Ron Howard names the greatest scene of his career: “I’ve always been very, very proud”
Every director is obligated to tout their latest feature as the best of their career, but once the dust has settled and enough time has passed for them to sit back and take stock of their achievements, they always end up with their favourites. Ron Howard is no different after he picked out one scene as the greatest sequence in his extensive filmography.
That’s a lofty honour for anyone to bestow upon their own work, especially a guy like Howard. After all, the former child star has helmed over two dozen features since Roger Corman gave him his big break on 1977’s Grand Theft Auto, and he’s racked up billions in box office dollars and claimed a pair of Academy Awards after A Beautiful Mind won ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’.
Like everybody else who’s been wielding the megaphone for almost half a century, Howard has overseen a few stinkers in his time. However, he’s also been responsible for a litany of commercial smash hits, critical darlings, awards season fixtures, and even one cult classic, at least by his own estimation.
The Happy Days alum has never been a filmmaker who rocks the boat and upends convention or even attempts to bring anything new, vibrant, daring, or inventive to cinema, so it makes perfect sense that the self-proclaimed finest sequence he’s ever committed to celluloid comes from a picture that’s widely regarded as one of, if not the best, he’s ever made.
Winning two Oscars from nine nominations, including ‘Best Picture’, Apollo 13 was arguably more deserving of scooping the Academy’s most prestigious prize than Mel Gibson’s Braveheart. Howard didn’t even make the shortlist for ‘Best Director’ either, which must have stung when he won the Directors Guild of America prize and was in the running for the Golden Globe.
When it was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress, Howard reflected on his cosmic character study. “There is one sequence that I’m incredibly proud of,” he said. “It’s the launch sequence, and it’s very long. I’m not sure how many minutes, maybe eight or nine minutes.”
“We built this sequence in such a fragmented way. Film editors Mike Hill and Dan Hanley, who won the Oscar that year for their work on Apollo 13, did a great job of putting it all together,” Howard explained. “Hearing the orchestra, with James Horner conducting, building the tension, the emotion around this sequence, making it cohesive, and making it build. It was just an amazing moment. I’ve always been very, very proud of that sequence.”
It’s comfortably one of the best and most memorable scenes in the movie, and it clearly means a lot more than that to the person who directed it. Apollo 13 undoubtedly resides among the top tier of Howard-helmed flicks, and the launch of the titular spacecraft remains its architect’s number-one moment behind the camera.
