When actor Tim Blake Nelson began thinking about who to nominate for the 2025 Rome International Film Festival’s Flannery O’Connor Award for Storytelling, he came to a quick realization: despite being named for a woman writer, the award had never been awarded to a woman.
“Not that I’m into quotas, but there did seem to be something really wrong with that,” Nelson, who was the recipient of last year’s award, said.
He decided to nominate filmmaker Jerusha Hess, co-writer of films like the cult classic “Napoleon Dynamite” and the writer/director of 2013’s “Austenland.”
“What’s most distinctive about Flannery O’Connor is that she had a very peculiar way of seeing the world,” Nelson said. “She was unafraid to share that as a storyteller. Jerusha Hess is exactly that.”
Nelson met Hess when she and her husband, Jared Hess (her frequent co-writer and director of many of their collaborations) asked him to voice the lead character of their short animated film “Ninety-Five Senses,” about a man on death row reflecting on his life. Nelson said he appreciated the honesty in Hess’ work, as well as her empathy towards all her characters, villainous or otherwise.
“She is an equal opportunity empath,” he said.
Hess, who received the award during a Nov. 8 screening of “Napoleon Dynamite,” said it was special to receive the award from the festival and Nelson.
“It’s such an honor as a woman and a writer to be given this award in honor of a woman and a writer,” she said. “I was tickled pink.”
Hess was in her early 20s when “Napoleon Dynamite” debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. If you’re of a certain age, “Napoleon Dynamite” is the type of movie that’s burned into your brain. The indie comedy, made for about $200,000, still feels completely unique. Even if you didn’t quite get Napoleon and all his quirks, you couldn’t deny the film’s newness, or help getting one of its many quotable moments stuck in your head.
Hess recalled walking by a Hot Topic after the film’s release and seeing T-shirts featuring quotes from the movie hung prominently in the store’s doorway. The pressure to capitalize on the film’s success was extremely high.
“That pressure, we did feel it,” Hess said. “Like, how can we ever write another movie? That movie took us forever to write, too. It was all of our family stories put into weird little vignettes.”
Luckily, the right opportunity came along. Hess’ next writing credit would come with “Nacho Libre,” starring Jack Black as a Catholic priest who moonlights as a lucha libre fighter to earn money for an orphanage. Other films throughout her career include “Gentleman Broncos,” “Don Verdean,” and the animated feature “Thelma the Unicorn.”
Hess wrote all of those films with Jared Hess. For twenty years, the two have been able to meld their professional and personal lives (they have four children and live in Salt Lake City). At the beginning of their careers, they would get together and make their way through every word of a script. Over the years, the process has evolved.
“Now, it’s often us breaking the story together,” Hess said. “Then I go off and write a draft and he might write the second draft.”
Hess has only directed one feature in her career, the spoofy romantic comedy “Austenland.” Based on Shannon Hale’s novel, the film stars Keri Russell as a “Pride and Prejudice” obsessive who travels to a British resort to experience that type of romance in real life. Hess said the filming process was interesting because despite her husband’s directorial experience, she was faced with problems he had never tackled at that time, such as filming a large ensemble or filming a romantic kiss.
The initial reviews for “Austenland” weren’t great (a little harsh, in this critic’s opinion – some of the film’s more exaggerated lampooning is a bit shaky, but it’s got some great laughs and a clever romantic twist). But Hess said she would love to get back into the director’s seat again if the right opportunity arose.
“It was really fun to be at the helm and see something through,” Hess said. “For me, filmmaking and being a director and a writer feels like giving birth. If you could write it and then see it to post, it’s like, ah! I raised it.”