The Team Behind 'Little Miss Sunshine'

DATE February 5, 2007 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: "Little Miss Sunshine" directors, Valerie Faris and
Jonathan Dayton, and writer Michael Arndt on their cast, their
Oscar nominations, and making and selling the film
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

The movie "Little Miss Sunshine" has gotten the reaction every independent
filmmaker dreams of. When it was shown at Sundance one year ago, it didn't
even have a distributor. Now it's a big hit and has four Oscar nominations:
Best Picture, Best Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor and Actress. My
guests are the screenwriter Michael Arndt--this is his first film--and the
film's two directors, Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, who are married.
Faris and Dayton have made many music videos and TV commercials and one music
documentary.

"Little Miss Sunshine" is a kind of road trip movie in which a dysfunctional
family in a dysfunctional VW bus travels to a children's beauty pageant that
their daughter Olive has entered. Here's a scene from the beginning of the
film. The whole family is sitting around the dinner table. Olive and her
teenage brother, played by Abigail Breslin and Paul Dano; their parents played
by Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette; their grandfather, played by Alan Arkin;
and their uncle, played by Steve Carrell. The uncle has come to live with the
family after his failed suicide attempt. Olive wants to know why her uncle
was just in the hospital.

(Soundbite of "Little Miss Sunshine")

Ms. ABIGAIL BRESLIN: (As Olive Hoover) How did it happened?

Mr. STEVE CARRELL: (As Frank) How did what happen?

Ms. BRESLIN: (As Olive Hoover) Your accident?

Ms. TONI COLLETTE: (As Sheryl Hoover) Honey...

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) Hm. Oh no. It's OK. Unless you object.

Ms. COLLETTE: (As Sheryl Hoover) Unh-unh. No, I'm pro-honesty here. I just
think, you know, it's up to you.

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) Be my guest.

Ms. COLLETTE: (As Sheryl Hoover) Olive, Uncle Frank didn't really have an
accident. What happened was he tried to kill himself.

Ms. BRESLIN: (As Olive Hoover) You did? Why?

Mr. GREG KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) I'm sorry. I don't think this is an
appropriate conversation. Honey, let's let Uncle Frank finish his dinner, OK?

Ms. BRESLIN: (As Olive Hoover) Why would you want to kill yourself?

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) No, don't answer the question, Frank.

Ms. COLLETTE: (As Sheryl Hoover) Richard. Richard.

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Don't answer it. He's not going to answer
the question.

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) I wanted to kill myself...

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Don't listen to him.

Ms. COLLETTE: (As Sheryl Hoover) Richard.

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) ...since I was very unhappy...

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) He's a sick man. He's a sick in his head
man.

Ms. COLLETTE: (As Sheryl Hoover) Richard!

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Look, I'm sorry! I don't think it's an
appropriate conversation for a seven year old.

Ms. COLLETTE (As Sheryl Hoover) Well, she's going to find out anyway.

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) OK.

Ms. COLLETTE: (As Sheryl Hoover) Go on, Frank.

Ms. BRESLIN: (As Olive Hoover) Tell me what happened.

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) Uh, well, there are a lot of reasons. Um. Mainly,
though, I fell in love with someone who didn't love me back.

Ms. BRESLIN: (As Olive Hoover) Who?

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) One of my grad students. I was very much in love
with him.

Ms. BRESLIN: (As Olive Hoover) Him? It was a boy? You fell in love with a
boy?

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) Yes I did. Very much so.

Ms. BRESLIN: (As Olive Hoover) That's silly.

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) You're right. It was silly. It was very, very
silly.

Mr. ALAN ARKIN: (As Grandpa) There's another word for it.

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Dad...

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Michael, you wrote "Little Miss Sunshine." What was the first part of
the story that came to you?

Mr. MICHAEL ARNDT: Well, the first part of the story was--it was actually
the ending because I had, you know, tried writing a couple of other scripts,
and they had ended sort of badly. They had ended with everybody getting
killed at the end. And they were just big downers and I decided, you know,
nobody wants to watch a movie, you know, that's such a huge downer, and I
decided the next script that I was going to write was going to have an ending
that would just be unbelievably wonderful. So I was really just looking for a
great ending. I was looking for something that would just wildly exceed your
expectations.

And I remember I was just sitting and watching, you know, clips of a child
beauty pageant on TV, and there were all these little skinny blond girls up
there, and I just thought to myself, you know, `Wouldn't it be great if a
little chubby girl got up there and you thought it was going to be this total
disaster.' You thought she'd be, you know, just humiliated, but instead she
just, you know, started dancing and rocked the house and blew everybody away.
And I was pretty sure that that would be a good ending. So having, you know,
found my ending, it was really a matter of sort of reverse engineering the
story and figuring out, you know, who is this little girl? What is this
pageant that she's at? Who is her family and how does she get there? And,
you know...

GROSS: "Who was her family?" You came up with some rather interesting answers
to that question.

Mr. ARNDT: Yeah.

GROSS: So I'm going to ask you to say a couple of words about, like, a few
short words about a couple of the characters. Let's start with the girl's
father, played by Greg Kinnear. He's a guy trying to sell his motivational
self-help plan "Refuse to Lose."

Mr. ARNDT: Right. Yeah.

GROSS: But he can't even succeed in finding a publisher.

Mr. ARNDT: Yeah, he's really sort of a main satirical target of the movie.
And I just thought, you know, I was actually in a phone call with my brother
and I was just talking about how, you know, the funny thing about families is
that they can be related to each other by blood but otherwise have nothing in
common with each other. And I just started riffing with my brother about, you
know, `Wouldn't it be funny if there was a family and, like, the dad was this
failed motivational speaker and, you know, you had this uncle who was this
highbrow academic, and, you know, the dad was this--the grandfather was this
sort of profane, you know, say-anything kind of guy?' And, you know, I was
just making up these characters, and those two ideas really connected. It was
the little girl, you know, wanting to be a beauty queen and then this crazy
family, you know, that was going to, you know, be put, you know, sent on a
road trip.

GROSS: One more character I'm going to ask you about, and this is the
character played by Steve Carrell. He's the uncle of the girl who wants to be
in the beauty pageant, and he's moved in with this family because, after his
suicide attempt, the doctors think...

Mr. ARNDT: Right. Right.

GROSS: ...it's unsafe for him to be alone.

Mr. ARNDT: To be alone.

GROSS: So tell us about the inspiration for this character.

Mr. ARNDT: Well, I just--my brother's an academic. I have two brothers,
actually, who are professors, and the world of academia is, to me, just sort
of an inherently sort of amusing place because it is very removed, to a
degree, from the real world and, you know, there's the old joke that the
fights in academia are especially bitter because the stakes are so low. And I
just thought that he was a great counterpoint. You know, Richard Hoover, the
dad, is this sort of lowbrow version of self-improvement and Uncle Frank
really is his sort of high brow counterpart. I mean, he is an aspirational
figure, also. But I just thought the tension between sort of lowbrow and
highbrow would be very funny.

And then, in terms of making--it being Proust, I remember my brother, who is a
professor and who does teach...

GROSS: Did we mention that he sees himself as America's foremost Proust
scholar?

Mr. ARNDT: Yeah, he's the number one Proust scholar in America. Exactly.
My brother teaches Proust. He's a literature professor. And we were talking
on the phone and he mentioned this little thing that Proust has at the end of
"In Search of Lost Time," that the happy years are the wasted years and the
years that are most valuable in your life are the ones in which you're
unhappy. And I thought that was such a great thing to have that character
say, especially to Dwayne at the end of the movie, that I thought, `Well, the
only way you're going to buy it coming out of his mouth would be to make him,
you know, an expert in Proust.'

GROSS: Well, Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris, how did you get ahold of
Michael's screenplay for "Little Miss Sunshine"?

Ms. VALERIE FARIS: We have two producers that we've known for a while,
Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, gave us this script, and actually, when they gave
it to us, they said, `You know, it's about a family--a dysfunctional
family--that goes on a road trip to take their daughter to a child beauty
pageant.' And when we heard that description we thought, `I don't really think
that's something we'd want to do.' You know? So we didn't actually read it
right away.

Mr. JONATHAN DAYTON: But then we, you know--actually, I remember Val picked
it up and was reading it in the other room, and I heard her laughing...

Ms. FARIS: Which never happens.

Mr. DAYTON: Yeah. To anyone when they usually read a screenplay,
particularly Val. And so I read it and she, you know, she kind of kept quiet,
and we both just loved it and...

Ms. FARIS: And I remember Jonathan in the other room reading it and laughing
out loud. So, I mean, it really was just the first time we had read a script
where we felt like we had to make the movie. There was no choice. We were so
in love with it. I mean, we just hadn't read anything that we liked so much.

GROSS: Well, you put your finger on a problem. You know, the movie was
described to you as like a road trip movie about a dysfunctional family headed
to a beauty pageant, and you didn't think you wanted to make that movie. So,
Michael, let me ask you, how do you wish the movie had been initially
described to them?

Mr. ARNDT: Yeah, no, it was a problem from the very beginning for me. I
always thought that this was the least marketable film of all time. And I
actually, you know, I had the story in my head for years and years and just
sort of carried it around and didn't do anything with it, just because I
thought it was such a small movie and such a sort of nothing, sort of unsexy
premise. And I thought, you know, `Who's going to want to sit in a VW bus and
watch this family bicker with each other?' But I finally, you know, I finally
just decided, `Well, I'm going to write this just to get it out of my head,'
you know. I read--I spent time working as a script reader so I'd read
hundreds and hundreds of screenplays, and I was very determined that by the,
you know, by the time I sent the script out, it would feel finished. It would
feel like a real movie, because that's--as a reader, it's the rarest thing
that happened is you read a script, you turn the last page and you say, `I see
that. I see that movie.' So I'm very, very glad that Jonathan and Valerie had
that reaction.

GROSS: Did you do anything on the first page to make sure that people read to
page two and three and four and five, since you'd been a reader and you
probably put down a lot of scripts after the first page?

Mr. ARNDT: Actually, I think a mistake a lot of comedies make, and I saw
this over and over again, is that they try to be funny right away. Yeah. I
know it sounds sort of like a contradiction, but I think the problem with most
comedies is that they're not serious enough. And if you start high on a
comedy--if you have Mr. Wacky wake up and, you know, he goes to his wacky job
and he meets his wacky girlfriend and all these wacky things happen, you sort
of don't have anywhere else to go from there. You can't go, you know, if you
start high you can't go up. So I was really determined, you know, to
introduce each of these--to start very low, very quiet, very subdued and
introduce each of these characters one, you know, one at a time and just, you
know, hopefully, in the first 10 pages, just get you to buy the reality of the
situation. I think that's something that most scripts don't spend enough time
doing, is just setting up the world, having you enter into this world and sort
of explore it and just buy the reality of the situation. So I actually held
off, you know, for the first 10 or 15 pages on a lot of the comedy and let it,
you know, let readers or let the audience get to know the characters first and
then start mining the interactions of the characters for humor, so...

GROSS: In directing the film, did you contribute any of your own
dysfunctional family moments to the story?

Mr. DAYTON: Well, it's funny--not--I mean, the script was so well realized
that it, you know, it was not so much adding things in the script, but I think
just...

Ms. FARIS: Just relating to it.

Mr. DAYTON: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have three children. You know, it took
us a long time to get the film made, and there were so many times along the
way we'd go, `Oh my god, this is a "Little Miss Sunshine" moment.'

Ms. FARIS: Yeah, like one of our kids would have a fit and run out of our
van and refuse to get back in the car, and we'd be late for school and, you
know, we were just--there were just--we were so tired of feeling like, `God,
we're living this script, but when do we get the chance to make it?'

GROSS: Did you go to beauty pageants to see what they're like from the
inside?

Mr. DAYTON: Oh, yeah.

Ms. FARIS: Oh, yeah.

Mr. DAYTON: Yeah, it was very important to us to not make fun of the pageant
world, that, you know, we went to these pageants and we wanted to make sure
that they were accurate. And, ideally, we were able to achieve this, we were
able to cast real pageant kids in the film. So everyone you see in the movie
is from the pageant world and most of them are doing their own acts, you know,
brought. They...

Ms. FARIS: They've done their own hair and makeup.

Mr. DAYTON: Yeah.

Ms. FARIS: And got their own costumes.

Mr. DAYTON: It was a low budget movie so it was great to be able to get, you
know, these acts ready to go.

GROSS: What about their mothers? Were their mothers real?

Mr. DAYTON: Oh...

Ms. FARIS: Oh yeah.

Mr. DAYTON: Oh yeah. I mean it was a...

Ms. FARIS: You have to...

Mr. DAYTON: It was a package deal. And, you know, I mean, also the thing is
is that, you know, initially there was a desire to shoot this film in Canada,
and we really fought that because the Canadians, to their credit, don't have a
kid pageant scene. And, you know, pageant kids start training at six months,
often. And they, you know, so when they're--so by the time they're eight or
nine, you know, they've been doing this for, you know, many years, and you
can't teach a kid who doesn't know this world how to move like that and how...

Ms. FARIS: Behave.

Mr. DAYTON: Or, for that matter, how to grow, you know, these girls have
been growing their hair so that it can get in those big shapes. And it's just
not something that can be done, you know, quickly.

GROSS: Valerie, was there ever a moment when you were young when you dreamed
of being Miss America or something that helped you, like, relate to the
character of Olivia in the movie, who wants to be in the beauty pageant?

Ms. FARIS: You mean Olive.

GROSS: Olive. I mean Olive.

Ms. FARIS: Yeah.

GROSS: Yes. Thank you.

Ms. FARIS: That's the French version. I don't--well, I never dreamed of
being Miss America or really in a beauty pageant, but the one thing that I did
relate to about the character of Olive was when she's doing her dance. I
remember when I was like six years old and running around in my living room
and my parents sitting on the couch watching me, and I probably was just, you
know, running through the room and jumping in the air and doing spins, but I
remember thinking that I was doing this magnificent dance. And I think
that's--I totally related to that age where you still have the fantasy in your
head of what you're doing and it's not, you know, it doesn't really matter
what you're actually doing. It's the feeling you have as you're doing it and
that she believed that she was great and that she was, you know, a great
dancer, and I just loved that, that she still had that fantasy life and, you
know...

Mr. DAYTON: I think that's what the other members of the family want to
protect, too, is that they see that this is something that means so much to
her. And whether she's great at it or not, it's something that she feels so
passionately about, and many of the family members have all lost something
that has meant something to them. So, you know, she is this last stand, you
know...

Ms. FARIS: Yeah.

Mr. ARNDT: And I think--I have to say in the movie I think that Abigail
Breslin does such a good job of showing the sort of dawning consciousness that
Olive has. You know, that she starts out very innocent and she starts out
thinking that she's going to be great, and she's so happy she won and she's
going to go to this contest and hopefully win. And in the course of the movie
you see, you know, in this little eight-year-old girl, you know, start to look
at herself the way other people look at her. And it is this sort of very
melancholy transition this character makes, and I just think Abigail, as an
actress, just captured that so, so perfectly.

GROSS: We'll talk more with the directors and screenwriter of "Little Miss
Sunshine" after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: We're talking about "Little Miss Sunshine" with the film screenwriter,
Michael Arndt, and directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Here's
another scene from the film. The whole family is in the car driving daughter
Olive to her beauty pageant. Richard, played by Greg Kinnear, is telling his
brother-in law Frank, played by Steve Carrell, about his plan to get his
self-help book published.

(Soundbite from "Little Miss Sunshine")

(Soundbite of music)

(Soundbite of running car engine)

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) So finally I'm just sitting there, and I
decide, you know, this is Stan Grossman, what the hell, and I start pitching
him the nine steps. And about--I don't know--two minutes in, he stops me. He
says, `I can sell this.'

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) Mm-hmm. Interesting.

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Yeah, and this is the guy who knows how to
do it, you know. You start with the book and then you do a media tour,
corporate events, DVD/VHS series. I mean, there's a whole fascinating science
into how you roll these things out.

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) Wow.

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Yeah, so he's in Scottsdale right now, you
know...

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) Ah.

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) ...building the buzz and kind of getting
the whole pipe thing going. He's doing what the pros call a "ticking-clock
auction."

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) Oh, how about that!

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Yeah, and I can detect that note of sarcasm
there, Frank.

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) What sarcasm? I didn't, I didn't hear...

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) But I want you to know something. I feel
sorry for you.

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) You do? Good.

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Yeah, I do. Because sarcasm is the refuge
of losers.

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) It is? Really?

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Yep. Sarcasm is losers trying to bring
winners down to their level, and that's step four in the program.

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) Wow, Richard, you've really opened my eyes to what a
loser I am. How much do I owe you for those pearls of wisdom?

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Oh, that one's on the house, buddy.

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) It is?

Ms. COLLETTE: (As Sheryl Hoover) OK, you guys, that's enough.

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) Yeah, it's on the house. That's on the
house.

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) Wow!

Ms. COLLETTE: (as Sheryl Hoover) That's enough.

Mr. CARRELL: (As Frank) That was for free?

Ms. COLLETTE: (as Sheryl Hoover) Frank!

Mr. KINNEAR: (As Richard Hoover) No charge.

Ms. COLLETTE: (as Sheryl Hoover) Stop it, stop it, stop it!

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: There's a scene in the movie where, you know, like, they're on this,
like, long trip in their VW bus, like the whole family getting the girl to the
beauty pageant, and because of all the mishaps they have along the way,
they're really late, but you know, all of this is a road trip movie in some
ways. The car is dysfunctional, too. It's not just the people, it's the car.

Mr. ARNDT: Right. Right. Right.

GROSS: And...

Ms. FARIS: It's very important.

GROSS: It's a VW van, a VW bus. And because the clutch is broken, they have
to like push it into second gear in order to get it started. And this is the
kind of scene that would seem really, like, silly and improbable to me, had it
not been for the fact that I, many years ago, made several trips in a van that
had exactly the same problem.

Mr. ARNDT: Oh, really?

GROSS: You had to run and push it and then pop it into second gear.

Mr. ARNDT: Right, right.

GROSS: And so, I guess, I just found it interesting that something that would
have struck me as completely improbable I actually witnessed firsthand. So,
Michael, can you talk about coming up with the idea for this kind of van? You
know, for a van with that problem.

Mr. ARNDT: Yeah. It was very easy, actually, to come up with that idea
because my family had a VW van when I was a kid, and pretty much everything
that happens in the movie happened to our van. So it was the door coming off,
the horn getting stuck. We actually had the wheel come off, you know, while
we were driving, which was in the script. It didn't quite make it into the
movie. And then, of course, having the clutch give out, and we actually, you
know, my family and I, drove 600 miles in a VW bus with a broken clutch, and
we had to, you know, just push it every time to get it started. It could
start up in third gear, and then my dad was able to shift into fourth without
using the clutch so it was--people ask me, you know, if the movie is
autobiographical, and I say, `Well, the only thing that's really
autobiographical is the car.'

GROSS: Abigail Breslin, the young actress who plays Olive in the movie, was
nominated for a Golden Globe and is now nominated for a Supporting Actress
award, you know, for an Oscar. How did you find her? It must be very
difficult to cast a child in a role because, first of all, they don't have the
kind of experience and they haven't made that many movies. At least, I assume
she hadn't. Second of all, I don't know if the audition process is as easy to
do or as easy to interpret for you as it would be for the process of
auditioning an adult.

Mr. DAYTON: Well, yeah. I mean, after reading the script, you know, our
first concern was, `How do we find Olive?' Because if you don't have a
credible Olive, you just don't have a movie. So the first thing we did was
get seed money to start the search, and we actually looked in every
English-speaking country in the world. I mean, we did casting sessions in
Australia and the UK and across America, and we found only one person who we
thought could do it and it was Abigail. And at the time she was six years
old, but it took so long to get the movie made that she actually sort of grew
to an ideal age when we eventually shot the movie.

Ms. FARIS: But even at six, her audition was pretty incredible. I mean, she
had these lines. At six years old she seemed to understand the scene with
Grandpa. She really, you know, she did it great at that age but, I think, you
know, the thing with Abigail, she had, by the time we worked with her, she was
nine and she'd already done, I think, four movies. And so she also had more
experience making movies than we did. And she just was, you know, I think
that does make the difference so that they're not kind of shell-shocked when
they get onto the set. And, you know, she--if you watch--we watched her other
films and we watched her appearances on "The Jay Leno Show," and that was in
some ways what completely sold us on her was watching her with Jay Leno.
Because she sat on that show and, instead of kind of playing to the audience,
she was completely engaged in her conversation with Leno. And I think that's
what's sort of exceptional about her is that she's an incredible listener and,
you know, even if she's not talking in a scene, she's completely engaged. And
that's pretty rare for a kid.

GROSS: We'll talk more with the directors and screenwriter of "Little Miss
Sunshine" after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with the team that made
"Little Miss Sunshine:" screenwriter Michael Arndt and directors Valerie Faris
and Jonathan Dayton, who are married to each other. "Little Miss Sunshine" is
nominated for four Oscars: Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting
Actor and Best Supporting Actress.

It took years for "Little Miss Sunshine" to get made. Why was it so
difficult?

Mr. DAYTON: Well, I mean, there were many reasons. I think, as we talked
about earlier, it's a hard film to describe. And I think any time people go
to make a movie, they immediately start to think about, `Well, how are we
going to sell this?' And, you know, how can it be simplified, you know, to a
tagline or a poster or a...

Ms. FARIS: Or a star vehicle.

Mr. DAYTON: Yeah. And because it was a true ensemble film, you know,
studios tend to be nervous about ensemble pictures, because they can't put the
face of one star or two stars on the poster. And, you know, in the past,
ensemble films haven't sold so well. So there were a lot of strikes against
it. And then I think, finally, you know, the whole notion of a dysfunctional
family comedy was something that, I think, people felt was tired. Now, I
think if people look closely, obviously, this was a fresh treatment of that
subject.

Ms. FARIS: There's so much more than that.

Mr. DAYTON: But on the surface it felt like territory we'd all been through.

Mr. ARNDT: And I think, also, at the same time, it was, it's what they call
in Hollywood an execution-dependent film, which means it really had to, you
know--you really had to sort of thread the needle or hit the bulls-eye for it
really work. And if you had had, you know, just one weak link in the chain,
like if you had miscast Olive, for example, or if you had shot poorly the
final dance number, then the whole movie wouldn't work, it would've been a
disaster. So I think people were just always nervous about the fact that, you
know, I was a first time writer, Jon and Val were first time directors, and
sort of, you know, was this really, you know--people tended to really like the
script, but, you know, there was always the question was, you know, was that
going to be able to translate onto the screen?

GROSS: Steve Carrell wasn't that well known yet when you cast him in the
movie. It was before "40-Year-Old Virgin" was released. Did the ability to
get a good distributor, or to raise money for the film change when he became
more famous?

Ms. FARIS: It certainly didn't hurt us. But it's funny because I think,
when we cast him, he was probably the one that, you know, everyone was sort
of--he was the biggest question mark, in a way. Although we didn't feel
that--we'd met him, we'd seen a couple episodes of "The Office." It hadn't
started airing yet, but we saw him in "The Office." We loved his work in all
the films that he's done, and on "The Jon Stewart Show." So--and then meeting
him, we just thought, `He gets this character so thoroughly,' and we agreed in
kind of the way we were going to approach the film, so we felt totally
confident with him. But I think, in some ways, he may have been considered
the biggest risk we were taking.

Mr. DAYTON: But the film, you know, we had finished shooting the film when
"The 40-Year-Old Virgin" came out, and it wasn't really till Sundance, where
the film was offered for sale, that Steve's, yeah, rising star really came in
handy.

Mr. ARNDT: I remember Steve on the set would, he would come, you know, to
act on the set, but then would say, `Oh, we had a test screening of "The
40-Year-Old Virgin" last night, and, you know, I really think it went well.
But I shouldn't say that. I shouldn't say that.' You know? He was such
a--he's such a modest guy but, you know, we were hearing, you know, that he
was getting great scores.

GROSS: Jonathan, Valerie, you're husband and wife, and you're a directing
team. So how did you maintain your sense of unity to the actors when making
the movie? Did they talk to both of you each time they had a question, or did
you say, `Let me get back to my spouse, and then--or, my co-director and then
we'll get back to you as a team and give you the answer'?

Mr. DAYTON: Well, it was so--it happened so many different ways, but, you
know, we had had three years to prepare this. We actually workshopped five
different scenes from the move with other actors, and so we had seen parts of
the film up and running. So we had a pretty good understanding of what we
wanted. We even acted out some of the scenes in our garage with just the two
of us so that we knew what we were asking of the actors. We weren't
performing very well, but we at least knew the feelings that we were going
for. So many times, we had talked about so much that we knew what the...

Ms. FARIS: We knew what the other one would say.

Mr. DAYTON: Yeah, we knew the collective stand on most issues. But, you
know, there were probably some times where we'd say, `Well, let me just talk
to Valerie and we'll come back to you,' or, you know, usually...

Ms. FARIS: Or we'd both be there. I mean, a lot of times when there's
something, you know, really important, or there's something that you're trying
to work out, the two of us would be there with the actor. And then it would
be a discussion among the three of us, so--it's funny how rarely that does
come up, where somebody says, you know, `What about this?' And then we
have--one of us has to go check with the other.

Mr. DAYTON: Yeah.

Ms. FARIS: It's sort of, it's very organic, and I don't really know exactly
how it works or how to describe it, except that we've never had anybody on the
set say, you know, `I can't talk to two directors.' Not yet, anyway.

GROSS: Valerie, you were a student of dance before becoming a filmmaker. And
you've done a lot of rock videos, in which, I assume, there's some dancing. I
know that you both directed Gap and Target commercials. Have you done ones in
which there's dancing?

Ms. FARIS: Well, we have shot dance a lot. We're actually doing some Gap
commercials coming up that're dance duos. But I think--I mean, I've always
loved--I still love dance, and I think good movies are--when you see a great
movie, the movement of the characters is so important. So I think of a lot of
things as dance, even if it's not strictly dance, and the just movement.

Mr. DAYTON: Pushing the van was really a dance sequence.

Ms. FARIS: Yeah.

GROSS: In what sense?

Ms. FARIS: Oh, just that they're all working together. It's just, I feel
like when, I think, physical, you know--physical comedy, for one, is something
that I think both of us--all of us--love, and I just think, you know, we're so
kind of dialogue-based today, and it's so nice to see--I think partly what
works about that scene is they're really physical; they're actually all doing,
you know, the pushing and the running, and when they jump into the van they're
breathing hard and, you know, I think that translates on film. It just gets
you involved as an audience. The movement does that.

GROSS: Just one more question, Jonathan and Valerie: Which came first for
you, being a directorial team or being a couple?

Ms. FARIS: You want to guess?

GROSS: Do I want to guess? Not really. (Unintelligible).

Mr. DAYTON: No, no.

Ms. FARIS: Well, it's funny because we think that that's probably the secret
behind why we work so well together, is that we worked together for six years,
and then we started dating. So, you know, all the work habits were already
established, and we had respect for each other, which is a good way to start.

Mr. DAYTON: And we still do.

Ms. FARIS: Yeah, we still do. But I, you know, so many people say to us, `I
don't know how you work with your spouse.' You know, `My husband or my wife
and I could never work together.' And I just--it's kind of funny to me,
because I guess I think, `Well, how do you raise kids together?' Or, `How do
you live together? It almost sounds like you don't like each other.' So, you
know, we happen to like each other as well as respect each other.

GROSS: I guess co-directing has helped in co-parenting?

Ms. FARIS: Yeah. Absolutely.

GROSS: You already got a routine together?

Ms. FARIS: Yes. And I think it would be much harder to be married to a
director, you know. They're just gone so much. So it's better that we're
both gone or we're both there. And we actually aren't gone that much. We
spend a lot of time at home.

GROSS: Well, I want to congratulate all of you for the success of "Little
Miss Sunshine," and for the Academy Award Best Picture nomination. Thanks so
much for talking with us.

Ms. FARIS: Thank you.

Mr. ARNDT: Thank you.

Ms. FARIS: It's great to talk to you.

Mr. DAYTON: Thanks.

GROSS: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris directed "Little Miss Sunshine."
Michael Arndt wrote the screenplay. The film is nominated for four Oscars,
including Best Picture and Best Screenplay.

Coming up, labradoodles, puggles and cockapoos. We talk about the new
designer dogs. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Writer Jon Mooallem discusses designer pets
TERRY GROSS, host:

You can get custom tiles for your kitchen or custom colors for your family
room. Now journalist Jon Mooallem reports Americans willing to pay for it are
getting custom-made pets. Mooallem's piece in Sunday's New York Times
magazine focuses on designer dogs like the labradoodle, born of a labrador and
poodle; or the puggle. Want to guess? That's a pug and a beagle. Mooallem
finds the trend is growing criticism from dog breeding traditionalists, and
raising questions about our relationship with man's best friend.

Jon Mooallem is a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine. His
pieces have also appeared in Harper's, The Nation, and salon.com. Last
Friday, when Dave Davies was hosting FRESH AIR, he recorded this interview
with Mooallem.

DAVE DAVIES, host:

Well, Jon Mooallem, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Mr. JON MOOALLEM: Thank you.

DAVIES: You write in this piece that designer dogs became popular about a
decade ago. What exactly is a designer dog?

Mr. MOOALLEM: Well, you know, a designer dog is really a lot of things to a
lot of different people. When I said that it really became popular a decade
ago, you know, that's really talking about a dog called the labradoodle, which
is, you know, in this country is largely a crossbred dog of a pure-bred
labrador retriever and a pure-bred poodle. You but those two dogs together,
and the litter of puppies you get are labradoodles. And that's sort of the
way it's gone on with people crossing different dogs, pure-bred to pure-bred,
and then just sort of mashing the two breed names together and coming up with,
you know, a kind of cute label for it, like a maltipoo, which would be a
maltese and a poodle; or a puggle, which would be a pug and a beagle. I mean,
it's just sort of gone on exponentially from there in kind of this
free-for-all of people combining these different breeds.

DAVIES: You know, it takes some effort to do this. What were the breeders
trying to accomplish?

Mr. MOOALLEM: Well, the first people to do a labradoodle, actually, this
happened in Australia in the '80s, and as I understand it, you know, the
breeder who did the first quote-unquote "labradoodle" was working to breed a
dog that would be a guide dog for the blind, but would also work for a
particular woman with very bad allergies. So he actually took hair samples
from different dogs--I think mostly poodles--trying to find a sample that this
woman's allergies could tolerate. And when he found a couple that seemed
workable, he then bred one of those dogs to a labrador, which is, you know,
typically one of the dogs used as guide dogs.

But what happened in Australia was that other breeders picked up on this, and
they sort of tried to build an actual breed of dog that was the labradoodle.
And the way you do that is you take that first litter of hybrid puppies, of
poodle crossed with labrador, and then you pick out the ones you like. You
look out for whatever you traits you want--either the temperament or the
particular kind of coat--and you start breeding them together. Maybe you'll
breed one to another breed of dog, kind of tweaking what you see in each
generation. And as you go down the line, eventually, you know, as you're
inbreeding and bringing in new breeds and just kind of honing the subsequent
generations, you end up with a line that breeds true. And that means that
you'll be able to take two labradoodles, put them together, have them have a
litter of puppies, and those puppies will really have those traits that you've
been trying to fix in the line.

DAVIES: And so, at that point, you have no longer a hybrid, you have a new
breed, right?

Mr. MOOALLEM: Right. And people are doing this all the time. I mean,
there's breeders who are, you know, constantly founding new breeds. But this
has been going on, really, since the late 1800s, when people started, you
know, really seriously breeding what we now think of as pure-bred dogs. But
what happened with the labradoodle, though, was the Australian breeders who
had done this then started exporting those dogs to the US as pets. You know,
here they had a dog with what they felt was a great, friendly temperament; it
was a relatively non-shedding dog, so it didn't make much of a mess; it was
good with people with allergies. And they'd put all this hard work into it,
you know, over about a decade of getting these dogs just the way they wanted
them, that they, you know, put a price tag on it of two or $3,000. And people
started buying them here.

You know, in some ways, it was kind of a big misunderstanding how the designer
dog craze started in this country. Because what happened was, you know,
American breeders, people who're breeding pure-bred dogs, you know, for pet
stores or selling them directly through the Internet, suddenly saw this thing
called the labradoodle. It cost $2500, it seemed obvious how you made one--it
was right there in the name, you took a labrador and a poodle--and people kind
of misunderstood that that's all it was, that's all the Australians had done.
So they would, you know, take their labrador, maybe go next door to their
friend who had a poodle, breed a labradoodle, and try to sell it for 2500,
$3,000. And it worked. It largely worked.

DAVIES: What were some other combinations you found interesting or
intriguing?

Mr. MOOALLEM: Well, you know, some of the most interesting combinations are
the ones that seem like two really different dogs. I met one man in Denver
who had actually never bred dogs before, and he was just looking to get
himself a pet. And he ended up breeding a poodle to a Rottweiler, and he
called it a Roddle, a standard poodle on a Rottweiler. And this is a guy, you
know, he worked for the post office, he really had no experience breeding
dogs, and over about five or six years of visiting breeders and trying to find
what he would consider to be the perfect pet, and sort of being very
disillusioned by it, you know, the whole culture of show dogs and show
breeders, just decided that he would read up over a period of years. He dug
deep into the inter-library loan program of the Denver Public Library, came up
with some really interesting reading, and talked to people, and ended up
crossing these two dogs.

And you know, honestly, when I looked at the dog, I couldn't really tell that
there were any specks of poodle or Rottweiler in it. It was really its own
thing. It sort of goes to show you that you can't really tell what a dog's
going to turn out like until you do that first cross.

DAVIES: And did the Roddle--is that what we call it? Did it have behavioral
characteristics? I mean, did the guy get what he was looking for?

Mr. MOOALLEM: Yeah, I think he did. He was really looking for, you know,
ironically, because he was working for the post office, he really was looking
for a really confident guard dog, which I'm sure angered a lot of his
colleagues at the postal service. But he did. He felt that--and I met some
of the puppies; I mean, it's hard to tell, only spending an afternoon with the
dugs--but he did feel out of the 10 puppies that he had seen, you know, very
trainable dog with some of the qualities of the poodle, with also some of the
confidence of the Rottweiler.

I think it's really important to point out that so much of this subjective.
And that's, you know, something I get at in the piece, is that I really think,
ultimately, a lot of the appeal of these dogs is almost kind of a
Rorschach-like quality to them. You know, here's this thing. We've given it
a name. We don't quite know what it is yet. It doesn't have a reputation.
And we're free to see what we want to see in it. If we want to see, you know,
the temperament of a poodle, you know, well, I know a poodle once and it was
sweet, and this dog is sweet, so that must've come from the poodle. You know,
we're free to do that. The scientific reality of it, you know, is far more
complicated.

And so much of it has to do with the individuals who are breeding the dogs
themselves, and their scrupulousness, their good taste in terms of selecting,
you know, high quality parents, screening for health problems, screening for
behavior. You know, so much of what a dog turns out like is dependent on the
whims and the practices of the people breeding it that it's almost a bit of a
red herring to say that, you know, to give these breeds or designer dogs names
and assume that, you know, all puggles will be the same or, you know, all pugs
or all beagles will be the same, for that matter.

DAVIES: You know, some of these breeds that're being combined are pretty
different. I mean, we picture the Rottweiler and the poodle. Does the
breeding occur naturally in these animals, or is artificial insemination
frequently used?

Mr. MOOALLEM: Right. Well, in most of--I would assume in all, and certainly
in the vast majority of the designer dogs, the dogs are breeding naturally.
The trick, so to speak, is to use the larger dog as the mother. If you do
that, then you'll be able to have the dogs, you know, manage the procreation
on their own and then the--but more importantly, you'll have the puppies in
the womb adapt to the size of the mother so that, generally, you'll have a
size and shape of puppy that can fit through the mother's birth canal.

DAVIES: Right.

Mr. MOOALLEM: Where you run into issues with artificial insemination or
C-sections is with pure-bred dogs. There're many of breeds of purebred that,
you know, can no longer procreate on their own reliably without human
intervention, where that, you know, virtually have to have all their puppies
delivered by C-section because, you know, the puppies just can't cram down the
birth canal, it's too narrow at this point.

DAVIES: And that's because the breeding over the centuries has exaggerated
their physical features such? They just can't do nature's tricks anymore?

Mr. MOOALLEM: That's right. We, you know, people, breeders have latched
onto a certain description of a dog, a certain vision of what the perfect dog
of each breed would look like, and over 150 or 100 years of selecting for that
shape and those proportions, you know, they really exaggerated a lot of those
qualities. They've really come up with some kind of a more dramatic
geometries of dogs. And yeah, it does get to a point where they can no longer
do their, really, their only biological function.

DAVIES: Which breeds are most misshapen this way?

Mr. MOOALLEM: Well, it's my understanding that it's a lot of the smaller
breeds where you find examples of this. I know, for instance, the pug is a
great example of a dog that, you know, the quote-unquote best-bred pugs, the
pugs that look most like the ideal description of a pug, can no longer
reliably mate on their own, and pug puppies are virtually always delivered by
C-section.

DAVIES: Wow. So pugs in the wild would simply not reproduce?

Mr. MOOALLEM: Right. There'll never be feral pugs is what one pug fancier
told me.

DAVIES: So there are thousands of dog caesarian sections every year?

Mr. MOOALLEM: Yeah, there are. And there's also, you know, elaborate
surgical procedures for inseminating dogs. You know, the most dramatic being
that, I guess, that you can actually open up the dog, inject the semen
directly into the reproductive system of the mother, you know, replace it all
and sew it back up, and that surgery sure is a bet to make sure that you're
going to have puppies. Also because, oftentimes you're paying, you know,
five, six, $700 in a stud fee. You're basically buying the semen of someone
else's male dog. And you want to make sure when you do that that you're
giving yourself the best shot of having a litter of puppies.

GROSS: We'll hear more about the new designer dogs when Dave Davies continues
his interview with journalist Joe Mooallem--Jon Mooallem, that is--after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: Let's get back to the interview that FRESH AIR's frequent guest host
Dave Davies recorded with journalist Jon Mooallem about the new designer dogs.
Mooallem's article on designer dogs was the cover story of this week's New
York Times magazine.

DAVIES: Well, I was intrigued that one of the breeders that you spoke to,
Wallace Havens, had worked out multigenerational formulas for combining five
or six different breeds, whose names then, he would gives the names which
didn't disclose which five or six breeds they were. What was he up to?

Mr. MOOALLEM: Wallace is a guy who is generally credited as quote-unquote
inventing the puggle, which was one of the more popular designer dogs. It
kind of peaked about a year and a half ago or so. And, you know, this--you
know, he really felt like he had invented this thing. He'd been breeding
puggles for about 20 years. And what happened was, as soon as, you know,
about the winter of 2005, celebrities started having puggles and being
photographed with them. Jake Gyllenhaal went on, I think it was "The Ellen
Degeneres Show," with a puggle. And it sort of spiked the puggle's
popularity. And, you know, breeding a puggle or something that you can call a
puggle is not that terribly difficult if you have a pug and a beagle around.
And what happened was, lots of people jumped on this bandwagon and started
breeding puggles and selling them over the Internet. There are now, with one
small registry service alone, there's something like 200 puggle breeders on
file. One of every four breeders they register a month is puggles.

DAVIES: Wow.

Mr. MOOALLEM: And Wallace really felt--I think he felt a little hurt about
this. I think he felt like he didn't respect the quality of the puggles that
were being bred. He felt like he bred them in a far better way. He had told
me that he'd seen people breeding pugs to other kinds of hound dogs and
calling them puggles. He actually said something like, it was giving the
puggle a bad name. And I think these kind of multigenerational crosses that
he started in on are a kind of way to stay ahead of the game.

DAVIES: Are breeders regulated at all? Is there any state or federal agency
that looks after breeders?

Mr. MOOALLEM: There is in some cases. In terms of, on a national scale,
there's the USDA. And my understanding is that the USDA is only inspecting
people who are selling their dogs not directly to the public, so to pet stores
or any other middle man types of situation. You know, if I wanted to breed a
few dogs in my back yard and then put up an ad on the Internet, as far as I
know, I would be more or less immune to any kind of regulation or inspection.

DAVIES: I just have to ask you about a couple more of these clever
combinations. One of them you mentioned was the sharpeis and the bassets
being combined for sharpassets. Is that anything more than a word game?

Mr. MOOALLEM: Yeah. You know, it is easy to ask the question whether the
name comes first in a lot of situations. But yeah, you know, there is really
sort of this infinite combination, infinite potential for combinations. And
it seems like, you know, the quirkier the name, the more attention it's going
to get to start with, regardless of what the dog itself is like.

DAVIES: Is the interest of pet owners in designer dogs related at all to
changes in modern lifestyle? I mean, a lot of people who are very, very busy
like cats because they're lower maintenance. Are people looking for dogs that
they can treat more like cats?

Mr. MOOALLEM: Yeah, I mean, that's essentially what some people told me who
I interviewed for the article. What happened, actually, in the '80s was that,
for the first time in America, pet cats were more popular than pet dogs.
There were more pet cats. And, you know, when I asked one man, a guy named
Bob Vetere, who's the president of a pet products trade group, about this, he
basically, you know, put it right back to scoopable litter. He said that was
the real clincher, that suddenly a cat, which was something that was seen as
self sufficient, you know, was now even more self sufficient. We didn't
really have to muss around with a smelly litter box as often. And you do see,
you know, in the past 20 years, a lot of products that have come out that're
basically designed to give a dog the best life possible without us having to
change our lifestyle so much.

DAVIES: Like what?

Mr. MOOALLEM: So, you know, if we want to leave the dog...

DAVIES: Give us a for example.

Mr. MOOALLEM: Sure. If we want to leave the dog at home, but we don't want
it to get on our furniture, there're, you know, tons of products. Everything
to the sort of mildly electrified little mats that you can set up with a
little minefield around your living room. So you do see--you know, to me,
this sort of shows that there is this subtle dissatisfaction with having to
make a compromise with your dog. You know, I don't think that there's any
reason to believe that, you know, a cockapoo or a labradoodle, or any of the
new breeds, is going to make that tremendously easier, if at all. But
certainly, when there's a new dog there, you know, I think people are very
optimistic and they say, `Well, you know, maybe this is it. Maybe this is
finally the perfect dog, the one I've been looking for.'

DAVIES: Well, Jon Mooallem, thanks so much for speaking with us.

Mr. MOOALLEM: Thank you.

GROSS: Jon Mooallem wrote this week's New York Times magazine cover story
about the new designer dogs. He spoke with Dave Davies, who guest hosts FRESH
AIR and is a senior writer for The Philadelphia Daily News. We'll have
pictures of the new designer dogs on our Web site, freshair.npr.org.

And now you can also go to our Web site for podcasts of FRESH AIR. That's
freshair.npr.org.

(Credits)

I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.