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Tavis Smiley: Good evening. From Los Angeles, I'm Tavis Smiley.
The Academy Awards will be handed out this Sunday here in Hollywood, and the night’s most unlikely winner may come in the biggest category. Oscar forecasters are giving the small comedy “Little Miss Sunshine” a decent chance of walking away with the award for best picture.
Tonight, a look back at my conversations with two of the film’s stars, Alan Arkin and Toni Collette. Both are past Oscar nominees, and for “Little Miss Sunshine,” Alan Arkin is also up for best supporting actor.
We’re glad you’ve joined us. That’s all coming up right now.
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[Clip]
Tavis: I'm not sure, watching that clip, Mr. Arkin, whether that was a smile on your face or a smirk or something I totally misread, but your muscles moved in your face watching that clip.
Alan Arkin: My muscles - oh, you mean while I was watching?
Tavis: Yeah, the muscles in your face were moving. What was I seeing?
Arkin: (Laugh) You're supposed to be watching the clip. Don't watch me.
Tavis: I can do two things at once. I'm a multi-tasker.
Arkin: Or maybe cross-eyed (laugh).
Tavis: (Laugh) What was I seeing on your face, though?
Arkin: I don't know what it was. Maybe slight amusement. I don't know what it was. I like the film. I'm enormously proud of the film. I love the film.
Tavis: I said to you before we came on the air, I called this the little movie that could.
Arkin: Why?
Tavis: Because it's still going after all these months.
Arkin: Oh, yeah, right, right, right, yeah. Well, I know people have seen it four times.
Tavis: That’s what you want, though. You want that repeat business.
Arkin: It’s good. I like it.
Tavis: So does the studio (laugh). What drew you to this character? I'll let you set it up. It's a fascinating character you play here.
Arkin: Well, I just love people like that. I've played people similar to that character a couple of times. I love people who haven't got a clue in the world what's going on who spout philosophy.
Tavis: (Laugh) Isn't that most people?
Arkin: I guess so. But every once in a while, you meet somebody who seems to know what they're talking about. This character, he just hasn’t got a clue. His life has been a complete mess, but he's willing to tell everybody how to live their life.
Tavis: I think that scene, though, kind of gets to the heart of what the character is. A guy, to your point, that seems not to have a clue and yet, in a moment when something loving and inspirational and motivating is required -
Arkin: Well, he just loves the kid. He just loves his granddaughter. He's a sucker for his granddaughter. I don't think he likes anybody else but her very much.
Tavis: Speaking of offspring, is it getting confusing in this town now when you hear Arkin and you're listening to hear if they said Alan or Adam?
Arkin: I don't know. I don't live here, so I don't really know (laugh). Great story, though, is Adam was on a movie - Adam is my older son.
Tavis: And doing quite well in this business.
Arkin: He's doing very well. He's a great actor and he's now becoming a really good director. He's getting a lot of directing work. But he was on a movie line waiting to get into a movie a couple of years ago, and he feels a tap on his back and he turns around and there's a lady smiling at him. She says, "Excuse me, but aren't you Alan Alda's father?" He said, "Lady, you've got it wrong in every conceivable way."
Tavis: (Laugh) In every possible way. Did you encourage Adam or discourage him?
Arkin: No. I didn't do either. I don't think it's a good idea to discourage any kid from doing anything that's creative, but I knew how tough it was. I couldn't get arrested for, like, 15 years. I wanted to be an actor since I was five years old. I didn't get my first job until I was 28, so I knew the pitfalls. But by the same token, I sensed when he was very young, when he was, like, 10, that he was very gifted and I didn't want to stifle that in any way.
Tavis: What allows one Alan Arkin, in this case, to know at the age of five that this is what he wants to do? Apparently, you were right because you do it extremely well. But how could you have figured that out at five?
Arkin: Oh, God, who knows? I don't know if I figured it out. I don't know what it was. I haven't got a clue. Attention-getting devices. I was blown away by several performances I'd seen in movies, and I saw how much it was affecting my father. My father used to sit in the theater and yell up at the screen when things weren't going well (laugh). I think that was part of it.
I remember seeing Chaplin when I was five, six, or seven in "The Great Dictator." The person who took me there - I threw a temper tantrum in the theater when they wouldn't let me sit through it the third time. I just laid down on the floor of the theater and started kicking and screaming (laugh).
Tavis: What then do you see as - I don't want to overstate this. If I'm overstating, you back me off of it.
Arkin: I'm going to back you off.
Tavis: Give me a chance to ask first. Give a brother a chance (laugh). What then -
Arkin: I have to back you off from this.
Tavis: (Laugh) What, then, do you see as the power or the possibility of this industry, something you wanted to do so badly? I raise that because it impacted your father, it impacted you. You wanted to sit and watch and watch and watch. There's something about the power or possibility of this medium that pulled you in or that you see now in retrospect?
Arkin: Well, you see a movie and everybody's got such big heads, they must be telling the truth (laugh). Their heads are gigantic up there. I haven't got a clue. I don't know; there's something about a screen. I don't know what it is. If you're watching a real event going on here, two people are beating each other up on the floor and it's on the television screen, you're going to watch it on the television screen. Why did I pick that analogy?
Tavis: ‘Cause you like WWF or something. You like wrestling.
Arkin: No, I don't, no.
Tavis: Let me take you back, if I might, to earlier in your career. You have been, over the years, very frank, very courageous, in fact, in writing and talking about - this is my word and not yours - self-discovery. You talk very poignantly about the fact when you started in your career the only place that you were comfortable, the only place where you felt you belonged, in my phraseology, not yours -
Arkin: It's true.
Tavis: Fair enough?
Arkin: Yeah.
Tavis: - on the stage, and you have spent the better part of your life trying to figure out why you felt so comfortable there, but so uncomfortable in other places. So what have you figured out?
Arkin: Well, I didn't spend the better part of - I started getting comfortable in my life, and the balance was weighed totally on the side of unreality and fantasy in theater and film. And I started with analysis and analysis took me a certain distance. Then I got really interested in eastern philosophy, and that took me another distance which I haven't begun to tap yet. It’s been 35 years, and I still feel like I'm a beginner.
But I got more and more excited about moment to moment existence, and that just started swinging the balance the other way so that film and theater - now my work, what I do to earn a living now, is an expression of my life and not the reason for it. My life doesn't need validation. It doesn't need a reason for its existence. I don't need a reason for my existence. I just exist. That's substantiation enough.
I used to feel that being an actor and doing a good performance was the reason for my existence, and it really didn’t make me happy. It only made me happy while I was acting or when I got through a performance and I felt good about it. But now I feel pretty good most of the time, almost all the time.
Tavis: I'm really fascinated by this. Other than the fact that we should accept it because Alan Arkin has lived a few years because he's wise -
Arkin: I don't think anybody should accept anything on my say-so.
Tavis: And that's what I'm getting at. Other than accepting the fact because they heard Alan Arkin say it because they assume he's lived long enough to be wise about certain things, what's your best advice on people trying to get to that place of self-discovery? 'Cause most of us are dealing with that in some way, shape, form or fashion.
Arkin: Self-discovery?
Tavis: Yeah, trying to get to that place of peace, for lack of a better word, where you are with the purpose and the reason for your existence. People struggle with that every day.
Arkin: Well, the only thing I can say, it sounds like a cliché, but I mean it from the bottom of my heart, is stop looking outside yourself for your substantiation. That most people look for if I get this, if I have this, if I get this award, if I get this job, if I get that woman, if I get something, it’s gonna make me happy and I'll be able to relax. It never, ever works. It only works for ten minutes, and then you're on to the next thing.
If you're in the mode to start looking for stuff outside yourself to substantiate your existence, it's not going to work. I'm absolutely positive about that. It can't be done. It can be done for short bursts of time. To paraphrase - who said it? "Money does bring you happiness, but only for ten minute increments."
You buy a $250,000 automobile - yeah, I got enough money to get a 250 - where can you drive it without thinking somebody's going to bang into you, somebody's going to touch it or scratch it, somebody's going to steal it? You cannot look outside of your own system for your purpose or your substantiation.
Tavis: I was participating in an event in New York the other day, and I’ll close with this thought. I heard someone at this event where I was speaking -
Arkin: But I have a lot more to say.
Tavis: Well, you can come back sometime. You're welcome.
Arkin: We'll go out for coffee (laugh).
Tavis: What are you doing tomorrow night? Come back tomorrow. (Laugh) I just want to say, though, to your point, the other day - if you want to be happy for a year, how’d they put it? If you wanna be happy for a year, win the lottery. If you want to be happy for a lifetime, learn to love what you do.
Arkin: Who you are.
Tavis: You made me think of that.
Arkin: If I may add that.
Tavis: Sure.
Arkin: Learn to love who you are.
Tavis: I appreciate it. Glad to have you on. "Little Miss Sunshine," if you haven't seen it, if you're not one of those persons who've seen it twice, three, four, five times, (laugh) go check it out. There'll be a lot of talk about it come Oscar time and you will have wanted to have checked it out. Starring one Alan Arkin. Mr. Arkin, nice to have you here. Pleasure to meet you.
Arkin: Thanks, man, nice to meet you.
[Clip]
[Clip]
Tavis: (Laugh) Nice to meet you, Toni.
Toni Collette: Yes, lovely to meet you, too.
Tavis: Glad to have you on the program. I was just saying to you while that clip was running that when I was a kid growing up, we had one of those wagons.
Collette: We call them combi vans in Australia.
Tavis: Combi, okay, in Australia. You call them what in Australia?
Collette: Combi.
Tavis: Combi van.
Collette: A combi van, yeah.
Tavis: So we had one of those. That one was yellow and white in (unintelligible). Ours was blue and white. But I remember that thing fondly. Those things were fun, actually.
Collette: They were beautiful. I wanted one.
Tavis: And I recall…
Collette: When I was a teenager going through my hippie phase, I was desperate to have one. Never eventuated. I had a Beetle instead.
Tavis: (Laughs) That scene’s funny to me, 'cause I remember my mom and dad at times having to do the same thing.
Collette: Those old cars, they’ll put you through it.
Tavis: But I loved that thing. So, I have not seen this, and I'm anxious to see it.
Collette: I hope you enjoy it when you do.
Tavis: But the buzz on this – I'm sure I will. The buzz on this thing is amazing. It’s, like, the talk of Sundance.
Collette: Mm. (Laugh) That can always be, I don’t know whether it’s a help or a hindrance, but apparently, people who are excited to see it aren’t disappointed when they do, so, at least they're liking it.
Tavis: So tell me about “Little Miss Sunshine.”
Collette: Well, it’s actually a really simple story. It’s about this family who are fairly disconnected, even though they're living under the same roof, and they're forced on this journey to support the eight year old daughter in the family on her way to a beauty pageant on the other side of the country. And throughout the journey, they see each other more clearly, and they fall in love with each other again.
It’s just really beautiful. And very funny. The tone of it is, you’ll be laughing one minute and it’s quite poignant and moving the next. And it’s original, which I think is really hard to achieve in this day and age, when everything’s just rehashed and plagiarized and based on making money. The filmmakers lived with this for five years, and kind of waited for the right group of people to be involved. And I think they’ve done a good service for themselves.
Tavis: What I have seen and what I've read, there’s a lot of dysfunction, though, in this family, not unlike most families, that starts to surface. Or to your point, that people see more clearly.
Collette: Yeah, they're (laughs) highly dysfunctional, but it’s not like you're watching a wacky dysfunctional movie family. There’s a realistic feel to it. You can actually relate to these people and what they're going through. And I think that the more truthful it is, that’s when it becomes funnier for me, as an audience member, or even when I was reading it.
Tavis: When you said, a moment ago, that it’s original, and it’s harder and harder to find that kind of stuff today, what kind of situation or position does that put you in as an actor when you're looking for good stuff, and by your own admission, it’s getting harder and harder to find?
Collette: Well, they are out there. But I've been pretty lucky. I don’t have much to complain about. Some are better than others. But I don’t know, I don’t have any kind of plan about what I'm gonna work on, and there’s no overly analytical thought process that goes into it. It’s literally just having some kind of gut reaction that compels me to want to be a part of something. And I think that’s the only thing you can trust.
Tavis: Yeah. So from one project to the next, you don’t ever have any idea of what you wanna do next, even something that’s dramatically different than what you last did?
Collette: Well, I'd never wanna repeat myself and play the same kind of character, and even when I did “Muriel’s Wedding,” and I didn't really have an inkling of what was to come, I still had this feeling of wanting to – I was offered a whole heap of characters, kind of similar vein and theme. And I just thought no, I'm gonna hold out, and I'm gonna try and play different characters. And it’s worked out pretty well (laugh).
Tavis: Yeah, it has indeed. I don’t wanna be naïve about this. I guess I do get it on one hand. On the other hand, it seems a little strange. So you play one character, it becomes a huge hit, and then every studio in town, big or little, sends you a script.
Collette: Get her to play the same character.
Tavis: I've never understood that.
Collette: Well, half the actors working in this town do that. They kind of play a version of themselves. I guess every actor does, 'cause it’s your interpretation of the character that you're playing. But there are some actors who basically just do the same thing. They do it very well, and they get paid well for it. But I think personally, I'd get bored 'cause the joy of it is being able to explore these different characters in their worlds. For me.
Tavis: Let me tell you something really silly, and forgive me for this.
Collette: Okay, I look forward to it. (Laughs)
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs) It won't be the first silly thing I've said, trust me. I was dying for you to walk on this set a few moments ago, because I wanted to see what you looked like in person. And what I mean by that is that in the characters you’ve played in your career, you've put on weight, and taken weight off, and put on weight, and taken, and I don’t know how you do that, like, up and down sort of thing.
Collette: I'm not doing it anymore. (Laughs)
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs)
Collette: I'm getting too old.
Tavis: I wanna talk about that, though. Like, how have you managed to do that? We could walk through your characters if I had the time. The ones that were bigger; the ones that were smaller. But I was, like, what is Toni gonna look like today?
Collette: Well, I guess it’s just been a matter of making each character truthful, and what I see on the page, trying to make that come to life and not letting down the people who inspired the story in the first place. So, if you have to put on weight, you eat a lot and you don’t exercise. If you have to lose weight, then you exercise and eat normally.
Tavis: (Laughs) You make it sound really simple, though.
Collette: It is simple.
Tavis: There are a lot of people, though, who wish that the weight thing, gaining or losing, were really that simple.
Collette: Right. Well, for any of the characters who've had kind of overt pseudo-obesity, I don’t ever think that that’s a problem unto itself. I think it stems from something else. So, and the same goes in life. So these people who are wondering, “Why can’t I lose weight,” I think that there’s something else going on. I think that it stems from some other emotional thing that’s unaddressed, perhaps.
Tavis: Yeah. You mentioned a moment ago, though, that you wanna stop that roller coaster thing. You're not doing that up and down thing anymore.
Collette: Yeah.
Tavis: So you don’t know what projects you wanna do, but you're certain that you don’t wanna do the up and down weight thing.
Collette: Pretty much.
Tavis: Why are we so certain about that at this point?
Collette: Well, I'm about to turn 34, and…
Tavis: Ooh, so, oh…
Collette: No, no, but my husband and I wanna have children, and I just wanna take care of my body, and, so that I can house a baby as best I can. And plus it’s harsh. It’s a harsh thing to go through. Put it on, and lose it so quickly.
Tavis: Yeah.
Collette: Can be fun, too, don’t get me wrong. (Laughs)
Tavis: Let me get really personal, now. If I get too personal, slap me and I'll back off.
Collette: Okay, with pleasure. (Laughs)
Tavis: But since you went - (laughs) you wouldn’t be the only person that felt that way.
Collette: Oh, no.
Tavis: To your point, since you raised it about you and your husband wanting to have a baby here, how do you know, particularly in a career like yours, as you mentioned earlier, where things have worked out okay, how do you know when this is, like, the right moment to do this, as opposed to doing it at a time that, like, is a bad career move, if I can put it that way?
Collette: Well.
Tavis: (unintelligible)
Collette: I don’t think that there is a perfect time. I think that when it happens, you just reorganize and prioritize your life around that. Bringing a child into the world is a massive undertaking. And I won't do it till it is at the top of the list, so everything else will fall away anyway. And jobs, they're jobs. And, well, that’s on one hand. On the other hand, it’s like this whole life experience. And I feel that you're given what you're meant to experience, in a way. So I kind of trust life enough for things to have a flow.
Tavis: So you're not worried that you have to re-enter this whole game of -
Collette: No.
Tavis: - Hollywood. This rat race thing.
Collette: I don’t think I've ever entered it, (laughs) to be honest. I don’t feel like I'm playing a game. I live in Australia, and I have these amazing opportunities come up, and I kind of travel over, and travel back, and it’s almost like a dream. Sometimes it feels like it never happened, especially with a lack of sleep. (Laughs)
Tavis: It’s such a beautiful place, Australia. Would you ever not wanna live there, or are you certain that this is where you wanna stay?
Collette: I think I'll always live there, and perhaps I'll attempt – I've tried, I tried living in London, I tried living in Ireland, I lived in New York for a year. I come here to work. But I think perhaps I wouldn’t mind living in a couple of places in Europe. Just for an experience. But I'll always return to Australia, it’s definitely my home.
Tavis: Okay, so just between the two of us, what turned you off about New York? You only stayed in New York for a year?
Collette: Well, it was working.
Tavis: Oh, yeah.
Collette: (Laughs) Turns me off?
Tavis: Yeah.
Collette: Oh, well, having to stay longer than a month. (Laughs)
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs)
Collette: It’s just, it’s too much. The energy of it I find so exhausting. Just walking down the street can be overwhelming. It’s also incredibly exciting. So if I go in short spurts, I'm fine. But I don’t think I could live there. I would just fade into some neurotic ball.
Tavis: Now see, I was about to turn to camera one and apologize to all of my viewers in New York for Toni Collette just outright dogging the city of New York.
Collette: It’s not that I dislike New York, I love New York. In fact, I'm really excited, I'm going there tomorrow.
Tavis: Yeah, try to clean that up. (Laughs) You really are a good actress. But I don’t really need to apologize, 'cause trust me, all the New Yorkers I know are happy that one other person decided to get out.
Collette: (Laughs) So they can have a little more space?
Tavis: To leave more space for themselves. So I don’t need to apologize.
Collette: A little more smog for them to breathe in.
Tavis: Nice to have you on the program.
Collette: Yeah, lovely to meet you.
Tavis: I forgot to mention, you got a second movie out this summer, as well, that I mentioned earlier.
Collette: Yeah, I've got a…
Tavis: In August.
Collette: Yeah, a film called “The Night Listener,” which is based on the Armistead Maupin book. It’s much darker than “Little Miss Sunshine.”
Tavis: Busy summer for you.
Collette: Yeah, well, yeah. It’s fun.
Tavis: So somewhere in between, you will find time to make this baby somewhere.
Collette: No, that’s a little further off in the future.
Tavis: Nice to meet you.
Collette: You too, thank you.
Tavis: My pleasure. “Little Miss Sunshine.” Check out Toni and crew. That’s our show for tonight. Catch me weekends on PRI, Public Radio International, check your local listings. See you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A., thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith.
[Clip]
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