Geek revival

LOS ANGELES -- Jared Hess doesn't mind the moniker. The young filmmaker has been saddled with it for months now, and he expects he will be for years more. Plus, it fits, although it doesn't convey the scope of his ambitions or potential: The Mormon Director.

"It's amusing to me because you never hear `the Baptist director' so and so or `the Catholic director,' but I don't know, it's cool," Hess said. "I'm fine with it. I'm just not sure why it comes up all the time."

It comes up in no small part because much of the 24-year-old Hess's moviemaking story is suffused with his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He attended film school at Brigham Young University. He lives in Salt Lake City, with his cowriter wife and their new son. And it was during his two-year mission, which began in Venezuela and concluded in Chicago after a medical problem sent him

stateside, that he met an older Italian man named Napoleon Dynamite. Hess took the name for the title character in his first (and so far only) full-length feature. Only his Napoleon isn't old or Italian. He's a high school student so far to the other side of cool that it can be almost painful to watch, in a can't-help-laughing kind of way. "Napoleon Dynamite," much to Hess's relief, not only drew rave reviews and a standing ovation when it was screened at the Sundance Film Festival this year, it drew guffaws. After so much time spent with the movie, on set in Preston, Idaho, and in the editing room, Hess wasn't sure anymore his jokes would work.

"When [the movie] got in to Sundance, I was like, `Yeah, maybe it isn't the lamest thing of all time,' but I had my share of dry heaving before the first screening." Hess said. "Oh man, I was so nervous I was expecting to hear crickets. But with a comedy it's pretty cut and dried; people either laugh or they

don't. Luckily enough people laughed at the opening shot and throughout the film and in places I never imagined. "I actually choked up," he said of the moment the crowd took to its feet. "You work so long and hard on something, and then to have people react like that, it was just phenomenal."

Now Hess is nervous all over again. After scores of screenings to build word of mouth for a quirky film that's hard to describe in a TV ad, "Napoleon Dynamite" opens in Boston and other major cities on Friday. He'll know soon enough whether audiences nationwide buy his story of a gawky high schooler with permed hair, a squinty stare, and a voice like an injured goose, who sets out to get his equally geeky pal elected class president. Not surprisingly, Napoleon has an oddball family too.

Efren Ramirez plays Pedro, the best -- and only -- real friend Napoleon has, an offbeat Mexican immigrant with an upbeat outlook even when he shaves his head for some inexplicable reason and has to wear a woman's wig. Ramirez, who had actual acting experience on TV and in movies beforehand, which not everyone on set could say, says he turned down a meaty part in "The Alamo," even though it meant more money, to appear as one of Hess's not-so-lovable losers. The script made him laugh that hard. Not laughing during filming was almost impossible, he adds. Between shots, it was equally hard not to laugh at Hess, who can and did imitate every character to get his points across during filming. "Jared knew exactly what he wanted, what the characters were like," Ramirez said. "He was clear on that from the beginning, which simplified everything because we sat down and talked about the character first. He said, `Always find the humanity in these characters and in this script.' And if we were having trouble with a scene, he would go, `OK, I want it like this,' and do a word-perfect Pedro or Napoleon or whoever impersonation," he adds. "He knew every single character."

That may be because the story has been with Hess for some time. Influenced by the Coen brothers -- of all the Hollywood types he's met so far, he was most excited to meet them, although he's also stoked that actor Jack Black has invited him to play video games -- as well as "The Karate Kid," he says he set out to make the underdog film of all time. He wanted to write about an almost irredeemable but still endearing loser, someone who wasn't a hottie beneath the bad hair or the keeper of a secretly impressive skill. "I always wanted to tell the story of the kid that you sat next to in math, that you never talked to but he was always drawing unicorns and fantasy creatures and he just kind of had his own world," Hess said. "That's who Napoleon is, and I'd never seen a character like that. I'd always wanted to see a real-type guy who had an interesting world he lived in and was an awkward guy and, well, a really real underdog."

Hess, who grew up in Preston, as well as in London and other cities after his father died and his mother remarried a man who traveled for work, looked close to home for Napoleon's annoying attributes: his five brothers, of whom he is the oldest, and his own life. He swears some of this stuff actually happened: His kid brother really did call home to beg him to bring his ChapStick to school, just as Napoleon does in the movie. His brothers really did move chickens into crates on a poultry farm one summer. He really was in the sign language club.

"I didn't have to make this stuff up," said Hess, who dropped out of film school to finish his film.

Instead, he took the true tales and for $500 spun a short film starring Jon Heder, a friend from BYU's animation department, who had also starred in an earlier short of Hess's called "Peluca." That first version of "Napoleon Dynamite" was just nine minutes and in black and white. But a producer took notice when it was screened at the Park City, Utah, Slamdance Festival in 2002. He helped find financing, $200,000 for principal photography, $400,000 in all, Hess said. ("When I see some of the money spent on movies, I'm just like, on what? he said. "If it's `Lord of the Rings,' it's obvious, but other things I'm like, man, you've got to be kidding.") Then came Sundance and a first-look deal with Fox Searchlight.

Except for a brief moment between Slamdance and Sundance when he had to work as an assistant cameraman to pay the bills, his luck has been like that. He's surprised enough to be grateful, with no plans to go Hollywood any time soon. He and his wife, Jerusha Hess, the film's costume designer as well as its cowriter, just bought a house in Salt Lake. As he put it, "I'm so influenced in a midwest Rocky Mountain sort of way that I have to stay."

Jared Hess, who says he has wanted to make movies since he was a boy, is now writing another comedy. He's also hoping to produce a project for his friend and fellow BYU filmmaker Aaron Ruell, who makes his debut playing the whiniest older brother ever on screen. He fits right into the "Napoleon Dynamite" world.

"Because I'm so used to writing my own material, I find it hard taking someone else's story and making it my own," Hess said. "That's just how I am. And there are a lot of bad scripts out there. Even the ones that are considered pretty good are bad. I think I'll stick to writing another one of my own."

Lynda Gorov can be reached at lgorov@aol.com.