The “elite” director Ron Howard knows is out of his league: “I emulated and will never achieve”
Now, the cynical among you might be sitting there and thinking to yourselves, “Well, that could be any number of directors, since Ron Howard is hardly an elite-level auteur himself,” and you’ve got a point.
On the other hand, you don’t get the kind of career he has without putting in the hard yards, and while he may not be the most exciting, dynamic, or daring filmmaker in the business, half a century of solidity, billions of dollars at the box office, and two Academy Awards speak for themselves.
If anything, you can trace Howard’s lack of stylistic verve back to his beginnings. Not Roger Corman, since he’d even let a first-time try whatever they wanted so long as their picture was brought in on time and preferably under budget, but American Graffiti, which saw him working under the tutelage of George Lucas.
Yes, it was a ‘Best Picture’ nominee and one of the most profitable films ever made at the time, but once Lucas segued into Star Wars, that was pretty much it for anything else. Lucas was friends with Steven Spielberg, and Howard ended up stuck in the middle of the Venn diagram between them, directing accessible, mainstream movies that did decent business without ever rocking the boat.
If the two bearded best buddies had a filmic child who inherited some of their talent but nowhere near their levels of imagination and ambition, it would probably look a lot like Ron Howard. Again, that’s not supposed to be an insult, but it nonetheless defines him; he’s a safe pair of hands who’s occasionally capable of greatness, but the baseline of his back catalogue is solid-if-unspectacular.
And yet, once upon a time, he had his sights set high. So high, in fact, that he dreamed of emulating a 21-time Oscar nominee, six-time winner, and ‘Golden Age’ icon who wrote and directed some of the era’s most timeless flicks. It goes without saying that Howard is no Billy Wilder, but for a while, he wanted to be.
“I began to study Wilder, and by then, VHS came along, and his diversity is something that I really actively emulated and will never achieve,” he confessed to Bafta. “Unbelievable. I just hold him among the most elite storytellers ever in the history of the medium.” One area where he has matched Wilder is versatility, but beyond that? Not so much.
The legendary multi-hyphenate responsible for Double Indemnity, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Sabrina, Sunset Boulevard, and many more was a one-of-a-kind talent, whereas Howard is more of a journeyman. One of Hollywood’s most successful journeyman ever, it should be noted, but still a journeyman.
In fairness, many have used Wilder as their north star and gotten hopelessly lost along the way, and there’s absolutely no shame in using one of the all-time greats as a barometer. Howard has had a better career than most aspiring directors can ever dream of, but he still can’t lace Wilder’s boots.
