When Clint Eastwood saved Ron Howard from embarrassment: “It was obviously so painful for him”
Few actors have made the transition to directing quite as successfully as Ron Howard. Starting out as a child actor on The Andy Griffith Show, Howard found major success as Richie Cunningham in Happy Days, as well as a series of motion pictures. Following his departure from acting, Howard has been responsible for some massive films, from Splash to A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13 to Solo: A Star Wars Story.
One of Howard’s earliest directorial efforts was 1988’s Willow. A fantasy adventure starring Warwick Davis as the title character, the film places a plucky young magician’s apprentice in charge of a prophesied baby princess who is being pursued by an evil queen. Alongside Davis, the film stars Val Kilmer, Joanne Whalley, and Jean Marsh, and was executively produced by George Lucas, who also has a story writing credit.
It had all the tools to succeed, and it made a significant dent in the box office, but according to Bryce Dallas Howard, accomplished actor and Ron’s daughter, it received a difficult start in life. “My dad made a film called Willow when he was a young filmmaker, which screened at the Cannes film festival, and people were booing afterwards,” she told The Mail on Sunday. This is the situation no director wants to find themselves in, especially at Cannes, which has a long and often complicated history with applause.
While they often get a lot of media coverage, standing ovations aren’t always the best way to measure a film’s quality. “The duration of the standing ovations in Cannes has become an informal way of measuring the approval rate,” claimed one anonymous employee of a European film distributor, but most major releases get long ovations at the festival, as it’s seen as the polite thing to do. This isn’t always true, as the likes of Pulp Fiction, Taxi Driver, and David Cronenberg’s Crash all got booed at the event, but it is the case more often than not.
Howard found himself in quite the pickle. As a relatively new director with a lot of big names counting on him, he simply couldn’t afford this sort of reception. However, just when things looked bleak, he was rescued by none other than Clint Eastwood. “It was obviously so painful for him, and Clint, who he didn’t know at that time, stood up and gave him a standing ovation,” Bryce continued. “Then everyone else stood up because Clint did.”
Eastwood and Howard would become friends and have worked together numerous times since that ill-fated night in France. Eastwood directed two movies that were produced by Howard’s company Imagine Entertainment: Changeling (which Howard was originally supposed to make) and J Edgar. The western icon also directed Bryce in 2010’s Hereafter, so hopefully, she got the chance to thank him in person for saving her father from a bad day at the office.
Willow getting booed at Cannes probably wouldn’t have killed Howard’s career stone dead, but it certainly wouldn’t have done his reputation any good. Whether Eastwood genuinely thought the film was getting badly treated or just wanted to spare a young director from embarrassment, the fact that he was willing to literally stand up and intervene shows that he is a hero both on and off the screen. Just when you thought he couldn’t get any cooler.
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