Little Big Top(2006)

Through training the clowns at the Peru Amateur Circus, Seymour (Sid Haig) rediscovers his smile, and he also eventually shuns cigarettes and alcohol.

However, at the dress rehearsal the night before the big show, he finds out that everyone is going to be performing for their families and not for the cast and crew like he thought, which greatly distresses him because he wasn’t expecting to perform for an audience that big yet (for some unexplained reason, big audiences scare him nowadays). After lashing out at the head trainer Aggie (Hollis Resnik) for not giving him any warning about the large number of attendees present, he abandons the circus and ends up drinking, smoking, and going on carnival rides with Pike (Mel England), whom he started working with as a greenskeeper to earn money to live on. However, as time passes, Seymour finds the experience becoming more and more unpleasant, in part because of Pike’s obnoxious attitude. After Pike is found by his wife and taken home, Seymour stumbles back to the circus and watches the trapeze artists perform in the last act of the night, and he is delighted to see Jenna (Tori Bakehorn) pull off a trick that she had been regularly fumbling on in the practice sessions. He then leaves and winds up passing out on the front lawn of his father’s old home.

After he awakens the next morning, he returns to his trailer park home to clean himself up. He then heads back to the circus, ignoring the liquor store he frequented along the way, essentially accepting that he needs to leave his bitterness, fears, and bad habits behind and move forward. He puts on his clown attire, and he tearfully hugs the director Bob (Richard Riehle) before heading out into the stands to await his time to perform his secret routine. After getting some support from Aggie, he goes out and stands in the center ring, and he gets over his fright by giving a comical sad facial expression, which the people respond positively to. The screen then fades to white, and we hear more laughter from the audience, implying that his routine was a success.