The cast and filmmakers behind Little Miss Sunshine attended a screening at the Sundance Film Festival Wedneday. The screening was held in the Eccles theater, the same theater where is screened in 2006.
That 2006 screening launched a bidding war, won by Fox Searchlight, now Searchlight Pictures. Twenty years after its first standing ovation, it earned another one amongst an audience mixed with people who were there in 2006 and those seeing it for the first time.
Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear, Paul Dano and Abigail Breslin joined directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, screenwriter Michael Arndt and producers on stage after the film. Breslin, 29, remembered the standing ovation worried her as a 9-year-old.
"We were in this theater and I remember everybody stood up in the end, started clapping and to my mom, I was like, 'We gotta evacuate, I don't know what's happening. Are we all going to die?'" Breslin said, adding that her mom assured her, "No, it's a really good thing."
Breslin plays Olive Hoover, a 7-year-old competing in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. Her family must drive her to the finals in Long Beach, Calif., from Albuquerque, N.M.
Now that Breslin is an adult, and a married woman, she reacted differently to some scenes. Now, she asked fans to meme the look Olive's mother, Sheryl (Collette) gives her father, Richard (Kinnear) when she finds out he lost a major business venture.
"I constantly make that meme when my husband forgets cat litter at the grocery store," Breslin said. "That's my mood. I'm like, yeah, girl, give him that evil eye, which is not something I would've picked up on at 10."
The Hoovers pack into an old bus with Sheryl's brother, Frank (Steve Carell), Olive's brother Dwayne (Dano) and her grandfather, Edwin (Alan Arkin) for a misadventure-filled road trip. The late Arkin won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this film.
Kinnear, 62, remembered Arkin telling him how rare such a great ensemble was, and did an impeccable Arkin impression. The cast got to know each other during a week of rehearsals prior to filming, which was a rare allowance at the time.
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"It wasn't a normal rehearsal," Kinnear said. "We played True Story. We played dodgeball. We went bowling together. We made notes on what we thought of each other's character. So I thought at the time it's kind of crazy but it really created a little magic between the cast."
An Arkin moment in the film landed for Collette, 53, during this anniversary viewing, too. Colette, who flew in from Australia to be at Sundance, responded to Edwin comforting Richard on his lost deal.
"Alan, who it's not in his nature to be that way, comes up and supports you," Colette said. "I just found that so incredibly moving how he expresses it."
Dano, 41, was met with shouts of, "We love you Paul," as he walked on stage. Not to be outdone, someone followed that with, "We love you, Michael Arndt."
The actor recalled worrying he would outgrow the role of Dwayne. He first auditioned when he was 18, but was 20 by the time filming began, playing a high schooler.
"I would meet with [Dayton and Faris] occasionally and they were basically checking me out to see if I was getting too old to play the part," Dano said.
Dano didn't even celebrate his 21st birthday on set because he was so worried.
"What's going to happen?" Dano said. "Am I too old? Are they going to fire me?"
This gave Collette pause.
"I was 33 and I was your mother," Colette said, singing, "Hooray for Hollywood."
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The film concludes with Olive's performance at the pageant. The family finally sees the dance routine Olive has been practicing with Edwin off-camera.
Olive dances suggestively enough to upset the pageant but innocently enough that it's comical because she doesn't know what Edwin taught her. Kinnear remembered that she performed the scene to ZZ Top's "Gimme All Your Lovin'" on the set.
"And it didn't work," Faris said. "It was too slow. It didn't have the right energy. Our music supervisor said, 'Just try "Superfreak" because we were like, 'Oh god, we can't use "Superfreak.'"
Dayton said the Rick James hit fit too perfectly to ignore.
"That whole 'She's kind of a kinky girl,' the choreography happened first," Dayton said. "The song landed perfectly with the butt slapping. We were like, 'God has spoken.'"
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