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Still Rolling: Dwight Little on 'Halloween,' Franchise Revisits & More

Director Dwight Little (Natty Knocks) spoke to Bleeding Cool about his memoir Still Rolling: Inside the Hollywood Dream Factory.

Dwight Little has seen a lot in his near-40 years in Hollywood since his debut in 1985 with KGB: The Secret War. He's worked in several genres across all media from film, TV, and video games in some of the biggest franchises like A Nightmare on Elm Street spinoff series Freddy's Nightmares, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home (1995), The X-Files, 24, Prison Break and Law & Order. Little's still just as busy as he was when he started with recent projects like Vertical's Natty Knocks (2023), ABC's 9-1-1, and CBS's Scorpion. While promoting his memoir, Still Rolling: Inside the Hollyoowd Dream Factory, the director spoke to Bleeding Cool about the advice he would give his younger self, what franchises he would return to, his thoughts on the newer Halloween films, surprising talent, and comparing his film and TV work.

Still Rolling: Director Dwight Little on Halloween Franchise, Film & TV Work

BC: If there is one piece of advice you can tell your younger self starting, what would it be and why?

DL: I would say to make your first movie with the filmmaker you'd like to become. In other words, if you want to define yourself as a genre director of action movies, horror, romantic comedies, whatever it is, you're strong at, and where you feel you'd like to go, make your first movie and first short about that. With any success, people will ask you to do the same thing again. Everybody wants to make their first short or feature, choose something if in ten years people were asking you to make that same movie repeatedly, would you still be interested?

Did you have a favorite franchise or project you worked on and would come back to if you had a chance?

I loved working on 'Halloween' and I didn't come back for Five because I wanted to go and do more studio-level things. I regret it to be honest with you. I wish I'd cleared my calendar and made Five, which [EP] Moustapha Akkad asked me to do because [writer] Alan McElroy and I had a better point of view of what we could have done there. I would also love to come back and do it again. I've talked about this before, but they're all wound up with Universal now. So that ship sailed. I also was proud to have been part of the Free Willy franchise, because it's a family film franchise people loved and it's meant a lot to people, so those two.

Any thoughts on Rob Zombie or David Gordon Green's work on the Halloween franchise?

Yes, but I respect everybody's effort, but I didn't see it as a killing field. Our version of Halloween 4 is what I loosely call "a detective thriller." You have an escaped convict hunted by a detective, Doctor Loomis (Donald Pleasance). We tried to create a compelling story that also scares mixed with Michael [Myers] kills and so forth. Where they headed with the Halloween franchise, it just became like a killing field, and the impact of the kills became less and less. I suppose I'm out on a limb on that, but I wish it was focusing a little bit more on a story, which is what I would have done.

Were there any actors that you worked with before, and you ended up surprised by how they turned out through the passage of time, or something that people may not have been aware of publicly at the time but is out in the open?

I can tell you, that I worked with Robert Patrick once on The X-Files then again on Scorpion, then on a little independent feature I did, called The Last Rampage, and again on (El Rey's) From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series, which was the Robert Rodriguez series. I was amazed by his ability as an actor, no matter how much I worked with him, his depth got deeper and deeper. That's one actor I had the privilege of working within multiple situations. He always seemed to always get better and better. Beyond that, I tried to work with, Steven Seagal after Marked for Death, but the movie we were trying to do together was derailed for reasons not to do with him or me. He was growing as an actor after Marked for Death and I would have liked to have done one more movie with him.

Comparing your film work versus television, are there any dramatic differences?

Yes. In film, you as the director are the commander or captain, however, you want to call it, in all decisions from props, wardrobe, locations, casting, and script all go through you and it is an author's medium. It's fair to say, "A film by so-and-so" because the director is going all the way through post-production, music, sound effects, and so forth. In TV, it's much more where you are hired for your skill set, and applying those skills to a machine already in motion. It isn't the author's situation, but more of a professional service you provide as a director like how you hire a good lawyer or accountant. It's not where it's your signature. They're different mediums for a director, and that's why I prefer films because it's a little bit more something where you can feel authorship.

From McFarland Books, Still Rolling: Still Inside the Dream Factory is available in bookstores everywhere.

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