Little Miss Sunshine Movie

HOLLYWOOD accounting isn't terribly trustworthy, but when it comes to great actor-director pairings, the usually unreliable show business math can actually make sense: One plus one often totals a lot more than two. Consider some of these combinations: Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. Clint Eastwood and ... Clint Eastwood.

The weather was bitterly cold, the hour was late and there wasn't a parking spot to be found. Still, the night belonged to "Little Miss Sunshine" and nothing could keep the parade of top independent studio executives from the Riverhorse Cafe on Friday, there to woo filmmakers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the pair behind Sundance Film Festival's first clear sensation. The suitors lined up: David Linde from Focus Features. Then John Lesher of Paramount Classics. Next was Harvey Weinstein.

TAKE Greg Kinnear as a relentlessly upbeat self-help guru wannabe, Steve Carell as a Proustian scholar gone suicidal over a hunky grad student, and mix them up with Alan Arkin as the heroin-snorting grandfather and Toni Collette as the barely-holding-it-together mom. Stuff them into an ancient, malfunctioning VW minibus with a bespectacled 7-year-old who thinks she can win a beauty pageant and her mute-by-choice teenage brother and you have "Little Miss Sunshine."

"LITTLE Miss Sunshine" may be the best R-rated family film out this summer -- of course, it is also the \o7only\f7 R-rated family film out this summer. The Fox Searchlight release, due to close out the Los Angeles Film Festival next Sunday before its general release July 26, follows the dysfunctional Hoover family after 7-year-old Olive (Abigail Breslin) is surprisingly propelled to the finals of the beauty pageant of the title.

Abigail Breslin always knew it'd come to this. She'd grown up on movie sets, thanks to her older brother, Spencer Breslin, who at 8 starred alongside Bruce Willis in Disney's "The Kid." While her brother mugged for the camera, little Abbie sat quietly toward the back, until one day she got the call. M. Night Shyamalan was on the hunt for a New Yorker to play the role of Mel Gibson's daughter in "Signs."

PRODUCER David T. Friendly started to believe "Little Miss Sunshine" might turn into a word-of-mouth hit when his college roommate's parents and a doctor friend both sent him e-mail congratulations. "It's a little unsettling when you get an e-mail from your dermatologist," Friendly says, "asking about your per-screen averages." Unsettling, perhaps. And also the wave of the future.

Every step of the way, Fox Searchlight's "Little Miss Sunshine" has challenged convention. It sold for a record $10.5 million at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Released in the middle of summer, it has become an enduring national hit. And now, it is trying to enter territory where comedies rarely venture -- the Oscar race for best picture.

THE 7-year-old girl at the center of "Little Miss Sunshine" is nearly barred from the film's namesake beauty contest. Fortunately for "Superfreak" fans everywhere, the young contestant does get out there and strut her stuff. But that moment in the limelight may be denied to some of "Little Miss Sunshine's" producers, as they seek to compete in Hollywood's ultimate pageant -- the Academy Awards.

THE good news for the producers of "Little Miss Sunshine": With its Golden Globe nomination for best comedy, the movie's Oscar chances keep building. The bad news: At least two of its producers can't enjoy any Academy Awards glory. And in the no-news-yet department: "The Departed's" four producers are still awaiting their fate.