With Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, Jared Hess established himself as a director with a distinctive visual style, a fixation on oddball characters and a love of awkward comedy.

He’s almost a fictional anthropologist, plopping his camera down in alien surroundings and filming whatever wanders in front of it. 

His new film, Gentlemen Broncos [see review here], is the story of Utah teenager Benjamin Purvis (Michael Angarano), whose life falls apart when his incomprehensible sci-fi novel Yeast Lords is stolen by his idol, pompous novelist Reginald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement, from Flight Of The Conchords). 

It feels more alien than usual, since we get to see snatches of Yeast Lords as alternately envisioned by Benjamin and Chevalier, with Sam Rockwell playing radically different versions of the story’s hero, battling an army of cyclops henchmen with the help of a tricked-out Battle Stag. 

I sat down with Hess at the Park Hyatt last week, on the last leg of the Gentlemen Broncos promo tour.

Where did the idea of Gentlemen Broncos come from? 

My wife actually has a cousin that lives in Alaska, he’s like 15, and for a long time he’s been writing really messed-up science-fiction stories that have had his parents worried. We read some of them. They’re pretty disturbing, and it’s kinda funny that it’s coming from a young kid. So we definitely related to that, in different ways, and liked the idea of making a movie about a kid that writes stuff like that. 

Your films are so specific, each one taking place in its own distinct universe. What’s your creative process like? 

When my wife and I are writing, one of the first things we write down is what they’re wearing and how awesome their hair is. And then we slowly start to figure out what they sound like. We have a very clear idea of who the characters are when we’re writing, so it can make casting difficult. You’ve got such a specific vision of who you want these people to be. Sometimes you’ll write with people in mind – we knew we wanted Sam Rockwell to play Bronco and Jennifer Coolidge as the mother.  

Was it easy to get everyone on the same wavelength?

It’s always fun when you share a comedic sensibility with the people you’re working with. There’s that creative respect for each other’s work. They definitely didn’t come on this film for the payday, because nobody really got paid – it was pretty low-budget – so when they’re coming on because they loved the script and the characters, and that kind of thing, it’s fun to collaborate with people that share a similar kind of comedic outlook on life. And we were very lucky, because all the people on this cast did. 

The look of the Yeast Lords scenes is so weirdly precise – like a forensic re-creation of some terrible 1970s backyard epic. Are you working something out there? 

A lot of my favourite cult films that I discovered as I got older, all the science-fiction stuff was made with limited resources. All the effects had a lot of character and personality to them, and a lot of charm that you don’t see now. And this being the science-fiction world of a 15-year-old kid, it’s fun to be outrageous with what is in this kid’s mind. And then see how that gets tweaked and changed to something that Dr. Chevalier would think exotic. 

It’s interesting that this is a movie where the conflict comes from people fighting over the ownership of a really bad idea. 

But I love the idea. The creative process is very satisfying in almost anything that you do, and it’s very fun to watch people be creative and pursue their dreams. All the characters in the film are engaged creatively, whether it’s the mom and her nightgown designs or Lonnie and his horse movies, or Chevalier, or Benjamin doing their science-fiction stuff. Everybody’s doing something creative. I love to see people hold true to their vision of things, even if it’s ridiculous and out there. Even if the rest of the world misunderstands it, to a degree, we still have something to learn from it.

Three movies in, you seem to gravitate towards characters with some level of emotional retardation – Napoleon, Nacho and Benjamin all spend a lot of time inside their heads, where they can be much cooler and more accomplished than they really are. 

Yeah, definitely. Benjamin’s different than the protagonists in my two previous films. He’s surrounded by really eccentric personalities, and he’s the most normal one, in a weird way. Until you get inside his head, and you learn about why he’s strange and maybe has a difficult time connecting, because of the work that he’s created. 

Napoleon Dynamite had its detractors, Nacho Libre was savaged by some critics when it came out, and Gentlemen Broncos is a pretty hard sell. Do you ever feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle to find your audience? 

It’s not about being understood by everybody, you know what I mean? When people can connect to you on some level, it’s great. Nacho was such, like, a specific culture, and it was different from Napoleon in a lot of ways. It’s funny, I find that there are two completely different audiences for those films. “I don’t like Napoleon, but I love Nacho!” And Napoleon fans are all, “I didn’t really like Nacho that much.”

I feel like all our films have been polarizing. It’s a very specific sensibility, and when we’re making a film, I’ll think “Gosh, I wonder what kind of people are going to like this film?” You do what makes sense to you. You make the film that you wanted to see – and then you cross your fingers and hope that there’s people out there like you.

Interview Clips

Jared Hess on casting Jemaine Clements as Dr. Chevalier:

Hess on casting Sam Rockwell as a platinum-haired yeast warrior:

Hess on challenging audience expectations with his films: