Name: The story of Napoleon Dynamite w/ Jon Heder | You Made It Weird
Uploaded: 2022-08-16T23:00:21.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The story of Napoleon Dynamite w/ Jon Heder | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-08-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The story of Napoleon Dynamite w/ Jon Heder | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-08-16. Transcript available.

how did you build that character what were you basing it on and all that it was
so it was there
on the page but really like it was it how is it it was without like a lot of
the physicality but
like it was it's like okay he said it but jared if you sorry okay there's a
funny moment just
before this if you want to note it while you're in the bathroom she could hear
us there's a funny
dick queef thing i think might be worth noting and cutting everything else out
that's all we really
just a one minute episode ads one minute of dick queef more ads then it comes
back to us and we're
just laughing about dick queef dweef a dweef now i just made that up i knew you
did and i yes-handed
it very fast i'm a dweeb not a dweeb um it was sort of on the page yeah so it
was yeah it was on the
page but if you knew if i don't know if you've met jared um but he is like a
master like he all the
characters he'll do himself and he's this really animated guy he's just like
the second he did the
voice he's just like well i picture him as this guy who's just like listen up
flipping idiot i don't
want to do it and everything was a little bit more lippy and a little bit more
exaggerated but it's still
i was like yes that's me and my younger brothers yeah like whenever they're
pissed whenever they're
annoyed that's just that's them so i just like that's it that's a broom
everything this guy is
is just this constantly crapped on younger brother type who's just like yeah
just he's the sound he's
that through chapped lips yes mouth breathing yeah kind of crusty kid who
thinks closing eyes
dragons reality is too much yes yeah and well the eye was kind of a weird mix
of just me and i squint a
lot and also he's just like yeah we're shooting in the sun and everything's and
it's like you blocking
out the world he's just like it's too much oh it's just sorry i'm doing it now
but it's just like it
it was just it was natural for me but it like made sense for the character it
was so easy yeah and you
lean so we just yeah and and jared and i i will say we went to the di i don't
know if you like but in
provo like the desert industries that's their um goodwill you know it's just
where you can go get
secondhand uh clothing everything so we went to the local di and we just
started going through clothes
and we just started like oh he'd wear this kind of shirt this got a sweet ninja
or sweet dragon on it
with these acid washed jeans and then simply it was like he mentioned the moon
boots i was like sweet
i remember having those and then his wife um was like and this is the best part
this is like a day
or so later after i said yes i'm gonna do this short which was a two-day shoot
in press and it was like
no big deal yeah but before that she's like called me up and and because they
they worked together and did
everything so jerusha his wife she's like john what do you think about a perm i
was like and i was single
and i was like you know i was like okay i'm post-mission i want to like start
dating i'm not
good at dating i i don't know how to but i like girls and i want to get with
them and i don't think
a perm's gonna help me but all this thought process it's gonna be harder
everything i just told you
was a millisecond where i thought that and then within the same millisecond i
was like dude what
who am i kidding you're never gonna see another student here who's not even
officially an actor
i'm not a paid or professional actor but you're not gonna see another student
do make that kind of
commitment for student film and i saw what level jared was on and he's gonna
give it his all i was
like we are gonna kill it like of course yes i was like yeah absolutely let's
get a perm so i got my
friend who was a hairstylist and she gave me the best perm of your life that
ever that i have ever had but
it was it was tight it was amazing i still tell people the the perm in the
short is years better than
the one in the film oh really oh yeah it's so good because by the time we shot
the film we had someone
else do it they didn't they did it wrong so we had to re-perm which fried my
hair it was just a mess
so what happened between the short and it becoming a feature i mean so we did
the short
and it was awesome and we got it in like slam dance which is like sundance
adjacent in the same
place but it's the smaller version yeah and that was like that might have
gotten into a few other
film festivals but the point was is like this is a short this is a short yeah
and we love we loved
it and i to me it was perfection um and people were digging it like the local
kind of indie well
the film scene at byu like people got it they loved it but you know i didn't
know how far that was gonna
go and it was like maybe i don't know maybe a few months later that jared calls
me up he's like dude
what do you think about doing a feature next it was like the following summer
so we shot this in like
fall of 2001 and then 2003 is when we shot the summer of 2003 so it was like he
had about a year
and a half like i want to shoot a feature of this what do you think i was like
yeah of course game
like why would i say no to that yeah and he originally he what a lot of people
don't know is like
he wanted it to be just the same kind of vibe but different characters he knew
he wanted to call
it napoleon dynamite because the the black and white the short one my name is
seth and there's no
he just knew he wanted his first feature i don't see seth dynamite making 44
million in the theaters
or whatever yeah and uh that's a big mistake seth isn't working no seth svedeen
was his name okay i
like it again i like that it was right i was like oh we kept i think svedeen
made it into the film okay
but he was like he originally talked to me he was like what if we like shaved
your head and gave you
braces and he was thinking of a another crusty kid from preston idaho but wasn't
the same but then we did
this oh and then that's right he had talked to me before the short really came
out then after the
short and he saw how well it worked and it was kind of a test that you know a
lot of directors will do
that he's like no we're keeping that character yeah it works so well don't with
seth yes and then let's
we call him napoleon dynamite news new name and then we're just gonna bring
that come from so he on his
mission uh get out yeah he was on the streets in chicago came across this guy
they started talking
about like hey i'm elder hess he's like oh elder has he starts talking about
like well it's a title
we go by this and he's explaining the name so what's your name and he was like
because like that's
interesting you're talking about like interesting names well mine is napoleon
dynamite shut up he was
this like you shut the up when you're talking to me he was this weird italian
guy but get this i don't
know if a lot of this was even crazier we found out later that napoleon dynamite
was is like a pen name
that elvis costello used on one of his albums what back in like i think it was
like the 70s or 80s so
i think this guy was a big fan of elvis costello yeah or knew someone who was a
big fan it could have
been you know yes uh a hand-me-down through generations this name jared had no
idea of that
connection wow he just like that is the sweetest name i've ever heard i'm
writing it down because he
knew he was gonna be a filmmaker he was like i'm gonna make my first film
called napoleon dynamite