Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Dir. Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris

Starring: Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carrell, Abigail Breslin 

On the last day of the year I have reached the final film of my challenge. I feel like a real winner. Which is good, because Little Miss Sunshine is about people striving to be winners. Admittedly, none of the characters get what they want – Olive (Abigail Breslin) is barred from her beauty pageant, her father Richard (Greg Kinnear) does not secure a book deal, Uncle Frank (Steve Carrell) is overtaken as America’s number one Proust scholar, her brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) realises he will never become an air force test pilot and grandpa (Alan Arkin) dies. But they all gradually coalesce as a family with mother Sheryl (Toni Collette). They leave the film happier and more unified than when they started it. 

In the film an ill-assorted and dysfunctional family find themselves hitting the road to travel from Alburquerque, New Mexico, to Redondo Beach, California, in a clapped-out old VW Minivan. Olive has made it through to the finals of the “Little Miss Sunshine” beauty pageant (after the winner of a previous heat was stripped of her crown). Sheryl needs Richard there to drive the van. Grandpa insists on coming after he has been coaching Olive. Frank, temporarily staying with them following a suicide attempt, has to come along so that they can keep an eye on him, and likewise Neitzsche-reading teenage Dwayne who has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his aim of qualifying for the air force. They face upsets along the way which culminate in a spot of grave-robbing. The adventures and vignettes along the route are part and parcel of the Road Trip genre; so too are the personal journeys undertaken by each of the characters.

 

And so according to the goals they set themselves they may all be unsuccessful. Richard starts the film stating that “There are two types of people in this world: winners and losers.” It is his foul-mouthed reprobate father who nuances this later on. He says that “Losers are people who are so afraid of not winning, they don’t even try.” In the end they have to be themselves. Even knowing that Olive is seriously outclassed at the beauty pageant they let her take the stage – and they all run up there to support her. They start as individuals, all focused on their own individual desires. Frank studies Proust. Dwayne reads Nietzsche. Richard echoes Dwayne in that his motivational speaking mirrors the Nietzschean ‘will to power’. Their actual prize is learning to trust and support each other unconditionally along the way. And a large part of this is down to the presence of Olive. You just cannot be horrible to a seven-year-old girl. It’s impossible. She actually is the sunshine that binds the family together. She is the only one who can make her grandpa behave like a human, she hugs her mother at the right time, and she brings Dwayne back from his tantrum when his dreams are crushed. She is wonderfully human when the ‘winners’ they encounter are all freaks, from the smooth agent to the porn-obsessed cop to the monstrous and petty pageant organiser to the actual contestants themselves. Child beauty pageants are freaky as hell, with the spray-tanned, bouffant-haired, hyperconfident little girls prowling around sexually in swimsuits looking like aliens. To be honest if that is the sort of thing that defines being a winner in this world the Hoovers are better off out of it… 



The Chef might have been Little but the Eaters were not Happy

 

The parts are well-acted. The innocent Breslin as Olive in particular shines, alongside Dano (who has to act without words for most of the film), Arkin’s gloriously badly-behaved grandpa and Carrell’s low-key depressive (cast before Carrell hit the big time with The 40 Year Old Virgin and The Office: an American Workplace). Toni Collette did not really have that much to get her teeth into I felt, and Kinnear’s Richard just reminded me too uncomfortably of William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundberg in Fargo. There was, in truth, a touch of the Coen’s about the whole film. Considering that it deals with death, suicide and broken dreams it is actually a bit of a feel-good film. It certainly makes one happy to be part of a family. 

What have I learnt about The Road?

The roadway network in America is constantly evolving. In Easy Rider (1969) Wyatt and Billy rode almost deserted roads between fields. In Vanishing Point (1971) the roads were busier and in the process of being constructed. In 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine we see concrete multi-lane highways and flyovers.  

It is a crime to transport a dead body across a state boundary without a permit. This is not something I had ever personally thought of before, and I am hoping that this knowledge will not prove to be of any real use to me in life! 

Can we go there?

In the original screenplay of Little Miss Sunshine the Hoovers were required to undertake a roadtrip from Maryland to Florida. An east coast roadtrip would have been a nice companion for Easy Rider’s Mexico-Arizona-New Mexico-Louisiana or Vanishing Point’s Colorado-Nevada-California. However, to facilitate filming the journey was changed to a sort of ‘Reverse Easy Rider’: New Mexico-Arizona-California. The Hoovers start off in Alburquerque and head down Interstate 40 to end up in Redondo Beach on the coast. Richard takes a separate detour en route to Scottsdale, Arizona. 

The bulk of the movie was shot in California however. The diner where Olive orders “waffles alamodie” was actually Pann’s on La Tijera Boulevard in Los Angeles. The beauty pageant was not actually filmed in Redondo Beach but in Ventura instead – the ‘Redondo Suites’ were the Crowne Plaza Ventura Beach Hotel. Frank and Dwayne have a heart-to-heart on Ventura Pier. 

Overall Rating: 3/5

Vanishing Point (1971)

Dir. Richard C. Sarafian

Starring: Barry Newman, Cleavon Little, Dean Jagger, Victoria Medlin

 

“And there goes the Challenger, being chased by the blue, blue meanies on wheels. The vicious traffic squad cars are after our lone driver, the last American hero, the electric centaur, the demi-god, the super driver of the golden west! Two nasty Nazi cars are close behind the beautiful lone driver. The police numbers are gettin' closer, closer, closer to our soul hero, in his soul mobile, yeah baby! They about to strike. They gonna get him. Smash him. Rape the last beautiful free soul on this planet…” 

A white supercharged Dodge Challenger speeds across the Nevada desert, clouds of dust being kicked up in its wake. Its engine screams as it slaloms the brush. Behind the police pursue. Ahead there is an unknown fate. At the wheel is Kowalski (Barry Newman). High on speed he is engaged in a desperate race against time to deliver the car he drives from Denver to San Francisco in only fifteen hours. And over the radio comes the voice of blind DJ Super Soul (Cleavon Little), urging him to keep going, warning him of the cops on his tail, and mythologizing him to his listeners as “the last American hero… the last beautiful free soul on this planet.” 

A great car chase can make a great movie. Think of Bullitt racing through the streets of San Francisco, the carnage strewn across Paris in Ronin or the loop-the-loop bridge jump in The Man with the Golden Gun. Vanishing Point is one big car chase, 90 minutes of it. There is no danger of getting bored by the leisurely pace as there was with Easy Rider. Like Kowalski the viewer is taken on a speed-fuelled adrenaline-boosted turbo-charged race across the American West. Many questions are left unanswered. What is Kowalski’s first name? Why did he refuse to stop for the first policeman? Why does he have just fifteen hours to reach ‘Frisco? We never know. When Kowalski’s dealer Jake (Lee Weaver) accuses him of joking about his deadline Kowalski merely replies “I wish to God I was.” The deadline seems arbitrary and unreal – and I was left suspecting that it was invented by Kowalski himself. Kowalski speeds and races not because of an external force compelling him, but because he wants to. Deep-down he needs to. A former racecar and speedway driver – as well as a former Marine and cop – he is drawn to the danger and the thrill of the pursuit. Super Soul posits that to him “speed means freedom of the soul. The question is not when he’s gonna stop, but who’s gonna stop him.” 

Kowalski is trying to outrace not just the police but the past. Through flashbacks we glimpse his life-story. We see his romance with Vera (Victoria Medlin) and we see her fail to return from surfing. It is the painful memories which he is trying to outpace. Finally he succeeds. It might not be true to say that he has a deathwish – actor Barry Newman is on record as saying that Kowalski smiles as he races towards the final roadblock because he thinks he can make it. I disagree. I think Kowalski finally makes peace with himself. With his actions being followed by the police, by the media, by the many listeners to Super Soul’s show, he has nowhere left to run. He decides to take the chase where they cannot follow him and where the answers about his behaviour will go forever unanswered. 

He is helped along the way by those that see him as the ultimate expression of American freedom, escaping the tyranny of an oppressive state. It is not just Super Soul, who seems to have an intimate connection to Kowalski, who helps, but also dealers, hippies and old-time prospectors. All people who have no love for modern American society. Being mobile is freedom: this is literally the freedom of the road. Kowalski becomes a folk hero overnight, a modern-day take on the old outlaws of the West. Both he and his car are resolutely and stoically American – they burn off a cocky (European) Jaguar driver. Super Soul refers to the police as “Nazis”. Speed, independence, freedom – these are the American virtues Kowalski represents. 

The film has wonderful sights and sounds to accompany Kowalski’s drive. The rural silence is shattered by the throaty roar of the Challenger’s engine. Wheel-tracks criss-cross the barren salt flats of Nevada. Super Soul lays down a funky soundtrack. Richard Sarafian manages to entertain with a film that has the energy and urgency of a car chase, but with more depth to it than that description would seem to merit. Vanishing Point is a redemptive quest as a man finds that no matter how fast you go,you can never outrun your demons. 

 

No matter what his GPS told him, he was sure this wasn't Bristol

 

What have I learnt about The Road?

As in Easy Rider The Road means freedom. And that is maybe not surprising when one considers the limitations on the police forces along the route – they are restricted to their own state and cannot cross the boundary lines. This means that the pursuit of Kowalski has to be handed over from the police in Colorado to those in Nevada, and from Nevada to California. California’s state police seem to have a lot more resources than Nevada’s. 

Can we go there?

Kowalski’s route is to take him from Denver to San Francisco. He takes possession of the Challenger in the Denargo Markets area (20th Street and Fox). He is first spotted by the police near Glenwood Springs in Colorado. When he refuses to stop a chase ensues. The route has been recreated as far as possible. The climactic end of the movie (and also its beginning) occurs in Cisco, California. There is no real life Cisco in California however – these scenes were shot in Cisco, Utah (off Interstate 70 about 30 miles from the Colorado border). 

Off this route Super Soul broadcasts from the Goldfield Hotel in Goldfield, Nevada. 

Overall Rating: 4/5

Easy Rider (1969)

Dir. Dennis Hopper

Starring: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Luke Askew

 

Easy Rider perhaps spawned the genre of road trip movies and – coming as it did at the dying end of the ‘60s – it was a very bad trip. 

In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas mention is made of the “high-water mark”: the place where the momentum of the hippy revolution faltered and was beaten back. It is clever that Hunter S. Thompson recognised it. But you can see that moment quite clearly in Easy Rider, made in 1968 and released the following year. Here we see the peace and love of the hippies – or, indeed, of anyone willing to check out from mainstream society in pursuit of freedom – confronted with fear and loathing. Our two protagonists, Wyatt, aka ‘Captain America’, (Peter Fonda, who produced and co-wrote the film) and Billy (Dennis Hopper, who directed and co-wrote the film), embrace the freedom of the open road on their Harley Davidson choppers and find themselves smashing at full-throttle straight into “straight” America. 

Easy Rider is largely improvised and free-form, so it is hard to find a plot amongst the vignettes. At its basic level it simply charts Wyatt and Billy’s journey towards New Orleans in search of Mardi Gras. The film opens with them picking up some cocaine in Mexico, which they then sell on to their contact (record producer Phil Spector) in Los Angeles. For the entire first nine minutes no English dialogue occurs. Wyatt and Bill then turn east. They drop a hitch-hiker (Luke Askew) off at a hippie commune. They are then arrested in New Mexico, meeting up in the slammer with drunk lawyer George Hanson (Jack Nicholson). George decides to join them on their trip to New Orleans. Unfortunately they are ambushed by intolerant locals in Louisiana. Wyatt and Billy go on to New Orleans, pick up two prostitutes (Karen Black and Toni “Hey Mickey!” Basil), take them out to a cemetery and get blitzed on whiskey and acid. One trip later Wyatt and Billy are on the road again; again they run up against intolerant locals.  

 

The Man from DelMonte quite liked his new hat

 

The film shows a world in which the battle lines are drawn. It is a war – except the hippies fail to realise this. George the straight does. He points out that freedom scares mainstream society. “They’re scared of what you represent to ‘em… What you represent to them is freedom.” “What the hell is wrong with freedom? That’s what it’s all about!” “Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s what it’s about alright. But talkin’ about it and bein’ it, that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, ‘cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you, about individual freedom. But they see a free individual it’s gonna scare ‘em… It makes ‘em dangerous.” He is proved tragically right. When the hippies say “this is where we make our stand” they are talking about establishing a commune in the South West deserts, trying to grow simple food in common. When rednecks make a stand they do it with laws or clubs or shotguns. Even Wyatt comes to the final conclusion that it is all hopeless. “We blew it” he tells Billy. 

I knew that Easy Rider  was the film my mum and dad went to on one of their first dates – my mum actually watched it three times with different boys. It has this great storied mystique about it, so I was keen to see it myself. And while I am glad that I saw it I have to admit that, to be honest, it is not very good. Director Hopper was angry when it was edited down to 90 minutes behind his back. Yet even with that cutting, it idles. I expected more plot. Because it was semi-improvised there is not much character development. Billy at the end of the movie is exactly the same at the start of the movie. There are weird cuts between scenes, the lighting levels are often too dim and there was often not enough content to keep me entertained. It starts well with their cross-border drug deal, then gets very dull very fast with the hippie commune. There was a hint of intrigue with the arrival of the Stranger on the Road, but that promise is not fulfilled. Jack Nicholson really lifts the piece; it then sags back into self-indulgence with Wyatt and Billy’s cemetery acid trip. But, as my dad commented, the soundtrack is fantastic – not just Steppenwolf’s iconic Born to be Wild but also The Weight by The Band, If 6 Was 9 by Jimi Hendrix and The Pusher by Hoyt Axton. 

All-in-all I probably feel more let down by Easy Rider than any other film I have watched this year. It is not the worst film I have seen – compared to Trigger Man, Rosalie Goes Shopping or Legends of the Fall it is great. But it a film I was really looking forward to and ended up disappointed.

What have I learnt about The Road?

For starters, America’s road network enables quicker travel than I had thought from looking at the map. I had imagined that travelling coast-to-coast would take over a week, but New Mexico - New Orleans can be covered in three days. The freedom of the road does look liberating – and it seems that camping out at the side of the road with a campfire is possible across wide swathes of the country. This is, perhaps, necessary as motel owners might not like long-haired sorts cruising up on choppers late at night. 

Travelling The Road is all about freedom – it is a signal that you are free to do what you want and are not “bought and sold in the marketplace”. As George warns, however, that makes you a target for all the deadbeats you pass along the way envious of your freedom to follow your own desires. 

Can we go there?

Easy Rider starts off in Mexico (actually what is now the Red Arrow Emporium in El Prado, just north of Taos in New Mexico). Wyatt and Billy then head on to make a drug-deal at the end of the runway at LAX airport. Wyatt ditches his Rolex at the ghost town of Ballarat in Death Valley. They cross the Colorado River on the I-40 at Topock, Arizona, get turned away from the Pine Breeze Motel at Bellemont, just west of Flagstaff. The motel is now disused, but stands on the grounds of the Route 66 Roadhouse Bar & Grill, which displays the motel’s No Vacancies sign above the bar and is described as “the ultimate biker bar”. The duo share lunch with a rancher in Valentine and then head east through Flagstaff (the lumberjack statue seen standing outside the Lumberjack café is now located inside the J. Lawrence Walkup Skydome on the campus of Northern Arizona University). After picking up a hitch-hiker (at the Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument) they stop for gas at the now-disused Sacred Mountain filling station (it’s on the west side of US Route 89 about 20 miles noth of Flagstaff). They camp out at the Wupatki National Monument near Cococino before continuing past Monument Valley in south-east Utah and on to a hippie commune in the desert. The commune was based on the New Buffalo commune, near Taos, but was recreated for the sake of filming overlooking the Malibu Canyon near Santa Monica, California. They go skinny-dipping at the Manby Hot Springs in New Mexico. They are arrested in Las Vegas, New Mexico (last seen in No Country for Old Men); the exterior of the gaol is 157 Bridge Street (now Tito’s Gallery) though the interior is the Bryans Gallery in Taos. They continue onwards to Louisiana – the scene in the diner was shot in Morganza, though the diner on Gayden Road has now been torn down. They arrive in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Madame Tinkertoys’ House of Blue Lights is supposedly located at the coner of Bourbon and Toulouse. The cemetery scene is the St Louis No 1 Cemetery. Thereafter they plan to head for Florida but run foul of some murderous rednecks on Louisiana Highway 105 North (North Levee Road) just outside of Krotz Springs. 

Of course, the best way is to do it all in one go, on a bike, sticking to Route 66 as far as possible. Mr Zip shows you how… 

The burned bike from the final scene can now be found in the National Motorcycle Museum in Anamosa, Iowa. 

Overall Rating: 1/5

Week 52: The Road

"Although we've come
 To the end of the road,
 Still I can't let go -
 It's unnatural..."
 - 'End of the Road',
 Boyz II Men

 

So here we are, stranded in Wyoming. Over the last 51 weeks I have watched 153 films, three for each state of America (including the District of Columbia). But I wanted one final week to take me up to magic 52 - and hence the concept of The Road. I suppose I could have tried to find three films set in Puerto Rico considering that they are making a play for statehood, but to me the concept of The Road is tied up with the mystique of America.

 

It is because the U.S. is so darned big compared to Britain. It takes time to get from one place to another. You could hardly have a revelation on the road to Darlington or get your kicks on the M6. Travelling from place to place gives a man time to think. The sights seen and the people encountered can change a man. The concept of the Road Movie is that the protagonist(s) leave their everyday life and encounter new experiences en route to their destination. By changing their location they transform their outlook.

 

And we've seen several examples of Road Movies already this year. In Into the Wild Christopher McCandless travels from state to state en route to his destiny in Alaska. In My Own Private Idaho the main characters pinball from Idaho to Washington to Oregon and back again. Just travelling from Los Angeles to Las Vegas exposes Hunter S. Thompson and his attorney to the dangers of "bat country". In Me, Myself and Irene Jim Carrey and Renee Zellweger are pursued from new York down through Vermont and into Rhode Island. Though I have to say that I do not think of the east coast when I think of Road Movies. Everyone there is too close together. For true cinematic splendour you need a lonely road, isolated truck stops and diners, and a limitless horizon. The wide open spaces of what was once the frontier are essential.

 

So, before I start pondering about what I have learnt on my journeys in 2012 I have three final films to watch. They are:

• Easy Rider (1969)
• Vanishing Point (1971)
• Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

So let's keep the motor running and get out on the highway, looking for adventure and whatever comes our way!