The movie that made Ron Howard so furious he almost disowned it: “This was Wile E Coyote shit”
Having spent most of his career repeatedly being called one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, it stands to reason that Ron Howard is one of the hardest people in the industry to piss off. However, if you really want to see him seething, then fuck with one of his movies without asking him first.
As a two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker with almost 50 years of directorial experience under his belt, not to mention the co-founder of the eminently successful production company, Imagine Entertainment, it’s probably been a long time since he’s had to contend with outside interference.
The right to creative control has to be earned, though, and there was no chance he’d get it on his feature-length debut. When he was still knee-deep in playing Happy Days‘ Richie Cunningham, Howard finally realised a long-held dream when he was handed the reins on a film that he could call his own, thanks to Roger Corman.
His reputation for giving new directors a chance spoke for itself, but Corman ran a tight ship. Quite literally, since he was one of the industry’s most notorious penny-pinchers, who wouldn’t spend a dollar more than he had to, and if he had a couple left over, he’d use them to shoot a completely different picture.
After the first test screening for Howard’s first tilt behind the camera, 1977’s Grand Theft Auto was held, the audience, which Corman had populated almost entirely with little old ladies for reasons that made little sense to anyone but him, helped plunged the first-timer into what he called a “personal crisis” when the producer told him “the movie wasn’t quite zany enough to wow a New World Pictures audience.”
To up the zaniness, Corman added two new scenes to the film, one of which saw a car crash into a swimming pool, and another that involved what Howard dismissed as “a brief chase scene in which two hillbillies throw sticks of dynamite” at the car being driven by Grand Theft Auto‘s leads; his Sam Freeman and Nancy Morgan’s Paula Powers.
“I hated this idea with a passion,” he recalled. “The chase and explosion scenes that Dad [co-writer, Rance Howard] and I had written were grounded in some version of reality. This? This was Wile E Coyote shit. I was so upset that I briefly considered taking my name off the movie and threatening not to promote it.”
Even though it was an inexpensive B-movie, Howard wanted to take the high ground and contemplated disowning his debut because Corman had compromised his creative vision without consulting him. As a rookie, though, he didn’t account for the concept of reshoots. Once he’d been talked down from the ledge, he agreed to leave his name on the picture, and he was a little embarrassed by the situation.
“The 23-year-old redhead with the unearned auteur complex still had a lot to learn,” he confessed. The only person who had the final say on a Roger Corman picture was Roger Corman, and even if Howard had disowned Grant Theft Auto, it would have been released anyway.
