Ron Howard’s most embarrassing filmmaking moment: “I’ve never told this story for this reason”
Hollywood can be a cruel place at the best of times, so in a way, it makes perfect sense that Ron Howard would experience his most embarrassing moment as a filmmaker when he was preparing to shoot the movie he’s repeatedly called the pinnacle of his directorial career.
It’s been 30 years since Apollo 13 was released, and despite making another 17 features in the following three decades and winning two Academy Awards along the way for A Beautiful Mind, Howard refuses to budge from his position that the biographical space drama is the finest film he’s ever helmed.
Not making the Oscars shortlist for ‘Best Director’ stung at the time, and Howard had every right to be aggrieved when it was hardly the strongest field in the category’s history. Mel Gibson’s Braveheart won the prize while the former Happy Days stalwart sat in the audience, crestfallen that he wasn’t even among the nominees.
Howard has called Apollo 13 the greatest movie he’s ever directed, and it also contains his personal favourite scene from his entire back catalogue, so it clearly holds a special place in his heart. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, though, after the scene-stealing The Studio guest star revealed his deepest, darkest secret from the production: that he pissed his pants as a 40-year-old man. In front of Kevin Bacon, no less.
To capture the weightless scenes, Howard considered using wires and digital manipulation, until a conversation with Steven Spielberg turned him onto the ‘Vomit Comet’, a plane that flies in parabolic arcs to mimic zero-gravity for brief periods of time. In order to bring himself, his actors, and his crew into the clouds, he needed to complete an exhaustive physical examination.
“It’s the treadmill, urine, blood works, heart monitor; the whole thing,” he told Stephen Colbert. “I’m a little more prone to shock, and I can get lightheaded. And at times, I can even faint. In this particular case, we’re going along doing the physical, and they’re doing the blood test, and I start to get woozy.”
Prefacing his admission by saying, “I’ve never told this story by the way, for this reason,” Howard revealed his embarrassment in the most Ron Howard fashion possible: “It led to Ron blacks out and Ron makes wee wee because I hadn’t done the urine test yet,” he explained, because of course that’s how he’d describe pissing himself.
The only person privy to his accident was Bacon, and thinking on his feet, a deal was quickly struck between them. “I’m one degree from Kevin Bacon, and I just take a beat and I just go, ‘Ten extra closeups in this movie, buddy, if you don’t say a word.'” His response? “I’m with ya, boss.”
It just goes to show that you can’t have it all, especially not in the movie business. Apollo 13 will take some beating as Howard’s self-proclaimed crowning achievement, but he’ll also remember it as being the backdrop to that time he peed himself in front of Kevin Bacon, and that was before he’d even been in the ‘Vomit Comet’.
