Hess used his real-life upbringing in Preston, Idaho-he had six brothers and his mom owned llamas-to form the basis of the movie, about a nerdy teenager named Napoleon (Heder) who encourages his friend Pedro (Efren Ramirez) to run for class president. The film got accepted into the Slamdance Film Festival, which gave Hess the courage to adapt it into a feature. In 2002, Brigham Young University film student Jared Hess filmed a black-and-white short, Peluca, with his classmate Jon Heder. ChapStick, llamas, and tater tots are just a few things that appear in Napoleon Dynamite, a cult film shot for a mere $400,000 that went on to gross $44.5 million.