gets to the beauty pageant at the end of the journey.
If you’re interested in how to write any of the various comic story structures, take a look at the Comedy Class or the Comedy Software.
Keeping up with the recent buzz-worthy films coming out of Sundance the past couple years, Little Miss Sunshine is a gem of a movie. After loving crowd favorites Primer (2004) and Hustle and Flow (2005), I wasn’t quite sure if the hat trick would be made. Sunshine seemed to have the cast, and direction (the debut of husband/wife team Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, who have helmed some of my favorite music videos including the Smashing Pumpkins’ Tonight, Tonight and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Otherside), but the big question would be if it had the laughs to sustain the quirky indie comedy from not being overwrought and boring. While the film definitely has a couple moments where I was about to be lost, everything ends up happening for a reason; emotions are on a roller coaster ride and the lows always come out with meaning and momentum for the highs. Do yourself a favor and see this sweet, subtle at times and gut-bustingly hilarious at others, perfectly pitched ensemble piece.
The co-directors set us up for what is to come in a very nicely designed opening sequence by going character to character, showing us each person in a small vignette of their personalities. This is the quintessential messed-up family with good intentions. Mom and Dad are bickering on how to tell their young daughter about her uncle’s attempted suicide, while he sits and stares in a strange melancholy next to the mute, troubled son, (on vow of silence in honor of nihilistic mind Nietzsche), while grandpa spews profanities about the lack of dinner variety. I mean this is the epitome of every family function I’ve ever been privy to. There is so much a viewer can relate to in each member, allowing for a certain amount of compassion for the views of all involved and seeing that each really does want the best for one another, even if they have a messed up way of showing it.
Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette are wonderful as the patriarchs, proving as always that they are probably two of the most under-appreciated actors working today. Very rarely do you get to see them in a starring vehicle, and even though this is an ensemble through and through, they definitely carry it as the driving force. Alan Arkin does his kooky, quasi-angry, sarcastic yelling that he is known for, kind of his role from Edward Scissorhands but r-rated and un- pc. Everything he has done comes to a surprising result at the eponymous beauty pageant for the biggest laughs of the movie, really great stuff subverting the grotesque surrealism surrounding any pageant of this kind. Paul Dano is great as the troubled teen, trying to find a place in the world for himself, and coming to grips with the need for struggle in order to grow as a person, and Abigail Breslin is phenomenal as the happiest girl alive. Once she finds out she has won her regional on default, (those primary school children and their diet pills), she is on cloud nine as the family makes the road trip all for her. She has the acting range of a pro and actually does the Dakota Fanning, but better, as she can act while still being a young child and not an adult in a child’s body. Her emotional reactions are spot-on and she has remarkable presence and a self-effacing nature that allows her to be who she is and not be ashamed about it, which is the main purpose of Olive Hoover.
The real revelation to take from the antics on screen is a career-role for funnyman Steve Carrell. I’ve always liked his naïve, teddy-bear persona used to successfully in the Daily Show, The Office, and as the only funny part of Anchorman. Here however, he shows that he has the acting chops to not be pigeonholed and typecast in the over-the-top, lug roles his peer Will Ferrell will never be able to breakout of. Carrell has genuine talent and his suicidal, top Proust scholar in America, uncle is the shining moment of the film. He maintains the dejected quality throughout; even when doing something for the family, doing good, he is always a beaten man. That kind of character is what is needed for all his sharp, dry sarcastic retorts thrown about. He barely outshines the prop of the year, though, the family’s yellow VW van. You will not see better prop-gags as the van takes a licking and keeps on ticking although the tick is faint and slowly fading away.
Little Miss Sunshine lives up to the strong buzz that surrounds it. It is heartwarming and funny at every turn. There are some dark moments, though, as there are in life. This film is a slice of reality, heightened just the right amount, for all to enjoy. While definitely in the vein of films such as I Heart Huckabees, Thumbsucker, and any Wes Anderson film—it wears its indie cred on its sleeve—it is still accessible and hopefully with the drawing power of Carrell will garner an audience that would not otherwise see it.