I am one of those people who listens to every director's commentary on my favorite DVDs, the other day I listened to Little Miss Sunshine's for the first time. When they were talking about this opening sequence they said that Steve Carell looked so sad in this opening they decided to put the title over his face as way to signify quirkiness or something is going to be a little bit irreverent about this movie. When they said that I remembered that when I first saw the movie the title came stair-stepping across his face and it did make me laugh. Lesson learned: placement can give you incite and set a mood separate from the one a visual gives.