Rick Rosenthal, director of the 1981 horror flick Halloween II, reveals the unlikely path he took to get the coveted job.
Rick explains that it all started when he enrolled in an acting class to learn better ways to communicate with the actors he directed.
Through the class, he came across a scene from a one-act play that he thought would make an incredible short film and obtained the rights to shoot it. “I got a group of friends together – not terribly different from the way we work today making little independent films – we shot this little psychological thriller in two long weekends.”
After filming the short, he began showing it around to people and it caught the eye of an agent who represented Halloween writer-director John Carpenter, who was getting a lot of attention and work.
The agent offered to introduce Rick to some other people who couldn’t hire Carpenter at the time, based on his thriller short. “What we never anticipated was that a few months later he called me up and said, ‘How would you like to do Halloween II?’” Rick said.
Watch the full episode to hear Rick talk about his quirky new series for Amazon Prime, Transparent - which stars Jeffrey Tambor as a devoted father going through the process of transgender transformation.
Comments