The blackmail scheme that launched Ron Howard’s directing career: “It’s not very good”
If there were ever a massively successful director with a career spanning decades who’d be named the least likely to resort to blackmail in order to get ahead, then Ron Howard would definitely be lurking somewhere towards the top of that list.
His clean-cut and all-American image has remained firmly in place ever since he was a kid, and he’s maintained that persona ever since. From The Andy Griffith Show onto Happy Days and then into his secondary career as one of Hollywood’s most consistent and reliable filmmakers, Howard is basically what ‘aw shucks’ would look like if it was a person.
However, reaching the top of such a ruthless business requires steely determination and innate self-confidence, and Howard wasn’t above twisting some arms to get his foot in the directorial door. Like many before him, he first sat under Roger Corman’s learning tree to cut his teeth behind the camera, which only happened because he effectively blackmailed the legendary producer.
Their first major production together was 1976’s action comedy Eat My Dust!, where Howard played the fantastically named lead character, Hoover Niebold. The actor was riding high from the ongoing success of Happy Days, but when Corman sent him the script, he wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about it.
In fact, Howard knew the screenplay was terrible, but he had a plan. He’d co-written his own story alongside father Rance and he wanted to make it his first feature. When he met Corman to discuss Eat My Dust!, he threw an ultimatum in the producer’s direction, but the ever-savvy Corman had a plan of his own to fight fire with fire.
“I really had to blackmail my way into my first directing opportunity,” he confessed to Observer Dispatch, but Corman was a tough nut to crack. “I went in to Roger Corman and said, ‘To be honest, I’ve read Eat My Dust! and it’s not very good, but I know you’re the one person who gives first-time directors a chance. Please read this script, and if you’ll co-finance this, I’ll act in Eat My Dust!“
Corman rejected Howard’s proposal to briefly rip the dream away before he offered a compromise. He wasn’t going to finance the latter’s script, but he would agree to let him write another movie that he could direct himself. The spitballing began, and instead of Howard and his old man getting the chance to turn their festive character study Tis the Season into a feature, they ended up scripting Grand Theft Auto.
It didn’t quite work out the way he’d intended, but Howard blackmailing Corman by letting him know he’d only star in Eat My Dust! if he got to make his directorial debut out of the deal worked out very well for the two-time Academy Award winner in the long run.
