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GRANDPA SUNSHINE

JUMP ON THE YELLOW BUS AS ALAN ARKIN EXPLAINS HOW HE TURNED A HEROIN-ADDICTED, SEX-CRAZED, FOUL-MOUTHED GRANDFATHER INTO A BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR OSCAR CONTENDER

By Scott Feinberg

Alan Arkin has been around the block. This past summer marked forty years since his big screen debut and first Academy Award nomination. It’s been thirty-eight years since his second Oscar nod, thirty-six years since his strongest performance, and fourteen years since his last serious shot at a nomination. He’s seventy-two years old now---that’s less than two years younger than Peter O’Toole, who many already are eulogizing, and more than three years older than Jack Nicholson, who seems like he’s been around forever. His eyes look tired. His face is wrinkled. His hair is gone. Yet when he was being considered by husband-and-wife directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris for the role of a heroin-snorting, sex-crazed, foul-mouthed grandfather in their independent film Little Miss Sunshine, their primary concern was that he was too… “virile.”

Arkin howls with delight at being reminded of this during our extensive discussion about his work last week. “It was the best compliment I ever got in my life,” the actor says. “Yeah, put that on my résumé!” But as he reflects, the directors initially weren’t the only ones who had concerns about a potential association. “I had a lot of reservations. I had reservations of working with two directors. I had reservations of working with two directors who were married. And I had reservations about working with people that had never directed a film before. But the script was so good I jumped on anyway.” And, he says, “within about a day-and-a-half, it was clear that all their promises about how they work together were true, and it ended up being just a wonderful experience from beginning to end.” Now, in large part because of Arkin's outstanding work, Little Miss Sunshine deserves to be included on every short list of Best Picture contenders.

Arkin was born in Brooklyn on March 26, 1934. His mother was a pianist and his father a poet and painter who decided in the late 1930s to follow his dreams of working in the movies (and a promised 'in' at a Hollywood studio) all the way across the country, only to arrive at the beginning of a yearlong studio strike that forced him to pursue work in the Los Angeles city school system. It was during these early years that young Arkin first realized the direction his life would take. Even today, he vividly recalls the turning point, which occurred when he was only five years old and overheard a conversation in his family's living room between his mother and her friend. “Her friend was sobbing about something going on in her life, some terrible catastrophe that had happened to her. And I sat there watching, and I said to myself, ‘I’m not moved by this. All this crying is not moving me.’ And I tried to analyze why,” he laughs. “And I finally came to the conclusion that she was crying too much, she was feeling too sorry for herself, and she wasn’t leaving any room for me. And so I was looking at the world as an actor first and a human being second, even at that age.”

When it came time to go to college, Arkin begrudgingly headed off to Los Angeles City College, but knew it was a poor fit from the start. And then "a miracle" happened," and through the help of a friend he was offered a theater scholarship to Vermont's Bennington College. He hitchhiked back East, and enjoyed a few productive and formative years studying in the Bennington Drama Department before deciding to drop out. He wanted to pursue acting for a living, but realized he would need to "goad a little money on weekends" in order to make that possible, and decided to see if his musical talent might be the answer. He and a group of others in similar situations got together, formed the folk group The Tarriers, and recorded a record. To their surprise, it shot to number four on the Billboard Charts on the back of 'The Banana Boat Song' (also known as 'Day-O,' Harry Belafonte recorded a more famous version later that year) and they toured the world for a couple of years. "And then," Arkin says, "I got sick of that and said, 'I got to get back to acting.'"

He landed with a small improvisation group in St. Louis, but considered it merely a stepping stone on the path to Broadway. One day, a talent scout from a Chicago-based improv club came to town and told Arkin to call him if he was interested in a job. "I smiled at him politely," he recalls, "and said to myself, ‘Fat chance! I’m gonna have a big career in New York, and I’m not gonna bury myself in Chicago.’" Before long, however, he was forced to eat a serving of humble pie. He went to New York---"and starved for another year after the summer improv gig, and called him up in kind of private despair, and I said, ‘If the job is still open in Chicago, I want to come out and take it.' He said, ‘Okay.’" The company turned out to be Second City, and six months later he, Elaine May, and a host of other promising young talents were receiving national attention. "So I thought I was burying myself with a group of non-entities," he reflects, "and it turned out that it saved my life. It was really the beginning of my career."

Ironically, Arkin did wind up in New York because of his detour to the Windy City. When Second City decided to open up a second club in the Big Apple, he was one of the members sent along to get it off the ground. In 1963, shortly after the move, Carl Reiner approached him with an offer to star in his semi-autobiographical Broadway production Enter Laughing. Arkin accepted, and ended up winning the Tony for Best Supporting or Featured Actor in a Dramatic production. It was, however, his second Broadway show, Murray Schisgal's Luv, that brought him to the attention of Norman Jewison, a young director in from Hollywood. Jewison was so impressed by Arkin's work that he asked him to try out for the lead in his next film, a Cold War satire titled The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! Arkin, not lacking chutzpah, said he would---on the condition that he could improvise. Jewison agreed, Arkin got the part, and a career in film was born.

Little Miss Sunshine is the story of Richard (Greg Kinnear), a husband and father who imposes his own insecurities on his family; Sheryl (Toni Collette), his wife and the mother of his two children, who is too busy trying to provide for her kids to notice that they are starving for love, not food; Dwayne, their son, who has realized that if he cannot get attention through words, perhaps he can through silence; Olive, their daughter, who is blessed with a seemingly endless supply of optimism, failing to recognize or care that her physical appearance flies in the face of her chosen dream of winning a beauty pageant contest; Frank, the kids' uncle and Sheryl's brother, who is ambivalent about going on in life after having his love spurned; and 'Grandpa,' a "wonderful wacko" who has moved in on his son's couch after being kicked out of a nursing home thanks to a proclivity for sex, swearing, and---the final straw---snorting vials of heroin out of his fanny pack. Pack this crowd together for an inter-state trip in a beat-down yellow Volkswagen bus and it is only a matter of time before madness ensues...

By this description, the film sounds like a typical road-trip comedy: eccentric characters thrown together in a confined space who attempt to collectively achieve a far-fetched goal while learning valuable lessons about each other in the process (kind of like R.V., this year's far lesser film that made far more money). If you see the film, however, you will find that it is a far deeper story about hope, perseverance, and family. Whereas most films of its sort have a hollow center, it can be said that Little Miss Sunshine truly has a heart. Arkin says the credit for that rests with Michael Arndt, whose "unique, brilliant" original screenplay thoroughly impressed him. It was "not manufactured in any way like I feel is true of so many films—they look like they came out a computer program for how to write a good screenplay," he says. And he immediately embraced the idea of bringing Arndt's Grandpa, a "wonderful wacko," to life.

When Arkin signed up for the film, he brought a certain prestige to the production that the directors say certainly energized them and inspired the cast to raise their 'game,' as well. (Steve Carell, who followed in Arkin's footsteps at Second City, was especially thrilled to have the chance to work with him.) The whole clan had a chance to meet and get to know each other before filming began as part of a rehearsal week, which the directors hoped would foster a sense of family among the cast. Arkin reports, “We didn’t do very much rehearsal. We hung around for a week, we went out on car trips together, we went bowling together, we had lunches, we played Dodgeball—all kinds of crazy things." He chuckles, "I have no idea what it accomplished. But I think we did end up looking like a family and feeling like a family.”

In terms of developing his own character, Arkin had more of an intellectual approach. "He's crazy," he says of Grandpa, "but he's right out there with it. He doesn't hide anything. He doesn't harbor anything." What sort of a life might have led this man to be this way? Arkin decided to concoct a backstory for the character, imagining what his experiences might have been in order to understand the lenses through which he sees life. (Though these 'facts' were never shared with the audience, they helped Arkin formulate a characterization that was believable and multidimensional, as opposed to the outrageous caricature it otherwise could easily have been.) "He was a guy who wanted to have a good time all his life," he determined. "He liked the ladies, and he liked to have a good time and avoid responsibilities. I think he left his family very early on to travel around the country. I think he was a musician—my feeling was he played either drums or the saxophone in strip joints—and didn’t keep his mind on his work, was more interested in the 'merchandise,'" he laughs, "than he was in his music. And had a good time, until it caught up with him.”

One cannot help but wonder if Arkin saw something of himself in Grandpa. Granted, he is neither sex- nor drug-crazed, as far as we know, but some of the other pieces fit. He, too, "seems like a guy who wanted to have a good time all his life," having dropped out of college to pursue his music career, only to tire of that less-than-trying life, turn to comedy, and then to acting. He, too, liked the ladies---he's been married twice, and he was considered quite sexy earlier in his career. He, too, left his family rather early; perhaps it is more apt to say that his family left him---he has been quoted as saying that the only time his parents ever paid him attention was when he was acting. He, too, traveled the country, indeed the world. And he says he loves a character who spouts wisdom, like Grandpa---having spoken to him, he certainly offers some memorable insights himself.

Perhaps some of this is reading too much into things. One similarity between Arkin and Grandpa that is undeniable, though, is that they seem to share a fondness for kids. The great comedian W.C. Fields famously advised his fellow actors to "Never work with children or animals." Arkin, however, has "worked with children and animals for most of my career," and has no regrets. "I love kids," he says. "I love hanging around kids." And that's a good thing, because in Little Miss Sunshine he shares the screen with one of the most precocious, talented, scene-stealing child actors of recent memory, Abigail Breslin.

Breslin, who was best known for her work as Mel Gibson's daughter in the 2002 film Signs before giving her breakout performance in Little Miss Sunshine, was eight years old when she shot her scenes with Arkin. "She was just a consummate pro," he recalls, and his fondness for the young talent is unmistakable. (The two will appear together again, along with Breslin's older brother, Spencer, in this winter's The Santa Clause 3.) "I witnessed somebody who had twenty-five years of experience under her belt in that eight year old body," he fawns. "She needed almost no guidance that I could see. She didn’t want any advice from her mother and the director. It’s not like she was standoffish about it; she just didn’t need any. She came in knowing what the character needed and how to play it.”

The only awkward thing about working with Breslin, he says, was having to deliver some of Grandpa's more 'acerbic' lines in the family bus while Breslin sat a row in front of him. His solution, he says, was to insist to the directors that she have her earphones on and that she be blasting loud music. "I said to the directors, 'I can't do this if she's listening to me,'" he recalls. "But then, it was kind of stupid, in a way, because she ended up seeing the movie about ten times, so it didn't really make a lot of difference!"

Two sequences, in particular, make one appreciate both the great script that Arkin had to work with, and the great range he was asked to convincingly cover:

In the first, which occurs early in the family bus trip, Grandpa flips out at nearly all of his caged-in relatives. To Carell's Frank, a gay Nietzsche expert, he says, "Look, I know you are a homo and all, but maybe you can appreciate this. You go to one of those places, there's four women for every guy. Can you imagine what that's like?" Frank says, "You must have been very busy," to which Grandpa replies, "Ho-oh! I had second degree burns on my johnson, I kid you not!" When his family tries to settle him down, he shouts, "I can say what I want! I still got Nazi bullets in my ass!" Arkin's favorite part of the rant, however, is when he tries to ask his grandson, who has taken a vow of silence, about his sex life. "I think it is my favorite line I've ever had to say in my entire career," Arkin recalls, "And I couldn't look at him! I think it took me about ten takes to finally get through it. And that’s when I say to him, ‘Can I give you some advice?’ And he shakes his head no. And I say, ‘Well, I’m gonna give you some anyway.’ And I say, ‘Dwayne… that’s your name, right?’ My grandson! The two of us cracked up endlessly.”

The second scene is at the other end of the spectrum. It is set the night before---spoiler alert---Grandpa overdoses and dies. In the scene, as it was written, a much more mellow Grandpa was to reassure young Olive that things will be fine at the next day's beauty pageant, even though he and the audience know it would take a miracle for the cute but pudgy youngster (Breslin wore a fat suit) to win. Arkin felt that this scene didn't ring true and decided he had to speak up. "I felt that it got a little soft and that they lost the insane edge that Grandpa had," he explains. "I got a little nervous about it, so I went to Jonathan and Valerie and I said, ‘Is there anything we can do?’ I said, ‘Can we get Michael here, or talk to him about keeping the same intentions—having the scene be about the same stuff, but just hang on to the insanity of this guy and make him still this abrasive pain in the neck he is, even with loving his granddaughter?’ And they felt that it was a legitimate idea. I don’t think Michael was around, so we just—the three of us—kicked around and came up with a few changes for the character so his rawness was still there.” In the scene as it was filmed, Arkin's interaction with Olive remains tremendously touching, but still faithful to his character. For instance, Olive hesitantly asks him, "Grandpa, am I pretty?" He responds, "You're the most beautiful girl in the world." Olive says, "You're just saying that," and Grandpa says, "No! I'm madly in love with you," adding, "and it's not because of your brains or your personality!"

Arkin's first brush with Oscar came back in 1966, when his Best Actor nomination for The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! made him one of only six men ever nominated in that category for a film debut (placing him among such elite company as Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Paul Muni, Orson Welles, and one Lawrence Tibbett). But, he says, "I don't think it did me any good. I think I froze, a little bit, for a couple of years after." He pauses to reflect before adding, "It all worked out fine, so I don't have any complaints."

When I ask him about the growing buzz surrounding a third nomination for his work in Little Miss Sunshine, he quotes, of all people, Philip Michael Thomas, the former star of TV's Miami Vice, who has seen his share of ups and downs. “He says, ‘Yesterday is a canceled check. Tomorrow is a promissory note. But today is cash-in-hand.’ And I like that quote. So who knows what’s going to happen? I have no idea." If he is recognized, it will be deserved. If he's forgotten, it won't be the first time. For while Peter O'Toole, Jack Nicholson, and other contemporaries get all the attention, Arkin continues to fly under the radar with his consistently understated yet impressive work. And after Little Miss Sunshine, he's content for now. "I love my life. I love hanging around with my wife, my kids, and my grandchildren. And taking pictures. And we have a lot of friends where we live. So I'll wait until something comes along that excites." He adds, "It was such a great experience that I don't want to really just go back to work in order to work." He's having a good time and living it up... sounds like a certain grandfather to me.

ESSENTIAL ARKIN

1. The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966, Best Actor nomination)
Norman Jewison spotted Arkin performing on Broadway in Luv and asked him to try out for the lead. “I said I’d audition for it as long as I could improvise, which he allowed me to do, and I got the part. And that was the beginning of my film career… it was an incredibly perfect way to embark on a film career.”

2. Wait Until Dark (1967)
“It was the only heavy I’d ever played up until then, and I had a miserable time… I was crazy about Audrey Hepburn. I was just in awe of her. She was an extraordinary person in every way, and I just hated terrorizing her. It just wasn’t fun for me.”

3. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968, Best Actor nomination)
“I had waited years for that part… The screenwriter, Tom Ryan, felt that even though I had never done a film, I was right for the part, but he couldn’t get it produced with my name on it. So after I had about four films under my credit and… I had gotten an Academy Award nomination… I called him back and I said, ‘Well, have I got enough credentials yet?'"

4. Catch-22 (1970)
The film was directed by fellow Second City alum Mike Nichols. "One of my most vivid memories... is asking Mike, before shooting started, ‘Who is this guy? Who is Yossarian? I don’t know how to play him. I don’t know who he is.’ He said, ‘He’s you.’ And I had no idea who that was… I used to go to dailies for the first month or two, just to make sure something was actually on the screen.”

5. The In-Laws (1979)
“I initiated the idea. I had never met Peter Falk, but I had an instinct that we would work well together. And so I went him and I said, ‘You want to see if I can come up with an idea, or somebody can come up with an idea, for us for a movie?’ And he said, ‘Sure,’ and he liked that idea. And so I went to Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers said, ‘Yeah, fine, let’s do it. Find a screenwriter.’”

6. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
“It was like brain surgery… Mamet’s dialogue is incredibly difficult to do, and it was insisted that we get it word-for-word. Sometimes I’d have a line that consisted of nothing but saying ‘I- I- I-.’ And if I’d mess up and do two of those, they’d stop the scene and I’d have to go back and do three. So it was painstakingly difficult, but well worth, because I think the film was kind of wonderful."