Great Scene: “Little Miss Sunshine”
Read how screenwriter Michael Arndt scripted Olive’s dance routine in his Oscar-winning screenplay.
In the movie Little Miss Sunshine (2006), there is this wonderful scene: The ending dance sequence where seven-year-old Olive (Abigail Breslin) performs on stage of the “Little Miss Sunshine” pageant. In the audience watching Olive do her dance routine is her father Richard (Greg Kinnear), a failed self-help motivational speaker, his wife Sheryl (Toni Collette), a woman whose idea of a home-cooked meal is a bucket of take-out friend chicken, their son Dwayne (Paul Dano), who took a vow of silence until he becomes an Air Force pilot, and Sheryl’s brother Frank (Steve Carell), who is living with the Hoover family after a botched suicide attempt. Olive’s dance routine was choreographed by her grandfather Edwin Hoover (Alan Arkin), who after having been kicked out of a retirement home because of unacceptable behavior, dies of a heroin overdose en route to the pageant.
We are talking about one seriously dysfunctional family.
And now perhaps the biggest disaster of all: After a series of cuter-than-cute dance routines by other young contestants, each one more chaste and endearing than the previous one, Olive takes the stage to live out her biggest fantasy — performing at the “Little Miss Sunshine” pageant:
Screenwriter Michael Arndt deservedly won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2007 because the script is a gem — exemplified by this scene. Every beat in the movie has been building to this moment. This is the Big Set Piece — and the scene delivers on every level, from the comic chaos of Olive’s dance routine to the satisfaction of this flawed and fractured family, coming together as one to support Olive in her moment of glory.
ADon’t overlook the obvious: How Arndt manages to describe the action without bogging down the reader in endless details of Olive’s routine:
She rocks out, busting crazy moves this stage has never seen: shakes, shimmies, twirls, dips, undulations — a melange of MTV rump shakin’, Solid Gold Dancers re-runs, and out-of-left-field inventions of her own. Other moves are clearly drawn from Grandpa’s sixty-year career of strip-bar patronage.
The description is visual, fun, and establishes a clear feel for the moment.
As great as the scene is on paper, the job that co-directors Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris, the actors, and the choreographer did in translating it onto the screen is equally masterful. There all sorts of grace notes throughout, each carrying with it meaning and emotional subtext. Check out the scene from the movie:
You can go here to see an extended interview with Arndt in which he describes how he came to write, then sell Little Miss Sunshine.
For more Great Scene posts, go here.
