Ron Howard's Favorite Directors and Dream Bio-Pics

Ron Howard is interviewed in The Sunday Times, and he's asked to list his top five movie presidents (excluding Frank Langella from his Frost/Nixon), the directors who have influenced him the most, and the other bio-pics he'd like to make. I hadn't really thought about it, but you could argue that his three best movies are all bio-pics, Apollo XIII, Cinderella Man, and Frost/Nixon, although two of those are pretty fictionalized. And his Oscar win was for another story from history, A Beautiful Mind. So clearly, it's a subject on which he has a fair amount of experience and expertise. He doesn't pick anyone you'd ever think of - how about Genghis Khan, Socrates, the explorer Hernán Cortés, and cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. We all know a little bit about those first three, but why Komarov?

"He was a Russian cosmonaut whose guidance system failed while orbiting earth. He made a stunning re-entry, piloting the capsule on his own, and it was a triumph...until his chutes failed to open properly and he crashed to earth and died. Not the most commercial idea, I realize..."

I'd like to see that, although it might play like a cruel joke. How much would that suck, by the way? You go through all that re-entry stuff and then you're just Wile E. Coyote holding a stupid sign and whistling to your doom while the Roadrunner makes a clean getaway. Oh, by the way, the directors who influenced Howard make a lot of sense: Billy Wilder, Mike Nichols, Ang Lee, Spielberg, and Robert Altman.

Comments

[MRPigg]

Howard has had a steady but unspectacular career. My favorite film of his is one a lot of people have unfortunately forgotten about, The Paper. I find myself recommending that one a lot and it seems to have slipped through the cracks a bit.