Half a century in show business has taught Ron Howard the value of good storytelling. But as he turns to the story of Richard Nixon, Howard again proves that many of the best stories are real, writes DONALD CLARKE.
HERE’S AN arresting thought. When Ron Howard took his first steps into show business, Richard Nixon was enjoying his second term as vice-president of the US. That’s correct. Eisenhower was still in charge and the most controversial episodes in Nixon’s career were still decades ahead of him.
“That’s about right,” Howard tells me. “This year, I celebrate 50 years in show business.”
It seems wrong. He should be a 70-year-old, pipe-smoking sage, rather than a middle-aged joker in a baseball cap. Yet the facts are indisputable. Little Ronny Howard’s first performance as a child actor was, indeed, in 1958.
After a few low-key cameos, he made an impression as the cute kid in the 1962 film version of the durable musical The Music Man. (Meanwhile, Nixon lost the election for governor of California.) In the mid-1960s, Howard became better known as another smart tyke in The Andy Griffith Show, an American sitcom that never travelled. (Nixon sulked in the wilderness.)
Later, in the 1970s, he achieved worldwide fame as Richie Cunningham in the hugely popular Happy Days. (Nixon finally won power, then allowed burglars and buggers to foul his legacy.) In subsequent years, as Nixon drifted into obscurity, Howard developed into one of Hollywood's most commercially successful directors.
Following triumph with treats such as Apollo 13, Cocoonand Splash, Howard now turns his attention towards the 37th president of the US. Frost/Nixon, his gripping adaptation of Peter Morgan's hit play, examines the 1977 television interviews between David Frost and Nixon. Michael Sheen brings oily charm to Frost. Frank Langella is grumpy and evasive as the former president.
“It’s true to say that Nixon was an important part of my life,” Howard tells me. “I still have mixed feelings about him. I had a very low draft number during Vietnam and that meant there was a strong chance I’d get called up.
If he hadn’t eventually honoured his campaign promise and got us out of that conflict, I may have had to consider my options. He did get us out, so he’s not all bad in my book.”
While David Frost was scowling across his clipboard at Richard Nixon, Ron Howard was considering a shift in his career. In 1977, he directed his first feature. Grand Theft Auto, a low-budget chase movie made for Roger Corman's exploitation machine, did well enough to allow Howard to embark on larger budgeted pictures, such as Night Shiftand Splash. It is worth noting that, unlike actor-directors such as, say, Sydney Pollack or Garry Marshall, who popped up in cameos throughout their careers, Ron Howard has barely delivered a line of dialogue in the past 30 years.
“That’s right. But I would like to do a little now,” he says. “Down through the years I have been invited to do a few roles – a few of which eventually brought the actor an Oscar nomination. But early on it was important to me to devote all my personal energies to directing. I didn’t want to confuse actors and didn’t want to confuse studio executives. I really, really wanted it to be seen as my career.
“I didn’t want to be like those movie stars – Paul Newman, say – who directed the odd film. I really wanted it to be the main job.”
I wonder if Howard had also resented the way he was often typecast. Red-haired with prominent ears, he was constantly asked to play the well-meaning, unthreatening kid from the bland suburb with the sunlit beech trees. Now somewhat bald with mild facial crevices, he looks very much like that youngster’s kindly grandfather.
“Yeah, I also didn’t like my acting all that much,” he agrees. “I felt that I had much more to offer. Maybe I was appropriately typecast. Who can say? One of the reasons I would like to act now is that I have been directing actors like Cate Blanchett and Russell Crowe and, now, Michael Sheen and Frank Langella. They are actors who really dig down deep. I would like to see if any of that has rubbed off on me.”
Howard's films have always sought to be populist crowd-pleasers, but they have very little else in common with one another. He has managed fine comedies such as Splashand Cocoon. He has delivered thumping true stories such as Apollo 13and Cinderella Man. (And, yes, he directed the dire The Da Vinci Code, which we'll come to later.) When critics try to find a word to sum him up, the best they can manage is "storyteller".
“I am very happy to have people say that about me,” he says. “I am the keeper of the story. I was a trained actor and I have to train myself to be bolder about the visuals. For me it always begins with the script – the story.”
Frost/Nixon– which this week got five Oscar nominations, including best director for Howard,best picture and best actor for Frank Langellas portrayal of Nixon – does not find Howard being notably adventurous with his visuals, but, once more, he makes a coherent, vigorous story out of the complex material.
Morgan’s script describes how David Frost, then regarded as an intellectual lightweight, negotiated the deal to interview Nixon and, after a disappointing opening, managed to extract an acknowledgment of wrongdoing with respect to Watergate. The film has as much to do with the politics of television as it has to do with televising politics.
“As an American and as a person involved in popular media, I thought Frost was pretty heroic,” Howard says. “He had the audacity, the balls to beat Nixon at his own game. Frost’s team had a real debacle brewing on the last day, but he managed to do something that no American newsman had managed.”
The film will grip anybody old enough to remember the Nixon administration and its sordid aftermath, but will it engage younger viewers? Morgan and Howard believe that it must. We met a few weeks before the US presidential election, and the writer and director, both firm liberals, were eager that Americans be aware that history can repeat itself.
“It’s a funny thing,” Howard says. “I showed the film to a group of students and, at first, they didn’t see any parallels with the present situation. But when you point it out they get it. Back then I thought those interviews closed the book on a shameful period of our history. I thought we’d be wiser when my generation was in power. Now you see these abuses of power taking place all over again. At times you feel at a loss what to do.”
FOR THE MOMENT, Howard is getting back to pure escapism. Later this year, he will release Angels and Demons, a prequel to the bafflingly successful The Da Vinci Code. Ah, The Da Vinci Code. Shot in stygian gloom, featuring yards of tedious, indigestible dialogue, Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's turgid novel defied the derision of critics to rake in $750 (€580) million worldwide. (It is, since you ask, the 27th most lucrative film ever released.) Howard smiled wryly when he is reminded of the contrast between reviews and takings.
"I don't think my expectation with The Da Vinci Codewas for critical praise or awards recognition," he says. "By the same token you always aim to please. People who knew the book warned me. My wife Cheryl was one of them. This is a kind of a phenomenon, she told me. It's not really a movie. You have to let go."
Well, quite. Howard’s version was, surely, far too faithful to the lumbering text. If Hitchcock had adapted that book, he would have thrown out everything bar the odd car chase and the occasional double-cross.
“Yes. That might have been true,” he says. “The decision was made at a certain point not to do that. That’s the way the studio felt and the way Tom Hanks felt and I had explored other approaches. But when the time came that was the way we went.”
This sounds like a tacit admission that they should have been a tad more ruthless in their adaptation. Is Angels and Demonsless faithful to Brown's book? "Yes. It's not as faithful. But there is still enough of the book there that the film is recognisable as Angels and Demons."
Who knows? Ron Howard may well turn it round and make a galloping nail-biter out of Angels and Demons. After all, he certainly has the experience to know a dud from a gem. As he moves into the second half of his century in show business, he may, perhaps, consider turning his own life story into a drama. "I don't think so," he says.
"I look at Frost/Nixonand I thank goodness that my life has been lacking the controversy to have a biopic made of it."
- Frost/Nixonis on general release