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By Tim Collins

It’s been 20 years since Jared Hess’ quirky micro-budget comedy struck gold at the box office and became an unlikely cultural icon. Here are some behind-the-scenes factoids about how this unusual Sundance hit came to be.

1. “Six dollars. That’s like a dollar an hour!”

Napoleon Dynamite was made for $400,000, which in Hollywoodland is a miniscule amount of money for a feature film. Like, if you, right now, went and told a Hollywood producer you had $400,000 lined up for them to make a feature film, they’d say “That’s fantastic. Here’s my card, text me when you’ve raised the rest.” But Jared and Jerusha Hess wrote, directed, and finished Napoleon Dynamite for that tiny amount of money. And you know how movie stars get paid “millions of dollars”? Jon Heder, the actor who played Napoleon, was paid $1,000 to be in the movie.

2. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

So Napoleon Dynamite was made for a meager $400,000, but after it became a worldwide theatrical success, its box office receipts totaled $46 million. That’s a MASSIVE return, with the movie making over 112.5x more money than it cost. (That doesn’t even include DVD sales, which were considerable.) And though Jon Heder was paid only $1,000, he was able to negotiate more money for himself.

3. “LU-CKEEEE!!”

Here’s a useful insider tidbit about “the biz”: Winning an award at a film festival will do nothing for your film career. If you want to get the most out of a film festival, try to get into a festival that functions as a film market, like the Sundance Film Festival. Jared and Jerusha Hess got Napoleon Dynamite into Sundance, where Fox Searchlight Pictures and Warner Independent Pictures engaged in a bidding war for the distribution rights to the movie. As the dealmaking was drawing to a close, Fox Searchlight made the winning bid of $4.5 million.

4. “Just listen to your heart. That’s what I do.”

Of all the great moments in the film, arguably the most enduring and iconic is the climactic, funky, sexy, throbbing dance sequence where Jon Heder’s Napoleon clinches Pedro’s victory for Class President and wins the hearts of the school. But when the scene was being shot, director Jared Hess was anything but confident: “We had one roll of film left and basically had just three takes to get the entire dance sequence filmed. … I remember after each take I was like, ‘Oh, man.’ I didn’t think that we had it. I was really worried.” But Hess gave Heder some excellent advice: “Dude, you just do your thing.”

5. “What the heck are you even talking about?”

While watching Napoleon Dynamite you likely asked yourself or your friend, “when does this movie take place? The ‘80s? The present?” And you’re not alone. After Fox Searchlight bought the picture at Sundance, they screened it for test audiences and got a lot of this sort of feedback. So how did they try to patch it up? The Sundance version of Napoleon Dynamite had no opening title, so Fox suggested they create a title sequence as the solution. What we got was a beautiful, organic, analog opening credit roll featuring food and props from the movie (all shot in the cinematographer’s basement!) along with a school ID with “2004-2005” printed on it. So obviously everyone saw that and no one was ever confused again.

6. “Tina, you fat lard. Come get some dinner. Tina, eat. Food. Eat the FOOD!”

The appeal of Napoleon Dynamite owes a lot to the quirky aesthetic and story choices made by the filmmakers. Here are some precious behind-the-scenes nuggets about those choices:

The moody Napoleon expressed himself with pencil drawings of fantastical animals. But the art wasn’t created by a production designer or independent artist; Jon Heder drew almost all of the now-iconic sketches himself.
In high school I loved to say “Tina, eat your food!” However, Tina was not some exotic procurement by the producer, but rather was loaned by the director’s mother who raised llamas.
Remember when the school bus Napoleon was on drove in front of a farmer about to shoot a cow in the face and then the shotgun went off and all the kids on the bus screamed? That’s based on real life. As a young child, Jared Hess was taking the bus to kindergarten and a farmer did exactly that next to his school bus.

7. “Make yourself a dang case-a-dila!”

For over a decade now, the power brokers in Hollywood have been obsessed with sequels, reboots, and adaptations. So it should come as no surprise that a Napoleon Dynamite sequel has been discussed. In 2020, Efren Ramirez (Pedro) and Diedrich Bader (Rex) said they’d come back and reprise their roles if Jared Hess gave them a call. And more recently, in November 2023, Jon Heder said: “I don’t think the book of Napoleon is closed forever. I honestly think there’s gonna be something.” So where does that leave us fans? We’re in a kind of Schrödinger’s Cat situation and may need to find a good way to pass the time. I recommend making yourself a dang case-a-dilla.

Tim Collins is a television editor working in animated series including Amazon Studios’ The Legend of Vox Machina and LEGO DreamZzz. His extracurricular activities include antique book collecting and watching obscure, terrible movies. Tim claims to hate Twitter, but he is active on Twitter-clone BlueSky as well as LinkedIn.

Gosh! 7 Surprising Facts About ‘Napoleon Dynamite’