#napolean dynamite

༉‧✰◛⁺⑅ 𝓵𝓮𝓽'𝓼 𝓭𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮 𝓲𝓷 𝓼𝓽𝔂𝓵𝓮, 𝓵𝓮𝓽'𝓼 𝓭𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓪 𝔀𝓱𝓲𝓵𝓮♡⋆˚.༄─★

"If I look back at the scripts I received after 'Napoleon Dynamite' (2004), I think the town thought I had multiple personalities that were all a variation of that character. They probably just thought of me as someone their kids liked, but was more like the goofy kid that asked to mow their lawn, not a professional actor."

Screenwriters/husband and wife Jared and Jerusha Hess wrote the climactic dance scene for the film because they knew Jon Heder liked to dance. "Jared's wife was like, 'Jon, I hear you're pretty good dancer. I've seen you boogie; it's pretty sweet,'" recalled Heder. "And I was like, 'Well, I like to dabble.' I liked to mess around sometimes in front of friends and dance. But I did take pride in it. I won't be modest. I wasn't great but I did like to mess around...Cut to two years later: after we had shot the short, they were like, 'Okay we're going to have you dancing in the movie as the climax. This is going to make or break the film.'"

When it came to shooting the dance scene for the final film, the producers scheduled to film it towards the end of the film. When they finally got to the scene, they were running out of money and film. They only had one roll of film (approximately 10.5 minutes) left to shoot.

"It was a lot of pressure," Heder observed. "I was like, 'Oh, crap!' This isn't just a silly little scene. This is the moment where everything comes, and he's making the sacrifice for his friend. That's the whole theme of the movie. Everything leads up to this. Napoleon's been this loser. This has to be the moment where he lands a victory. He gets up there, and it's quiet: no reaction from the audience."

The dance was spontaneously improvised by Heder, with some choreography help from Tina Majorino, and additional moves taken from "Saturday Night Fever," (1977) Michael Jackson, and "Soul Train." "They were like, 'No, Jon, just figure it out.' So I just winged it. I danced three times and they took the best pieces from each of those."

"When you're shooting in independent film, you don't know what you're going to get the rights to," Heder explained. "We thought Jamiroquai might be expensive. So we danced to three different songs. To that song ("Canned Heat') and another Jamiroquai song, 'Little L.' We danced to Michael Jackson, something off of 'Off the Wall.' Just those three. And then we got the rights to Jamiroquai. And I think that was half our budget."