Unsung Auteurs: Jared & Jerusha Hess | FilmInk

While the Unsung Auteurs column has featured a handful of husband-and-wife creative teams (John & Joyce Corrington, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch), none of them are quite as unusual as writer/director Jared Hess and writer/one-time-director Jerusha Hess, in all likelihood the hippest Mormon filmmaking team in cinema history. “To be a part of any religion, there are things that you practice,” Jared Hess told FilmInk in 2006.  “I don’t drink or smoke or anything. Everybody is fascinated with the Mormon lifestyle to some degree, although I don’t make a big deal out of being a Mormon. I’d never move to Hollywood though…I live in Salt Lake City in Utah. I’m going to stay in the Midwest.”

 

Though they began their career with a very large bang with 2004’s Napoleon Dynamite, the work of Jared and Jerusha Hess has been decidedly under-celebrated since, hence their status as Unsung Auteurs. Jared and Jerusha Hess met at Utah’s Brigham Young University, where they were both enrolled in film school. While there, Jared Hess directed the short film Cardboard Only, the curious tale of a seven-year-old Idaho farm boy who struggles to escape boredom while wearing a cardboard box over his head. Hess’ other short, Peluca, was the in-utero prototype, if you will, for the film that would change everything for the husband-and-wife team. Co-written by the pair and based on Jared Hess’ own experiences as a teenager, Napoleon Dynamite blew up big time and instantly put Jared and Jerusha Hess on the cinematic map.

 

The darling of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, and garnering immediate cult status, Napoleon Dynamite plays like a warped David Lynch teen flick. Delightfully quirky, this revenge-of-the-nerd comedy went on to take a staggering US $40,000,000 at the American box office (having cost just $400,000 to film), and introduced the world to a startling new talent in actor Jon Heder, who plays the awesomely named title character. Napoleon is the most unlikely of heroes:  a geek with a penchant for moon boots and medieval warriors, who lives with his all-terrain riding grandmother, and wimpy chatline addicted brother. Throw in a school presidential election, a time-travel machine purchased from the internet, a flying steak, and the Happy Hands Club, and Jared and Jerusha Hess cooked up ninety amazing minutes of pure unadulterated laugh-out-loud weirdness. Theirs was a cinematic voice unlike any other.

 

“I feel very fortunate,” Jared Hess told FilmInk in 2006. “Everything just happened after Napoleon Dynamite, which was always a very small personal film for me. I didn’t know if it would ever see the light of day. It was a labour of love and all my friends helped me make it. And then when we got into the Sundance Film Festival, it was like, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me!’ Then when we were able to sell it, and then when it caught on and people discovered the film, I was speechless. It’s very personal for me. When my mom saw the movie she said, ‘Well Jared, that was a lot of embarrassing family material.’ I think everybody feels like a loser at some point in their life. I feel like a loser quite a bit. I think that people can identify with flawed characters on screen. I don’t think that most people really admit that they’re losers. I just find that people that are trying and maybe don’t have it all together yet, are more interesting than people that just have it all.”

 

 

For a breakthrough indie director, the follow-up is vital. Quentin Tarantino backed up Reservoir Dogs with Pulp Fiction, Richard Linklater topped Slacker with Dazed And Confused, and Paul Thomas Anderson exploded the promise of Hard Eight with Boogie Nights. When Napoleon Dynamite became a major hit and cultural phenomenon (“Vote For Pedro” t-shirts, anyone?), the pressure was on to deliver again. With such a heavy weight to bear, Jared Hess made the wise move of bringing in a few extra people to share the load. Along with vital collaborator Jerusha, Hess brought in leading man Jack Black and writer/producer Mike White, two of the driving forces behind the monster hit The School Of Rock, for 2006’s utterly delightful Nacho Libre, which saw the director well and truly join the ranks of those who’ve managed to deliver on their initial promise.

 

Set in the hills of Mexico, the film revolves around Brother Ignacio (Jack Black), a kindly but spirited friar who works in the kitchen of a small orphanage. Despite being given no money for choice ingredients, Ignacio is put upon by the priests for his lumpy, taste-free food. When he sees Ramses (Cesar Gonzalez), a superstar of “Lucha Libre” (Mexican wrestling with the moves – but none of the over-the-top showbiz pizzazz – of rock’n’roll wrestling, where the combatants wear garish masks and take on near superhero qualities), being feted, a light bulb goes off in Ignacio’s head. Teaming with wild street urchin Esqueleto (Hector Jimenez), Ignacio dons his own mask and heads into the ring to get money to make better food for the children of the orphanage. Seeking the wisdom of the Gypsy Emperor (Peter Stormare), Ignacio will eventually climb right to the top of the Lucha Libre tree, while trying to win the favour of beautiful nun Sister Encarnacion (Ana de la Reguera) along the way.

 

Though not exactly loved by critics and far from a box office smash, Nacho Libre is an unbridled joy. Sporting a curly wig, moustache and just-this-side-of-crazy Spanish accent, Jack Black is brilliant as Ignacio, easily tapping into the character’s full throttle energy, but also finding the sweetness that drives his quest. Newcomers Hector Jimenez and Ana de la Reguera have charm to burn, while the background extras (all made up of local Mexican actors) add colour, authenticity and a vivid sense of place to the highly enjoyable proceedings. Perfect for the whole family, Nacho Libre is a true one of a kind, and in the best possible way. It showed once again that Jared and Jerusha Hess, even when teamed with other creative forces, have an unmistakeable vision of their own. “We rehearsed and had a lot of fun,” Jack Black told FilmInk in 2006 of working with Jared Hess. “The writing was amazing too. Jared has got all the voices in his head. He can do every character. I’d love to see him do a one-man show someday. You can’t believe what a great performer he is. He’s hilarious; he’s very odd and strange in a great way.”

 

While Jared and Jerusha Hess have continued to make funny, strange and wholly original films since Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, their first two films are unarguably their best. 2009’s Gentlemen Broncos (in which Michael Angarano’s wannabe teenage writer discovers that one of his ideas has been stolen by Jemaine Clement’s arrogant and very successful novelist) is quite extraordinary in its own very curious way, but is almost wilfully strange and singular, and failed to connect with audiences. It is, however, wholly individualistic as a work of art, and deserves far more appreciation than it currently gets. The film also served as something of a catalyst for Jerusha Hess. “I remember thinking after my husband and I finished Gentlemen Broncos – our weirdest and most testicular film to date – that I really needed to start making movies for girls,” Jerusha Hess told FilmInk in 2011.

 

The product of that thought was 2011’s Austenland, which Jerusha Hess adapted from Shannon Hale’s novel and directed solo. Sorely underrated, Austenland is a fluffy, flouncy, romantic romp for any woman who has fallen in love with Jane Austen’s books or, indeed, her romantic hero, Mr. Darcy. Keri Russell stars as thirtysomething singleton, Jane Hayes, a seemingly normal young woman with a secret: she’s obsessed with Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy, the misty-eyed ideal of the much-loved novel, Pride And Prejudice. This obsession is ruining Jane’s love life for one simple reason – no real man can measure up to this towering literary figure. But when Jane decides to spend her life savings on a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-crazed women, her fantasies of meeting the perfect Austen-era gentleman suddenly become more real than she ever could have imagined.

 

“My husband directs very differently than me, but the things that I took away from him are that he handles the whole set pretty generously, and with a lot of love,” Jerusha Hess told FilmInk in 2011 of lighting out on her own. “When you’re nice to people, they bring their A-game. I saw how collaborative it was for him. He wasn’t sitting on his throne making demands. He had people help and contribute. They felt that they were a part of it, and they really loved it. So, that’s how I directed as well. I did things a little differently though, in that he kind of line-reads for his actors. Jared is a funny guy, and he does great voices. He knows exactly how everything should sound, and he tells them. I think that can be a little disconcerting, so I was more like, ‘Let’s see what you’ve got and just bring it.’ They improvised, and the actors made this an amazing project because they just brought so much into it.”

 

Disappointingly, Jerusha Hess is yet to direct another film, largely focusing instead of raising her children. “I would love to direct another movie, but it’s a give and take when you have babies,” Jerusha Hess told FilmInk in 2011. “Also, Jared makes forty times as much as me, so he’ll make the next one, and we’ll see when I can do it again. I would love to. I had such a fun time doing it. I loved my actors.” And they loved her too. “Jerusha Hess is probably one of the coolest Mormons on earth,” Austenland’s Bret McKenzie (The Flight Of The Conchords actor/comedian/musician) gushed to FilmInk.

 

Jared Hess continued to ply his wonderfully weird directorial trade with 2015’s Don Verdean, on which he co-wrote once again with Jerusha Hess. Despite boasting a great cast (Sam Rockwell, Jemaine Clement, Amy Ryan, Will Forte) on top form, an engagingly unusual premise (a Biblical archaeologist tries everything to inspire the faithful), and the cock-eyed sense of humour now a trademark of Jared and Jerusha Hess, Don Verdean sunk with barely a trace, as did that same year’s very funny comedy Masterminds, which saw Jared Hess for the first time directing a script he didn’t write. A killer laugh fest about a loopy real-life armoured car heist starring Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig, Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis, Masterminds is much, much better than its ice-cold reception would have you believe.

 

While Jared Hess has been busy producing and directing for television (Making History, The Righteous Gemstones, Murder Among The Mormons, Son Of Zorn, The Last Man On Earth) and Jerusha Hess has been busy raising their family, the quirky-as-all-get-out husband and wife team have reunited for this year’s animated family film Thelma The Unicorn, an adaptation of the popular books by hugely popular Australian author (and one-time actor) Aaron Blabey (The Bad Guys). We can’t wait to witness their combined cinematic vision again. “We’re very different people creatively but we have more in common than not, I guess,” Jared Hess told FilmInk in 2006 of working with Jerusha. “It’s difficult…and sometimes I end up sleeping on the couch! But it all works out in the end.”