Ron Howard says he once thought about directing porn to fund his filmmaking career.
The 69-year-old former Happy Days actor and Oscar-winning director was asked by journalist Graham Bensinger on his In Depth show how much truth there was to the long-standing rumour, and admitted it briefly crossed his mind.
“Well, it’s true that it went through my mind. It endured as a serious idea for probably two and a half to three seconds,” he said.
The director’s brother, actor Clint Howard, 63, added that no one would have wanted to see the idea come to life, referring to how Ron had the chance to make a film called Opie Gets Laid.
“Yeah, Opie Gets Laid would have probably made Ron a million dollars and he could have gone off and made a movie, but I’m glad he steered away from that,” he said. “I don’t think anyone really wanted to see Opie get laid.” Opie was the character Ron Howard played in the 1960s TV comedy The Andy Griffith Show.
Ron Howard’s daughter, actress and director Bryce Dallas Howard, 42, also appeared on In Depth, adding: “A lot of times in life, I’ll think about the fact that my dad has a public profile that isn’t embarrassing. It’s massive. And if he had done Opie Gets Laid, I just… I wouldn’t be in this business.”
Ron Howard told Howard Stern in 1999 about thinking about getting into the porn business to fund his directing dreams: “It was right at the time where Behind the Green Door and Deep Throat were making millions of dollars, and it was the first wave of the independent film movement… nobody was taking me seriously as a director, I could just see it.
“And I actually thought one day, maybe I can cash in on this thing. One time, one shot, Opie Gets Laid. Make it, you own it. What does it cost? $1,500? I wanted the money to be independent as a filmmaker.”
Howard, who has an estimated worth of US$205-million, left his role as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days after the eighth season of the hit ABC sitcom to pursue his directing career.
He said: “The entire time that I was under contract and doing Happy Days, my dream was to be a filmmaker, and I felt like the clock was ticking a little bit on me because I was 26, 27, and I had been directing for a few years, and I’d lost patience with not being able to devote all my energies to making that transition and giving that its chance.
“A lot of it just came from the fact that I really wanted some guarantees from Paramount Pictures and ABC that they would allow me to direct – not Happy Days – we had a great director, Jerry Paris. I wanted to direct a feature and I wanted them to facilitate that and they simply would not make any kind of guarantee.”
Howard’s first feature film as director was 1977’s Grand Theft Auto. He won Oscars in 2002 for best director and best picture for A Beautiful Mind, and was nominated again in both categories in 2009 for Frost/Nixon.
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