At Los Angeles Comic Con this last weekend, Dave Klein moderated a panel featuring Jon Heder and Efren Ramírez, stars of wacky 2004 cult hit Napoleon Dynamite. This was a very loosely formatted panel, where Heder and Ramírez ad-libbed an opening segment and then spent the rest of their time doing crowd work.
The first thing I want to point out is that casting on this film was spot on. Heder said he basically channeled his teenage self to nail Napoleon’s trademark speech patterns, posture, and movement. Ramírez said that during the audition stages, he would deliver a line, and then he’d get notes to slow it down. He’d slow it down, and they’d ask him to slow it down further, until he reached the cadence they were looking for, at which point Ramírez was left wondering “What’s wrong with Pedro? Is he okay?”
Pretty much, the character of Napoleon Dynamite is 16 year old Jon Heder, and Pedro is Efren Ramírez played at half speed.
Speaking more on the casting process, Ramírez said that he had already been offered a part in The Alamo when he was reading audition pages for Pedro. He was booked for both films, and had to choose between this weird little indie film and a big studio picture with a $107 million budget. His father told him “Follow your heart,” and that sealed it for Efren, who saw it as a sign that his dad delivered a line that Napoleon told Pedro in the script.
Heder jumped in to point out that if it had gone the other way, “You would have been cast as, like, ‘Mexican #312.’ But on the (Napoleon Dynamite) call sheet, you were ‘Mexican #1.’ You made the right choice.”
Regarding the iconic dance sequence, Heder says writer/director Jared Hess asked him if he could dance. When Jon replied that he liked to dance sometimes in his free time, Hess informed him that he would be dancing for the climax to the film. Everything would rest on this one scene. No one would buy Pedro as president if this scene didn’t work. Heder objected, saying he’s not a choreographer, to which Hess replied “Wing it.”
When people ask if he can still do the dance, he says “I don’t call it ‘The Dance.’ It’s just ‘dance.’ Dance from your heart and make it look just a little crusty.”
In short, he didn’t remember the order of his sweet, sweet moves. Luckily there was an audience member in Napoleon cosplay who was able to give us a pretty decent rendition.
A really unique aspect of the film is that, because of the limited budget and setting, a lot of what you see on screen is real. On a big budget film, if someone is going to, say, get hit in the face with a steak thrown from 20 feet away, they might use a prop steak, camera angles, post-editing tricks, and a stuntperson. Not on this film.
In the scene where Napoleon gets belted in the face with a steak lobbed by Uncle Rico (Jon Gries), that’s a real steak. Heder and Ramírez told the story of how, when Gries couldn’t get the throw just right, Hess told him they really needed to nail the shot on the next take, because they were running out of film and daylight. Gries said he could definitely do the thing, but he’d need a bigger, heavier steak.
When a bigger chunk of meat was procured and film started rolling, Gries used skills from his baseball background to pitch the beef straight into Jon Heder’s face, knocking off his glasses and bloodying his nose. Heder says everyone was just glad he stayed in character, but that it wasn’t hard to do, since it actually hurt. A lot.
Gries was busting up off camera, and Ramírez, who was supposed to stay in the shot, improvised, saying he had to go. He got on the bike and rode off so he wouldn’t ruin the shot with his own laughter.
Lastly, when asked about the fate of Tina the llama, Heder replied “I don’t know, but she’s probably dead. What’s the lifespan of a pet llama?”
The average lifespan of a domestic llama is 15 years. The film is 19 years old. That llama is definitely dead. RIP Tina, you fat lard.
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