Napoleon Dynamite is a 2004 American comedy film directed by Jared Hess, written by Jared and Jerusha Hess, and produced by Jeremy Coon, Chris Wyatt, and Sean Covel. It stars Jon Heder as Napoleon Dynamite, a nerdy high-school student who deals with several dilemmas: befriending an immigrant who wants to be class president, awkwardly pursuing a romance with a fellow student, and living with his quirky family.
Napoleon Dynamite was Hess's first full-length film and is partially adapted from his 2002 short film Peluca. It was acquired at the Sundance Film Festival by Fox Searchlight Pictures, which partnered with Paramount Pictures and MTV Films for the release. It was filmed in 2003 at Preston High School and different areas in Franklin County, Idaho. It debuted at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Most of the situations are loosely based on Hess's life. The total worldwide gross revenue was $46.1 million. The film has since developed a cult following and was voted number 14 on Bravo's 100 funniest films.
Plot Socially awkward 16-year-old Napoleon Dynamite lives in Preston, Idaho, United States, with his grandmother, Carlinda, and his technology-addicted older brother, Kip. Napoleon's school days are spent doodling mythical creatures, dealing with bullies, and playing tetherball by himself.
Carlinda breaks her tailbone in a quad bike accident and asks Napoleon's and Kip's uncle Rico to look after things while she recovers. Flirtatious, middle-aged Rico arrives in the camper van he lives in, and teams up with Kip to sell items door-to-door in a get-rich-quick scheme. Kip wants to pay for his online girlfriend, LaFawnduh, to visit from Detroit. Former high-school athlete Rico dwells on his past and dreams of going back in time. He believes wealth will help him get over his breakup with his girlfriend and failed dreams of NFL stardom. Meanwhile, Napoleon takes a job on a chicken farm, but makes very little money.
Napoleon befriends Deb, a shy girl who sells headshots and knick-knacks to raise money for college, and Pedro, a bold transfer student from Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Pedro is rebuffed when he asks the popular and snobby Summer Wheatly to accompany him to the high school dance; Deb gladly accepts. Pedro encourages Napoleon to find a date and he picks popular classmate Trisha. As a gift, he draws an unintentionally bad picture of her and delivers it to Trisha's mother, one of Rico's customers. Rico tells Trisha's mother embarrassing stories about Napoleon to evoke sympathy. She buys his wares and makes Trisha accept Napoleon's invitation. Trisha goes to the dance with Napoleon but abandons him to hang out with Summer and her boyfriend, Don Moser. Pedro allows Napoleon to dance with Deb.
Pedro runs against Summer for class president. The two factions put up flyers and hand out trinkets to attract voters. To demonstrate their "skills" and increase their respect at school, Napoleon and Pedro enter a Future Farmers of America competition, grading milk and cow udders. They win medals, but it does little for their popularity. Pedro becomes stressed to the point where he becomes feverish and shaves his head, subsequently wearing a wig. He later makes a piñata of Summer for fellow students to whack, but is reprimanded by the principal and forced to remove all his campaign flyers. To deal with the bullying, Pedro and Napoleon enlist Pedro's cousins to chase off the bullies.
Napoleon buys an instructional dance videotape, D-Qwon's Dance Grooves. Kip's girlfriend, LaFawnduh, arrives and gives him an urban makeover, outfitting him in hip-hop regalia. Seeing that Napoleon is learning to dance, LaFawnduh gives him a mixtape.
Rico continues to spread embarrassing rumors about Napoleon to prospective customers. He tries to sell Deb a breast-enhancement product, claiming it was Napoleon's suggestion, causing her to break off their friendship. Napoleon confronts Rico and tells him to leave, but Rico refuses. His sales scheme ends when martial arts instructor Rex walks in on Rico demonstrating the breast-enhancement product on his wife, and assaults him.
On Election Day, Summer gives a speech before the student body, and presents a dance skit to the Backstreet Boys' "Larger than Life" with the Happy Hands club as her backup dancers. Pedro gives a despondent speech after discovering he is also required to perform a skit. Napoleon gives the sound engineer LaFawnduh's mixtape and does a dance routine to Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat", wearing a "Vote for Pedro" shirt. He receives a standing ovation, stunning Summer and Don.
Pedro becomes class president, Grandma returns from the hospital, Rico reunites with his girlfriend, Kip and LaFawnduh leave on a bus for Michigan, and Napoleon and Deb reconcile and play tetherball together.
Two months later, Kip and LaFawnduh get married, and Napoleon arrives on a stallion he tamed for Kip and LaFawnduh to ride out on.
Cast
Production Origin
In 2002, Brigham Young University film students Jon Heder and Jared Hess collaborated on a class project; the result was Peluca, a nine-minute short movie on black-and-white 16mm film about a nerdy high school student named Seth.
Peluca was shown at the 2003 Slamdance Film Festival and well received. Jeremy Coon convinced Hess to drop out of school and adapt it into a feature-length film, and helped him find investors for the project. Hess sent the short film and the script to various casting directors, many of whom found the idea "too weird, or they just didn't like the character", Hess said. One casting director suggested Jake Gyllenhaal for the lead role but Hess believed Heder was the only actor for the part. Jason Lee was offered the role of Uncle Rico and Brad Garrett auditioned for Rex and enjoyed the script, but decided not to commit. Vincent Gallo was considered and almost cast as Uncle Rico. Heder was paid $1,000 for starring in the film, but negotiated for more after it became a runaway success.
Filming and setting
Hess shot the film on location in Preston, in southeastern Idaho near the Utah border, in July 2003. Operating on a tight budget of $400,000, he cast many of his friends from school, including Heder and Aaron Ruell, while generous locals provided housing and food to crew members. Among the established actors in the cast was comedy veteran Diedrich Bader, who filmed his scenes as virile martial art instructor Rex in one day. He recalled in 2011 that Napoleon Dynamite "still to this day [is] one of the two top scripts I've ever read", alongside Office Space (1999), one of his most-recognized roles. "It was very, very hot", Hess said in an interview. "But it was so much fun being in this rural farm town making a movie. We shot it in 23 days, so we were moving very, very fast; I just didn't have a lot of film to be able to do a lot of takes. It was a bunch of friends getting together to make a movie. It was like, 'Are people going to get this? Is it working?'"
Hess has called the film "so autobiographical". In an interview, he said: "I grew up in a family of six boys in Preston, Idaho, and the character of Napoleon was a hybrid of all the most nerdy and awkward parts of me and my brothers growing up. Jerusha really was like Deb growing up. Her mom made her a dress when she was going to a middle school dance and she said, 'I hadn't really developed yet, so my mom overcompensated and made some very large, fluffy shoulders.' Some guy dancing with her patted the sleeves and actually said, 'I like your sleeves ... they're real big"'.
The film is set during the 2004–05 school year, as shown on Napoleon's student ID card in the title sequence. It has numerous culturally retroactive elements harking back to the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. For example, Deb wears a side ponytail and Napoleon wears Moon Boots, both popular fashion trends of the 1980s. One scene is set at a school dance that plays only 1980s music, such as Alphaville's "Forever Young". An earlier scene shows students performing a sign language rendition of "The Rose" (1980), originally popularized by Bette Midler (in the film, it is sung by studio session vocalist Darci Monet, who was never credited or paid any residuals for her work). Much of the technology in the film is also archaic; Napoleon uses a top-loader VCR and Walkman cassette player, Kip connects to the Internet via a pay-per-minute dial-up connection, and Uncle Rico drives a 1975 Dodge Tradesman. Napoleon dances to Jamiroquai's 1999 song "Canned Heat".
Opening sequence
The film was originally made without opening titles. Audiences at test screenings were confused about when the film was set. Eight months after the film was completed, the title sequence was filmed in cinematographer Munn Powell's basement. Ruell, who played Kip, suggested the idea of the title sequence. The sequence shows a pair of hands placing and removing several objects on a table. Objects like plates of food had credits written in condiments, while other objects like a Lemonheads box or a tube of ChapStick had credits printed on them. Hess said:
Of the studio's reaction to the sequence, Hess said:
Dance scene The Hesses wrote the climactic dance scene because they knew Heder liked to dance. Heder said: "Jared's wife was like, 'Jon, I hear you're pretty good dancer. I've seen you boogie; it's pretty sweet.' And I was like, 'Well, I like to dabble.' I liked to mess around sometimes in front of friends and dance. But I did take pride in it. I won't be modest. I wasn't great but I did like to mess around ... Cut to two years later: after we had shot the short, they were like, 'Okay we're going to have you dancing in the movie as the climax. This is going to make or break the film.
The producers scheduled the dance scene toward the end of production. When the time came, they were low on money and had only one roll of film (about 10.5 minutes) left.
Heder said: "It was a lot of pressure. I was like, 'Oh, crap!' This isn't just a silly little scene. This is the moment where everything comes, and he's making the sacrifice for his friend. That's the whole theme of the movie. Everything leads up to this. Napoleon's been this loser. This has to be the moment where he lands a victory. He gets up there, and it's quiet: no reaction from the audience."
Heder improvised the dance, with some choreography help from Tina Majorino and moves from Saturday Night Fever, Michael Jackson, and Soul Train. "They were like, 'No, Jon, just figure it out.' So I just winged it. I danced three times and they took the best pieces from each of those."
"When you're shooting in independent film, you don't know what you're going to get the rights to", Heder said. "We thought Jamiroquai might be expensive. So we danced to three different songs—to that song and another Jamiroquai song, "Little L." We danced to Michael Jackson, something off of Off the Wall. Just those three. And then we got the rights to Jamiroquai. And I think that was half our budget."
Origin of the name "Napoleon Dynamite" Upon the film's release, it was noted that the name "Napoleon Dynamite" had originally been used by musician Elvis Costello, most visibly on his 1986 album Blood & Chocolate, though he had used it on a B-side as early as 1982. Hess said he was unaware of Costello's use of the name until two days before the end of shooting, when he was informed by a teenage extra: "Had I known that name was used by anybody else prior to shooting the whole film, it definitely would have been changed ... I listen to hip-hop, dude. It's a pretty embarrassing coincidence." He said "Napoleon Dynamite" was the name of a man he met around 2000 on the streets of Cicero, Illinois, while doing missionary work for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.