Trivia for
Little Miss Sunshine (2006) More at IMDbPro »

• The movie took five years to make, mostly due to financial reasons.
  
  
• Fox Searchlight bought the rights to distribute the film at 2006 Sundance for $10.5 million.
  
  
• Focus Features was involved very early on but dropped out in 2004.
  
  
• Marc Turtletaub and his fellow producers bought the script for $250,000.
  
  
• After Focus Features backed out, producer Turtletaub bought the rights back from the studio in 2005 and announced that he would cover the budget himself.
  
  
• Bill Murray was the original choice to play Frank. The second choice was Robin Williams.
  
  
• Contrary to popular belief, Frank's last name is not Greenberg. The released script revealed his last name to be Ginsberg.
  
  
• Dwayne's full name is never mentioned in the movie.
  
  
• Abigail Breslin wore a fat suit for the part of Olive.
  
  
• The drawing on Dwayne's T-shirt is the face of Big Brother from the 1956 film version of George Orwell's "1984".
  
  
• The "heroin" Grandpa snorts in the bathroom in the beginning of the movie is actually crushed up B vitamins.
  
  
• The license plate on the Hoovers' Volkswagen van reads "153 H8A". This can be seen most clearly over the mechanic's right shoulder during the scene inside the garage.
  
  
• The license plate of Frank's academic and romantic rival, Larry Sugarman (the #2 Proust scholar), reads "lost time", a reference to Marcel Proust's principal novel À la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time.
  
  
• Stan Grossman, played here by Bryan Cranston is also Waid Gustafson's business partner in Fargo (1996), another well known independent film, played by Larry Brandenburg.
  
  
• Originally written as an East Coast road trip movie from Maryland to Florida, it was shifted to a journey from New Mexico to California due to shooting issues.
  
  
• Five identical Volkswagen Type 2s were used during filming.
  
  
• The scenes that took place in Redondo Beach, California, were actually filmed in Ventura, California. None of the freeways near Redondo Beach lead to the beach.
  
  
• Steve Carell, at the time he was cast for Little Miss Sunshine (2006), was a relative unknown in Hollywood. According to an article in Entertainment Weekly, the producers of the film worried that he wasn't a big enough star and didn't have much acting experience. However, between the time the film was shot in the summer of 2005 and its release in the summer of 2006, Carell became a huge success as the star of the high-grossing film The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) in August 2005 and the leading character of the popular NBC Emmy-winning television series "The Office" (2005), which premiered in March 2005 and for which Carell won a Golden Globe in 2006 for best lead actor in a comedy television series. In the span of just one year, Carell had become such a star that the producers had gone from protesting his casting to tapping him to do prominent promotion for the film.
  
  
• On July 25, 2006 Fox Searchlight Pictures invited VW bus owners to a screening of Little Miss Sunshine (2006) at Vineland Drive-In theater in City of Industry, California. 65 VW buses were present at the event.
  
  
• Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris had previously directed the "1979" music video by The Smashing Pumpkins. The total of Frank's purchase at the convenience store is $19.79.
  
  
• In one driving scene, Olive is shown playing with the same happy face puzzle that the main contestant played with in the 2001 HBO documentary Living Dolls: The Making of a Child Beauty Queen (2001) (TV).
  
  
• Dwayne is actually from a previous marriage of Sheryl's. She says toward the beginning "he visited his dad in Florida", and a wedding photo is shown with him in it, but much younger. Olive however is not, because her last name is Hoover, the same as her father's.
  
  
• During the diner scene, the four customers seated behind Sheryl (Toni Collette) and Richard (Greg Kinnear) are the parents of directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.
  
  
• While filming in a convenience store in Santa Clarita, CA a Paul Dano look-a-like walked in. Dano was late and unaccounted for so everyone thought the look-a-like was Dano. After he explained that he was not Dano, they took some pictures and sent him on his way.
  
  
• All of the girls acting as participants in the "Little Miss Sunshine" beauty pageant, except Abigail Breslin, were veterans of real beauty pageants. They wore the same costumes, including hair and makeup, and performed the same talent routines as they had in their real-life pageants.
  
  
• The film was dedicated to Rebecca Annitto, the 14-year-old niece of producer Peter Saraf, who was killed in a traffic accident in 2005. She appeared as an extra in scenes at Pann's Restaurant and the convenience store.
  
  
• The character Dwayne was originally supposed to have a Mohawk.
  
  
• Thomas Haden Church turned down the role of Richard Hoover, a decision he said he later regretted.
  
  
• Michael Arndt had to quit his job as Matthew Broderick's assistant to write Little Miss Sunshine.
  
  
• The production crew made sure Abigail Breslin really was listening to music in her headphones to keep her from hearing Alan Arkin's profanity-laced scenes.
  
  
• The Emcee at the pageant is a parody of the official emcee at the child beauty pageants, Tim Whitmer (aka Mr Tim) whom can be seen or heard in various child beauty documentaries.
  
  
• In the film, Grandpa asks Dwayne how old he is, to which Dwayne replies he's 15. In reality, Paul Dano who played Dwayne, was 22.
  
  
• During the scene in the VW bus when Olive is listening to her CD player while Grandpa is spouting off profanities, Abigail Breslin really was listening to music so that she would not hear what Alan Arkin was actually saying.
  
  
• Though they are supposed to be mother and son, the difference of age between Toni Collette and Paul Dano is just 12 years.
  
  

• SPOILER: The grandfather's first name is revealed only once, after he has died. His full name is Edwin Hoover.
  
  
• SPOILER: In the commentary, the directors note that Greg Kinnear was really self-conscious about dancing because his wife made fun of his dance moves at their wedding. He was so self-conscious that he requested the dance scene be eliminated from the film.
  
  

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