Jared Hess

I was going to say exactly that.

Jared Hess was the creative on the Minecraft movie, Napoleon Dynamite.

You probably know him, Nacho Libre.

And they gave it to the right creative for Minecraft.

Neither had any background in education.

They made a self-financed pilot and put it online, and Jared Hess, who directed Napoleon Dynamite, saw it and recommended it to Nickelodeon.

That's the whole origin story.

And what they built was deliberately a dual-audience show.

But it's just not.

I've never been a Minecraft guy and I like Jared Hess in theory.

We love

Mormons, don't we folks?

His father and my uncle, Jimmy Engelman, has requested the 2004 indie coming-of-age teen comedy Napoleon Dynamite, starring John Hader, John Grease, Aaron Russell, Efren Ramirez, and Tia Majorino.

The June 11, 2004 film, which was director and co-writer Jared Hess's first full-length movie and a semi-adapter of his 2002 short film Palooka, in it, nerdy, socially awkward teen Napoleon decides to help his new immigrant best friend Pedro win the class presidency election in their small Western high school while pursuing a fellow student and dealing with his strange personal life.

Its total worldwide gross was only $46.1 million in theaters, but it's gained quite a big cult following in the years since.

According to IMDb.com, John Hader drew all of the drawings that are seen in the movie except for the unicorn, and the film was actually shot in 22 days.

We are now on the 20th anniversary year of it, which is an insane thing to think about because I saw this in theaters.

This is directed by Jared Hess, who's known for literal cult classics like Masterminds and Napoleon Dynamite, as well as Big budget slop movies, like a Minecraft film.

You know, it's an eclectic filmography.

He and his brother, Jared and Jerusha, has also done a few TV projects, but we don't list them here because we don't talk about TV here.

Written and directed

by Jared Hess, co-written by Jerusha Hess, based on Palooka by Jared Hess, starring John Hedda, John Grise,

Aaron Rule and Efren Ramirez and the premise is a listless and alienated teenager helps his new friend win the class presidency in their small western high school whilst dealing with his bizarre family life back home.

So this is based on a short film that Jared Hess made in 2002 with John Hedder.

And almost everything from the short made it into the feature film.

In the short, there's only a line of spoken dialogue that mentions the taste testing of milk.

Yeah.

Hess, I guess, maybe wrote the film.

He described it as so autobiographical.

Oh, my God.

In this episode, we heard from two different podcasters.

Link 7 was created by Jared Hess of Roll, Ponder, and Play.

Link 8 was produced by Carl White of the Lone Adventurer podcast in collaboration with Justin Feil of the Keep on the Borderlands webcomic.

I encourage you to check out all three of these talented storytellers.