How to fail as a Motivational Speaker

…might be an appropriate subtitle for the hilarious movie Little Miss Sunshine which I caught in Berkeley last night.

Little Miss Sunshine

It’s a touching and wacky portrayal of a dysfunctional family, complete with surly adolescent son who has taken a vow of silence, a heroin-snorting Grandpa and a Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman style Mom.

However, it’s the Dad that anyone looking to make their fortune as a motivational speaker should observe closely. Here’s a guy who is trying in all the wrong ways to make it as a professional speaker. He has masses of misplaced self-confidence, almost no platform speaking skills, and an unfortunate choice of publicity agent to book his engagements and push a book contract. There’s more than a touch of pathos in his inability to grasp that he’s in the wrong line of work – especially as the family lives on the bread-line and is forced to drive from New Mexico to Los Angeles in a yellow VW Bus that is as mechanically unsound as the “motivational” techniques he applies to his family life.

The film is a wonderful satire of the weirder aspects of contemporary American life – from pre-pubescent beauty pageants to the way the health care system deals with death. Not to mention one of the more unusual motorcycle policemen you’ll ever see conduct a traffic stop.

If you’ve any interest in the professional speaking business, and enjoy mad-cap humor, this is a movie to go see.