Born and raised in Preston, Idaho—an idyllic rural town that would later serve as the prime location for his movie—Hess determined early in life to become a filmmaker. He began working as a camera assistant for TC Christiansen, a director of photography for IMAX films. Hess then attended Brigham Young University, where he studied film, and met his future wife and collaborator, Jerusha. Another significant relationship was forged at BYU with actor Jon Heder, who would later play the lead character in “Napoleon Dynamite.”
Before making his feature, Hess wrote and directed a 9-minute black-and-white short, “Peluca” (2003), the precursor to “Napoleon Dynamite”. In “Peluca”, Hess told the tale of Seth, a loveable geek enamored with ninja books, unicorns, and fanny packs—all the familiar obsessions Hess and his brothers shared growing up. The film was one of twelve to compete in the shorts program at the 2003 Slamdance Film Festival. It was well-received, and off that success Hess secured funding to film a feature-length version, which he penned with his wife. Though the story involved the same character, Hess chose to rename him Napoleon Dynamite after an older Italian man he met in Chicago after being sent home from a two-year Mormon mission to Venezuela due to illness. Hess cast old friend Heder as the lead—the only actor he felt could pull off the role.
If the first day of shooting were accurate in portending the outcome of the movie, Hess would have had a disaster on his hands: the camera truck broke down on its way to set, and Hess, the crew, and the actors waited half a day for the camera to finally arrive. The rest of the shoot, however, came off without a hitch, and after 22 days of filming, Hess had his first feature in the can. All throughout, his hometown community pitched in and helped any way they could: they let the crew sleep in basements and allowed Hess to use locations for free. Hess got his film into Sundance, but worried about how audiences would receive it—so intense were his fears, Hess was physically ill until the moment the lights went down. His fears soon abated, however, when the audience began laughing at jokes he initially felt might be too obscure; indeed, they laughed heartily throughout and rose to their feet when the lights came back up. Fox Searchlight Pictures snatched up the film for a cool $3 million and turned a hearty profit well before the film peaked at 921 screens and over $30 million in receipts. Meanwhile, the exasperated cry of “Gosh!” re-entered the cultural lexicon and Hess found himself with a budding career in Hollywood. He began filming off-beat television spots, including one for AOL, and started developing “Napoleon Dynamite” into a TV series.
Hess finally moved on from “Napoleon Dynamite”—if only for the moment—to direct his first studio picture, “Nacho Libre” (2006), a rude-and-crude comedy starring Jack Black as a monastery cook whose awful food prompts him to go on a quest to raise money for the orphanage so the children can have good food to eat. His quest leads him to moonlight as a lucha libre wrestler—a pursuit strictly forbidden by the church elders. Along the way, he becomes one of Mexico’s top wrestlers, finding his true identity and his rightful place in the world. Hess had been fascinated by lucha libre wrestling ever since he’s seen a Spanish-language movie featuring Santo—the so-called Muhammad Ali of the Mexican wrestling world—as a teenager. When Hess met Black at the 2004 Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado where “Napoleon Dynamite” was screening, he pitched the actor several ideas centered in the mysterious and sometimes absurd world of lucha libre. Because of his two years spent on an LDS mission in Venezuela, where he became fluent in Spanish, Hess was confident in his choice to film on location in Mexico with a local cast and crew—something he required for authenticity. With little competition for its opening weekend, “Nacho Libre” seemed assured of the top spot at the box office.