Jon Heder has had a few notable TV guest appearances in America for "Mad TV" and "Good Day L.A.". Napoleon Dynamite will be the first time many UK audiences will get to see him…

Q: In the production notes, it suggests that you regarded this as something of a role of a lifetime? Could you tell us about that please?
Jon Heder: I guess in a lot of different meanings. It’s the first feature film that I have done and it may be the role of my lifetime, I mean I have to accept the fact that I may be known for the rest of my life as the guy who plays the geek. And it’s the role of a lifetime because I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to top that kind of character, you know if another writer or director will come to me with another character as challenging.

Q: How did you create him? What I loved about him was not only the language that he speaks because it just reminded me of so many teenage kids, the mono syllabic “Huh” kind of way that they react to everything. But the body language. Did you study kids from your own youth and high school days?
Jon Heder: Yeah, it was just remembering observations. I drew a lot of inspiration from my younger brothers. I have two younger brothers and they inspired certain aspects, especially how he talks. But how he moves, I just thought… so what’s a kid going to look like when physically he’s got no balance, he would be horrible at sports, even though he thinks he’s amazing.

Q: And the hair… was it your own hair that was given a perm?
Jon Heder: It was permanent when I got it and those curls stay in, locked until you cut them off or let them grow out. When we shot the short film Peluca (the pre-cursor to Napoleon Dynamite) back in 2001, I kept it for a couple of months, and I liked playing with the hair and it was easy to maintain. But after we shot the feature-length film, it was like, this is my third perm so my hair was kind of fried and wasn’t very good so they actually permed it again and permed it straight which fried it even more so I looked like a lion…

Q: I feel I should ask then, given what you just said, did you wear the outfit out?
Jon Heder: I never went out like that, with the cast. I mean when I had the hair, I washed it very little, I washed it I think three times through the whole month we shot. I couldn’t get it wet that often because it was the third perm. So we would style it up and part it so much, that if it was washed then it was much cleaner looking, much flatter. I hardly ever walked around in his outfit, I would never wear the moonboots and I would put on my own clothes. I didn’t wear the glasses and I would open my eyes.

Q: Were you a sports jock or were you more inclined to be a geek like the rest of us?
Jon Heder: I was probably more towards the geek. I was definitely not a sports jock. I wasn’t as clueless as Napoleon – he has no idea how dorky he is – I knew how dorky I was and I was kind of in between. I had a twin brother so we kind of had our clique… then we had other friends… we were friends with a lot of the popular kids but then we also had nerdy kids who were friends, it was kind of a blend.

Q: Were you identical twins? I’m wondering if you do that things that twins do: messing with teachers and pretending to be one another?
Jon Heder: We were identical, we did that more when we were in elementary school, not so much when we were growing up cause our teachers were smart.

Q: Was there any thought or hope of a franchise with this film? Is it a character you would like to play again, do you think he has some potential?
Jon Heder: He easily has potential for sequels or TV shows and all kinds of stuff. We always hear from fans “We want to see Napoleon in some more adventures”, so it would be easy to franchise. When we made it though, we were just simply making a film that we hoped would be bought some day and that large masses of people would see it, and so far that dream has come true in a lot of ways. But speaking in franchise terms, I don’t know, we’ll see what happens. I wouldn’t place bets on a sequel…but I guess I wouldn’t mind playing it again, especially if Jared Hess who wrote and directed it was involved.

Q: And play him within that world he inhabits just now?
Jon Heder: Well that world in Preston is going to stay that way for another good number of years so we don’t have to worry about that changing.

Q: So it’s beyond redemption?
Jon Heder: Well you know it’s its own form, it’s its own redemption really.

Q: The director claims that the scene with the cow being shot actually happened. Do you know the story behind that?
Jon Heder: I don’t know much, except that someone had seen it happen at one point. I don’t know how personal it was to Jared… I don’t think that any of his brothers were on the bus, but it did happen in real life as the kids were driving by on the bus so it kind of ruined them all.

Q: Why do you think the character of Napoleon has enjoyed such huge success in America?
Jon Heder: I think because maybe so many people are just sick of seeing so much emphasis being put on looks and how popular you are. Personally sometimes I’m just sick of seeing high school movies and the messages they give…. Celebrating the nerd liberates so many young people, and even old, it was very liberating for me.

Q: And I wondered what that situation was in your own case. I mean did you bake a cake to win the young lady of your dreams or did she send you a note saying yes I will go with you to the school dance?
Jon Heder: I did some nerdy stuff, but I never baked a cake. I think I sent her a pine cone with some lame picture. I was definitely awkward with the females, once again I wasn’t as awkward as Napoleon but I always was trying to hook up with the ladies and I didn’t always have the luck.

Q: One of the many tremendous scenes in the film is that thing that happens at dances, you get people just sitting there looking enviously at people who are having a good time dancing, whereas they’re too scared to make that step.
Jon Heder: Yeah, that was me at the dances. It was like you wanted to dance but at the same time you thought it would be nerdy to get up there and do it.

Q: Will your next film be something completely different?
Jon Heder: Well there’s the desire to get away. We’ll see, I would like to do some more comedy but I would like to do something a little more dramatic.

Q: Are there offers in the bag?
Jon Heder: Some offers…there have been a couple of offers or scripts that are basically very similar to Napoleon. And most of that stuff I am trying to stay away from. Obviously there is a certain dorkiness to some of the roles that I might be interested in but…

Q: What would you say was your comedic inspiration?
Jon Heder: In High School I loved Jim Carrey, I still love Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell… Jack Black a lot of those comedians are great. Dana Carvey, a lot of those guys… growing up in high school those were my comedic inspirations.

Q: How did the town of Preston receive the film?
Jon Heder: We went to the premiere in Preston. It was kind of both ways… I think a lot of the youngsters really loved it and some of the regular people were like: “Is this making fun of us?” so kind of a mixed reaction. Plus it was kind of hard as it’s such an old theatre: the sound was bad. But I hear now that they’re gearing up for school year, they’re going to be having steak-throwing competitions and doing this whole Napoleon kind of fayre at the High School, so I think that they’re really embracing it.

Q: Talking of steaks, tell us about that, how much did it hurt?
Jon Heder: It hurt, a lot. We did about four takes. The first two takes he completely missed cause he was a good distance away and it was actually John Gries who played Uncle Rico who threw the steak. The third one hit me in the armpit and then left this nasty meat juice on the shirt. And the fourth one he said ‘look I’m just going to throw it hard cause I can’. So he really threw it hard, it smacked and ripped my glasses off and I had this big bruise that we had to cover up with makeup. It hurt but luckily I stayed in character cause I was like I don’t know what I’m going to do if I crack up. There were two scenes where I had difficulty staying in character which was the Rex Kwon Do scene…I was busting up when Rex was doing his scene. And then when I’m throwing food at the llama, I was just laughing, I was actually throwing food at the llama, and we cut that out because there was not a clean shot.

Q: And your big dance?
Jon Heder: It was just ad-libbed, all improv.

Q: How tough was that? Because that’s got to be the mixture of two things: the blossoming of the geek and the dance steps that don’t look too bad at all.
Jon Heder: I like to dance and Jared knew that so he wrote that into the script and we just said hey let’s play some good music…some Jamiroquai. We both love that music. Take 3 takes and we’ll take the best of the best.

Q: Were there hours of research involved for the very important speech you make right at the beginning about the Loch Ness monster?
Jon Heder: There was research done when I was in elementary school and I had to do reports on the Loch Ness. But Jared actually said go ahead and make up your own stuff, he wrote some of it and was like, just start ad-libbing.

Q: How was the whole Sundance experience because it was a sensation at Sundance?
Jon Heder: It was insane. It was really cool… it was basically where everything happened for the film and for me. That was our ultimate goal, to get into Sundance, to get it seen by some serious studios. At the first screening, the people went nuts.

Q: Did you rub shoulders with any of the people that you admire from the movies?
Jon Heder: I didn’t really get to meet all that many, I met a lot of agents….

Q: Was it an emotional thing because that was possibly something that you thought you would never achieve in your career?
Jon Heder: I think as an emotion it was just overwhelming, I wasn’t crying or like ‘Oh my God’… It was very cool because of the potential opportunities I saw in the future and I was like gosh, I could be doing this or that in the future. But at the time who knew if audiences were going to like it, so I really didn’t start to realise until just this summer, when I saw people gobbling it up.

Q: Have you been in the theatre, hiding in the back, watching the audience’s reaction?
Jon Heder: I did that once or twice, more towards the beginning when it wasn’t as big so the reactions weren’t as big… but now

Q: What was it like working with Tina Majorino, who you may remember first as a child onscreen.
Jon Heder: We became very good friends and I asked her all the questions about what her experiences were like. So it was cool, really cool to work with her because it was the first film she had done in four years, she basically took a break. For her it was like revisiting so it was kind of a new experience for all of us. But yeah, she definitely worked on some big productions back in the day and we talked a lot about that. And the same with John Gries who played Rico, he’s never been in the limelight but he’s been in the film business for so long and doing so many odd jobs.

Q: How was the chicken scene to shoot?
Jon Heder: Yeah it was fun, I really liked that scene cause it was nasty and it really smelled bad and it was like I couldn’t eat chicken for a while and chickens, you know, smell like chicken. But it was like phew, I’m not supposed to be smelling this, is that the meat? Shouldn’t it be smelling like something else? But it was really fun to handle animals.

Q: Are you now an expert at identifying the peculiarities and …of the common law garden chicken?
Jon Heder: Yeah.

Q: Is that a country boy thing?
Jon Heder: That’s an FFA thing (Future Farmers of America).

Q: So that’s what that stands for, I was wondering.
Jon Heder: It’s a real thing… I was interested that they never really pointed that out in the film, it was just more of a background detail.

Q: Because you and Pedro both wear these jackets with the badges. Kind of like boy scouts who like farms.
Jon Heder: Yeah, that’s basically it… instead of going camping they taste test whole-milk, sounds like lots of fun.

Q: I believe you were an animation student…
Jon Heder: Yeah, I always wanted to get into film and I was studying film at the time we made the short film Peluca, and when we made Napoleon Dynamite, the whole time on the side I would audition for short student films… I was always somewhat interested in acting, but for me I was like look I’m not going to try and get jobs in acting unless I definitely am interested in continuing to do this type of work.

Q: In this age of mobile phones, the scene with the long phone cord, really made me laugh…
Jon Heder: I thought the funniest part was obviously that the home phone had a cord on it that was a mile long. Yeah, we grew up with the cord… nowadays I hardly have any cord phones… I think taking the phone round the corner was improvised. I just figured that Napoleon is the kind of guy that likes to keep his conversations private. I was just talking about my chapstick that no-one else touched. Kids are embarrassed when they have physical problems, especially chapped lips.

Q: Who do you think the film will appeal to?
Jon Heder: That’s a good question because when we made the film, our first impression was that it was going to most appeal to the 18-30 year old range cause a lot of us who made the film were mostly in our twenties. And you know there’s a lot of 80’s references in it and there’s a lot of early 90’s. Surprisingly the movie has really exploded with early teens… They are crazy about the movie… and then our age group started to realise oh it’s cool, it’s cool to like this movie and its funny.

Q: Did you ever consider the character of Napoleon as being mentally impaired?
Jon Heder: No, no, I think he’s socially impaired, he’s a social misfit. Although they’re bordering that line… both him and Kip I think. Kip even more in some ways. I mean it’s just he’s grown up in a different environment, and he’s a good kid and I don’t think technically he has any learning difficulties, just a little awkwardness that seeps into some of his other functions.

Q: Could you give us an indication of what happens in the ‘extra scene’ to the film which will be released later during the film’s release here?
Jon Heder: It was Fox Searchlight’s idea in the US to make an extra ending and then we wrote it, just basically so those who have seen it 3 or 4 times can go and see it another 3 or 4 times to see the extra ending. It’s a wedding between two of the characters…. But it’s just a chance to see all the characters again for a short time.

Related Links:

• Napoleon Dynamite: Movie Review
  
• Jon Heder: Surf’s Up Interview