On a long bike ride one day, I came up with the idea for a film about ventriloquism. You have to understand that I am a surrealist at heart, and my first two pictures have strong elements of surrealism in them. What could be more surreal than a talking puppet, right?

After doing a little research, I found out there hadn’t been any feature-length treatments of this perceived novelty act. I contacted a “vent” organization, which I found on the Internet, and quickly learned that no one wanted to speak with me.

This was a subject that had very little exposure beyond the creepy and bizarre, and they were tired of being treated like a bunch of schizophrenics. Eventually, I convinced them that’s not what I thought at all. The result was my film "I'm No Dummy."

But it wasn’t until these unique and much-...