jared hess Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Although it doesn't open until next year, it appears that the viral marketing machine is already cranking away in the name of Gentlemen Broncos, with the appearance of this thorough website for the film's antagonist, Cluster Award-winning author Dr. Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement, perhaps better known as one-half of New Zealand's fourth most popular folk parody duo, Flight of the Conchords).

In the provided videos and audio snippets, Clement portrays Chevalier as a third-rate Orson Scott Card with the voice of Orson Welles, and I've little trouble believing that he would both fit into the eccentric world of filmmaker Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre) and lift a story from a young fan (Michael Angarano) out of desperation.

Also starring Sam Rockwell and Jennifer Coolidge, Broncos is currently in post-production, but given the rough timetable and unique pedigree at play, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if we finally find out what the title means come Sundance next January ...

[Thanks to Matt Dentler for the heads-up.]

Things certainly seem to be moving quickly for Gentlemen Broncos. Five days ago, Patrick had first broke the news on the follow-up project for Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre creator Jared Hess. Now, The Hollywood Reporter has already announced that Sam Rockwell has signed to star along side Flight of the Conchords creator Jermaine Clement for the teen comedy. The story centers on a teen fantasy novelist who has his story ripped off by his idol at a writer's camp. Michael Angarano (Lords of Dogtown) will play the teen that comes up with the fantasy story with the unfortunate title of Yeast Lords.

Rockwell will play the fictional character in the story and there will be some "book-come-to-life sequences under two guises: one in the teen's story and one in the author's story". Well, if anybody can pull it off, it would be Rockwell -- the man has a knack for playing some of the most diverse characters without breaking a sweat. If you don't believe me, take an afternoon and watch The Green Mile and then Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and tell me those are two pretty impressive ends of the spectrum.

The script was written by the husband and wife team of Jared and Jerusha Hess, and will be produced Mike White and Ben LeClair. Both White and LeClair worked with Hess before on Nacho Libre. So it looks like Patrick's prediction came true and the cast is going to be an 'indie' affair, but with the addition of Rockwell and Clement there's just a smidgen more of 'hipster' cred. Gentlemen Broncos is scheduled to start production this March and arrive in theaters some time in 2009.

Jared Hess loves exploring the nerds, geeks, freaks, outsiders, and weirdos of the world, and God bless him for that. The outcasts are always far more interesting than the cool kids. Hess kicked off his career with Napoleon Dynamite, and if you can measure a film's popularity by how often people quote its dialogue, then Napoleon is one of the most beloved films in recent years. He followed Napoleon up with the less favorably received Nacho Libre. I think the problem most people had with Nacho is that they weren't expecting it to be a kids' movie, but I kind of dug it. It was certainly an original, and had some great visuals. Now Joblo has the scoop on his next project -- Gentlemen Broncos.

From Bronco's description and lead character (a high school outcast), it seems Hess is aiming to recapture that Napoleon magic. The film will focus on "an aspiring fantasy author. He attends a fantasy convention to show off his work and finds his supposed masterpiece - Yeast Lords - ripped off by legendary novelist Ronald Chevalier, who has turned desperate for ideas." It sounds pretty funny to me, and the whole Dungeons and Dragons/Lord of the Rings fanboy world should certainly provide Hess with ample comedy ammunition. And since his mockery tends to be pretty sweet-natured, I doubt he'll alienate those fans. No word on casting, but I wouldn't expect huge names -- it seems he'll be doing Broncos as a pretty indie affair. As with his previous films, Hess will direct and co-wrote the script with his wife, Jerusha. Sweeet.

I've noticed that the big splashy film festivals, like Sundance or Cannes, always have an eclectic mix of members on their award juries. For example, the feature film jury at Cannes in 2006 included Samuel L. Jackson, Wong Kar-Wai and Helena Bonham Carter (wouldn't you love to see those three involved in a film together?). This year's Sundance juries, which have just been announced, are no exception. Jurors for the dramatic competition include actor/musician Mos Def, actress Sarah Polley (whose feature directorial debut Away from Her is the festival's Gala opener), director Catherine Hardwicke (The Nativity Story and Thirteen), editor Pamela Martin (Little Miss Sunshine and Slums of Beverly Hills) and Dawn Hudson, executive director of Film Independent/LAFF. I'm pleased to see the high percentage of women on this jury, too.

Other Sundance 2007 juries don't have quite so many high-profile names but are still interesting: the documentary jury consists mainly of doc filmmakers, many of whom have had movies premiere at Sundance themselves: Julia Reichart, Alan Berliner (Wide Awake), Lauren Greenfield (Thin), editor Lewis Erskine and playwright Carlos Sandoval. The jury for the Alfred E. Sloane prize for indie films related to science and technology contains professors and science consultants ... and director Darren Aronofsky (The Fountain). And the short film competition jury includes Jared Hess, who directed a past Sundance hit, Napoleon Dynamite. Hess based Napoleon Dynamite on a previous short film he made, but I've never thought of him as someone with a background in short filmmaking. Still, his name will help generate popular interest in the short-film category, which always seems to need more attention than it gets.

I was not one of the many who were bowled over by the slow, curveball charms of Napoleon Dynamite. Sure, Napoleon Dynamite was fun and quotable and had a certain lunatic bravery to it. But Napoleon Dynamite was also plotless and meandering, and had a little of that back-and-to-the-left feel to it --  as if it was looking down on its characters, as opposed to looking out through them. The nice thing about mixed and incendiary indie debuts is that they usually lead to subsequent films, where you get a sense of if the director/writer/star has, in fact, more than one movie in them. So it is with Nacho Libre, the second film from Napoleon Dynamite's director and co-writer Jared Hess. Hess is back behind the helm here, and this time around he and regular co-writer (and wife) Jerusha Hess even have the benefit of a script polish by Mike White (Chuck and Buck, School of Rock) for their film. Is Nacho Libre a worthy follow-up to Napoleon Dynamite? Well, part of answering that question involves how worthy you think Napoleon Dynamite is in the first place. ...

Jack Black stars as the kindly, dim and warmhearted Ignacio, a monk-in-training at an abbey/orphanage in rural Mexico. Ignacio makes meals for the orphans out of scraps, and is pretty much low man on the abbey's totem pole in terms of duties: He doesn't even rate conversation time with the new cute nun, Sister Encarnación (Ana de la Reguar). Ignacio has but one dream: To be a luchador, a masked wrestler. And once it dawns on him that he can wrestle and use the money to buy the orphans better food, well, bring on the tights. ...

Just when I thought World Wrestling Entertainment couldn't be more of a joke, I learned through Fark.com that WWE's website features Jack Black -- actually his Nacho Libre character, Ignacio, aka "Nacho" -- in its roster of Smackdown Superstars. If you go to the site, Black can be found hidden among "real" wrestlers. Click on his photo, and there's all kinds of advertising for the new film from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess.

I know that WWE has become interested in Hollywood, but does Hollywood need to be interested in WWE? Maybe giving Black to Vince McMahon is payback for his giving the studios The Rock (I can't think of who got shafted, more)? Actually this is a pretty good cross-promotion for Paramount. As hard as it is for some of us to believe, millions of fans still love wresting and many of them will probably be drawn to this movie. I say WWE fans and Jack Black can have each other.

It feels like an explosion of Austin film news and events is going on this week. In addition to the screenings listed below, some limited-release movies are finally reaching Austin: Summer Storm, Don't Come Knocking, Awesome; I F***kin' Shot That!, and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.

• The Cine Las Americas film festival starts on Wednesday 4/19 and runs through Sunday 4/23. This week's issue of the Austin Chronicle contains previews and recommendations for the festival.
• Held over: Austin filmmaker Kyle Henry's film Room has extended its run at Alamo on South Lamar for another week.
• Nacho Libre is getting an Austin premiere, done in a very Austin way: outdoors and with live wrestling. Director Jared Hess will attend the Lucha Libre Extravaganza on Saturday 5/27, outdoors at the Glenn. You can buy tickets now or reserve a free ticket if you promise to wear a Mexican wrestling mask.

First it was "leaked" stills on the internets, and those quickly turned into "unofficial" and "behind-the-scenes" footage from all the movies that the kids really want to see. Now, however, the whole viral marketing thing is officially out of control: Paramount has released a trailer promoting the iTunes release of behind-the-scenes footage, which in turn is promoting the theatrical release of Jack Black and Jared Hess's Nacho Libre. Got all that?

Starting March 15, a series of "confessionals" recorded by Black during the filming of Nacho Libre will become available at iTunes; each week for two and a half months, a pair of installments will be released. Based on the trailer and knowing Black, the confessionals are sure to be both completely useless and incredibly funny, not to mention packed with shots of him clad only in tights. So, if you're into that sort of thing (I know I am), get fired up: only six more days until the first one drops.

There are whole lot of people looking forward to Nacho Libre, among them the crazed fans of Jack Black,  Napoleon Dynamite (and, though they may not know it, director Jared Hess), and writer Mike White (of The School of Rock fame). The movie is the story of Nacho, a priest who, in an effort to keep the orphanage in which he was raised from closing, begins moonlighting as a wrester at the local Lucha Libre club. Because the movie is due out in June, test screenings have begun and, as usual, AICN has a couple of the earliest reactions. Sadly, from the sound of things all of those fan groups are going to be very bummed out.

Though one of the reviews is really too brief to shed much light on the movie, the other is both well-informed and thoughtful. According to its writer, there are some wonderful moments in the movie: Black's acting is great, the film looks gorgeous, and the fight scenes are surprisingly good. The problem, though, is that the good parts only account for about 25% of the movie; the other 75% is crap. The screenplay is awful, a collaboration between quip-masters White and Hess that manages to have zero memorable lines. In addition, the humor is sometimes strangely juvenile, which is particularly disappointing coming from two people who are so skilled at mixing clever humor with mainstream sensibility. Yikes.

Let's all just keep repeating these two words to ourselves: "rough" and "cut."

It's official: Beck has lost his damn mind. Based on the abundant evidence of a single feature, he has elevated Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess into the film stratosphere alongside none other than Federico Fellini. Seriously. That really happened. Talking to a stunned Rolling Stone reporter, Beck dropped the following bomb: "No filmmaker since Fellini has had such an eye for amazing characters [as Hess]." Um, wow. Read that carefully, now: I realize he's not comparing Hess' visual style to that of Fellini, but still - in Beck's personal world of great characters, there are only two masters, and one of the is Jared Hess. Man, if Wong Kar Wai knew who Beck was, he would totally come kick his ass, and Michelangelo Antonioni might just tie him to a chair and force him to watch The Passenger over and over again.

Sadly for those two, the lack of Beck love means that he'll never, ever score one of their films. Since his first ever foray into movie scores will be for Hess' Nacho Libre, he clearly has very high standards for such things - if Fellini were alive, he'd be the only other man with a shot. In addition to scoring Hess' film, Beck will also contribute songs to the soundtrack (though it's unclear if they'll be new recordings); the movie hits theaters June 2.