The Oscar-winning movie Ron Howard had “reservations” about making: “Bothered me quite a bit”
There’s a difference between being an Oscar-winning director and directing an Oscar-winning movie, not that Ron Howard cares when he’s got two Academy Awards to call his own.
David Ayer technically helmed an Oscar-winning film when the dismal Suicide Squad won ‘Best Makeup and Hairstyling’ in 2017, while Stephen Hopkins’ The Ghost and the Darkness claimed the prize for its sound effects, with Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman and Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor among the other terrible titles to have reached the pinnacle of the industry.
It would be a stretch to call A Beautiful Mind the best entry in Howard’s filmography when Apollo 13 is right there, but it nonetheless saw him awarded ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Picture’, which is far from the only time his features have been celebrated at the biggest ceremony in Tinseltown.
That was the only one that rewarded him specifically, but Apollo 13 winning ‘Best Film Editing’ and ‘Best Sound’, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas taking home the trophy for ‘Best Makeup’ ensured it wasn’t the first time the Academy had recognised a Howard-directed feature.
It didn’t take him too long either, with Cocoon, his fourth tilt behind the camera, becoming a two-time Oscar winner when its visual effects win was followed by Don Ameche being named ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his performance in the slow-burning sci-fi that recouped its budget more than four times over at the box office.
It’s impossible to predict which projects will sink or swim before a frame has been shot, and even though Cocoon ended up as Howard’s first Oscar-winning flick, his highest-grossing release as a filmmaker, and scored strong reviews from critics, he wasn’t entirely convinced it was the right career move, due to its similarities with other movies, one of which he’d made himself.
“The characters were the most unique aspect of the script,” he explained to The New York Times. “I had some reservations because of the story’s similarities to Splash, Close Encounters, and E.T. In fact, that bothered me quite a bit, but it’s so rare that you have an opportunity to work with these kinds of characters that I decided it was worth doing.”
It was impossible to make a studio-backed sci-fi in the 1980s without the shadow of Steven Spielberg looming ominously overhead, which could have been even more awkward when they were part of the same close-knit quartet of effects-obsessed directors that also included George Lucas and Robert Zemeckis.
Howard had already tackled comedy-tinged fantasy in Splash, and the prospect of aliens wasn’t particularly enticing when Spielberg had already cornered that market and found unparalleled joy in doing so. However, the residents of an old folks’ home accidentally stumbling upon an extraterrestrial fountain of youth in the communal swimming pool was a novel concept, and one he couldn’t resist.
It’s a high-concept genre film at the end of the day, but as Howard acknowledged, it wasn’t all spectacle. The characters drew him in, and he made the right call, ending up with what was his most successful picture yet, despite his initial reservations.
