'Napoleon Dynamite' had its beginnings on LDS mission

• Jared Hess chose the title of his first feature long before even the short "Peluca" was born, while serving as an LDS missionary in Chicago. He met "an old Italian-American gentleman who introduced himself as Napoleon Dynamite," Hess recalled in an MTV News interview. "I thought, that is the best name. That is going to be the name of my first movie." Hess wasn't aware until late in the filming that the name "Napoleon Dynamite" is a pseudonym used by Elvis Costello for his 1986 album, "Blood and Chocolate."

• Every food dish used to show the opening credits is a dish eaten by a character later in the movie.

• The surprise "wedding scene" epilogue, which was filmed after the initial theatrical run, cost about half of what the entire feature cost to make.

• The film features one of the longest credited cast lists in movie history; all 181 student extras' names are listed in the closing credits.

• The movie was edited in producer Jeremy Coon's apartment using a $6,000 Macintosh with Final Cut Pro.

• Behind the scenes at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Fox Searchlight engaged in a bidding war with Warner Independent Pictures over the distribution rights to this movie, until Fox Searchlight put in a last-minute bid of more than $3 million, and won. They would later join forces with Paramount Pictures and MTV Films to distribute the film, a mere 17 days before its release.

Sources: MTV News, Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com