“I can cover her breasts”: the Ron Howard movie too hot for Disney to handle
He’s nobody’s idea of cinema’s sexiest or most scintillating filmmaker, but Ron Howard did once manage to get Disney so hot under the collar that the studio took drastic action.
Some directors specialise in steaming up the screen, but Howard isn’t one of them. For proof, look no further than the fact that he called Rush the sexiest entry in his back catalogue, which is, for all intents and purposes, a biographical drama about a pair of rival Formula 1 drivers.
You’ll never see the two-time Academy Award winner helming an erotic thriller, and if he did, it’d probably be rated PG-13 because he’s Ron Howard, but he did once contemplate the idea of starring in a porno flick to capitalise on his residual childhood fame to raise money for his directorial endeavours.
He also busted a car full of little people having an orgy behind the scenes on Willow, too, so he’s no stranger to the more salacious side of the craft. Disney certainly wasn’t in the early 1980s, and when he tried to pitch the studio a fantastical rom-com, a compromise needed to be made.
“We couldn’t get that movie made,” Howard reflected, with Splash struggling to get a green light. “Finally, Disney said yes. That terrified me. They’d never made anything that wasn’t a G-movie.” Since Daryl Hannah was playing a mermaid who’s essentially topless for great stretches of the picture, he had to argue his point with the powers-that-be.
“I can cover her breasts with hair,” he reasoned. “I can make sure that she’s mostly covered, but, you know, it has to feel organic and real, and she’s of the sea: it wouldn’t be sexy otherwise.” The ‘Mouse House’ agreed to fund Tom Hanks’ big-screen breakthrough, but it wouldn’t be released through the usual channels.
Splash would break new and uncharted ground for Disney as its first widely released PG-rated film, but with the executives remaining wary of tainting the brand by having a partially clothed lead character, the top brass went a full extra mile and launched an entirely separate production arm, with Howard’s third feature as its flagship.
“They had to invent the division, Touchstone,” he explained. “And we were their first PG movie.” Touchstone Films was officially launched in February 1984, and less than a month later, Splash swam into cinemas and became one of the most popular comedies of the year, earning almost $70 million.
It wasn’t Disney’s first PG-rated release as an entity, but it was the first one that became a runaway hit at the box office, vindicating Howard’s decision to fight his corner and justify that Hannah, whether in her mermaid form or otherwise, had to be at least somewhat scantily clad for him to truly realise his vision.
