“Napoleon Dynamite,” the strangely endearing film about a gawky, clueless teenager who makes good while revealing the eccentricities of small-town culture, premiered in 2004 to reviews as kooky as its quirky characters.
“An inspired dead-end stunt that keeps delivering snarky laughs far longer than it has any right to,” said the Boston Globe’s Ty Burr.
“There is a kind of studied stupidity that sometimes passes as humor, and Jared Hess’ ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ pushes it as far as it can go,” wrote Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, while the New York Times’ A.O. Scott said its “most interesting quality” was “its stubborn, confident, altogether weird individuality.”
The film is nearly two decades old now, and — gosh! — it’s aged well, better than many of those reviews. Napoleon’s funky, triumphant dance, which wins over the high school crowd that had shunned and mocked him, has been mimicked at countless school assemblies and became a popular YouTube meme. Before the pandemic, the hamlet of Preston, Idaho, where the movie was filmed, became a tourist destination, with visitors from as far away as Europe and Asia stopping by. Shot on a budget of $400,000 in 22 days, the film earned $46 million at the box office.
Hawaii fans can re-experience all the film’s classic moments — Napoleon calling home for ChapStick, or feeding his grandmother’s pet llama, the “fat lard” Tina — and get some behind-the-scenes insights into the cult classic at Hawaii Theatre Center on Sept. 16. The theater will not only screen the film but will host a panel with actors Jon Heder, who starred as Napoleon; Efren Ramirez, who played Napoleon’s quiet wingman, Pedro; and Jon Gries, who portrayed Napoleon’s delightfully deluded Uncle Rico.
If you’re in the mood, feel free to dress up in Napoleon’s velour three-piece suit, or wear a “Vote for Pedro” shirt. Fans in other cities have.
“We love doing these shows,” said Heder in a call from Washington state, where he lives. “It’s a great way to connect directly with fans of that movie, seeing the difference it made, because it really was not your typical studio film at all. There was nothing typical about it. It was just a little movie we made, and it just took everybody by storm.”
Heder was college buddies with Hess, who had originally created a Napoleon-like character for a short film, “Peluca.” Hess had hoped to find a real person like Napoleon for the role, Heder said, but ultimately decided to have him “act” the part.
“He just thought, ‘Jon, why don’t you give it a shot? If we give you a perm, and if we give you some moon boots and some sweet clothes …,’ ” said Heder, lapsing for a moment into Napoleonic vocabulary. “As soon as I read (the script), I was like, ‘Oh my gosh! I know this kid. Let’s do it.’ ”
For his part, Heder recalled thinking: “I’m a single guy, trying to date girls, and this thing is going to ruin that for me. But I don’t care, because this is going to be so authentic.”
Heder saw the character as “the forever younger brother.” “It’s that feeling that they’re always being picked on. They’re trying to prove themself, and they get no love for it, so there’s a frustration there — kind of an anger, but definitely an annoyed frustration.”
Heder took cues from his own experience as an elder brother to two younger brothers. He also has a twin brother, who he claims was “more of a punk” to their younger brothers. “That’s how we talked to our younger brothers: ‘This is so stupid!’ ” he said.
Since “Napoleon Dynamite,” Heder has starred in a number of off-kilter comedies, like the screwball figure-skating feature “Blades of Glory” (2007) and “When Jeff Tried to Save the World” (2018), which is set in a failing bowling alley. He’s got a film, “Tapawingo,” in production now, which he called a “Napoleon-style, weird oddball comedy.”
He’s also working on his art — those were his actual drawings in “Napoleon Dynamite” — and is using them to get into NFT market, the latest craze in the art world. So will we be able to get our own version of Napoleon’s drawings of a liger, “a lion and tiger mixed, bred for its skills and magic”?
“Yeah, I kinda like that,” Heder said with a laugh.
The steaks are high
Gries has close connections to Hawaii, having acted in several Hawaii-based productions, including “Lost,” “Hawaii Five-0” and the Maui-based hit HBO miniseries “The White Lotus.” He said “Napoleon Dynamite” could “easily have taken place in a small community in Hawaii. It has that down-home feel.”
“Napoleon Dynamite” actually gave new life to Gries’ acting career. Back in the early 2000s, he was intending to quit acting and go into writing and directing, when he got a small role in the 2003 film “The Big Empty” (playing the manager of a seedy California inn called the Royal Hawaiian Motel), which led to him being cast in “Napoleon Dynamite.”
He was initially told Uncle Rico was a “David Hasselhoff meets Burt Reynolds meets Elvis” character, and he ran with it. “He’s a very universal character. There’s been so many people that I meet that say, ‘I have an Uncle Rico!’ ” he said in a recent call from his home in Los Angeles, where he was taking a break after shooting the second season of “White Lotus,” which is set in Italy.
He believes one of the reasons the film works so well was that “nobody was playing comedy,” he said. “We were just so caught up in that world, and I don’t remember a lot of laughter on the set.”
One exception was the infamous steak-throwing scene, when Uncle Rico, reliving his glory days as a high school football star, hits Napoleon in the head with a steak. Gries had tried lobbing the steak a few times but kept missing. Hess, growing concerned about wasting film, suggested he move in close. Gries insisted he could do it, “but I gotta really chuck that piece of meat.”
“So Jon was like, ‘Go ahead, chuck it!’ and I was like, ‘OK, then get me a bigger piece of meat too.’ ”
Hurled from at least 40 feet away, the steak beaned Heder full force, leaving lasting cuts and bruises. Ramirez, as Pedro, ducked out of the scene because he was laughing so hard, Gries said.
“It’s my greatest moment in acting ever, and I wasn’t even on camera,” he said.
Gries said there have been some touching moments over the years during meet-and-greet presentations of the movie. One woman told them that she had been planning to commit suicide when a friend called and asked her to go see the movie. She wound up changing her mind and became a suicide-prevention therapist.
Similar to what happens after Napoleon’s dance, “the crowd just slowly erupted into huge applause,” he said. “It was amazing.”
Vote for Pedro
Ramirez, who has had a thriving acting career on stage and screen and as a DJ, was actually offered a role in another movie when he got cast for “Napoleon Dynamite.” He was unsure which role to take. “I remember my father telling me, ‘Follow your heart, that’s what I would do.’ It’s funny because that’s what Napoleon says to Pedro,” he said in a phone call from New York, where he was working on a “secret” project.
For Ramirez, the role of Pedro brought to mind the work of the silent movie stars Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. “There was such an honesty and stillness to their work,” he said. “I thought if I can put that in Pedro, maybe that might work. And I wasn’t so sure, you know? And then I met Jon Heder in base camp and he was dressed like Napoleon.”
He loves the changes and growth that Pedro undergoes in the film, even when Pedro shaves his head. “I was going for a mohawk, but then I just kept going and cut it all off,” he said.
As an actor, “you want to explore any possibility of having to grow as a person,” he said. “Not only do I end up growing a good friendship with Napoleon, I decide to run for school president, which is interesting by itself, because you get to find out what skills you have.”
He sees the film as demonstrating a lot of universal values: fulfilling dreams, friendship, finding onself.
“It’s such a special movie because it’s about inclusion,” he said. “Everyone’s trying to do good in a certain way.”
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“Napoleon Dynamite” — film and panel
The film screening will be followed by a moderated discussion with actors Jon Heder, Efren Ramirez and Jon Gries.
>> Where: Hawaii Theatre Center
>> When: 7 p.m. Sept. 16
>> Cost: $35-$85
>> Info: hawaiitheatre.com or 808-528-0506
>> Note: The box office currently operates remotely; callers can leave a voicemail to request a callback or send a text message.
