‘Grand Theft Auto’: the atrocious comedy that changed Ron Howard’s life
Everyone has to start somewhere, and even though some directors strike gold from the start, like Orson Welles with Citizen Kane or David Lynch with Eraserhead, the vast majority have to find their way through several interesting but deeply flawed movies before finding their feet. Ron Howard didn’t fit into either of these trajectories.
Beginning his Hollywood career at the ripe old age of six, he spent 15 years working as an actor. During his late teens and early 20s, he wanted to try his hand at directing but quickly learned that the transition wasn’t going to be as easy as scoring another acting gig. He had made a few student films, but no one seemed interested in financing a feature. At the time, he was starring in the hit television series Happy Days, and although he had the opportunity to direct several of the episodes, he turned it down, wanting greater autonomy.
Like many young filmmakers before him, Howard got his breakthrough from producer Roger Corman, who had helped foster the careers of everyone from Francis Ford Coppola to James Cameron. As Howard recounted to Conan O’Brien on the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast, “He wanted me to act in a movie called Eat My Dust!, and I read Eat My Dust! And I didn’t much care for it.” But Howard wanted to strike a deal, telling Corman that he would act in the car chase comedy if the producer would finance a script he had written and let him direct it.
Corman was open to the idea but changed the terms. “If you act in Eat My Dust!” Howard remembered him saying, “I’ll give you a chance to write a script. If you write a script and I like it, and you’re willing to be in it again, then I’ll let you direct that. If that fails, I’ll let you direct the second unit on something, you know, the car crashes or the fights or something else.”
Critics detested Eat My Dust!, but it was a modest box office hit. In true Corman fashion, it only cost $300,000 to make, so when it pulled in more than $5 million, it constituted a resounding success. Full of optimism, Howard went to Corman’s office and pitched a flurry of ideas with a range of genres, but the producer already had an idea up his sleeve.
“When we were testing titles for Eat My Dust!,” Corman told him, “There was another title that came in a very close second: Grand Theft Auto. If you can fashion a car crash comedy that we can correctly entitle Grand Theft Auto, I’d probably make that picture.”
Howard dutifully went away, wrote a script with his dad in a month, and brought it back to Corman. “It was the fastest greenlight I’ve ever had in my entire career as a director,” he said.
The producer doubled the budget that he’d given Eat My Dust! and didn’t regret it. Grand Theft Auto was a hit, earning $15 million. The reviews were just as poor as they were for Eat My Dust!, but Howard had passed the test. He didn’t have to be relegated to being a second unit director. After that, he was given more opportunities to helm projects, and the rest was history.
