The one movie Ron Howard holds closest to his heart: “A project I really cherish”
Every director should spend their career making movies that they’re interested and invested in, but relative to his peers, there aren’t too many Ron Howard films that can be called passion projects.
It’s not as if he was helming the Da Vinci Code trilogy, The Dilemma, Hillbilly Elegy, or Willow because of a deep-seated passion for the source material, which is one of the reasons why he exists in that odd space between a journeyman and auteur.
He’s a safe pair of hands who flits between genres at will, but he’s also a two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker and one of the highest-grossing directors in cinema history, so he’s no hack. On the other hand, such a zig-zagging set of credits and a lack of style means he’s never managed to crack the elite tier among the Steven Spielbergs, Christopher Nolans, and James Camerons of the world.
That doesn’t mean he’s entirely passionless, though. Far and Away came straight from the heart, Ransom was inspired by a kidnapping threat made against his family, Apollo 13 was born from his obsession with the space race and cosmic exploration, and Cinderella Man fulfilled his desire to shoot something set in and around the Great Depression.
Howard is the kind of guy who’ll turn down the chance to helm a Star Wars movie when George Lucas asks him, but will nonetheless step into the breach when Kathleen Kennedy fires a flare into the air after booting the current incumbents from their position, so it’s hard to predict anything he’ll do next.
After co-writing his debut, Grand Theft Auto, another six movies would pass before he assumed another writing credit. That should be the first indication that he was more actively involved than merely being the person wielding the megaphone, with Howard using his own trials, tribulations, and travails as a thirtysomething family man to inspire him.
“Parenthood is a project that I really cherish,” he explained. “It’s a great memory. It was a great creative experience. To this day, it’s probably the most personal film or story that I’ve ever really been involved with. And so, it’s something that I hold near and dear.”
In the film, Steve Martin’s Gil Bruckman feels the pressure of overextending himself, with the father of three having a fourth on the way, while his teenage niece’s pregnancy, his other sister’s marital problems, and his wayward brother continue to compound the situation and push him ever closer to the brink.
It’s not entirely biographical, but when he was developing the picture, Howard was indeed a married man with young children and an all-consuming career, so he didn’t have to look too far to find inspiration. It’s been almost 40 years since Parenthood was released, and there hasn’t been another one of his films that he’s held closer to his heart, and he’s made over 20 of them since then.
