Specifically, the read (around a table, get it?) was of a production script titled “Bed Races” for a proposed cartoon series based on the justifiably huge indie hit “Napoleon Dynamite.” By justifiably I mean that I loved this big-hearted and hilarious Jared and Jerusha Hess collaboration that seemed to spring – like its otherworldly main character, Napoleon Dynamite – from the film’s location in the vividly surreal soil of Preston, Idaho.
Since my then-high school daughter Rachael brought the DVD home back in 2004 I’ve argued its sweet and offbeat message with a number of humor-abated folks who thought the film was insulting to people with special needs. And that might be true if the characters were special needs instead of what they were – quirky, needy and lost in a world mined with rules that nobody ever bothered to write down.
The movie – which grossed something like $44.5 million on a budget of about 48 cents – had me with the opening lines.
Kid on school bus: “What are you gonna do today, Napoleon?”
Napoleon: “Whatever I feel like I wanna do. Gosh!”
And could Karl Rove have bested Napoleon’s advice to friend Pedro as he ran for class
president, “Just tell them that their wildest dreams will come true if they vote for you.”
But the best line of all was delivered by actor Jon Heder’s Napoleon, “… nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer skills. Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.”
Who among us wasn’t transformed by that single observation? And who, for that matter, doesn’t expect a reading performed by the movie’s entire original cast to include some of the stuff movies and TV shows – the ones that are about the making of movies and TV shows – have conditioned us to expect?
In that respect, the Fox lot is one huge disappointment. No cameras being wheeled between sound stages, no feathered showgirls, cowboys or aliens waiting for calls. Just modernist buildings and a long corridor that could have been an insurance office. Or worse, a newspaper office, only better because (unlike newspapers) show business always seems to throw in a nice buffet.
And the people, I love the people – the writers and producers, actors and such. They are a bright-eyed bunch with the quick humor and everyone dressed like they are on their way to a swap meet. Why is it I expected producers like Mike Scully and writer/producer Tom Gammill (both of “The Simpsons”) and the others to appear in Burt Bacarach- casual cashmere?
Present was Heder, Aaron Ruell (Kip), Tina Majorino (Deb), John Gries (Uncle Rico), Efren Ramirez (Pedro), Sandy Martin (Grandma), Haylie Duff (Summer) and an assortment of other voices that include radio personality Phil Hendrie.
They all, these people whom we think we know but actually don’t know at all, occupied one side of the long table looking out at two rows of chairs.
The first row was filled with Fox executives, people who did not resemble in the least either Gloria Swanson or Cecil B. DeMille in that about-movies movie “Sunset Boulevard.” In the second row, backed by a tremendous view of the hills of Beverly, sat people who were far more important than me.
I was sitting behind the actors with the small children of people who know people. This gave me a great view of the 6-inch, cutout characters placed in front of each actor, showing them the way they will appear when their voices are dubbed into the half-hour cartoon show set to start airing in January.
Did I mention that my daughter Rachael, the one who long ago introduced me to this very film, is the show’s production coordinator? A show, and this I say as a completely objective reporter, that I hope the network picks up because, one, it is truly funny and, two, because I want my daughter to stay employed.
She was my main reason for being there, and it was fantastic, if not surprising in the least, to see her moving in that world with such ease. It’s a gift, that blend of easy familiarity and intensity, and it only cost me half my life and a few hundred thousand dollars. But it was worth it.
Rachael introduced me to Heder, who, in person, is tall, good looking and does not much resemble the Napoleon of years past.
Rachael: “John, would you like to meet my father?”
Heder: “I guess I would … when he gets here.”
I liked the guy immediately.
Then they got down to a table-read of the 46-page script that took 29 minutes and change. But I have no idea where they will cut a hilarious script that includes a dream where Napoleon – wracked with guilt over cheating grandma out of a bed race win – is accosted by a trio of inanimate objects demanding that he tell the truth.
A pillow jumps onto Napoleon’s face and starts to smother him. “Get off, pillow!” Heder screams in his Napoleon voice.
“Stop it. You’re going too far!” demands a paper napkin dispenser read by actor Phil LaMarr.
“Yeah, you said there’d be no killing!” yells the dragon figurine played by Diedrich Bader, who also appears in the TV show “Outsourced.”
But what amazed me is the same thing that always amazes me when people unfurl their talent, when they stop being who they are and start being other people completely. It’s true even here around a semi-formal table where lines are pried off the flat page and made to stand up, where they are given life in an ancient process that could only have been made better by a few passing showgirls and maybe a director in jodhpurs. You know, show business.
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John Bogert’s column appears on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.
Talk Radio Network syndicated host and KFI/Los Angeles weekend personality Phil Hendrie is in San Diego today for the sold-out Comic-Con International confab. Hendrie is hosting the panel, Napoleon Dynamite, featuring original cast members from the hit indie film including John Heder, Tina Majorino, Efren Ramirez, Jon Gries, Sandy Martin, and Diedrich Bader. Hendrie will present a sneak peak at never-before-seen footage of the new 20th Century Fox TV show based on the film, and lead a Q&A session with the cast members. Napoleon Dynamite follows the misadventures of an awkward high school teenager and his quirky friends as they struggle to navigate life in rural Idaho.
