Ruby Sparks

Jonathan Dayton (born July 7, 1957) and Valerie Faris (born October 20, 1958) are a team of American music video directors, also husband and wife, that received critical acclaim for their feature film directorial debut, Little Miss Sunshine.

Dayton was born in Alameda County, California and grew up in Grass Valley, California. After graduating from Ygnacio Valley High School in Concord, California, attended the UCLA Film School, studying film and television in the late-1970s; while there, he met Valerie Faris, a dance student and native of Los Angeles County, California, who became his wife and his partner. As a pair, they have directed and produced music videos, documentaries, commercials and films. They have received international fame for their music videos for bands such as Oasis, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, and R.E.M.. They won six MTV Video Music Awards for the video “Tonight Tonight” by The Smashing Pumpkins. In 1998 they established a production company, “Bob Industries”. Through this company the pair directed commercials for companies such as HP, Volkswagen, Sony, GAP, Target, Ikea, Apple Computer, and ESPN. They have broadened their horizons through television work (“Mr. Show”) and film direction (Little Miss Sunshine). The latter won the Audience Award at the 2006 Sydney Film festival and an ovation at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.

In December 2006, Variety announced that the team’s next project would be a screen adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s novel The Abstinence Teacher for Warner Independent Pictures. As of October 2007, Perrotta was writing the film’s screenplay with input from Dayton and Faris. —Wikipedia