Ep 277: Interview w/Dwight Little, Director of “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers”

After fans rejected the absence of Michael Myers in “Halloween III: Season of the Witch,” Dwight Little came onboard to direct “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.” Tune in to hear all about making the film that brought back this horror villain, what it was like casting and working with franchise stars Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell, and Donald Pleasence, his thoughts on “Halloween 5” and how he would have approached that sequel, and his work on additional horror films like “The Phantom of the Opera” (1989) and “Natty Knocks.”

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hello, Welcome to Happy Horror Time. My name is Tim Murdoch.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
And my name is Matt Emmert.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Now today's special guest is pretty much responsible for bringing
Michael Myers back into our lives efforts he disappeared during
that wacky season of the Witch. He directed nineteen eighty
eight's Halloween four, The Return of Michael Myers, which is
not only one of our favorite films in the franchise,
but introduced one of the strongest sibling dynamics in horror

(00:35):
with Ellie Hornell and Danielle Harris. He also directed horror
icon Robert England in nineteen eighty nine's adaptation of the
Phantom of the Opera, and then flash forward to twenty
twenty three, he reunited with both Danielle Harris and Robert
England in his Halloween set horror film Natty Knox.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Now, although we'll.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Try to get as many details as possible out of
him today, if you want a more extensive look into
his entire Hollyod career, both making movies and directing TV shows,
you should definitely check out his book Still Rolling Inside
the Hollywood Dream Factory.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Please welcome to the podcast. DWIGHTE.

Speaker 4 (01:10):
Little Good morning, Good morning, Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Good morning. How are you today.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
I'm I'm up, I'm awake, I'm caffeinated.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Perfect, so are we.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
So, you know, speaking of locations, I heard you mentioned
on another podcast that you grew up in the suburbs
of Cleveland and knew you wanted to be a filmmaker
since like middle school. So can you tell us about that,
Like what first got you interested in making movies?

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Yeah, I got a superreat camera for Christmas. And you know,
I don't know if you guys don't remember, but the
super cameras were super cheap, like Kodak made. It was
like an instumatic but with a movie camera and you
just put a little cartridge in that you got at
the pharmacy, and I don't know, I got one. I
started playing around with it. I think it was actually

(02:00):
my father wanted to buy it for himself, and he
excused it by saying, this is for you, so that
my mother wouldn't accuse him of doing something ridiculous. And
I picked it up and I just started filming everything,
you know, the dog, the cars, the people on the street,
and I sort of got fascinated with it. But that

(02:21):
being said, I also in seventh or eighth grade, I
had a professor, I guess you'd call it a teacher
who introduced us to kind of what we would now
call social justice movies like The Loneliness of the Long
Distance Runner and The Hill with Sean Connery and The
Pawnbroker with Rod Steiger. You know, these were he was

(02:45):
teaching civics, you know, and he was using these movies
to instruct us about a world kind of unpleasant beyond
our suburban borders. But I was just so taken by
this class of these black and white of the British.
You know, they call them kitchen sink movies, you know,
just just domestic dramas about working class people. Anyway, so

(03:09):
I got involved early and then started making one student
film after another.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
And I'm also from Ohio, so I hear Columbus like
go Bucks.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
Well, Combs, you're more sophisticated than we are.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
No, But my mom is from Cleveland, so I spent
a lot of time in Cleveland.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
I love Cleveland.

Speaker 4 (03:33):
It's green, it's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yes, I totally agree.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
And so growing up, what horror films had the biggest
impact on you?

Speaker 4 (03:41):
Well, the Granddaddy just set me back, which was when
I saw the First Exorcist. Must have been about tenth grade,
I'm thinking I was. We all a bunch of us
went down to what was called the Colony Theater in
Shaker Square.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Oh my gosh, I've been there.

Speaker 4 (03:58):
Yeah, oh my ad a huge screen and you know
that movie if you're at an impressionable age or any age. Really,
it just got under my skin in an astonishing way.
Then I went to a drive in of a Ray
Miland movie, B B movie called Frogs.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
I've heard of it.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
Yeah, yeah, like, what are we doing? There's nothing to
do tonight, so let's go to this drive some stupid
B movie. And it was like, right, I know if
you're a Ray Miland and Frogs. But I mean, I
loved halloweenen. I love the fog, of course, as I
was older by then, But for some reason, that's the

(04:47):
carpenter that sort of got to me, was the fog.
I don't know what it was. I think it was
Adrian Barbo in her radio station talking to what was
that town up in northern.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
California, something Bay Antonio Bay.

Speaker 4 (05:05):
Yeah, yeah, and it was so eerie and so and
he had hal hulebook in there and John Houseman at
the fire and these creatures. I thought that. I mean,
I don't know if that was recognized to the degree
his Halloween was, but anyway, that was impression that made
an impression on me. So those are a couple.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
That's that's a great answer. I mean, we definitely recognized
the guess one of our favorites. I'm a huge, huge
Halloween fan, so that's like my number one Carpenter, but
the fog is definitely number two or three. But it's
always between that and the thing I always absolutely love
from John Carpenter.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
Yeah, the thing to me gets too it gets too
creature feature for me because I see the effects and
I sort of, you know, check out. But you know
the magic of Halloweens, you don't. I mean, Michael is Michael.
It's like this is not you know, a special effect,
like that's what's so creepy about it.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah, it'll never not be scary a man in a mask, Yeah,
always exactly, exactly.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, So you know, moving on to Halloween for the
return of Michael Myers. Now, I know you've probably gotten
this question a million times, but how did you first
come upon the opportunity to direct this sequel.

Speaker 4 (06:20):
It's an awkward story, but I was in I had
been in India shooting a B action adventure movie with
a prolific BC movie producer named Nico mast Rakis. If
you've ever heard of Nico master you should look him
up and you'll be shocked. Anyway, he had money raised

(06:40):
in India and he was a director himself. He couldn't go.
He didn't want to lose out on the money. So
he sent me down there. And Mustapha Acad, who was,
you know, the great entrepreneur impresario of Halloween, wanted to
shoot a movie in India because he had done lying
it the Desert and Mohammed Messenger of God. He was

(07:02):
a real director himself, the Halloween, you know, producer. So
he wanted to talk to somebody who had recently shot
in India, and I was like the only guy in Hollywood.
So I got a meeting and we started talking about Halloween.
And they were struggling. They had this treatment they didn't like.

(07:23):
They were just in the middle of kind of having
a divorce from Debrah and John. I mean, they wanted
to do you've probably read all this, but they wanted
to do an anthology Halloween where every year I think
they would explore some other angle to it, so it
wouldn't be necessarily a Michael Meyers series anyway. So they

(07:46):
had a falling out and I pitched them Halloween for
with my partner Alan McElroy, and you know, he just
responded to the pitch. I wanted to do a cop
movie and I always tell people this and they get
mad at me, but no, I I saw Donald Pleasants
as the detective, and I had an escaped convict, you know,

(08:07):
Michael who shows up in a small town in pursuit
of a victim, which was you know, the niece Danielle.
And I shot it like almost like in my mind,
was like Silence of the Lambs, like a police procedural,
so that every single moment had to make sense. And

(08:29):
that's why when we burned the gas station to bring
down the phone lines, and we throw Bucky into the
power center in order to shut down the lights, and
we kill the guy in the garage so that he
can get the overalls, and he scares the little girl
in the you know what we used to call the
dime store, I guess to get the mask and so

(08:52):
everything is very carefully calculated, so nothing's random, and the police,
instead of dismissing Donald pleasants, the cop finally says, all right,
let's go check this out. You know, usually the police
are like, oh, this guy's are not and never you.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
Let them out, they always blame Donald Blea. I think
it's hilarious. They're like, it's your fault, it's your fault.

Speaker 4 (09:14):
But he does. He has this speech where he tells
that sheriff and he says it pretty brilliantly, to the
point where the sheriff goes, Okay, we better go check
this out anyway. So that was my take that yes,
we have scares and kills and hauntings and stockings, and
that was my and my second take was I wanted

(09:35):
to build that central relationship between Ellie and Danielle. That
was because I figured if we had those sisters and
if you cared about them, that that would make everything scary.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Oh yeah, and which you were very successful at.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
Yeah, that was a big win. And in the book
I go into detail about how how those two actresses
were cast. It's it's kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
And have you I mean, obviously, how did you at
that time seeing the previous films and what did you think?

Speaker 4 (10:03):
So I had not seen Season of the Witch. I
was aware only that Michael had been blown to smithereens
at the end of two. Of course I knew one
very well. Yeah. One was like a seminole building block,
you know, film that everybody saw and everybody admired, and

(10:28):
you know, loved Florie Strode and Donald and everything about it.
But I think Halloween two was a problem for us
because how do you bring Michael back after he's been
blown to pieces? And you know, Alan really kind of
helped figure that out, Like, let's come up with this
whole he was in a burn ward and he's been

(10:50):
in a coma for ten years. And then we put
this funny little burn scar on Daniel Donald pleasants, which
was only moderately successful. But anyway, so we kind of
there's one elevator ride in the beginning where the attendant
takes us down in the elevator and he we we

(11:11):
have like about forty five seconds to do the entire
exposition for the whole movie, and I said to his
character actor, I said, dude, it's on you, like you
got you gotta tell us this story in one elevator ride,
because I felt like when we got to the bottom
and we open the door and we go into the
mental ward, we're done. So he says, it was ten

(11:31):
years ago. You know this happened to this town. This
guy was blown up. He's been here and he just
he just I said, let's not try and dance around it.
Let's just say it. So never.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
You never forget the faces. You never forget the faces.
I love his money, says of all the people.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
The actress is from Silent Night, del Night, which I
love that she was into like corn films.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yeah, the nurse who.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
Oh my god. I know. So we were drawing from
the talent pool of Salt Lake City at that time,
so a lot of our actors were from there, and
because we was a non union shoot and that's a
non union right to work state, and so we were
up making Salt Lake look like the middle of the country.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
To me, it looked like and I think Silent I
deady and I was filmed in Uas, so.

Speaker 4 (12:20):
That makes sense. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah, So there's a ton of conflicting info online shocker
about like various stories that were pitched for Halloween four.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
I think either before or during when you were going on.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Like how initially John Carpenter and Deborah Hill had some
sort of like supernatural treatment and there were even like
reports that Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace from part one.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
We're going to be the main stars.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
My question for you is when you signed on, were
you aware of any other ideas going around for the story,
and of so, what were they?

Speaker 4 (12:50):
Yeah, the only thing I knew is they gave me
a treatment for I don't know if to be honest,
whose treatment it was, but it was a treat for
Halloween for It was not a script. It was like
a concept and what I remember it was just kind
of it was more like five like a killer stalking teenagers,

(13:13):
you know, having sex basically. And I read it and
I thought, well, this is and I don't know who
I'm disparaging by saying this, but I thought, this is
really terrible. This is just this is very body numbers
slasher movie one oh one, Like anybody could have made
this movie, you know what I mean, It would like it

(13:33):
had that prom night terror train, you know, generic movie
of the eighties feel. There were a lot of them,
as you know, Yes, they kind of came out lots
of them anyway, So I kind of made this bold
play and I went back into the meeting with Mustaff
and his number two man and I said, you know,

(13:55):
I read this. I said, I don't want to do
any of it. And they're the room the most quiet.
The room was silent, like why are you here? And
I just don't want to make this. I don't think
it's good. And then kind of defensively, they said, well
what would you do? And I had worked out something
with Alan. I don't know if you know Alan, but

(14:17):
he's really good, and I had it in my head
and I just pitched it from the Escape from the
Mental Ward, the arrival in town, the Stalking of the Knees,
you know, the Rednecks, the whole pretty much Halloween four
and I just pitched it in the room and they

(14:37):
just said, well, thank you for coming in and we'll
get back to you. But this threw their whole world
upside down because they had to shoot. There was a
writers strike coming up. They had to get it in
the theater by you know, the second week in October.
It was already January. They were just out of time,

(14:58):
and so they said, well, we can't do this because well,
you guys won't be able to get the script ready
and Alan is the fastest writer in the history of
the world. Plus he had to get it done by
the writer's straight Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
That's so impressive. Was Jamie Lee Curtis ever mentioned during
any of these meetings.

Speaker 4 (15:15):
She was mentioned as being unavailable basically so so, No,
she was. I think she was probably not happy that
John was stepping away, you know, and her loyalty, as
it should be, you know, would be with John. And
also I think she had enough by then, but we

(15:36):
snuck her in with one photograph in the shoe box.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
And I wanted to ask, because what inspired you and
writer Alan McElroy to want to continue the family storyline
with Michael Myers's niece And were there any concerns at
first about making his main target a young kid?

Speaker 4 (15:54):
There would be. Now it's interesting you say that, because
I don't think you could even make it now. Yeah,
that's true because the politics of child endangerment. Although I
hear this new movie that everybody's raving about the.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
One weapons weapons.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
Yeah, isn't that young children?

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yes, it definitely is.

Speaker 4 (16:17):
I'm going to see it tonight.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
Oh right, it's wonderful.

Speaker 4 (16:21):
Yeah, But at that time, I feel like we were
in a different age where there was less oh you
can't do you know, if you if you slapped an
R rating on it, it was like you were kind
of protected. But now you know, the politics is very yes,

(16:41):
be very careful about everything.

Speaker 3 (16:43):
I just think it was so genius to con because
knowing that you couldn't have Jamie Lee Curtis as Lorie
stro to continue her family line. Because the big thing
about Part two, other than the explosion that they set
up obviously, is that Laurie is his sister. And you know,
some people love that, some people don't. But either way,
that was established. So the fact that you guys took
it in the direction of keeping the family line like

(17:06):
that makes it personal. It's something people can identify with.
It gives him a motivation.

Speaker 4 (17:11):
Well, it is reason to go back to headonfield exactly right,
which you know, we had to have that. So I
think that kind of made sense, and you know, the
new Foster family and that all worked out pretty well. Again,
I was just trying to really turned down with pleasance
into I mean, I know he's a psychiatrist, but turn

(17:32):
him into a cop.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
It felt like that though, you know, and something I
read on IMDb trivia, and this may not be correct,
but I wanted to run it by you, is that
they said that you had viewed Michael's pursuit of Jamie
as a misguided attempt to connect with her, and that
the violence came from lacking the social capacity to interact
in any other way, which I think is a really
interesting perspective.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
Is that true? And can you expand?

Speaker 4 (17:56):
Well, I love that take, but it's not mine.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
That's hilarious. Oh my god. I love checking these things
because that's so funny.

Speaker 4 (18:04):
Okay, that's very interesting. But no, I was I don't know.
I was in my freaking friend connection Cerproco, I was Gene,
I was in my cop thriller Time of Life. This
is what Aby eight. You know, all those seventies movies

(18:25):
had had a huge influence on me, And I thought,
what if we what if we don't just try to
make a horror movie. Let the horror come, like, you know,
let the babysitter, the daughter getting paled in the door,
and let's do all the grizzly stuff, but let's have

(18:46):
it work as a suspense film. And I think that's
I'm not sure people know why they like it, but
I think that's why.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Because that was the beauty of the original.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Oh my gosh, the opening of Halloween four really makes
me feel like Ohio, and I think that's why I
love it so much.

Speaker 4 (19:04):
Well now that is all me. And I was like,
when I started get the assignment, I thought, well, what
is Halloween? I've mentioned this before, Like, what is Halloween?
I went to, Yes, I'm going to say it the library.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, what's that? I never heard of it?

Speaker 4 (19:24):
To get books on Halloween, you know, And of course
you find all these stories about agriculture in the seventeen
hundreds and the becoming of winter and winter solstice, you know,
the darkness is coming and the fear of getting through
a winter with no food or no harvest, and the

(19:45):
scarecrows and that, you know, Halloween comes out of that
Irish Scottish agricultural dread. It gets almost like druid kind
of shit. And so I saw these pictures and I thought, Okay,
if we can start the movie like going with nobody
knows that that's what I'm going back to. But like

(20:07):
you see the scarecrow with the gloves on his hands,
Like it's just creepy.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
It's so good, and it may be our favorite opening
in the franchise because as iconic as the zoom in
on the Pumpkin ears, which is incredible, you're opening, really
it just feels like Halloween.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Like that's what I.

Speaker 4 (20:26):
Think it was.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
So, I mean, obviously I'm gonna say relatable, but obviously
I didn't have a psychopath.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Killer chasing me.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah, but no, right, But like the whole setting, the
fact that like everyone kind of knows everybody, and like
when when Ellie Cornell goes and knocks on the door
and like, oh, it's her ex boyfriend, her boyfriend. So
it's like all of that's very relatable to me. Growing
up where I grew up, I was like everyone knows everybody.

Speaker 4 (20:53):
It was I think I treated I mean, yeah, and
in the little talent I was in, the houses were
fairly far apart, so you had to kind of go
through you know, a fans or a field or a
lawn to get to the next house. Is freaking scary
because no lights. Yeah, no lights, there's no lights, and

(21:19):
so a lot of that took your teeting. That was
Ohio stuff, and the I also loved the zoom in
on the pumpkin. But I thought, well, then I'm really
just remaking the first movie, you know, and it's like,
what can I bring to it that I think when
people see the opening of Halloween four, they go, oh,

(21:40):
just do like you know, it sets our own path.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
A little bit totally.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
So we're huge fans of both Danielle Harris and Ellie Cornell.
And I know I've heard you mentioned it took a
while to cast both of their roles. So what I
wanted to ask was what was it about each of
them that stood out and made you realize they were
You're Jamie and you're Rachel.

Speaker 4 (22:02):
Well. I started in LA in both cases because we
read and read and read. And the problem with young
girls in LA and in New York is that they've
only done one thing, which is commercials at that age, right,
So there wasn't even the whole Disney you know model

(22:22):
of TV shows yet or anything's been casted in anything.
It's a sitcom, right, So all the casting agents and
agents and moms are always telling these kids, you know,
to be up and be up and be to be
full of you know, they're supposed to entertain all the time.
And be cute. So everybody, yeah, yeah, it's all it's

(22:43):
it's all put on a show.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
Yeah, it's the opposite.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
Right, there's not one real moment. And I finally, even
when I gave them notes, I finally went to Mustafa
and I said, listen, do you think we could look
in New York? Because I'm this isn't working out. And
amazingly he said yes. Most producers would say, you know,
if you can't find an actress, and I'm not finding
somebody out, you know, all those things, but he wasn't

(23:10):
like that. He listened to what I was trying to do,
said I think we're going to get a different kind
of person in New York than we're going to find here,
you know. And so he amazingly set us up in
New York with a casting session. And about this sixth
person who came in the door was Danielle. Now she

(23:33):
was but I think he was playing like seven in
the movie, but she was closer to nine, so she
was definitely older than the character. But she's you know,
she was tiny, and she walked into the room with
this kind of poise and because she was older than seven,
but she looked at you know, she looked right, and

(23:55):
it was it was I mean, of course she read,
but it was just like done. When she walked into
the room, I was like, well faster. You know. It
was really one of those moments because she was poised.
She was sophisticated, but she was but she was still vulnerable,
smart as a whip. I just worked with her. You know,
she still is, of course, but so that was that.

(24:17):
So we found her in New York. And then there
were two actresses who we for the Eli Crannell part,
and we couldn't decide, and Mustapha wanted one, and I
was kind of interested in Ellie for the same reason
because she had a very East Coast vibe, which to
me was more Midwestern. And you can appreciate it coming

(24:39):
from Ohio. There is a different energy between van NY's
and you know she ran falls or something, right, There's
just everything is different. And so I thought Ellie had
that she could play midwestern her convincingly. And so we
did a screen test because we couldn't agree, and I

(25:01):
and I said, let's just shoot it on film. Let's
do a real old fashioned screen test, which we did
so so that I was just I didn't want anybody
to be show busy. I didn't want anybody to be
trying for a laugh or trying for a tear, or
trying to seduce the audience. I just want, you know,

(25:22):
I just wanted them to be in the room, like
just be real. And that's so I was right about
that because they both were. They were just convincing and
they never tried to oversell it.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
And were there any other like big names like maybe
not at that time, but later that came in to
read for you.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
Well, because I've heard, I can tell you what I've heard.

Speaker 4 (25:46):
I think sadly that that girl who was murdered was
one of the ones.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
Do you remember it was Rebecca Schaeffer? Yeah, oh wow,
cowbu Lisa Wilcox does.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
That ring about? I've heard that mention.

Speaker 4 (26:01):
But Rebecca Schaeffer I think was in the running. This
is before that tragedy.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
How about Melissa Jonhar do you does that sound?

Speaker 4 (26:10):
Yeah? I think she was in the mix, and there
were no they were. I met and read a ton
of people because that was it's a final girl in
the Halloween movie, So it was something that people wanted
to do. But you know, no one who knew who
Elie Cornell was, but she just you know, she could

(26:31):
just sit and like hold the moment. I don't know
how else to describe it. But and I have to
really hand it to Mustafa cod because instead of fighting
me all the way, right, he just sort of listened.
He would make his suggestions, He kind of let me

(26:52):
make the movie. And that's you know, not always the
case to.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah, yeah, we heard first story.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Doing this podcast for years and interviewing so many filmmakers,
we have heard it can go either way. The studio
can force them to change the movie completely, or they
can be on their side. But I think it's more
often that the studio pushes to have you know, their
changes made and everything.

Speaker 4 (27:14):
Well, the funny thing is, and I really believe is
they would have just as good a chance because they
always fail anyway, they'd have just as good a chance
of winning if they would hire someone they believe in, Like,
don't hire a director you don't like, but find someone
you really like and then let them make the movie.
Because all your notes and all your test screenings and

(27:35):
all your changes and all your reshoots, you I know,
you're chasing a hit and you're chasing a win. But
most of the time you were better off in the
first place. It's funny, but you know, it's a control.
It's human nature. They want to control it, they want
to make it theirs. But how many hit movies are
there really versus how many complete bombs?

Speaker 3 (27:59):
And also how many times do you hear the studio
forced us to make this change and then it was perfect?
Like it never happens like that, you know, it usually
kind of tanks things too many. Yeah, you know, we'd
be remiss if we didn't ask about working with late
actor Donald Pleasants. And what I love about Donald is
he was just so dedicated to this series, like even
until the end, he was in five in the movies.

(28:19):
And I just wanted to get your opinion on why
do you think Donald was always so game to appear
in more Halloween films? Like did you get the impression
that he just really loved the character of Doctor Loomis.

Speaker 4 (28:30):
Y Yes to that. But of course he was English,
so he was a journeyman actor. He had had a
huge moment right in his in his life, he had
had not only his The Great Escape, but you know
the Bond Villains. You know, he was he was had

(28:52):
a moment as Donald Pleasants and then later they started
putting him all these be English should be movies, and
I think that number one. He liked Loomis, but he
was at an age where I think he loved being
on set. He loved still being the star, which was
of that series. You know, on another movie he'd be

(29:14):
like the fourth guy, right, it would be oh, we
got Donald Pleasants for three days. But in these movies,
he you know, he was the star, and he liked
to work. I just think it's an English actor thing.
Like he was on set, he was working. It was
you know, satisfying to him. And also he had you know,

(29:37):
he had a mortgage, you know, and the mortgage is
a surprisingly huge motivator. They call it the nut. You know,
he had a big nut.

Speaker 3 (29:50):
That's an interesting way about saying.

Speaker 4 (29:53):
It's an awkward way to put it, but you know,
people say like, well, what's your nut, and I'm like,
excuse me.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
I just love that Donald Pleasants had a big nut.

Speaker 4 (30:03):
Every Yeah, that could be the quote of the.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
Whole Dwight Little Donald.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
No.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
I think it's it's just great as fans of this
franchise to see characters continue in it, you know, and Obviously,
Danielle has done multiple, Jamie Lee Curtis has done multiple.
But Donald Pleasants was that face after Jamie Lee went
exited at first, and he was he was essential.

Speaker 4 (30:26):
Yeah, he was essential to the movie. I mean, Michael's Michael.
But you had to have Loomis.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Of course.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
I mean and even the most recent Halloween films without Loomis,
they have a Loomis like character, you know, like you're
never good never, no, it's never never as good.

Speaker 4 (30:43):
Great Malcolm McDowell, you know, and he's a fine actor,
to be sure, but I don't think he could step
into it. Well.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
They played that very interestingly, like he was like fame hungry.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah, he was so un famous.

Speaker 4 (30:56):
He was so.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Unlikable in the remake. Yeah, he was so unlikable. Whereas
you always love Donald Pleasants always.

Speaker 4 (31:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
So okay, So again, there's tons of rumors on the
internet about scenes that were supposedly in the script at
first and then we're changed or cut. So I was
hoping I could run a few of these bibles.

Speaker 4 (31:14):
I'll try.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
So, first, was the opening scene originally going to show
doctor Loomis being blasted out of the hospital like he
was at the end of Halloween two.

Speaker 4 (31:25):
I think Allen and I talked about some version of that,
but no, it was like because then you're just you know,
there's an expression in development like you're hanging a lantern
on something meanie, you're shining a light in a place
you don't want to look like, don't we mind people
who maybe don't even know or who have forgotten that

(31:45):
this thing happened, you know, just pick it up ten
years later, look the other way, acknowledge it in the
elevator scene, and then move on. So no, that would
that would have been.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
A terrible idea, probably expensive to do. Also, okay, second
one was Sheriff Meeker initially supposed to die in the
basement of the house and light the whole house on
fire leading up to the roof scene.

Speaker 4 (32:09):
Well, there there was a version of that because there
was a we wanted the idea of the being stranded
on the roof and the house being on fire, like
you know, another development expression, So I called a hat
on a hat, you know, like, so the danger is Michael,
the scary roof, oh and it's on fire. But the

(32:30):
production reality of that quickly took that off the table.
You know, the fire is impossible to do even today
it's all digital, but you know, fire is very hard.
It is very dangerous. It was dangerous enough just to
get them up doing the roof scene. Yeah. Yeah, And
I love Meeker and you know, I love the fuselage

(32:53):
of gunfire on Michael at the end where they just
they just let him.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
Have it and to destroy him. And then lastly, did
the original ending have Rachel and not Jamie's foster mother
as the one who gets stabbed by Jamie.

Speaker 4 (33:10):
Wall after that? Again, did it have who instead?

Speaker 3 (33:13):
So the very end when you know Jamie puts on
the mask and stabs her foster mother, was originally it's
supposed to be Rachel getting stabbed.

Speaker 4 (33:21):
No, I never remember that.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
I'm glad to hear that.

Speaker 4 (33:24):
Yeah, I wouldn't have killed Rachel. There's no, there's no way.
First of all, you know she was she would look
Alan and I have a beef with five obviously, because
you know, we set something up. You know, we set
up Michael, we set up the girls, we set in
There's a whole bunch of things you could have done
with that, and they didn't do it. But it's my

(33:46):
own fault because Mustapha Cott asked me to do it,
and I didn't, and I kind of now wish I
had because I felt like they did the wrong thing
with what we put in place. But that's a water
under the bridge.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
But I mean, now that you've brought it up, because
we had a segment we wanted to ask, I have
brought it up.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
I mean I have to ask.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
So what would the story have been in your version
if you and Alan had worked on Halloween five?

Speaker 4 (34:15):
Well, I think you know, Michael would have, you know,
survived underground. I think that was okay, you know, and
we found the reason that he wasn't really dead. I
think she would have gone into a lot of psychet.
I mean, Danielle psychiatric treatment and been re you know,
what do you call it? Re educated and back into

(34:37):
the normal world. But I just I don't know. I
think the sisters rebuilding the town, rebuilding the characters. It
shouldn't have been a slasher movie, I mean horror movie,
a suspense. There's no point in just doing because there
are all those movies existed. You want, if you want

(34:58):
to go see prom n I go see prom Night.
And I keep picking on that one, but there were
you know so many.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
It's so interesting that you're picking another Jamie Lee Kurtis
movie yet.

Speaker 4 (35:10):
Right, but you know, but you know what I mean,
like you were, you just it's a tenel Indians, you know,
just a kill zone, which they did with the later Halloweens,
which you know it's no good. And if I'll be
very controversial and say that as well made as those movies.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Are the David Gordon Green right, yes, yes, no, I
mean really.

Speaker 4 (35:34):
Good director, but they're just they're just it's just a
kill field and there isn't I don't know, I feel
like they're not trusting the audience. It's like, let's just
put up a body count. You know, in those days,
there wasn't this expression the number of kills or how

(35:55):
good were the kills? That no one talked like that.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
And do you end up seeing Halloween five and what
did you think about it?

Speaker 4 (36:03):
I never saw. I watched about the ten or twenty
minutes of it, and I was just furious.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
See what happened to Rachel? Yeah, because did you see
I have to know.

Speaker 4 (36:12):
She got scissored in the head, right.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
In the shoulder.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
But they kill her off so early in the film,
and I have to ask like that, you would have
never done that.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
I have ever.

Speaker 5 (36:22):
Okay, she would have lived, She would have been in
the whole movie. Yeah, she was the heartbeat of the
of the whole thing. Why would you kill itous? Its insane?

Speaker 3 (36:36):
I agree, And we thought it was insane too, because
then they have another character, Tina, like a friend of hers,
become more of the like sister figure to Jamie. But
viewers are just like, why not just keep Rachel alive
and keep her as that character? So yeah, I had
as I was.

Speaker 4 (36:54):
Very disturbed by it. I think I think that these
writers or the director or whatever. I just think they
went on a bad path. And I also think as
much money as some of those later Halloween movies made,
they lost the I mean they made money, so who
am I to judged, but they lost the tone. It

(37:18):
was just, you know, crazy, And I think Jamie Lee,
with her shotgun, her insanity and her gray hair, she
just looks like a crazy lady. She doesn't. She doesn't
look like Lori Strode grown up, do you know what
I mean?

Speaker 3 (37:32):
Ory Strode after a lot of trauma.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
Yeah, but it's just like I don't think anger is
that great an emotion on film. And just anyway I'll
get myself into all kinds of trouble.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
No, No, it's okay.

Speaker 3 (37:48):
So look, I could probably talk with you about Halloween
four all day, but before we move on to other projects,
I just have one last question. I know you've spoken
before about how you'd love to do like a Halloween
four parts two type of movie that continues the characters
of Jamie and Rachel on the present day. Can I
just tell you how ecstatic Halloween fans would be about this,

(38:09):
And I feel like Danielle and Ellie would sign on
a few directed again, So my question is what can
we and our listeners do to make this happen.

Speaker 4 (38:18):
Well, first of all, I would love to do it.
Second of all, so at Allan And you know it's
really the magic is me and Allan together. Yes, yes, yes,
because his sense of place and his writing style. He's
from Cleveland too, by the way. So and I just

(38:41):
feel like I pitched it, but they kind of gave
me that. We've already got a deal for to do this.
For television. They're doing a very big thing. I think
it's called Haddonfield and it's a big streaming thing about
Halloween and Michael Myers. So I think they're just saying,

(39:01):
let's take our bat and ball and go to streaming.
Maybe they think it'll be stranger things or they think
they can do something that way. So I don't think
they're I don't think they're going to interrupt their plans.
And Universal bought the rights. I think anyway, it's it's
too late, I think because all the lawyers and you know,

(39:23):
they don't want to. I don't think they want to
threaten their TV plans. But what a great movie that
would be Halloween for it?

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Yeah, and you got me really thinking just the fact
that you said a kill count, Like, I don't know,
if we're so invested in these characters, I think we
forget about the killed count and it becomes a suspenseful
movie on its own. So I think that's where, like
I mean, I Halloween five is nostalgic in my mind
because I think I was like eleven when it.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
Came out, right, right, I mean, is it a great film?

Speaker 4 (39:51):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
It was just such a It was just unfortunately, such
a letdown to have these strong siblings make it through
Halloween four and then to kill one them off so early.

Speaker 4 (40:01):
It was it was depressing.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
And one last thing I'll say about Halloween four Part two,
because I'm still gonna hold out hope, dight. I just
wonder why they can't pursue two avenues like the Friday
the thirteenth. The Jason Universe is going to TV with
Crystal Lake. But they also say they're working on a
new film. So my pitch is, let them do their
Hatt and Field TV show, do both and do a

(40:24):
film that continues now Danielle and Ellie's characters.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
But I don't know.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
So many bloodlines, yeah, so many like different ways you
can go.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
So I mean, just make room for everybody. I'm just
telling you, speaking for Halloween fans right now.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
You guys start an online campaign because because Alan and
I are here, we would do it in just a heartbeat,
and with Danielle. And by the way, Ellie is back East,
happily living her life. She's you know, she's available, and
you know Danielle's down in Texas. Everybody's around. I think

(41:02):
Sasha is still I was trying to think of who's
not dead. No, Sasha died.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
I was just about to ask you if you're still
in contact with them.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Danielle and l Ellie especially, well, yes to Danielle.

Speaker 4 (41:16):
Of course, I just worked with there a couple of
years ago. Ellie. I have zoomed with her and I
have had a couple promotional things. I did see everybody,
and this is going back now several years ago. There
was one of those Halloween cons in Pasadena, and so

(41:37):
I did see everybody there. It's been now, it's been
a little while, but you know, everybody seems to be
doing well.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
Yeah, no, that's great. So moving on to Phantom of
the Opera.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
So you had just directed Michael Myers and then, funny enough,
one year later, you got the chance to direct Freddy
Krueger himself Robert England in the nineteen nine movie of
Phantom of the Opera. So what appealed to you about
this project, Like, were you a fan of the original
novel or the earlier films.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
Well, they gave me a script that had been done
by at Cannon. This is before Mono can go On
split off for twenty first century, and I read it
and it wasn't very good. But I had a history
of looking at bad scripts and turning them into something.

(42:29):
But monockam goal On was hell bent on making this
movie and they've all already made a deal with Robert England.
So I got this funny phone call they said, can
you have a meeting with monocham goal On? He really
wants to talk to you about it. Because I was
kind of on the fence. Honestly, I'm like fam of
the opera, like an old Hammer movie like at that time,

(42:53):
this wasn't really I mean, the Lloyd Weber thing was
certainly around. But they said, but here's the one thing
about the meeting. He needs to meet you in Budapest.
Excuse me, they say, he needs to meet you in Budapest.
It went day after tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
Now did they pay to send you there to meet him?

Speaker 4 (43:12):
Well, they paid for the tickets. Yeah, but fortunately I
did have a passport. But I was like, yeah, i'll go.
So I went over there and I met him in
a hotel coffee shop and he said, now before you
say anything, I need you to spend a day with me.
And you know, I don't know if you know who
he was, but he was. He was an Israeli salesman,

(43:36):
is what he was. He loved movies. He had a
very checkered reputation in business, canon you know, and unpaid
bills and launch.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
There's a documentary about Canon, right, the Go Go Boys.

Speaker 4 (43:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they were making it one time. People
forget this, like fifty movies a year. It was unbelieve
Chech Norris movies and Charles Brown movies and Van dam movies,
all of them, Michael Dudkov movies. Yes, they were cranking
these movies out anyway. So he took me. He was

(44:11):
shooting Threepenny Opera in Budapest with Roger Daltrey, of all people,
and he took me around and showed me these sets.
It was unbelievable. I mean it was like nineteenth century
London and they had all these sets and these wardrobe departments,
and he said, this is I'm going to give you
all this. You're going to have all this to make
your movie. And I'm looking at this. Would be ten

(44:34):
million dollars of art department, you know in Hollywood, And
I'm looking at this. I'm like, okay, but I don't
think the script's very good. He says, well, you figure
it out. So he just wanted at that time, he
wanted the guy from Halloween four, which was a hit
movie with Freddie with this this title, which had just

(44:58):
become public domain, just come to one hundred years. That's
why he snapped it up. Wow.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
You know, one thing we obviously loved about your Phantom
of the Opera movie as horror fans is that it
truly did feel like horror. You know, like the Phantom
doesn't just wear a white mask. He has a mask
made of flesh from his victims. And the kills are
you know, the kills are pretty intense. I think there's
like two decapitations.

Speaker 4 (45:21):
Well, speaking of kills, at that time, that was way
over the top. Now today that's an episode of a Game
of Thrones, right, Yeah, but then we had to make
a lot of cuts to get in our rating because
it was Kevin Yaeger. It was gory. And it's so

(45:43):
funny how tastes changed because now people talk about the
music and they talk about there's a lot of people
who like that movie. They talked so much about the kills,
but they certainly are intense.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
I was just wanted to know, had you always wanted
to kind of enhance the horror of this story or
was that kind of like a demand from the studio
since Robert Englund was involved.

Speaker 4 (46:07):
A little of both. I wanted, just like I wanted
to tell a detective story with Halloween four, I wanted
to tell a show business story. I just thought it
was a great show business story. You know, you've got
the diva who's got all this attitude, and the young
Angeu and the stalker who's in love with the ongein
New I mean, it's all from the book obviously, but

(46:28):
you know, then you kill anybody who's going to get
in the way of his little baby getting to this
main stage. And it was a show business story. It was.
It was a Broadway slash Hollywood story, and Robert and
I really leaned into that. Yeah, you get the atmosphere
and you get the gore of it. But I just

(46:50):
I thought the Awwa sequences were really good and beautifully produced.
And Jill was able. I mean she on the day
and while we were shooting, she did sing because she
has a very nice voice. The voice was ultimately replaced
because we knew and a lot of people were going
to be judging it, you know, very carefully, but she

(47:14):
sang well enough that we could shoot it and make
it seem like she did great with that. And so
I'm always in my mind, like, you know what movie
am I making? And I was sort of making as
Star is Born, you know, I was. I was in
that headset, mindset. No, that makes sense. You know when

(47:37):
you were directing Robert, how important was it to make
sure he was playing the phantom vastly different from how
he portrayed Freddy Krueger Or was that even a consideration?
It was a consideration. It got a little more Freddy
than I was expecting it too, and I kind of
tried to steer it back some of it with the

(48:01):
one it's the one liners to make it freddy, right, Yeah,
you know, if he says a one liner and then
kills somebody, it's getting pretty freddy ish. But he's a
really as you know, really good actor, and he was
playing the heartbreak of this guy, the pathos, the loneliness,

(48:21):
the sexual There's a great scene where he goes back
into the you know, the brothel area, and he gets
a hooker, and he gets a hooker that looks like Christine.
You won't see this anywhere else, you know, And he
takes out his frustrations with this hooker who looks like Christine,
and I'm like, oh man, this is crazy. People either

(48:44):
gonna love this or they're gonna like come looking for
us one or the other.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
It's funny.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
And you mentioned that Joe Scholin did sing the material,
but then it was dubbed, So you're saying, like, when
you were filming the scene, she was actually singing all
of those songs.

Speaker 4 (48:58):
Yeah, and she did great. Yeah, And she is kind
of a musician. She has a great voice, but you know,
to be to hit it perfectly, as an opera singer
is so specific, you know, the control of certain notes
and all that, so, you know, but she was good
enough that when we went to replace her, the opera

(49:21):
singer was able to double exactly because her facial expressions,
her mouth movements are breathing, was all so accurate. You know,
it didn't look it didn't look just like dubbed.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
In No, that's great.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
I mean we could have, like you could have told
us that it was her singing, would have believed it
it was.

Speaker 4 (49:42):
And I was just such a stickler about this because
I just thought if people smell that this has all
just been dubbed, it's just gonna blow it. You know,
It's just it's like, Plus, we also had the advantage
we had all these English actors who were coming over
from London. I mean we even had Bill Niki in
that movie.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Yeah, I was like, I was like, that's the guy
from Love actually, because Matt and I just watched it,
so yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:07):
So what did it look like to you? You don't have
to you don't have to be nice, but what did
it look like to you after all these years to
see that movie.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
I haven't seen it since I was like eleven, but
I really I loved the ending when she tore up
his I'm giving away the ending spoiler alert. I love
when she tore up his face. I love that Molly
Shannon was in it. I loved I loved the soup
with the head. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was gonna say.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
For me, it was kind of I've seen the Phantom show,
I've seen other iterations, but again for me, I guess,
but it's because I'm such a horror fan. I really
gravitated toward the more horror elements of your version, like
it made the Phantom truly scary and not just like
a hopeless romantic, and I think that's what I enjoyed most.

Speaker 4 (50:48):
So he cuts off heads, and he put people in
wardrobe closets and.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Get them alive.

Speaker 4 (50:56):
Yeah. Well, but the whole idea of using your victim's
skin to replace your faces is pretty gnarly.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
Yeah, and you know Tim mentioned this, but Phantom was
snl Alom Molly Shannon's first movie. What was she like
to work with at that time? And how come she
didn't end up playing the character of Megan both timelines.

Speaker 4 (51:17):
Okay, that's a good question. First of all, she was
charming and she wanted to do well, and I've stayed
in touch a little bit Molly also, by the way,
from Cleveland. I don't know what the thing is. You know,
Molly's a sweetheart. I think everybody knows that. And she
was not being funny, you know. We just thought she

(51:39):
was so positive and she could do the exposition because
she had to tell you know, she had story expedition
to do. But it was I think it was really logistics.
We would have had to take Mollie from New York
or ally wherever she was from, take her to Budapest,
put her up for eight weeks. I think it was

(51:59):
just like, no, we can't afford him, We're going to
recast her. Also, because the whole ambiance was British, It's
like she would maybe not fit in because everybody, you know,
everybody was and by the way, the girl who did
play in Meg was charming. Yeah. Yeah, the magi that
we had. You know, at the time, the movie fell

(52:23):
between the cracks because the Lloyd Webber people were shocked,
you know, and outraged, and the horror people were like, opera,
We're not interested in opera, So we split the Now
in what has it been thirty years now, people think
it's really creative and really interesting because it's not like

(52:47):
anything else. Yeah, I mean, maybe it's a little like
an old sixties hammer movie maybe because you know, a
Herbert Law movie or something. But those those sets and
the costumes and the lighting and the production. You know,
we made it for like a four million, but it looks.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
Like, oh my gosh, much more than that scene with
the candles. Would you be able to film it like
that today? With the fire?

Speaker 4 (53:12):
No, we had an accident that set.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
What happened because that's one of the most climactic scenes obviously,
that ending battle between Richard and the Phantom, and there's
looks like there's like hundreds of candles around.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
How did you go about filming that?

Speaker 4 (53:26):
Or The other question is how does the Phantom have
his guy go.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
Around and like all that might have taken quite a while.

Speaker 4 (53:33):
Yeah, there were alwayster problems, like we would not have
pulled that off here without an army if all those
candles would have been you know, some kind of controllable element.
But it was open flame on sets. It was not safe,
and we did it because we were in Budapestan it

(53:54):
was nineteen eighty nine. I kind of don't want to
think about it because I feel like I feel like
we udged a bullet there. Although although Jill's sleeve or
something when she was fighting her sleeve something, it really
did catch on fire as terrifying. I think maybe she's
mentioned it in a podcast or something that's wow.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
Yeah, well, luckily everything went okay. I wanted to ask
about the poster because the poster was very much like, look,
it's Freddy wearing the Phantom's mask. How did you feel
about that? Appre terrible, terrible.

Speaker 4 (54:29):
There's there's later they reissued some posters which are much
more interesting. The MGM Blu Ray poster. There's a there's
some posters advance that are real works of art. You know,
it's much more him and and you know, the scarf
and the hat and it's much more elegant. I think
they just panicked and it was like, you know, how

(54:50):
are we going to get acids in the seats? And it's like, well,
we'll We'll just tell people to another Freddie movie. And
it was crass and it was exploited, and I think
it back for it because it made the movie less interesting.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Agreed. Were you planning on working on the proposed sequel?

Speaker 4 (55:10):
I wasn't really involved in that. I had since moved
on to do a studio movie, So I you know,
I kind of feel like once I put all my
energy into one of these things, I've kind of done it.
It is hard for me to understand how people do
all these sequels, Like, I mean, I think, what's James
gunn once is talking about doing what he's going? Is

(55:32):
he gonna do Superman again? Or I just don't know
how they do it, Like, aren't you burned out on this?

Speaker 3 (55:38):
I'm trying to think of director. I mean, David Gordon
Green did three Halloweens. Try to think of a director
who's done more.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
Minor I think thirty three. Yeah, So sometimes what about.

Speaker 4 (55:51):
The granddaddy of them all? What about Cameron, who spent
twenty years making which.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
Is his habitar. Okay, truth be told. I fell asleep
in the first one, and I'm not going back.

Speaker 4 (56:04):
Well, but it's like, can you look at those blue
people for twenty years? No?

Speaker 2 (56:09):
I can barely look at them for twenty minutes. You've
watch the trailer.

Speaker 4 (56:13):
Yeah, you know what's funny. It's like, if I'm in
a big theater, I'm in, I'm okay to go on
the ride. But you look at those things. You put
that on TV or streaming, it's unwatchable, the pace or
the it does. Whatever the spectacle of an Avatar movie is,

(56:33):
once that spectacle is gone, it just it doesn't really
work anyway.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
I'm sure the good movies, it's just not my movie.

Speaker 4 (56:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, No, we're all specific. We all
like what we like.

Speaker 3 (56:46):
So jumping forward thirty four years to twenty twenty three,
you reunited with Danielle Harris and Robert England in your
Halloween set horror film Natty Knox, can can you kind
of take us through how you became attached to this
project and how you got both Danielle and Robert involved.

Speaker 4 (57:01):
Well, this was quite honestly a COVID movie. We were
all sitting around, restless and out of work, and you know,
nothing really was happening. And there was some money, honestly
that I found in northern California, some you know, investment money.

(57:22):
And it was a very low budget movie. But I
was able to persuade these investors, Look, if we make this,
I can call Robert, I can call Danielle. I didn't
know Bill at that time. I've since come to know
Bill mostly, but I can call them and we can

(57:43):
get there. So that was, you know, to them, like
to make a movie on a very low budget and
get those people that became enough too. And then it
was like it was kind of a let's put on
a show movie. We had very little, but once daniel said, oh,
I'll do this, and the script was pretty solid. I

(58:04):
mean it wasn't it wasn't perfect, but it was pretty solid.
And then when we got Bill Moseley, we got really
excited because he brought something special to it. What I
liked about it, the hook was the watching of the
old B movies from the sixties. I mean, I thought
that was so interesting that his mother was a scream queen,

(58:27):
right the Killers. I hadn't quite seen that hook before.
So he's watching all these and he gets his brain
gets all messed up. And then he saw his mother
as a prostitute and all these you know, burned and
the thing. So he's a psychopath. So I liked all that.
We found an actress and she hadn't done nothing except

(58:49):
a student play or something. Her name is Charlotte Fountain
Hardeem and she's starting to show up a little now,
but she played the babysitter part and she was wonderful.
I think again, kind of like the Phantom thing we have.
We have a problem with that movie. And the problem

(59:11):
is you only learn these things in retrospect. But the
cast Bill chop Top, Robert Freddie and Danielle from all
of her scream Queen movies promise. Those three names promise
kind of a gorefest right in their casting. You're sending

(59:32):
a message. It's like putting three comedy. If you put
Will Ferrell and Dana Carvey and you know some one
of the Michael Mike Myers, Mike Myers, if you put
those three in a movie, you're saying big comedy, right,
And so we were saying essentially, but we weren't making

(59:53):
that movie. We're making kind of a small town Halloween
ish movie about some kids who get into trouble because
they're stealing and they you know, there's a rare window aspect.
They watch them, they watch the murder, they don't know
what to do about it. And I think that the
people who don't have expectations for gore porn really enjoy

(01:00:19):
the movie as just kind of a fun Friday night,
you know, kids suspense movie. Almost it's in the it's
in the Stranger Things universe. It's not that fantastical. But
I think where we had a lot of backlash, and
I'm not mad about it because they're right, but a
lot of the horror fans, maybe some people in your

(01:00:45):
audience were upset that, yeah, there's you know, there's some
kills and there's some stalking, but it's it doesn't have
that what was it those movies Hostile or.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
The torture porn movie.

Speaker 4 (01:01:00):
I saw it right, saw as the new you know,
that's the new baseline, and it doesn't have any of that.
I mean there, you know, the girls get kidnapped and
the boyfriend gets killed in the trunk, and you know,
there's there's some there's some things going on, but it's

(01:01:21):
not dismembering, and it's not you know, a poker in
the eye. We have a a haunted house sequence in
the movie, which is spooky, but you know, the nastiest
thing that happens is that Jason Richter gets a knife
in his chest. You know, it's not you can see
it on television and that television has changed every Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
Did it feel surreal though, to be again working with
Danielle Harris on a film that's set during Halloween. I
mean that had to be a weird full circle whoa.

Speaker 4 (01:01:52):
And it's weird because she's my little Danielle. She's like,
she's like nine years old and I'm talking to her
and she's like the real estate mom, you know. But
you know, it's so easy to be with her because
she's so sure of who she is and she's just
very poised. And we had a lot of fun. But

(01:02:15):
it's like every time somebody would like even head in
the direction of telling a dirty joke or doing something
that was slightly our rated, I'd say, hey, hey, hey,
this is Jamie Lloyd. Here, watch your mouth.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
That's hilarious. This is young little Jamie loy.

Speaker 4 (01:02:34):
You can't talk like that in front of her and
I'd cover her ears.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
That's so funny, was Natty Knox? Was the script always
meant to take place on Halloween?

Speaker 4 (01:02:44):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Was that always a part of the movie?

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
It was? Well, it was. Originally Ben Olsen had written
a spec called Ditch Actually, which was more of about
a kind of a ding Dong ditch pranking movie, and
I saw it as an opportunity to say, Okay, well
why wouldn't this I mean, that's what how that's what

(01:03:07):
trick or treating is. It's kind of your pranking houses, right,
So it was a specscript that I kind of turned
more into a Halloween movie, But obviously I was very
aware that we were poaching on that turf.

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
Yeah, no, which is great because that's part of I mean,
for me, I love movies that take place during Halloween.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
Do you tell me that's the setting? And I've been already.

Speaker 4 (01:03:30):
There's a lot of good in the movie. The it
does just like My Fantom, it does split, and I
do feel like in two or three years when it
shows up on AMC, fear Fester, you know when it
starts playing and the origin and the initial when people
just find the movie without an expectation. I think people

(01:03:55):
will start to see it as a really fun little
suspense movie. Yeah, but it is hard to know sometimes,
like what is what is the tone? And but you know,
it really comes down to what do you want to make,
what do you want to see, and then hope that
people get on board.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
Yeah, you mentioned two and we also felt the same
way that two of the standout performances in Natty Knox
were obviously Bill Moseley as Abner Honeywell the serial killer,
and Charlotte Fountain Bardim as I'm brit. I got to ask,
what was it like directing Bill to play a serial killer?
Because he's you know, he's was in Texas Chainsaw, Massacre two,
House of a Thousand, Corpses, Devil's Rejects. He definitely has

(01:04:36):
the resume in that. What was it like working with him?

Speaker 4 (01:04:40):
Well, he's interesting because his face is so expressive. There's
some shots of him when he's watching the movies and
he's not really saying anything, but the camera just sees
on his face. He's a real film actor. And by
that I mean the expression is in his face and

(01:05:01):
he's very and this is why he's made all these
movies because he communicates to through the camera to the audience,
I'm fraid all. I mean, he's a lovely man. But
beyond that, I think you just have to don't go
to heavy in the dialogue because you're not there to
listen to him to exposition. Let him just be with

(01:05:24):
the camera and that's where he would. You know, there's
little scenes where he's in the back of the pickup
truck where he's just creepy. Yeah, and he's stalking her
at the window, and you know, he's just got an eerie,
an eerie kind of vibe about me, and he was
People's comments about the movie, they do always pick him

(01:05:46):
out as being particularly good in that movie. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
And did Charlotte kind of remind you of a young
Danielle totally?

Speaker 4 (01:05:56):
I saw it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
Were that was the first thing we thought, were like,
oh my god, this is this is like Danielle Harris
at a young age, right, And it did.

Speaker 4 (01:06:05):
But again, we you know, we looked and looked and
looked to find somebody and didn't until we got a
tape of Charlotte and she it was a Rutgers student,
but there was something about her and I thought her
her poise for doing her first film. Her poise and
her ability to hold a scene was really fantastic. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
And last question on Natty Knox, just to give a
spoiler alert here since the film's only two years old,
how was it different directing Robert Englin in a scene
where he's playing the victim versus being the assailant?

Speaker 4 (01:06:43):
First of all, as an exposition guy, wasn't he fantastic? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
Of course.

Speaker 4 (01:06:48):
He tells that story and it's just I said, Robert,
it's just you behind this desk. You have no place
to hide. This is just you and two pages of exposition.
Oh my god. He makes that because he tells the
story of the screen queen and Natty Knox and the
history of the town. And it's a lot to do

(01:07:10):
in the middle of the movie, you know, but he
just he's such a good actor that he just holds
your attention. And to me, that was like the elevator
scene in Halloween, for it's like, you know what, let's
just sit down and let's just do it, Like, let's
tell who she was, what happened to the sun. He'd say,

(01:07:33):
he's buried out on the thing. Let's get it all done.
In this one scene, and he does it so well.
Also I got to stab him and throw him down
the stairs, so.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
Yeah, which you don't always get to do with Robert Englein.

Speaker 4 (01:07:47):
No, no, so he hasn't done that a lot. In
having the two of them at the top of the
stairs in a little grudge match was pretty fun, you know,
having Chopp top and Freddy at the top there. That
was fun.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
It's like a horror lover's dream.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
So before we wrap up, I wanted to give you
a chance to tell our listeners more about your book,
Still Rolling Inside the Hollywood Dream Factory. What kind of
stories can people expect to get from this?

Speaker 4 (01:08:15):
But I happen to have.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
Oh well look at that everyone, sure.

Speaker 4 (01:08:20):
Yeah, yeah, much younger guy. So to answer your question,
it's all in there, Halloween, Phantom, all the action stuff,
Brandon Lye, Steven Segall, Wesley's Knives, Diane Lane, Alan all
the and then all the TV stuff. So there's all
the Don Johnson and the Dylan mcdermots. And you know,

(01:08:42):
could I, as you know, spent twenty years in television
to keep your Sutherland and Tom Salka all of them.
So it but it's not a you know, it's not
a celebrity X was a it's a it's a how
to how to make it in the business, how to
make movies. And then there's all these cool stories like

(01:09:04):
how we did cast Rachel and Jamie, how we did
how I did work with Steven Segall, how we made
that movie, how he turned it into a studio hit.
You know, the studio. There's a lot of stories about
studio meddling. The one movie that I didn't put in
there was Teking, and the reason was it was because

(01:09:27):
that was such an acrimonious situation that I didn't feel
there was any value to getting into the weeds on that.
But it just, you know, it happens. You read about
it all the time. It just it just didn't. It
wasn't it didn't go. It wasn't what we wanted. So

(01:09:50):
but everything else is in there, and any film student,
any film lover, any film goer, I think they'll find
it really entertaining. And it's you know, there's a lot
of everything we've spoken about. I go into quite a
bit of detail.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
What are you up to today? Any projects?

Speaker 4 (01:10:13):
Well, okay, there's two. There's two that are out to
actors right now. One is a straight up cop action
thriller called The Hardest Place, written by Alan McIlory.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
That's awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:10:28):
We're set up with a company called Capstone, which is
a nice little independent film company, but we're waiting to
get the right actor because today to trigger the financing,
you have to have the right actor. I'm also working
on a possession horror script. It is literally called Possessed,

(01:10:49):
and that is we're out to an actor right now.
We're trying to cast that one. It's really interesting. I
would call it. It's kind of the Exorcist meets groundhog Day,
if you can ever make that match in your head.
It's got a very weird timeline. It's got all the

(01:11:10):
tropes of kind of a of a possession story, but
it's the structure is really inventive and original. So I'm
hoping that will happen. And then I'm just like writing
like a mad dog. I'm writing an alien thriller called
Juvenile X right now, yeah, which is cool, which is

(01:11:33):
a bunch of juvenile delinquents who are they've just finished
their time in juvie and they have to be transferred
to an adult prison to serve out the rest of
their time. And the bus goes the wrong way for
various reasons, and they get caught in a field and
attacked by basically what become aliens. We don't know that

(01:11:56):
at first, and they get kidnapped and taken to It's
quite interesting. It's kind of a John Carpenter movie in
a way in that there's an assault on Precinct thirteen
element to it in the middle. But I love the
idea these kids that nobody cares about, and they're on

(01:12:17):
their way to just a life of hell, Like they're
going to adult prison. In their kids, it's like being
transferred to Attica or something and you're eighteen. You know
it's going to be brutal, and so they're fighting not
only for their life, but they're fighting to get out

(01:12:38):
of that anyway. It's really good. We'll see how that goes.

Speaker 3 (01:12:42):
That's so cool, and like you know, we're so excited
to hear obviously you're continuing in horror also, I mean
in addition to other genres. But we'd love to see
these projects come to life and can't wait.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
And I read in your book that you always like
to cast Ohio actors, so.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
He does, do you know any tim Murder.

Speaker 4 (01:13:06):
I'm just saying.

Speaker 3 (01:13:08):
Molly Shannon, but bring back Molly Shannon in there.

Speaker 4 (01:13:11):
We go wrong with Molly Shannon. But she became such
a big star.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
Comedy superstar, a superstar.

Speaker 6 (01:13:18):
Yeah literally, And you know I ran into her at
the Burbank Starbucks, which if you want to see celebrities,
go to the Burbank Starbucks. Yeah, but I ran in
here and we got caught up, and you know, she
hasn't changed at all.

Speaker 4 (01:13:33):
She's just you know, she's a superstar, but she's Molly. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
That's awesome. Well, we have one final question for you, Dwight,
and you've been incredible. This has been such a great interview.
We know our listeners are gonna love hearing about all
these movies that you've worked on. We asked us to
every single person we interview on the show, so it's
going to kind of put you on the spot. But
what is just one thing you can tell us about
your experience working on let's say, Halloween for that you've

(01:14:01):
never told any other interviewer, podcaster, publication, or convention, Q
and A. Maybe it's not even in your book. Just
one thing about your experience working on Halloween for that
you've never told before, doesn't have to Yeah, it doesn't
have to be scandalous unless you want it to be.

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):
Or it can just be some random detail.

Speaker 4 (01:14:19):
Okay, here's a random detail. So the appliance that we
put on Donald's face originally was not good. It was
a burn, it was a burn effect, and he was
very unhappy with it. And he said, he thought, there's

(01:14:40):
a there's a British word. I can't remember it. There's
a British word for like a profilag, like for a rubber.
There's a British word forever. And he said, it looks
like someone planted a rubber around my face. And so
he was really upset, and I went down to his room.
He was staying at the same hotel. I sat down
with him, and he was really upset, and I thought,

(01:15:00):
oh boy, this is We're getting off really on a
bad foot. And I said, here's the thing, Dot, let's
reshoot that scene. Let's send you back to you know,
makeup and hair, Let's do it again. I could feel
him calming down, and then I had to call Mussafa,
who again always was helpful. So we had to let

(01:15:23):
that day's shooting kind of it was half a day
you know, be Reshot and it was one of those
things where I could feel like this could either go
really really badly or we can dodge the bullet, and
we did. But it's these kinds of little things that
you know, it's it's not directing, but it's so much

(01:15:45):
part of a director's life, which is putting out fires
all the time. You know, the dp's going to quit,
the producers upset, the studio's going to fire you with
If Toarros dailies aren't better, you're going to get fired.
I mean on anacondas they tend to fire me every week,

(01:16:05):
and because we were down in Fiji and they didn't
think they could get to me and we were going
over budget. And I don't know if you guys have
seen that movie, but it's a complicated movie, so I
guess I don't know. That's not very gossipy, but it's okay.
It goes along the lines of when you're a director,

(01:16:27):
you are your dad, your big brother, you're the lover,
you're the friend you have to massage, not just the
egos of all the actors. That's just the beginning. But
the writers are upset because they're not getting what they want,
and you know, the special effects people aren't getting what
they want. And so it's really and I think this

(01:16:52):
does come through in the book. You really have to
be a politician, a pretty good politician, to keep all
from derailing. And by the way, we just read the
other day that you know, Michael Bay stepped off a
project with Will Smith and you can imagine what must
have happened in that room. Oh yeah, I mean, well,

(01:17:13):
they put a nice press release out, you know about
creative differences, But can you imagine what must have happened
to you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
I want to see that movie may have gotten slapped.

Speaker 4 (01:17:24):
Yeah, wow, it has to do with that. I'll promise
you it goes back to that. But anyway, but these things,
you know, the world's protected from these details, but I
bet I mean these it's a very it's a tricky
thing to keep that train running on the tracks with
all those of you.

Speaker 1 (01:17:44):
I like the way you said that, you said putting
out fires all day long.

Speaker 3 (01:17:47):
It really does sound like a ton of just pressure
and stress because like you said, you know, it's your productions.
You have to make sure everyone is happy, and like
you said, not just the actors the ball Yeah, like
actors crew, writers, the studio, everything, and so I can't
even imagine the amount of stress tried to deal with
all of that and get a movie made.

Speaker 4 (01:18:07):
Well. I showed up on the back of Fox doing Bones.
I did a bunch of Bones episodes, and I showed
it was like eight o'clock. We had seven o'clock call.
We hadn't been shooting yet, and we had a tricky
shot to do with again another body because Bones always
start to always find the body, right. So the ad

(01:18:29):
comes over with the phone. He said, this is for you,
and I said what he says, and it was the
head of production at the studio, and I took the call.
He said, what the fuck is going on down there?
I said, we're trying to get this shot, and he
just started reading me the riot act. I said, listen,
it's eight o'clock in the morning. Walk down here, get

(01:18:51):
a coffee, come join us if you think you can
do better. But just I'm hanging up now. And I
was so. I like, by that time, I've done thirteen episodes, right,
But you know, the indignity, and sometimes you just get
tired of it, like stop throwing your weight around. We're

(01:19:12):
trying to get this shot. You're not helping.

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:15):
Like, and I'm gonna say to that, Matt, get some
coffee and some coffee, get out.

Speaker 3 (01:19:20):
No, but I mean and it's like, how does that
ever make things better? Yelling at some No, it's worse.

Speaker 4 (01:19:24):
Yeah. They think that they're doing their job and that
they're throwing their weight around. But this one guy, I
was at the top of a hill on a satellite phone.
This guy from Sony is telling me he's going to
tell me to pack up and come home. And I'm thinking, Okay.

Speaker 6 (01:19:43):
He's got boats, he's got crew, he's got Australians here,
we got a river, we got animatronic snakes.

Speaker 4 (01:19:50):
Really, how real is this threat? Yeah, okay, he could
send down another director. But that's going to be a
pain in the ass. It's like, don't don't rally your cage.
If you're not gonna I mean, if you're gonna do it,
just do it. Just fire me, but don't threaten to
fire me.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:20:11):
No, oh god, Anyway, it's a tricky vision.

Speaker 3 (01:20:15):
Yeah, no, I can I can only imagine. Well, thank
you so much for your time today, Dwight. It was
such a pleasure chatting with you about these projects. We
really appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (01:20:26):
You're gonna cut this all down right, Well.

Speaker 3 (01:20:28):
I mean there's just little things here and there. Otherwise,
I think everything that is very interesting. Yeah, I think
our listeners are really gonna love it, all of it.

Speaker 4 (01:20:37):
All right. Well, thank you guys.

Speaker 3 (01:20:38):
Yes, we'll have a great rest of your afternoon and
we'll definitely be in touch.

Speaker 2 (01:20:42):
Okay, thank you so much. Okay, Okay, bye bye.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
Thanks for listening to another episode of Happy Our Time.

Speaker 3 (01:20:55):
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(01:21:16):
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Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
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Speaker 3 (01:21:32):
I'm Matt Emmertts and I'm Tim Murdoch, and we hope
you have a Happy Horror Time.