“Little Miss Sunshine”: Winning, Losing, and Story Themes

Stories should be about something. As a reminder, here is screenwriter Michael Arndt talking about the central theme in his film Little Miss Sunshine:

Here is an excerpt from the video clip:

“One of the things that was an impetus to write the script was I remember reading this interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger… where he was talking to a group of high school students… and he said, ‘If there’s one thing in this world I hate, it’s losers. I despise them.’ And I thought there’s something so wrong with that attitude… something so demeaning and insulting as referring to any other person as a loser… I wanted to attack that idea, that in life you’re either go up or you’re going down… A child beauty pageant is the ultimate in stupid meaningless competition.”

And so armed with all that, Arndt went off and wrote one of the best character-based comedies in the last decade.

In my view, while Olive is the story’s central character in driving the plot — it’s her goal of appearing in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant that creates the spine of the plot — the Chief Protagonist is Richard (her father) with Secondary Protagonists Frank and Dwayne, each of whom is dealing with this issue: Winner, Loser.

Richard: A motivational speaker who is failing in life.

Frank: One of the world’s experts on Marcel Proust who has lost his lover, his teaching job, and almost his life through a failed suicide attempt.

Dwayne: He so loathes his family, thinking of them as losers, that he has committed himself not to say a word until he can become a pilot, symbolically getting as far away from his current crap situation as possible.

So broadly speaking, the story takes the Protagonists from this starting point:

Richard: There are two kinds of people in this world, winners and losers. [Which is the very first line of the movie].

To this ending point:

Dwayne: You do what you love, and fuck the rest.

In my view, theme is about the emotional meaning of a story.

And that is one reason why LMS works so well: Clearly Arndt felt passionate about exploring this theme — winning, losing. It’s not just some intellectual exercise for him, but something personal, human, affective. That comes through with every character, every subplot, every scene.

A story has to be about something and we typically call that its theme. But the best stories have thematic elements that connect to a reader or viewer’s very soul, they should feel the themes, not just think them.

Let’s use this as an opportunity to discuss, analyze and praise this little gem of a movie Little Miss Sunshine.

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