The normalcy that Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris exude is
strikingly atypical of successful movie directors.
Dayton and Faris, happily married UCLA alumni (Class of 1980)
with children, have every reason to be frazzled or erratic or, at
least, tired.
Rather, despite ringing phones, festivals and meetings, the
couple is upbeat and excited. After all, their first feature film,
five years in the making, recently entered a successful wide
release. After dedicating years of work to Michael Arndt’s
script, the couple beat out 13 other filmmakers to direct the
recent indie hit “Little Miss Sunshine,” starring Steve
Carrell, Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette.
“We’ve never actually point-blank asked our
producers why they went with us, but our assumption was that
we’d wanted it more than anyone else,” Faris said.
Dayton and Faris met at UCLA where they were both undergraduate
students. Though Faris was not in the film school like Dayton (she
studied dance, but sat in on several film courses), they began
making documentary films together during college.
Upon graduating, the couple began their professional career in
film together at the then-embryonic MTV.
“The great things about the UCLA film school is that they
try to create total filmmakers,” Dalton said. “We were
just really fortunate to come out of school at a time when MTV was
just starting and there was a need for filmmakers in a world where
there were no experts.”
Dayton and Faris produced and directed documentaries, music
videos such as Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” and
the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight,” and
commercials for companies such as Volkswagen and PlayStation.
And although the couple’s first love was documentary film,
the transition to feature film was always something they had
considered.
“Commercials and videos are great in terms of getting to
stay in production and getting comfortable on the set with crews
but we never saw that as our end-all career choice,” Faris
said.
“We were always interested in feature film, but it
wasn’t as if it was the end-all,” added Dayton.
The couple is synchronous not only in their words, but in their
work: the seamlessness of “Little Miss Sunshine” comes
despite the fact that it was directed by two individuals ““ a
rare practice in the Hollywood film scene.
“The fact that we work together makes raising a family
easier, because we’re all in it together. It’s a
cooperative effort across the board,” Faris said.
“I think we’re also very empathetic,” Dayton
said. “She can complain about the ass at work and I can
understand.” (“As long as it’s not you,”
Faris added.)
The most difficult part of the process for Dayton and Faris was
often never knowing whether the world would ever see their
“Little Miss Sunshine.”
“Even though it was frustrating for most of that time, it
was good to get used to the material and explore it so that by the
time we did go to make it, it was a part of us and it was more
satisfying because of that,” Dayton said.
Unlike many other first-time directors, they learned not from
their mistakes but rather from what they did right.
“We’re fortunate in some ways, maybe it’s a
bad thing actually, but our first experience was a really good one
and it set the bar pretty high,” Faris said. “What we
loved was that we could make the movie with independent funding and
very little interference and work with people who were not getting
big paychecks and so had to be there for the love of the material.
In a way the film was like a cause that people could get behind.
… Everyone was there because they loved the idea of what the film
could be.”
Dayton and Faris say they would love to make another feature
film but are waiting for the right script.
“I think there are a lot of great scripts out there, but
they’re not always ready and they’re forced into
production. The script is everything and if you know it really well
and you’ve done your homework, it’s a whole different
process,” Faris said.
With the critical and popular success of “Little Miss
Sunshine” from Sundance to Westwood, the husband and wife
directing team are still strikingly normal. They are simply
content.
“We kind of decided in a way that if we’re ever
going to make a film, it’ll be “˜Little Miss
Sunshine,'” Dayton said. “And if we can’t
get this movie made that means so much to us …”
“… then we’re in the wrong business,” Faris
said.