On the evening of New Year's Day, I was sitting in a hotel room in Pocatello, Idaho, flipping around the channels, and "Napoleon Dynamite" was on E!. It was an amazing feeling -- watching the best movie ever made about Idaho in Idaho. It's been five years since it was made for $400K and made over 100 times its costs back, but everybody's over it because in America, sensations die easy. Napoleon's legacy lives on well into 2009, however, because he's screwing up the Netflix Prize.
During one of the 379 commercial breaks, I checked the map to see how close I was to the town where the film was shot. Too close not to make a pilgrimage, it turned out. On my way south to Utah, I slid off the interstate down the one-lane mountain road to the small town of Preston. I'm not the first to make the trip, and it's to the point where it's organized religion, but my trip was flippin' sweet anyway.
Before 2005, Preston was famous for rodeo and Christmas lights.
Downtown looks like a lot of small main-drag based towns in the intermountain west. Lots of brick, and plastic.
That's where you'll find Deseret Industries, which is basically the Mormon version of Goodwill. Two of the key turning points in the film happened here.
Sure enough, there was a brown suit on the racks, perfect for any high school dance. "It's incredible. It's awesome." If it were two sizes bigger, I totally would have bought it.
Napoleon's life changes when he finds D-Qwon's dance video in the Deseret Industries audiovisual section. The best thing I could find was a cassette compendium of Jerry Clower's best routines.
Contrary to the message of the film, Preston is very open to Hispanic culture. This restaurant from the Taco Maker chain, however, had gone out of business.
On to the high school, which is really the emotional centerpiece of the movie.
It was covered by snow at the time, so there was no chance to play tetherball.
Not a "Sledgehammer." It's a Huffy, which is not capable of taking sweet jumps.
The lockers are really as colorful as they were in the movie. Blindingly so.
I'll bet they sooo played this song at the Stag Dance.
This picture would never have come out anyway -- it was Saturday, the school was empty, and the lights are controlled remotely (so students won't turn them off in the middle of assemblies), but this is the Preston High Auditorium. If I was better prepared, I would have bought some moon boots as Deseret Industries (they had some), loaded up some 'Quai in the iPod and done this properly. But I did get on stage and bust the moves I know best (the hands-in-pockets slide-step at 0:40-0:50, mostly). This is one life experience I'll always have on you, no matter how much better you are than I am.
How much you wanna bet I can throw a football over them mountains?
