The one movie Ron Howard always wished he’d directed: “I think I could have made it”
It’s impossible to succeed in Hollywood without having supreme levels of self-confidence, but Ron Howard might have been aiming his sights too high when he claimed that he was more than capable of directing one of the greatest movies ever made.
Has he ever helmed anything that’s part of that particular conversation? No, he has not. Apollo 13 is the closest thing he’s made to an indisputable classic, although he is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker and producer, not to mention one of the highest-grossing directors of all time, so there’s that.
Not that confidence has ever been in short supply for Howard, who walked away from an incredibly lucrative and prolific acting career to chase his real dream of becoming a director, even when Happy Days was throwing piles of money on his doorstep in an effort to convince him to hang around a little longer.
After serving the same apprenticeship as countless industry icons under the legendary Roger Corman, he was off to the races, and he hasn’t looked back. For the last five decades, Howard has become one of the safest pairs of hands in Hollywood, which hasn’t always been a good thing.
As successful as he’s been and as adaptable to virtually every genre as he’s proven himself, his body of work is all a bit vanilla. He’s made some great films, some good ones, a few OK numbers, and the odd shiter or two, but his biggest claim to fame is that he’s arguably the most well-known mainstream director of the modern era who doesn’t have anything resembling a signature style.
It can’t be denied that it’s worked for him, but it should realistically lead to a raised eyebrow or two that Howard once told CBS that not only was Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the one movie made by somebody else that he wished he’d directed, but he was confident he could pull it off, too.
“I think I could have made it,” he suggested. “I mean, I think I could have understood it well enough, with that degree of sort of wisdom and emotional connection, to have been able to do the movie and do it justice. And I think it’s just a great, great character piece. It stayed with me. It really touched me.”
Only the second picture in history to win the ‘Big Five’ at the Oscars, Forman’s masterpiece is one of American cinema’s finest achievements, anchored by what might be the best performance of Jack Nicholson’s career, which is saying something when you remember that he’s one of the best to ever do it.
George Roy Hill and Hal Ashby, like Howard, both Oscar-winning filmmakers themselves, were attached to direct before Forman, but does the man behind Splash, Willow, and Backdraft really have the chops to make a version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that’s comparable to the one we’ve got? He seems to think so, and there’s only one way to settle it: remake it, we dare you.
