November 13, 2020
There are plenty of directors who have had a long and successful career that have spanned decades behind the camera. Hitchcock, Spielberg, and Scorsese come to mind. And there are plenty of actors who have made the successful transition from actor to director. Redford, Gibson and Affleck are just a few examples. But it’s the rare one who can have a successful acting career and a long directing career. There’s one who will probably always be at the top of the list and that’s Clint Eastwood, who has been directing for almost 50 years (but Clint is 90! Oh, and he’s already working on his next film, in which he will both star in and direct. God bless him). Despite Clint’s impressive career, right up on the list has to be Ron Howard, who has been in show business for 60 years, ever since he started acting at the age of six. Howard has a new film coming to Netflix later this month. Hillbilly Elegy is based on the bestselling 2016 memoir and I covered it in my fall movie preview here. This week, we’re going to take a look at just how impressive his career has been.
What makes Howard’s success and longevity so impressive is that he started so young. Most actors who get into the business at a young age flame out pretty fast. Some (like Macaulay Culkin) are rarely heard from again. Some (like Drew Barrymore) flame out, but come back strong with a resurgent acting and producing career. Howard was successful in not one, but two network television shows – first as Opie on the Andy Griffith Show, and then as Richie on Happy Days. He was cast in the latter based on his strong performance in George Lucas’s classic film American Graffiti, which featured a murder’s row of future stars.
After his directorial debut with Grand Theft Auto at the ripe old age of 23 (!), he left Happy Days to pursue directing full-time. It was considered a bold move at the time, as he was starring in one of the top television shows in the country, and people had a hard time thinking of him as anything other than Opie or Richie. Rob Reiner experienced a similar transition a few years later when there was a common refrain of “Meathead is directing a movie?”, referencing Reiner’s best-known role on All in the Family. Like Howard, Reiner would go on to have a very successful directing career of his own.
The Early Directing Days and Mainstream Success
As you look over the landscape of Howard’s post-acting career, you can see how it starts small, then slowly grows, almost as a small circle becoming bigger and bigger with each project. He would eventually grow from child actor to industry mogul and one of the more successful director / producers in history.
Howard’s first directorial effort after leaving Happy Days was Night Shift, a silly comedy starring Henry Winkler (trying to escape the image of the Fonz, a dilemma Howard could relate to) and Michael Keaton (in his first starring role). They played two morgue workers who decide to make some extra money by opening up a prostitution service at the morgue. One of the “workers” was played by Shelley Long, right before her breakout success on Cheers. In researching this movie, I learned that Long turned down the role of the mother in Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, because she had already committed to Night Shift. Yikes – well, at least she found success with Cheers. Now, I remember finding Night Shift hysterical when it was in constant rotation on HBO while I was a teenager. I’m going to guess that if I were to rewatch it now, it probably hasn’t aged very well. But for Howard, it showed he could have success as a director, which showed the movie industry that he wasn’t Opie or Richie anymore.
The 1980s saw Howard continuing to expand his breadth of storytelling and filmmaking, beginning with the hit romantic comedy Splash with Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah. The unconventional tale about a mild-mannered man who falls in love with a woman who is actually a mermaid was a surprising hit, and gave Howard leverage to continue his directing career, proving that his decision to leave acting behind was a good one. While his films during this decade had some hits (Cocoon and Parenthood), there were some misses too (Willow and Gung Ho), but there was also a very important development in his career – the establishment of Imagine Entertainment, the production company he founded with his film partner Brian Grazer. Over the last 35 years, the company has produced some very successful films (including those directed by Howard and others) and a number of successful television series (including Parenthood, Friday Night Lights and Arrested Development).
Pushing the Limits
With a full decade of directing under his belt, including a few hits, and a production company driving projects, the 1990s saw Howard push the limits as a filmmaker, including directing a few memorable epics. His tribute to firefighters, Backdraft, featured harrowing scenes that required complex special effects. This film was the start of a theme in Howard’s movies that I have noticed over the years – what I call the “Hollywood Popcorn” movie. Backdraft featured a deep cast, a handful of conflicts between the characters, scenes of both drama and action, some aspect of tragedy near the end, but an ending that leaves the moviegoer feeling good about the experience. While I like Backdraft (and other films that have this similar feel), it’s the one criticism I have for Howard’s work. Don’t get me wrong – I love “popcorn” movies that are there for pure entertainment purposes. But, Howard is not likely to make a film that is going to leave you conflicted at the end about what you saw, what it means, or who was the hero or villain of the film. And while I wish he would take more risks in the fiction films he makes, he has shown the initiative to get outside his comfort zone with some documentary work that we’ll get to shortly.
Continuing the theme of pushing the limits as a filmmaker, Howard recruited Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (newly married at the time) to play Irish immigrants in search of a new life in America in the late 19th century in Far and Away. This was a nice romantic drama, with some action sequences, but the most impressive part of the film was the end, when the couple claim their land during the Oklahoma Land Rush. This scene featured hundreds of actors and animals and is on the short list of most impressive scenes in Howard’s career. I am fond of Far and Away as a film, although aspects of it are a little schmaltzy, a trait that some of Howard’s films tend to have. For instance during this decade, he also directed The Paper, a “day in the life” comedy about a New York newspaper. It’s a fine film, but it’s a little too neat, and at times, a little cheesy.
While continuing to stretch himself as a filmmaker, Howard would push the limits even further (literally off the planet) in 1995 with Apollo 13, in which the space scenes were shot in a KC-135 that could be flown to simulate weightlessness. I’ve written about this film before and it remains one of my favorites. The way Howard developed a vision for the scope and scale of this story impresses me every time I watch the film. He was adamant that he would not use stock NASA footage for Apollo 13, instead creating whatever footage he needed on film, regardless of the challenge. His achievement would provide him his first serious recognition from the Academy, which nominated Apollo 13 for nine Oscars, but it was another six years before he would win the big prize.
Oscar Glory and Passion Projects
The new decade brought us A Beautiful Mind, the story of Nobel Prize winner John Nash (played by Russell Crowe in a performance that could easily have won him a second consecutive Best Actor Oscar after Gladiator). While suffering through a debilitating case of paranoid schizophrenia, Nash struggles to hang onto his career, his wife Alicia (played by Jennifer Connelly, who won for Best Supporting Actress), and his sanity. Crowe is masterful in this film, immersing himself in the role with a range that we rarely see on film. It can be a challenge to make a compelling film with mathematics at the center of the story, but Howard (and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman) present Nash’s story in a creative way. By using special effects to illustrate how Nash “sees” the solutions to problems he is solving, we get a glimpse into his brilliant mind. We also get the plot twist halfway through the film, when we learn that Nash has been suffering through delusions, and characters we have seen him interact with are figments of his imagination. The film received excellent reviews and would go on to win Best Picture, with Howard winning the Oscar for Best Director. I’ve always liked this film, and think it still holds up after twenty years. There was minor criticism for Howard’s decision to leave out certain negative aspects of Nash’s life in the film, which aligns with my earlier comment about his films tending to be stories that can be wrapped up neatly, without too much conflict that isn’t resolved. He’s not going to make a messy, complicated movie, but that’s ok sometimes.
With Oscar recognition under his belt, it looks to me like Howard has spent the better part of the last twenty years pursuing some unconventional passion projects, checking boxes off his to-do list. Make a Western? See The Missing, the very good 2003 action film with Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones. Adapt a best-selling book? See The Da Vinci Code, the 2006 adaptation of Dan Brown’s thriller, and it’s two sequels. Tell true stories that are relatively unknown? Here we have Cinderella Man, the story of a boxer played by Russell Crowe. Or Rush, an excellent film about rival race car drivers. Or In the Heart of the Sea, an adventure at sea that served as the basis for Moby Dick. Or Frost / Nixon, a film about the controversial television interviews Richard Nixon gave after he left office, in which he admitted breaking the law. Ooh, wouldn’t a repeat of that be fun in a year, if a journalist could actually get the truth from a former president? Never mind – I’m ready for Mr. Irrelevant (my new nickname for the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for only 68 more days) to be gone from my life. Anyway…..
After six decades in the industry, it’s clear Howard has the clout to do whatever project he wants to direct. In fact, he is so revered, he was called in by Disney to rescue the Star Wars film Solo, the Han Solo origin story, after the studio had a fallout with the original directors. It wasn’t considered a success, especially by Star Wars standards, but the fact that he completed the was an achievement.
As much as I may be critical of Howard for not taking many chances with the type of stories he chooses to tell with his fiction films, I have to give him credit for taking the opportunity to bring forward some unique stories in the documentary space. This is been an area of interest for him, especially the last decade. If you are a fan of The Beatles, I highly recommend his 2016 film Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years. It features some outstanding footage of the band from 1962 – 1966, before they stopped touring to focus on recording. Even with the mountain of Beatles projects we’ve seen over the years, this is still a welcome addition. While his next documentary was not really for me (Pavarotti, about the legendary opera singer), his newest film is one I definitely recommend. Rebuilding Paradise tells the story of the small community Paradise in Northern California that suffered severe damage during the 2018 wildfires. Throughout the film, we see fascinating footage of the fires and the staggering damage they caused. But the more impactful portions of the film are the stories of those who suffered, but chose to stay and rebuild their community. Some of the pain they experience is difficult to watch, but their words and actions were very inspiring. While I’m not sure how Hillbilly Elegy will turn out (the trailer and early reviews have me a little worried), it’s good to see Howard has already delivered a strong film this year and after six decades in the business, he can still deliver.
That’s it for this week – thanks for joining me on a tour through the impressive career of Ron Howard. Next week, we’re going to take a look at one of my favorite actresses working today, who stars in Hillbilly Elegy later this month, the great Amy Adams. If you’d like to be notified of future posts, you can subscribe here.
A great read Steve!
Thanks MB!