7 Questions with Jared and Jerusha Hess of 'Gentlemen Broncos'

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While in film school at Brigham Young University, Jared and Jerusha Hess wrote a screenplay and recruited their friends -- including a then-unknown actor named Jon Heder -- to help turn it into what would become one of the most successful movies of 2004, Napoleon Dynamite. Since then they've made two more films: 2006's Nacho Libre (starring Jack Black), and Gentlemen Broncos, which will be released October 30.

A Gentlemen Broncos poster (via Iwatchstuff.com)
Napoleon Dynamite gained its cult classic status by following an awkward misfit in rural Idaho, and Gentlemen Broncos isn't so different. The protagonist, Benjamin Purvis (Michael Angarano), is a 17-year-old aspiring sci-fi writer who spends much more time in his own head than hanging out with his peers. He nervously submits his masterpiece Yeast Lords to a fantasy writing competition judged by his idol Ronald Chevalier (hilariously portrayed by Jemaine Clement), and is enraged when Chevalier changes a few names and publishes the story under his own name. And as demonstrated by the bizarre fantasy sequences used to portray Yeast Lords, the two writers have a very different interpretation of the story.

We sat down with the husband and wife duo to talk about Gentlemen Broncos, rural America and "cloning humor."

Zimbio: Who's funniest offscreen: Jon Heder, Jack Black or Jemaine Clement?
Jerusha Hess: Jack Black. Jemaine is very reserved, and Jon Heder is not funny.
Jared Hess: Jemaine and Jon turn it off and can turn it on onscreen, but Jack, he's kind of like, all the time, a little firecracker.

Zimbio: Napoleon Dynamite was your first movie, and that really blew up (Vote for Pedro T-shirts, etc.) Did you feel a lot of pressure after that one came out to come up with something really spectacular?
Jared: We were more surprised by it all. It being our first film, we never anticipated it. We hoped that it would maybe get into a festival or maybe get on a late night cable program or something eventually, that it would lead to other things.
Jerusha: We purposely made a movie that was nothing like Napoleon for our second movie. We didn't want people to go, "Oh, it's kind of like Napoleon, but not as good." So we made Nacho.

Zimbio: How did you feel like Nacho Libre stacked up?
Jared: We found that a lot of people who really like Napoleon didn't like Nacho, but Nacho kind of had a new kind of younger...[laughs] I feel like a lot of kids really like that movie. It's a lot more physically funny.
Jerusha: So Gentlemen Broncos went back to our Napoleon roots. We'll see what our Nacho fans think.

Zimbio: You tend toward the more G-rated comedies versus the hardcore sex and violence ones out there. Is that intentional?
Jerusha: This is our first PG-13 movie. Our five-year-old audience is going to be a little disappointed. We put all that testicular humor in because we were potty-training our son. It was really on the mind.
Jared: I like to refer to it as "cloning humor." I'm worried about what my grandparents and mom and dad are going to think about this film, just because of the body aspects of it.
Jerusha: We do like to make these kind of fun, family, anyone can enjoy these movies. And it's not that we're intentionally going out to say, "Oh, we gotta make a G movie." We're a bit tame.

Zimbio: When your mom saw Napoleon Dynamite, she felt like it was a little personal. You tend to draw from your own experiences when you're making films, right?
Jared: [in mom voice] "That was a lot of embarrassing family material."
Jerusha: She loves it.
Jared: My little brothers especially -- with Napoleon, things that happened in the film were things that happened to them growing up.
Jerusha: I don't know if his brothers have gotten over it still. I think there'a little animosity there.
Jared: Like when my little brother called and was like, "Jared, is mom there?" "No James, she's not." "Can you bring me my chapstick? My lips are killing me right now." It's increasingly becoming more a family affair with each movie. On the DVD commentary for this film it's like, "And there's Jerusha's uncle Hal in the background clapping, and that person there in the choir is my mom, and there's Aunt Becky." Yeah.

Zimbio: What's it like working together as a husband and wife team?
Jared: We bring different things to the table and those things change all the time. We write everything together.
Jerusha: By the end of the script we don't know who wrote what. I want to claim all the funny stuff but I doubt I did it.

Zimbio: So everything that's not bathroom humor is Jerusha?
Jerusha: No, I put in a lot of the "cloning" jokes.
Jared: Yeah, it was your idea for Bronco to be sewing his loins back together.

Zimbio: One of the things you do best is portraying rural America and the people you see in the Home Depot. How do you get the inspiration to do that?
Jerusha: We just always have our eyes open.
Jared: Yeah, and so much of it's autobiographical too. So much of it is inspired by our immediate family, and actual people, so it becomes easy for us to regurgitate who they are on the page.
Jerusha: Occasionally we'll be somewhere, we were at a Heart concert or maybe the fair, where there was a lot of mullets and it was just fun and cute. We saw some kid walk across and Jared and I both had this amazing moment where we were like, "That kid has to be in our movie."
Jared: He was the real deal. But living in that part of America, it's what inspires us.
Jerusha: I know we're really on the nose with some of our characters, but we sometimes try to be subtle with it too.
Jared: We realized that all the antagonistic forces in this film wear turtlenecks.

Michael Angarano plays the main character Benjamin in Gentlemen Broncos.
Zimbio: Like cartoon characters. But sometimes the caricatures of rural America seem almost a little bleak. Is that intentional at all?
Jared: Maybe too much of anything is bleak.
Jerusha: I think we wanted to show that here's this single mom [Benjamin's mom, played by Jennifer Coolidge], and she has been single for a long time, and it's kind of gone over the top with the girliness in the house. Without that male influence, I think it is a little depressing. She's just alone in that poor little dome.

Zimbio: Napoleon Dynamite was small-budget because you were in school, but now you have a lot more production money to work with. Has that changed your process at all?
Jared: We've tried not to let it change the process. It's good to be able to pay our crew, which we weren't really able to do on Napoleon. That one was a labor of love all around, it was buddies from film school that came.
Jerusha: Nacho had some stunts, but there were no special effects. But this one had quite a bit of special effects, but I think Jared doesn't like a really involved movie. I think you just like making simpler movies. You don't want to go make Transformers 5 or whatever.
Jared: Yeah, I'm interested in people at the thrift store and my own family.

Zimbio: How did you decide to portray the fantasy portions?
Jared: We thought the idea of different people changing and interpreting this young kid's work was just fun to see.
Jerusha: This is a 17-year-old boy's fantasy, and really, would he be writing such elaborate effects? It's nice to see that it's just a little bit ghetto because it's a young boy's dream.
Jared: His ideas are kind of low-fi.

Zimbio: Does your Mormon faith come into the movie at all?
Jared: Probably in an unconscious way.
Jerusha: Sure. But I think the culture, more so.
Jared: I was a Mormon, Spanish-speaking missionary in Chicago. I was in Cicero. I met a guy on the street and he was like, "Hey church people, I want to talk to you." We went over and he was like, "Why are you called 'elders?' " You know, that's the title you have as a missionary. I'm like, "Oh, it's a title...What's your name?" He said, "My name is Napoleon Dynamite." I wrote down his name and I was like, "Holy cow, first movie title has to be Napoleon Dynamite." I don't know if he was just messing with us or that was his sweet street name, but I've always wondered if he remembers that day.

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