10 Questions With Sean Meredith, Filmmaker

3. How do you sell a movie based on a classic and made with paper puppets? Was it a struggle to get funding, and how did you find it?

We got lucky with funding. I about killed myself stretching every dollar. How do we sell it? Shit, it's hard. We've just gotten started. We'll end up with some kind of video deal, but how lucrative is pretty up in the air. Theatrical and TV sales are a long shot. TV might be tough due to some explicit paper puppetry. The tough part for a distributor is that there's nothing to compare it to in order to estimate box office and DVD sales figures. But it could be an opportunity for a distributor because it's so unique. I could imagine a lot of people who would be super curious to check out a puppet version of Dante's Inferno that'd be rated NC-17.

4. How did Dermot Mulroney (Dante) and James Cromwell (Virgil) get involved with the picture?

I knew Dermot through some friends. Specifically, my composer Mark McAdam, who was briefly in a band with Dermot, got me in contact with him. McAdam and I went to Emerson College together. I thought his voice might be to old for the part of Dante, but his voice is really strong. It's deep and resonant. He was into the whole tone of the script and liked the style. Once we had Dermot, James Cromwell became my first choice for Virgil. I had been imagining an old crusty sounding Virgil (imagine Tom Waits or somebody like that), but with Dermot's strong low voice, it made me reconsider what Virgil should be. Cromwell was perfect with his calm soft confidence. He can infuse a lot of gravity into lines without overdoing it.

5. You collaborated with artists Sandow Birk and Paul Zaloom (of the Bread and Puppet Theater and Beakman's World). How did you meet these guys? And how did you click?

Sandow had created over a hundred and fifty artworks surrounding a fictitious civil war in California set in a vague present. He was getting ready to have a museum exhibit of the work and wanted to create an audio tour to expand on the mythology. He had met Zaloom through a mutual friend, Greg Escalante (Editor in Chief of Juxtapoz Magazine). Somehow Zaloom and Sandow ended up collaborating on the writing and recording. It turned out real nice, real ridiculous. Sandow had tackled spoofs of romantic- era painting, propaganda posters, and museum audio tours, then he set his sights on Ken Burns' Civil War series. It seemed ripe for parody. He worked with Zaloom on a script but didn't know how to go about making a film.

Escalante, continuing his infamous instigating, introduced Sandow to Tom Patchett. Patchett was a TV writer/producer/director who had dropped out to open an art gallery in Santa Monica called Track 16. He had produced and funded a couple videos with Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley, and with Bruce and Norman Yonomoto, so Escalante thought he'd be a good person to talk to. Patchett then introduced me to Sandow and I immediately wanted to be involved. To wrap it up, we made the film for almost nothing, it premiered in 2003 at Slamdance, went on to 20 other festivals, and made money. I think we click because we have some key areas in which we're on the same page, but we come from different areas (filmmaking, performing, art making) which gives us a wide range of experience to draw from.

6. The Divine Comedy and your movie guides people on a tour of the levels of hell. Which level was the most fun for you to work on? Why?

It'd either be the lust scene or the River Styx. They were both shot at the start of production and we were all just wowed by how beautiful (and goofy and dumb) it was all turning out. They're also both scenes that have characters from the original poem, which were fun to adapt.

7. How do you personally define hell? What does it look like? Is it similar to what we would see in Dante's Inferno?

If we draw the wrong lot, we see it on Earth. But I'll give you the scoop - after death there's nothing.

8. This one is for those who have seen the movie or the trailer. Where did you get the idea for the scene with the fondue?

We wanted Lucifer's pad to have some bits of the 1970s. A fondue pot was an obvious piece of decor that could go to good use. It was a pain in the ass. The scene took a long time to shoot and it was a bitch to keep the cheese fresh and gooey.

9. Since you are clearly bucking the CGI movie trends with Dante's Inferno, how do you feel about mainstream moviemaking? Are mainstream movies suffering from a lack of imagination, or are they effectively utilizing all that technology has to offer? How could the relationship between technology and the movies improve?

CGI is just the new thing. It was bound to go to use making awful and mediocre movies. I was discouraged that the furry animal style animation of Pixar and Dreamworks (and the knock-offs) was becoming so prevalent. The animation lacked a point of view or vision – like the way a Tim Burton or Hayao Miyazaki films do. But I've had some recent encouragement. I recently visited Dreamworks and saw bits of their upcoming slate and some of it was really starting to challenge conventional CGI animation. But also the tools cost and availability is putting a lot within the realm of possibility for lower budget storytellers. Of course, you can't beat those behemoths at their own game ... plus, why would you want to? What would be the point? It's your ability to tell a story from start to finish (story and production-wise). Something few can do well every time they make a movie.

10. What is your next project? And does it involve puppets?

We're all working on separate projects right now. Paul just starred in a pilot for the History Channel. Sandow is working on a series of art works about the war. And I'm collaborating on a high concept studio script. Yikes! And Elyse Pignolet is working on a ceramics project. When stars align, we'll start the next one.