The day Ron Howard compared himself to Hollywood’s most hated director: “The ginger-haired version”
Even if he wanted to, Ron Howard probably wouldn’t even know how to lose his shit on a movie set. He did a great job acting it out on The Studio, but it’s impossible to imagine him doing it for real.
He did once threaten to fire a topless extra, though, so there’s that, and he even managed to keep his eyes to himself. When that’s as close as the filmmaker has come to seeing red and flying off the handle, which was four decades ago, it’s safe to say he’s the opposite of a directorial tyrant.
Tom Hanks wants to fall out with him, just to see what it’s like, but that won’t happen, either. Howard has earned his stripes as one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, which makes it very hard to take him seriously when he compares himself to the industry-renowned wanker who might well be the single most despised director to ever set foot in Tinseltown.
In the ginger corner, we have Ron Howard, who doesn’t have a bad bone in his body, has left a great impression on almost everyone he’s ever worked with, and reacted to rampant unprofessionalism on one of his sets by marvelling at how many little people could fit into a Citroën for an orgy between setups on Willow.
In the bald corner, we have Otto Preminger, nicknamed ‘Otto the Terrible’, who was called a Nazi by Kirk Douglas and Anthony Hopkins, branded a “fascist asshole” by Paul Newman, became a lifelong enemy of Billy Wilder, bullied Laurence Olivier, and scared the shit out of John Wayne, to name just a few examples.
Needless to say, the two are not alike in any way, but Howard invoked the auteurial despot’s name anyway when commenting on his directorial style. “Because I was an actor, I was playing every role in my mind and trying to make puppets out of everybody,” he explained. “I was so prepared, and pretty dictatorial about how things had to go.”
In response, the Directors Guild of America noted that it’s hard to imagine the genial Howard as Preminger V2.0, but he ran with it. “The ginger-haired version,” he added. “It’s my job as the director to be tough enough, clear enough, and knowledgeable enough about what the story needs that I can make quick judgments as to whether or not something realises the full potential of the moment.”
That’s not quite the same as frightening Lana Turner out of Anatomy of a Murder a month before the start of shooting, leaving Jean Seberg “a nervous wreck,” or being labelled as “despicable” by TV’s favourite Batman, Adam West. Michael Caine got on alright with Preminger, but he was firmly in the minority, with the Academy Award nominee generally remembered for what he was: a dickhead.
Ron Howard would likely find it impossible to be a dickhead, and as much as he’d like to think of himself as having the latent fury to become Preminger’s heir apparent, nobody’s buying it for a second.
