How Little Miss Sunshine Avoided Abigail Breslin Hearing Alan Arkin's Swearing

Alan Arkin's "Little Miss Sunshine" character, Edwin Hoover, reads as a crass stereotype on paper. He's a man who's lived far too long and through too damn much to care about filtering his thoughts anymore, much less worry about his health. 

Think of every "Dirty Grandpa" cliché out there and Edwin embodies it. He snorts heroin every morning, reads pornographic magazines in front of his own family, and launches into profanity-laced tirades at the drop of a hat ("Every night it's the f***ing chicken!"). Likewise, Edwin advises his moody teenage grandson Dwayne (Paul Dano) to have sex with as many people as possible (as you probably intuited, he phrases it somewhat cruder than I did) and bonds with his innocent young granddaughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) while teaching her a beauty pageant dance routine that ... well, let's just say it's not family-friendly.

Thanks to Arkin, however, you absolutely believe Edwin is a real person — or at least I do, biased as I've always been to love the late actor in any of his screen appearances. There's a sincerity to Arkin's manner that just makes his comically crotchety portrait of a senior citizen on his last legs work, and it earned him an overdue Oscar for his efforts. 

And don't worry about Breslin; as the then-pre-teen actor told MovieWeb in 2006, she never actually heard Arkin swearing:

"Whenever I'd go on and Alan [Arkin] was cursing I was listening to music really. So I didn't hear any of that, but whenever I go on sets they never say any bad things, and when they do they say, 'Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.' I'm like, 'Oh, it's okay.' I don't know how it would really be being treated like a grown up because I'm not a grown up and so I don't know that."

The chemistry between Alan Arkin and Abigail Breslin also goes a long way in selling their characters' interactions in "Little Miss Sunshine," as does their chemistry with their co-stars (all of whom, like Arkin and Breslin, manage to breathe actual humanity into the broadly-sketched members of the highly dysfunctional Hoover family). Their offscreen relationship was clearly one of mutual respect, too. With much of the film taking place in the Hoovers' barely-functional yellow Volkswagen van as they cross state lines to attend the titular pre-teen beauty pageant, that meant the cast was stuck sitting in the vehicle for hours on end. It's a situation that could've quickly gone south, yet the film's stars seemingly never lost their composures.

Arkin, speaking in the same MovieWeb interview, was especially impressed by how Breslin handled their situation. He explained:

"She's just a consummate pro; it's like working with a first-rate, seasoned actress. There would be periods where we would be locked in the van for three, four hours at a time, and she was just part of the group; her mother wasn't there, she was just part of the group. When it came time to do that scene where she breaks down in the hotel room, she wouldn't talk to me that morning; she just said 'Hi.' She was focused on what she had to do, and she was getting prepared for that scene."

He continued, noting that Breslin wouldn't waiver when asked to re-shoot a scene, either:

"The first take was brilliant; the director said — and I hadn't talked to her about how to do it — she [Valerie Faris] said, 'Can you take it down a little bit? There's a little too much crying.' She says, 'Yeah.' She did it, she took it down about 10%; she's a pro."