The Ron Howard film that the studio hated: “You should be embarrassed of this movie”
Being a child actor is hard. In fact, for many, it can turn out to be a bit of a curse. All you have to do is read about the adulthoods of pretty much anyone who became famous before adolescence, and you’ll find a pattern of struggle and even tragedy.
However, Ron Howard, sunny and kind though he may seem, must possess an abundance of determination because he managed to buck the trend. After becoming a household name at the ripe old age of three for playing Opie Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show, he became a successful teenage star on Happy Days and then morphed into one of the most successful directors of his generation.
These days, Howard probably has legions of fans who have no idea that he was once an actor. Now an Oscar-winning filmmaker, his movies have grossed more than $4 billion worldwide, making him one of the most profitable directors of all time. He makes movies in the mould of Steven Spielberg – sentimental, action-packed, and usually centred around distinctly American stories, whether it’s the suburban family drama of Parenthood or the space race in Apollo 13.
Despite his early fame, Howard did not have his adult career handed to him on a silver platter. He had to work hard to prove himself as a director, going to film school and hammering out a deal with legendary producer Roger Corman to get his first directorial gig. Even before that, though, his work was being underestimated. In 1973, a few years before making his directorial debut, he starred in the George Lucas film American Graffiti and saw firsthand how studios can get things laughably wrong.
Ron Howard’s unlikely rise to the top
It had only cost them $700,000, which was barely pocket money even in the ‘70s, but when they saw the first edits of Lucas’s nostalgic exploration of small-town American teenhood in the ‘60s, the executives hated it. “You should be embarrassed of this movie,” Howard recalled one studio suit saying. “It’s too long; we hate the way it looks; it seems unprofessional.”
At the screening that day was Lucas’s friend and business partner, Francis Ford Coppola, who whipped out a chequebook and offered to buy the film off the studio that instant. “Never mind he didn’t have the money,” Howard quipped.
As sometimes happens, Coppola’s instincts turned out to be dead on. American Graffiti went on to make $140 million at the box office, a return on investment that most studio executives wouldn’t even dare to dream of. It also earned five Oscar nominations, including for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director.’
Luckily for Howard, Roger Corman was an independent producer through and through who had no interest in micromanaging or belittling the filmmakers he financed, even those who were just getting started. He ascribed to a mentorship model rather than a dictatorial one, and it’s hard to imagine Howard’s career getting off the ground as successfully as it did without this benevolent approach.
After the scarring initial steps of releasing American Graffiti, Lucas did not, of course, suffer much. The wild success of the film gave him the credibility to pitch something truly outlandish — a samurai space opera full of fantastical creatures. In yet another show of obtuseness, the same studio that had baulked at American Graffiti rejected Star Wars, leaving the door wide open for Twentieth Century Fox to make the deal of a lifetime.
