Inside ‘Napoleon Dynamite Live’: How the Sundance Cult Classic Became a Never-Ending Road Trip
Through a haze of tater tots and ill-tempered llamas, it can be easy to forget that “Napoleon Dynamite” is also about time travel. There’s a literal time machine in the movie, yes, but it’s also an ode to retro-nostalgia and small-town teen angst.
Jared Hess’ 2004 cult classic about a pack of misfits growing up in Preston, Idaho, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to mixed results. The low-stakes story (co-written with the director’s wife, Jerusha Hess) was hugely meme-able but still confusing to critics in the mostly pre-internet age. Now, it’s a persistent triumph of the American indie scene and a live show amid an ongoing tour.
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“We had no idea anybody would see this film,” said Jon Heder (aka Napoleon himself). “It’s become the ultimate case study. You can go from writing a story to casting the right people to making an endearing and enduring film. It’s absolutely doable.”
“But let’s face it,” said Jon Gries (aka Uncle Rico). “If it were released today, ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ might not have survived. Theater owners kept it in theaters. It was six, eight, 10 weeks before the film finally caught fire. I don’t think they’d do that now.”
“It might go straight to streaming,” agreed Efren Ramirez (aka Pedro).
Speaking backstage at the historic Mother Lode Theater in Butte, Montana, the actors looked like rockstars. The trio joined IndieWire at Northwest 360 Winter Fest for their latest “Napoleon Dynamite Live” event in January. Despite ice and howling winds, it was a nearly sold-out show for the old mining town of just 35,000. Entering its sixth year, the ongoing “Napoleon Dynamite” road trip — an ever-evolving fan journey that started in Colorado in late 2018 — is still spreading joy from coast to coast.
“It’s almost like we’re doing a ‘Twilight Zone’ thing,” joked Gries. “We load up and we drive from town to town. We’ll walk into a gas station to buy something, and you’ll see somebody behind the counter. Then they’ll just go white, like, ‘What are you guys doing here? Did you really just come in?’ And just like that, we disappear.”
What began as a moderated panel in honor of the movie’s 15th anniversary became an interactive screening and immersive Q&A experience — complete with an original song performed by the “Napoleon Dynamite” actors. To kick things off in Montana, Heder rode a bicycle into the auditorium and down a flight of stairs. Then, with Ramirez on harmonica and Gries on guitar, the cyclist hit the keys and brought fans into a blend of improv comedy and movie trivia with the occasional prize up for grabs.
“It’s like our version of a vaudeville act,” said Ramirez, who is also a professional DJ. He spent the night before the show bumping an EDM remix of the “Ghostbusters” theme at a local bar in Butte. “It’s something for us to be able to do to jump from city to city, theater to theater, enjoy these places, and see all this history that’s being kept alive.”
“We met while making the movie,” Heder said, “but when we started this show, we got to see a lot more of each other. It’s definitely turned into a family thing.”
According to the actors, not everyone who worked on the eventual hit “got it” at first. The cast never thought they were “killing it” during production, but after they finished shooting each day, the script — about a new kid running for class president and an ex-football star babysitting his nephews — echoed through the small creative team.
“We’d be sitting around, and, out of nowhere, somebody would say, ‘Your mom goes to college!’ — and we’d all just start laughing,” Gries remembered. He described himself, Heder, and Ramirez as the “original ‘Napoleon’ fans,” who put on the live show today because they earnestly love the world Hess made. They credit the filmmaker with creating a universe so authentic movie lovers everywhere still want to live in it.
“There’s such an honest curiosity out there, not only for these characters that we were playing, but everybody as a group shooting an indie film in the middle of nowhere,” said Ramirez. “We were just excited to have the opportunity to be able to do a movie. Then, when it got picked up by Sundance, we were all so surprised. It was a while before we were thinking, ‘Maybe this is going somewhere.'”
After “Napoleon Dynamite Live” ditched its moderator, and later its driver, the actors took a bigger role in shaping the film’s legacy. Onstage in Montana, the three men sat on a couch made to look like it was from the movie. The living room set was flanked by a pi?ata and a tetherball with a coffee table and assorted props down in front. Heder, Ramirez, and Gries answered questions from the audience and recalled their best behind-the-scenes stories for a crowd oozing with affection. Attendees were sporting dozens of “VOTE FOR PEDRO” shirts, and at least one Happy Hands Club uniform.
“People tell us they truly love this film,” said Heder, noting one guest had described sharing the comedy with their late father that night. “They grew up on it. With the tour, we get a lot of the same questions, and we’re telling a lot of the same stories — but you have a new audience every time, and that keeps it fresh for us. If this was a cruddy movie we weren’t proud of, it would be a cash grab. But we really love this movie.”
Although one could feasibly find the film’s best anecdotes online (the Washington Post has a good history of the production), “Napoleon Dynamite Live” is made to put Heder, Ramirez, and Gries in conversation with the wonderfully weird cinephiles who love their art. No, the “Napoleon Dynamite” crew didn’t really shoot that cow in front of that school bus, as one charming Montana kid so politely asked. Yes, the final dance scene was filmed in just three takes — because they were running out of film. And no one knows what happened for sure, but the rumors are true: The actress who played Summer Wheatley (Haylie Duff) tragically lost her pet dog while filming in the wilds of Idaho.
“Jon and I hit a deer once,” Heder told IndieWire backstage with awkward remorse. “I’m not saying that’s a funny story from the tour — but that is a story from the tour!”
From crawling haunted corn mazes to going on “geocaching” treasure hunts, the trio’s roadside adventures sound like a Sundance film. They’ve visited scads of tourist attractions over the years, from the “Shawshank Redemption” museum in Ohio to a hiking trail in Missouri, where they made a surprise cameo in an amateur documentary.
“He had no idea who we were at first, but we ended up spending the whole day with him,” Ramirez said.
On the road, the three friends like to listen to podcasts, and they’ve debated whether they should start their own — although Gries is picky when it comes to narrators. He’ll ruin a true crime show “like that,” said Heder, describing Gries as an “older version” of himself who is even more selective when it comes to music. In the car, the two cycle through a range of artists from the Bee Gees to Tame Impala, and often squabble over the chance to play new songs for Ramirez.
“When we played ‘Led Zeppelin IV’ for him, it was just one of those amazing moments,” Gries said. “He just lit up, like, ‘What is this?'”
“I’m not going to introduce them to any hard techno,” Ramirez said. “That’s like 150 beats per minute. That’s too much.”
As the world’s foremost ambassadors for their favorite movie, Heder, Gries, and Ramirez are living the sort of unique spin on the American Dream evocative of the exact authenticity Hess championed with his film. Only 23 years old at the time, the director had a clear-eyed vision that Gries describes as if it were a flashbulb memory.
“I’ll never forget, Jared was filming Jon,” he said. “And it got to the point where he was so specific, he said, ‘OK, look down. OK, swallow. OK, look up.’ That’s in the film.”
At the performance in Montana, several audience members shared what the comedy meant to them as people from a less frequented corner of the country. Many said that in all their unique weirdness Napoleon, Pedro, Uncle Rico, Kipp (Aaron Ruell), and Deb (Tina Majorino) brought them a sense of comfort. To Heder, that reaction suggests it’s still possible for an indie film to make all of your wildest dreams come true.
“In its purest form, independent film is exactly what it says it is — made by people who aren’t attached to the studio system,” Heder said. “Anybody can make a movie, but it’s whether or not it finds an audience and gets seen and resonates and clicks that matters.” Freakin’ idiot.
You can find upcoming dates from “Napoleon Dynamite Live” on their website.
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