- Travel
- North America
Decades after the movie's release, fans still come to see its filming location.
By
Rebecca Sharp
Location Scoutinvestigates the intersection of entertainment and travel, delving behind the scenes of top movies and TV shows around the world to showcase their backdrops as prime travel destinations.
“Bow to your sensei!” my partner shouted at the four strangers from North Carolina, lowering his voice a few decibels to sound more threatening. He was wearing billowing red, white, and blue pants, a black polo shirt, lime green shades, and a star-spangled bandana. There are only two locations I can think of where a get-up like this wouldn’t look out of place. One is anywhere across the US on July 4th. The second is a small town called Preston, Idaho—filming location of Napoleon Dynamite, the source of my partner’s Rex Kwon Do costume—on any day of the year.
Oh, and the four strangers from North Carolina? They were in Napoleon Dynamite costumes, too.
Filmmaker Jared Hess graduated from Preston High School in 1997 and returned to his hometown a few years later to shoot Napoleon Dynamite. Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the 2004 movie focuses on the titular character (played by Jon Heder), an awkward, atypical high schooler with typical troubles. He has a quirky family, a romantic interest in part-time glamour photographer Deb, and a new bestie with lofty dreams of becoming class president. Oh, and he’s in charge of feeding Tina, an overweight llama living in his backyard.
Napoleon Dynamite shouldn’t have been a hit. Hess filmed the movie in 22 days on a $400,000 budget, the equivalent of lunch money in Hollywood. It was an eccentric, deadpan comedy, and “heck” was the dirtiest word written in the script. Fortune doesn’t favor the weird, right? A worldwide box office gross of $46 million says otherwise.
Quotable dialogue and warmly hopeless characters rocketed Napoleon Dynamite to success and cult status amongst movie fans. It’s the reason why, 20 years after its release, I was able to convince my now-fiancé to visit its filming locations in Preston the very first time I visited him in the US. I just had to see where this movie that defined my teenage years was made.
I flew in from England with nothing but hand luggage, and therefore no costume for our mission. My partner, on the other hand, had crafted an unbelievably accurate Rex Kwon Do outfit. When I saw how much effort he’d put into dressing up as Napoleon Dynamite’s dojo owner, I vowed to marry this nerd one day—then hopped onto Depop and expedited a musty second-hand “Vote for Pedro” T-shirt.
We drove two hours north from my partner’s home in the Salt Lake Valley and across the Utah-Idaho border. To the east, the Wasatch Mountains leveled out and transformed into a patchwork of lush green potato fields. One by one, billboards slipped behind us and we arrived in Preston. Population: 5,994.
I had rewatched the movie a few weeks before our trip and noted down any must-visit filming locations. From what I could tell on Google Street View, sweet and sleepy Preston hadn’t changed much in 20 years. We parked on State Street to explore the first chunk of locations and my suspicions were confirmed.
Preston High School’s lockers are still painted in the same vibrant colors from the film. Napoleon’s beloved yellow tetherball pole still stands in the Pioneer Elementary School playground, sans the tether and ball. Deseret Industries thrift store, where Napoleon finds his prom suit, is open for business. And the character’s groovy flared russet suit probably did come from Deseret Industries, as many of the characters’ costumes did.
Next door is Olive + Jo, a gift boutique that owner and Preston local Kimberly Cannon relocated to its current address three years ago. While she mostly sells cute accessories and homeware items, she also stocks Napoleon Dynamite-themed T-shirts, pins, and magnets.
“I decided to hang a ‘Vote For Pedro’ T-shirt in my shop window,” Cannon explained. And the fans came. “That was the moment I realized I was on to something. I don’t think anyone local to Preston really knew how many people drive up for the sole purpose of visiting the Napoleon Dynamite movie sites.”
Even today, the fans have continued to visit, said Cannon. “I put a US map up in my store and asked visitors to pin where they are from. In 2024 alone for the 20-year anniversary, I have 47 states pinned and seven international countries including Iceland, New Zealand, and South Korea.”
Olive + Jo isn’t the only business that has kept the Napoleon Dynamite spirit alive for two decades. Alton Barnhart, a writer at Salt Lake City’s SLUG Magazine, told me, “Gas stations are stockpiled with “Vote For Pedro” shirts and DVD copies of the movie. Even some of the locations like restaurants and stores will have signs that say something like, ‘As seen in Napoleon Dynamite.’ Even though I think some of the locals hate that reputation of the movie being their only claim to fame, I think it's tremendous!”
Cannon had also heard there were “mixed feelings” among Preston natives when the movie was initially released, but said that it seems like the locals have come to embrace it over the years. As for her own take, the self-described “huge fan” of Napoleon Dynamite said, “I do believe it is representative of rural small town Preston, but only in the most positive of ways.”
It’s fitting, then, that Cannon’s store recently became the headquarters for Napoleon Fest, a town-wide event that took place on July 26th - 27th 2024 to celebrate the film’s 20th anniversary. The festival’s many fun activities included dance workshops, a tater tot eating contest, and a visit from an actual llama called Tater Tot. In Napoleon Fest’s first iteration back in 2005, as many as 3,000 people attended—including Barnhart.
“Back then, it felt like the whole town of Preston was getting involved,” said Barnhart. Comparing the initial event to this year’s Napoleon Fest, he said it was clear that interest in celebrating the movie had waned over the past few decades. But it certainly hadn’t gone away altogether.
In my own experience, Preston’s residents demonstrated a fondness for the film and the characters that had to some degree become part of their daily lives. One lady gleefully approached my partner and me as we explored the downtown locations in costume. “I know you,” she said to him, like she was bumping into an old friend. “Imagine that, Rex Kwon Do in Preston.”
And my partner and I weren’t the only out-of-towners still hanging onto a love for the film. After walking around the town, we drove north to Napoleon Dynamite’s house, arguably the movie’s most iconic setting. While we snapped photos, an SUV rolled up the otherwise deserted lane and parked behind us. Out stepped mom Deb, dad Uncle Rico, son Napoleon, and brother Kip—a group of movie fans who had made the trip from North Carolina. We laughed, made impressions in character, took group pictures, and chatted about the serendipity of our meeting. But it wasn’t serendipity, not really. It was Preston’s eternal lure for Napoleon Dynamite fans, who are very much alive and kicking.
We drove back through Preston on our return to Utah, passing Olive + Jo with its “Vote for Pedro” T-shirt hanging in the window. In any other city in any other state, those shirts would be crumpled in a cardboard box alongside Breaking Bad’s “Los Pollos Hermanos” shirts and other pop culture references from the 2000s. But in Preston, 20 years on, Napoleon Dynamite is still relevant and a sweet source of community pride.
Rebecca Sharp is a freelance travel, culture, and entertainment writer and runs the film tourism siteAlmost Ginger. Her fiction pieces have appeared on BBC Radio and in literary magazines. She has a creative writing master's degree from Queen's University Belfast and splits her time between her English hometown and her new home in the US. Italian spritzes, embroidery, and Nordic baked goods comprise the remainder of her personality.