The directing job Ron Howard was too scared to take on: “What if I whiff?”
Ron Howard’s directorial career is one of the great success stories in Hollywood. You could argue that he had a head start, given that he was a famous actor from the age of three, but that was more of a hindrance than a help. It wasn’t as common in the 1970s for actors to successfully move into directing, especially ones who were known for playing children and teenagers on cheesy sitcoms.
Like many successful and unsuccessful filmmakers, he went to film school, muscling his way through student films and dodging fame-hungry classmates while trying to break into the industry. His first big break came courtesy of the great B-movie producer Roger Corman. When Corman offered him an acting role in a car crash comedy, Howard agreed with the stipulation that the producer read a script that he had written.
The deal wasn’t very favourable to Howard. Corman could easily have read the script, tossed it aside, and moved on, but he didn’t. Well, he did and he didn’t. Howard showed up to his office with a host of ideas – a film noir, a science fiction thriller, a little bit of everything. Corman turned them all down and suggested he make another car crash comedy, this time as the star and director. And thus, Grand Theft Auto paved the way for Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, and Rush.
It could have gone differently. Howard could have made his professional directorial debut earlier. It might not have been a big break, per se, but it could have been a break. During his stint playing Richie Cunningham on the wildly popular sitcom Happy Days, Howard could have renegotiated his contract to include the stipulation that he direct some of the episodes, but he decided against it.
In an interview with Conan O’Brien on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, Howard explained that it didn’t feel like the right time. For one thing, he felt that it “would not be fair” to his cast-mates for anyone other than veteran director and writer Jerry Paris to direct them. But he also felt that it would heap an enormous amount of pressure on his own shoulders.
“What if I whiff?” he recalled thinking. “Every once in a while, an episode doesn’t work. And if I do well, they say, ‘Well, it’s his show.’ If I have an off episode, then he can’t even direct his own show.”
It was a lose-lose situation, he believed, so he bided his time and waited for the Corman offer to pan out. This might seem like a poor decision, but it might have been the greatest of Howard’s career. There was very little crossover between television and movies back in the 1970s. If Howard had gotten the best-case scenario that he was describing and the episode had been a good one, he would likely have gotten stuck as a sitcom director.
Thanks to the unlikely success of his directorial debut with Corman, Grand Theft Auto, he got the chance to make another low-budget movie and another, until he landed a big one with 1984’s Splash. So, while he may have made his decision partly out of fear, he was also making his first of many shrewd business calculations.
