Ron and Clint Howard on being ‘The Boys’

[Music] good evening i'm donna wares editor of the la times book club welcome back as you know this is our very first in-person la times book club event since february and i want to thank everyone here at l.a live for getting off the couch actually putting on some pants and joining us for a cocktail we are so excited to pretend present two very special guests who grew up on television right in front of all of us on some of the most iconic and popular shows of the 1960s and 1970s i could really uh spend a long time telling you all about academy award winner ron howard the red-headed boy who famously played opie and about his kid brother clint an actor with more than 250 screen credits um and very memorably starring opposite a brown bear named general ben but really i'd rather show you and our guests tonight have made that so easy by producing a beautiful video i have been fortunate to see my life turn out incredibly well to not only realize but surpass my dreams of making a living as a storyteller it could have all been so different my name could easily have been ronnie beckenholt and today i would be what how about a farmer in north central oklahoma where my dad's folks were from it's long hours and hard work but fortunately i have the company of my brother clint five years my junior ron talks in positive terms he's a glass half full guy i'm not sure i would have handled those harsh oklahoma winners particularly well there's a good chance i might still have become a familiar face as a young man to the oklahoma state troopers it's true that we didn't become farmers but we inherited the farmers work ethic our folks brought with them from oklahoma until recently i was not particularly inclined to contemplate the why of this but when my father died over thanksgiving weekend in 2017 his passing kicked off a round of introspection clint and i were now orphans our mother had died in 2000 our parents story had come to an end a lot for us to process their journeys were rich and strange in ways we hadn't realized until that point that made our journeys rich and strange too like ron i experienced a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions the day we went back to our old house after our pop died i don't know if i'd even be here right now if it weren't for dad then as now hollywood was littered with cautionary tales we grew up in circumstances that were profoundly unusual dividing our time between attending public schools being tutored on set and working in an industry fraught with way more snares and traps than we were aware of in our innocence yeah i guess we were different we were grinders and scrappers showbiz may seem glamorous but each battle is one in the trenches with heavy doses of perspiration and preparation mom and dad managed this feat with remarkable grace navigating their boys through terrain that by all rights should have left us psychologically damaged but like indiana jones in that famous scene where he narrowly escapes getting crushed by a giant rolling boulder we somehow made it through intact ready for the next adventure ron and i decided to share our story of growing up as the products of these sophisticated hicks just your typical post-war tale of a tight nuclear family whose two kids happen to be on tv all the time [Music] [Music] [Applause] and now please join me in welcoming ron howard clint howard and mary mcnamara to the l.a times book club stage thank you thank you take it away mary thank you donna this is so exciting thank you i can't believe it we'll uh kinda freaking out i mean there's so many people and we're out and it's not on zoom and it's so exciting thank you for being here i feel like well we're gonna have to come up with some stuff because you kind of just got it all from the from the trailer you were thinking that i was thinking about hey that question um thank you so much for being here and and thank you both for all the wonderful things you have brought to our lives i mean looking at you i am of an age where it's like you are my life it's like it's really scary actually it's kind of like from mayberry to you know gentle ben i remember one of my older cousins had a gentle bend lunch box that i coveted greatly i hope she still got it yeah absolutely that's a good question um and will she give it to me um and then all the way through and you know even now and it's uh you know and thank you very much for the paper which remains one of my favorite why thank you i hear from you we always go that was such a good the whole chair thing we still talk about that actual newspaper um before we start talking about your wonderful book i do want to ask you guys as you know hollywood elite do you think we're gonna have a strike i'm like really nervous about this yeah you do think we're gonna have a strike yeah oh crap yeah all right well i gotta go i hope some story i certainly hope not but i you know i have a feeling there's i mean just from what i've gathered there's you know there's a real disconnect and that's you know it kind of might be the only way to resolve it right and do you have any insights can you fix it ron howard i feel like you might be able to no no no get on the phone and say it said let's you know let let's hope not let's hope not okay and do you have anything in production i i have uh i've uh two different projects in post-production which would be affected okay all right well everybody say a little prayer that the producers come to their senses let's talk about the boys um i love this book so much i love this book on like 11 different levels miraculous one but also it's like it is as you say in your if you're real it's a story of family craft you know it's like a story of your parents handing down a craft to you which is like just absolutely amazing um you talked a little bit about the why you wrote it can you talk a little bit about how you wrote it i mean i have a brother i wouldn't want to write a book well ron and i you know once we got the idea to to do a book uh then of course we had to come up sort of with a proposal so at which point we we sort of got together we locked in on what we thought the rhythm of the book might be uh we locked in on on sort of how we might how we might present it yeah time frame sort of the length of our lives that we would try to cover and you know just like writers which we both are you know we started with an outline and sort of just fleshed it out i always had a sense that that a sort of shared narrative might might work although i i couldn't recall actually reading anything but when i tested it on on on people who didn't know um they you know they they seemed to feel like it could work and it really proved itself out in our in our proposal and uh and and also in the proposal it it i realized that that clint was a secret weapon because he's funny and he writes in his voice now david camp is a journalist who came in and really helped us he's also an author himself a vanity fair veteran and and really incredibly helpful interviewing us um reading our emails uh suggesting structures uh handing pages back to us to rework and and went back and forth but he was great at sort of not only sort of recognizing our individual voices but also uh you know just encouraging us to just keep sort of writing and rewriting and then morrow yeah the the editoriator was great maura was absolutely awesome and i had no first experience with all of that so yeah i had no idea really you know what an editor was going to do and at first he sort of left us alone but like a good coach man when it counted just when my emotions which this was an emotional experience for for at least for me to write this book and both both emotionally and mentally but in the fourth quarter man our editor just you know he got in our faces i mean not not literally but in a way he really stepped it up and i i really appreciate tomorrow and and and i also thought that you know at the beginning that it was going to be more of a solitary process and in fact collaborating with ron was beautiful but david camp and morrow made it a real collective team but kovitt unfortunately intervened i mean and you sort of we we we never spent a day riding together we couldn't really uh i mean well the proposal we live 3000 miles away right right i live on these coasts and and so you know we did that sort of virtually back and forth phone calls emails you know sharing documents and whatnot um and with the with the intention we were gonna we were gonna get together and and and write and it you know unfortunately we just uh we couldn't we couldn't do that well we had a beautiful advantage um ron sort of had cajoled dad um before well i don't know 10 years 10 years ago to to write legacy letters like legacy emails and ron couched it that he that he wanted dad to write these letters to explain the family history to to our children you know which was a great idea and dad really loved the idea dad didn't want to write a book we tried to get him to write a book he wouldn't want to do it but he did these legacy letters and they ended up becoming just rich resource for us as we dove into the book many of the stories you know we'd heard over the years but he you know when he you know he gave us so much more detail so look the the reality is we've both been asked all our lives you know what was it like to grow up on television uh you know how did you survive and and you know and i'm talking about you know a-list superstars to folks you bump into at the mall everybody wants to talk about this and um and i i felt and this is why i brought it up with clint when we were when we were doing preparing the memorial for for dad you know i i never wanted to do a book on my own i had no interest and and uh um and but i did recognize look here's a chance to sort of use our history answer that question for readers in in you know in a really thorough fun way um and but also um invite people to understand our parents if their their sort of their their their love story their the sort of the origin story of how a family changes course because that's what they did we didn't do that i don't i clint said it a few times i i wouldn't have done i wouldn't have done it i i you know i i wouldn't have said there's a horizon i'm going to go chase that down that's not my nature they did that and we really wanted to honor that to celebrate that and and along the way you know i think it's a pretty good parenting book i think there are a lot of object lessons there are some you know they're used to i love your parents like when i was done with reading it it was like it was amazing um i mean it really was the not just the you know which many people have mentioned the idea that they didn't take all your money which many parents of young performers are seem to be incapable of doing um but also just that they your father taught you how to act i mean he literally i mean he you have a lot of detail in there about how he shared his method with you when he was a method actor and he like how you teach method acting to a four-year-old i'll drop a name i'm gonna drop a name here uh fairly early on because one of the people that i'd you know sort of asked at one point should i write a do you think i should do a memoir was tom hanks who's a good writer and and and we're pals and i said do you think this is something i should pursue i don't really have much interest he said well one of these days you probably should but my advice would be do do do your childhood you know that's what's really fascinating uh he's one of those a-list superstars that likes to sit around at three o'clock in the morning and ask stories about the you know ask for what was it like anecdotes for about barney five um yeah yeah we're gonna need a few of those um but so so you know and then i told him clint and i were joining forces on it and he thought that was a great idea he knows clint well well we asked him to read chapters along the way and he did as a good friend uh that he is and uh he said this is great because it's it's not only all the fun stuff we want to know but what your dad gave you it is an acting primer uh those are great fundamentals and it was it was basically actor studio stuff right it was stanislavski in the most simple terms and and he knew how to make it digestible but but here's the thing he trusted us to be able to understand at five years old that we could recognize that this is make-believe and yet somehow also understand that we needed to draw upon some truthful understanding of what the characters were going through what might what your our character was going through and what the scenes were about and he was right and that's you know he he was right to be to do that and most directors don't don't trust kids to actually understand they just want him to be performing well and then he became what you call several times during the book the child whisperer even for movies and shows that you weren't in it seemed like a couple of times they kept trying to hire him the only there's one the the monroes was a television series that recruited him and they they they made him a regular on the show right and that they dangled that and didn't have a great part but he was you know he loved being on a series and so he he did take on that but clint mentioned you know that we we had suggested that he write a book and i even said hey dad it's kind of low-hanging fruit why don't you start an acting school everybody knows what you did for clint and i you know you could you could impart that and it's probably make a lot of money at it too and he said no i don't want to write a book and i don't want to be an acting teacher he said i i worked with you boys because you're you're my sons and i thought i had something i could i could share with you and it was fun because we had this in common but i have no interest in in in working with anybody else i'm too busy trying to get jobs as an actor and a writer he could have taught sex education too because he was wrong yeah i mean that's what i love is like you ask him these questions all through the book there are like these little you know awkward encounters as there are with teenage boys and girls and it's like he just answers the question and moves on dad was always amazing remarkably straightforward with us uh in terms of the business but also just in terms of life i mean it was i did boy so vividly remember going into bathrooms with him on these studio lots and back in the days it was a very male dominated sort of industry and these bathroom walls were just filled with wonderful pictures and i mean diagrams and stuff and of course says curious kids you know what is that dad and dad was very methodical and he never bsed us he would always give us the answer and it would take a long time [Laughter] and you know well also too this process of writing the book i i so tried to channel dad and mom as we were going through this process of of you know thinking back see one one thing i had was i had memories of me thinking about you know when i was i was thinking when i was nine years old and now i can go back and analyze it and go boy i was thinking like an idiot you know or have a reflective moment and go well that was actually for a nine-year-old i was pretty smart and they gave us so much confidence i remember having i was i remember being so confident as a young actor and you know it wasn't self-made that came from a great environment not only did i have mom and dad mentoring me and being my parents i was five years young five years younger and i had ron being this great role model i watched him wade into the business and i sort of you know got along and you know behind him and rode the wave you know one of the things that i never obviously contemplated when i was young and i and i hadn't thought about it until we were working on the book but you know one of the things that i think they imparted without ever really describing it was you know a kind of a fearlessness and a kind of a courage to to try and fail there was a lot of disappointment in their professional lives and you could see it and you could also see that because of the the way they they faced it that that wasn't crushing that that didn't kill you that was just a disappointment and it was a separate thing then your life with the people that you loved you know and that was that was powerful and i think that it without that i don't think i would have had the the sort of the the nerve to leave acting and transition into directing to believe that i could really do that to face those frustrations and fears and and along the way in my own way i've tried to take creative risks um because of them and because of something that didn't wind up in the book but uh when i was doing a tv series with henry fonda he he said at one point he said as a creative person in this business if you don't feel like you're risking your career every couple of years you're not really trying and you're not and you're not respecting the medium or the audience and i've i've to in my own way tried to take that to heart as well were there things i mean memoirs can be really tricky things because you remember one thing and you think that's true and then you talk to your sibling or your parent or your friend and they're like hell no that's not how it happened um did you guys discover things did you i mean one of the things that i really like about the book is like every once in a while clint will bust in to your narrative or you'll bust into his narrative and like sort of it's almost like you're reading it and then adding a little marginalia note or something well the five years difference was was really perfect for you know i had a different perspective i had a completely different perspective of the 70s that that you know than ron had just age-wise and and you know maturity level and yeah we saw things different i'll tell you what i saw i saw him not getting any respect at about 16 or 17 years old when he started floating the idea that he wanted to be a filmmaker and i you know and it was frustrating for him but i sat back and i thought you know my brother here he may be 16 years old but he's got all the chops and at 16 years old he could have stepped on the set of a television show and directed and been as good as anybody that i've worked with and and you know it it's been it's been so beautiful for me as an adult and to to watch him grow not only change careers but then flourish as a director and i've been so proud that he has kicked it in the pants and for and he hires me once in a while which is also really pleasant [Applause] that's the easy part that's the easy part the uh you know i the um the structure the approach was was the sort of the the the shield against that ever even being a problem it suddenly flipped it around and it was an asset so we recognized that that was going to be you know part of part of the fun of it uh one of the things that that david camp also did was because it was kind of awkward to go back and like interview people you know like noel salvatore my best friend from high school is here he's in the book um and um but david actually got together with these the cordova street boys the guys that you know were my little gang and uh and spent some time and and came came away with some observations that he could then bounce you know off of us and he interviewed a few other people including henry winkler which was uh which again was really useful um and uh uh and but and would have been a little awkward for us well yeah i mean that that part of the book where you're discussing your uh career on happy days and you go into some you know that it wasn't all as happy as the title might imply that you know as fonzie grew as a character and you started feeling like hey this is maybe not what i want to do and i certainly don't want to do it on a show that is shifting towards another character can you talk a little bit about that what that was like to sort of was that something that you had thought about before or was that something that sort of came out of going back to tell the story i'd been a bit reluctant to take to do the show but you know it was a great job and and and i've grown up you know with that sense that work begets work and you don't sort of turn your nose up at a at a great opportunity it it um it was never really that the show was shifting or that my part was changing that wasn't ever really what bothered me we had a great ensemble jerry parris our director was inspired we had this great you know sort of uh you know um spree decor henry and i always got along great and and he was like you know almost immediately became almost a big brother figure for me he's a very inspiring guy very intelligent and funny and loves loves you know the the art of acting so all of that was great it honestly it had to do with the media and it had to do with the studio and the network and their treatment uh of me i felt suddenly disrespected and and and that that sort of my value in their eyes was reduced and look in retrospect it was a real quality problem and i could even recognize that then tremendous to be on a number one show i knew that um and but but but it it it was a test it was a test and it was eating me up in a lot of ways because again it wasn't exactly where i wanted to be right it also fueled my ambition so i was able to kind of convert it um and um and i began making films again on the weekends and and and doing that sort of thing and but it also provided opportunities the leverage ultimately to get my first directing going so i always knew it was a double-edged sword and it was a wonderful thing and i stayed with the show until my contract was up and it was you know one of the most difficult decisions of of my career was to actually leave the show when it was still going great and these are all people that i uh loved including marine ross who's here by the way uh marion let's see uh who the uh can i tell people how she describes her age who describes herself as 93 [ __ ] years old [Laughter] you are a goddess she is a goddess she was a real glue on the show we were talking backstage but she she knew to sort of look around gary marshall and marion ross had everybody's sort of psychological backs and understood how to kind of sidle up and get people to get people to talk and uh and so in some of those frustrations those periods where uh you know i felt like god my hair's falling out awfully fast when did this start to happen uh or the eczema on my eyelids and hands were kind of getting away from me she recognized all those things and was also incredibly helpful talking me through that there's there's also a great part both of you address it in the book about you know how you know the terrible tween years when like when child actors become not quite adolescent so you're not quite able to play you know a 20 year old or even a high school student because they're all 27 and and just like what a trap that is for young actors can you talk a little bit about that i mean because that's kind of like adolescence times nine million well well that's it and it and it feels like a kind of emotional betrayal well yeah adolescence is you know the actors young actors don't have the market cornered on on troubled adolescents but the junior high school era the junior high school period was both in a way the real highlight of my life because i and also a low life i got i got kind of put on a television show called the cowboys and it was based on a john wayne movie and i had just been in a film called the red pony with henry fonda and maureen o'hara and i just felt like my career was my my career was going really well and then i got on this television series the cowboys and my role was a stinker i was the seventh of eight kids and i was getting one line an episode and it was draining me a little bit i had one huge advantage and that is in junior high school i developed this thirst for journalism and that was brought upon by my journalism teacher mr campbell mr campbell who i had in the eighth grade and immediately loved the idea of writing dad had been a writer but but mr campbell introduced me to the fourth estate and and tight writing a tight lead and being a good solid journalist and he inspired me so much and he was by far and away the best educator i ever came close to encountering now this is sort of special because i remain friends with with steve campbell over the years and he's just absolutely a superior human being and in fact today is steve campbell's 80th birthday and he's here tonight in the audience [Applause] and and that and that man meant so much to me and over the years our relationship has has you know it's changed it's grown it's it's it's grown stronger though and i just lo i love you steve and and i you you're a great teacher and you're a better friend but let's hear it for the journalism teachers yeah you know in talking about the you know that sort of that period of time i think in some ways i might have even felt it more than clint did because you know the andy griffith show had been gone out as a number one show i was 14 years old and you know i continued to work and i you know i barely barely ever even had to audition and when i did i always got the part and suddenly that just changed like you know 18 months later two years later and i went for a stretch where i didn't work for i don't know a long time nine months ten months uh and and i it was really destabilizing and that coming along with sort of adolescence with all of those insecurities was uh you know i i again i was able to convert that into a kind of focused ambition a kind of uh and i again i think i i recognize this in my dad a sort of uh you know it doesn't have to be easy if it was easy everybody could do it um dig down and if you love it chase it we're restaging backdraft for you yeah yeah well we need them we need them let's not begrudge them sirens eat my dust will be coming sorry um i do i know i'm conducting this interview completely back afterward but i do want to talk a little bit about when you were kids and child actors and i do want to hear the barney five stories um but one thing i do i really i want to clarify that your parents were introduced to each other by dennis weaver at the university of oklahoma ladies and gentlemen and then you ended up co-starring with dennis weaver like that is some serious like midwest juju i don't even know what was sacrificed for that to happen well dennis was an upperclassman at ou and and uh mom and dad were underclassmen and and dennis was running a scene study class and uh he paired mom and dad with each other one day to do a scene together and you know the sparks flew and you know the fact that we circled back and dennis got to play my dad uh was just you know it was yeah if we wrote it in a movie no one would believe it dad dad always said that mom was the the best actor at ou when he was there um that everyone you know expected great things of her and um she proved that right much later but the [Music] the business really really punched her in the gut she just she went on audition after audition and just was not getting work um and you know they once she once she and dad were married um she threw herself into being the person who could always get a job which she could um you know she typed 115 words a minute or whatever it was and then she was in the typing pool at cbs but she could she was just one of these people that could you know well as clint always said she could make make friends and on an elevator and two floors yeah um and um but uh but later in life after we were after we were raised and out of the house yeah empty nest i mean it really was an empty nest situation she did other jobs she helped a friend with the business she did if she'd cast extras for tv movies and things like that and slowly but surely she started inch her way back into it henry winkler cast her in a nice role uh in a dolly parton christmas movie that he was directing um and she'd been in a couple of couples she had a nice little small part in cocoon she sort of began to find her way into it and then she went out there and she was then went over 100 on auditions she was experiencing the whole nightmare all over again and and this time she said you know i don't i don't care anymore it's just fun for me i don't need the money i don't i don't even need the job for any reason but you know what else she did she she she she entered a cold reading workshop she went back to scene study she started sending out postcards with herself and these funny little granny poses you know and and [Applause] it's a tribute to mom the title because that's what she always called the three of us and so that that's hence the title it was so it was so beautiful i would go on auditions i still go on auditions you know but i would be going around the the audition circuit here in la and every once in a while i would see one of those postcards that mom had created tacked up on a casting director's bulletin board and you know they loved mom and and mom loved the business and mom always used to say that you know the audition process is really the work and she loved doing it and getting the job was just icing on the cake mom had such an incredibly beautiful attitude towards the business uh you know i she said she said a great thing that this this didn't wind up in the book but but when my oldest daughter bryce began showing interest i have another acting daughter paige that i suspected was was going to going to be interested and and i i you know i realized they had talent and and uh um cheryl and i wouldn't allow them to work professionally as as kids but i i actually went to mom and i said you know i it's much harder it's a much harder business for women than it is for men i'm i'm a little terrified should i be just dissuading them you know we moved to we moved back east we moved to connecticut so that they wouldn't feel like they were sort of inculcated into the world and she said no you can't discourage them you cannot do that she said look when rance and i were doing summer stock together i i've kept up with everybody you know of the 30 people that were in a company you know only four of us stayed with it the rest found other things to do with it but i'm telling you not not a single person um regrets having chased the dream and if if you try to subvert that that that that dream you're this is that's not good parenting uh and the and you know and and uh i followed her advice i'm glad i did can you can you tell the apollo 13 story though i've i've heard you tell it before and it's in the book it's a wonderful story well i love working with clint i love working with dad whenever i could um neither of them ever hustled me for a gig nobody ever said it got anything for me you know if if i cast them i cast them if i had something great and and it's just that was just the way it worked but i was getting ready to do apollo 13 and i knew john sales had come in and done a terrific rewrite um and um and my dad read the rewrite he i always ask him to read scripts and um right up to the end he always could give me great notes um and so he read the script um and he already knew he was going to play a part mostly was cut out that's a great conversation to have with your dad um but he experienced that a couple of times along the way it was never because he didn't do a good job but sometimes that happens but he called me up and he said uh can i talk to you about your casting and i i um and i wondered if he spotted a bigger part for himself or something uh i said sure he said well in this rewrite there's a really nice little part all of a sudden for jim lovell's mother and um and i said yeah and he said your mother would knock that out of the park now mom hadn't done all that much yet she was back she was she was she was she was getting some work and and um and i and it was a very important role even though it was just two or three scenes and i said well i don't know dad i don't know i i let me think about it and then i called and i said you know dad for a role like this i this is a big movie it's a big movie for me it's a big movie for imagine you know i'd have to audition her and he said fine she'd love that so so i went over to their house didn't ask her to come in just sit over here on the couch for an hour and a half see you when we get them in uh so i went over there and she she read it and it was i was so relieved she was instantly understood it and was you know and she did nail it she just had it but she she looked too young this is supposed she's supposed to be in a nursing home this mother and and i said mom i'm just a little worried you know that frankly you know you're you're 10 or 15 years too young for this and dad said well there's makeup and you can you know she already has the gray hair we can play on you know i'm sure that they can work on that and i said yeah i guess we could try some tests then mom leaned away she came back with her teeth out [Laughter] [Applause] did you take usual help i said you got it you're cast you're in and she was great she was great and and when she said to to neil armstrong are you at the space program too i mean she knocked it out of the park in that picture you know so everybody was in you were in it and you were supposed to oh yeah he had a good part your dad was in it yes yes it's amazing um we are going to get back we'll keep saying let's talk about the young years and then we go somewhere else but let's talk about the young years um just really briefly um i have to say the the red pony when i told my husband i was interviewing and i said oh he was in the red pony and like my husband started to cry just from the movie and there's just this you have this anecdote in there about the buzzard about like that's just like insane can you tell that story yes well in the film um that that that there was a scene where the colt dies and i kind of rushed down to this ravine and i see the colt and he's laying in this stream and the buzzards are on the colt and the scene is written to where jody grabs one of these buzzards and and and to get him off the the colt kills the buzzer and at first i assumed that it was going to be some sort of you know puppet or not a puppet but a dummy bird and the director bob totten and this would never be done today at all but somehow bob totten had it in his head that we were going to i was going to take out a real buzzard and somehow they got the humane society guy off the set and it bothered me at the time because listen i had worked with animals i'd been in general ben raccoons and the bear and all sorts of critters and and i was being asked to in this buzzard's life and you know dad and i had a long talk about it and you know the whole idea of the the food chain and and they assured me that this buzzard was going to be food for other animals and stuff and and i was right in the middle of making this movie and it was you know i knew it was an important thing for me to do or so i thought and and by god you know um they put a flat rock out there in the stream and when the time was right and then you know bob called action i raced down i grabbed this buzzard and i i beat him and i killed him and i thank god you know it only took a couple of whacks you know because i was afraid i wasn't going to be able to do it and and i i did this deed and i'm not i'm not real proud of it and like i wrote in the book you know i love that movie and for me it was the highlight of my juvenile career and yet that scene it's hard for me to watch because you know that poor buzzer didn't deserve it that day and you know i don't know uh hopefully god uh gives me a pass on that one how old were you you were just a child i was i think i turned 13 years old at the time that's just i mean that just blew my mind it's like if anybody thinks that being a kid actor is easy yeah well one of the fascinating things um which i you know i just again i don't look back all that much but it was really interesting to recognize the cultural shifts within our business um sensibilities uh not just our business but the way in which change has reflected itself within the business i am so grateful for it i don't look back on that aspect of it with one bit of nostalgia it was toxic masculinity it was um you know rules like that being overlooked um and uh and i'm i'm i'm i'm so grateful that we've that we've you know that we have and are struggling to to to to work through that and grow and and grow out of that but it's also interesting to recognize how little the process has changed in its purest form it is about connecting [Music] ideas and themes using entertainment values genre discipline um to convey these ideas to an audience in a memorable way and it boils down to you know um actors at writer's writing actors acting directors directing and trying to that creative problem-solving and that fuels me to this day it excited me as a little kid you could feel the energy it was palpable and it's really what i i live for i love i love it as a collaboration because it just continues to be great when i was doing uh cocoon uh which was when did we shoot 84 83 84. um the uh we were there in st petersburg florida there was one small speaking part that uh we hoped to find locally and we did we found a guy i can't remember his last name charlie he was 96 years old charlie was still driving a car and um and and charlie who had been too old to serve in world war one had at one time been an actor and i said well when was this and he said well it was before movies left new jersey and and there had been a thriving business in new york and new jersey and then it you know it sort of went first to arizona and then to california and he just didn't want to move west so he became a salesman and and that's what he did so we're sitting around and charlie did fine you know he had a few lines and he was terrific and and i was talking to him and i said well charlie this must have really really changed he said nah not really [Laughter] kind of the same old [ __ ] hurry up and wait he said he said that he said the only difference is that that you know now you got to shut up when you roll the cameras in the old days we didn't have to stop the card game and and uh but uh you know so the you know i i do get sort of excited by the fact that it probably hasn't changed ever you know once people started trying to put on productions to convey an idea i think i think that same process of discovery and and um and sharing with an audience has always existed and it continues to excite me i think one of the things that's so wonderful about the parts uh where where you guys are writing about the andy griffith show and gentle ben is that it's described you describe it as children because you experienced it as children so like there's this wonderful bit about all the sweaty people that you've had to deal with like how much johnny cash sweat i mean like you've been sweat on by some of the great yeah it's like i was like when i was getting ready i'm going well well i sweat ron howard seems to really notice that but i mean it's not just that but it's just kind of like the kid's eye view of like what was happening so how when you went back i mean with the bear and the story of the raccoon running up your front i mean that's just like but and and the way the bear smelled and like having to deal with that when you was that all there when you went back to write it or did you did you watch some of the stuff and like go oh i remember what that was like or oh no the experiences are all still still very vivid pretty darn vivid in my mind you know and the sweat the the heat the heat and ron described it really well in his experiences on on the music man but the reflectors for the westerns that they would shoot bonanza and gun smoke they would just put a bank of those hot reflectors and just zero them in like you know magnifying glass in the sun with ants and like ron said you know when it got really hot on your face and you couldn't hardly open your eyes you were in your light and they loved it and then of course the last thing the director would say is after you're being blasted with this heat and this light is open your eyes clip you're squinting yeah i'm squinting i can't see can you talk a little bit on the music man you write very vividly about the heat and like the makeups what i mean i love the music man thank you very much for being part of this great it was fun to be a part of people ever and i'm glad robert i always i've never met robert preston but it sounds like he was as wonderful as i think he is was yeah he was great i can't say that i got to know him very well i had a few scenes with him and he was very you know very very busy and that was a huge uh you know a huge production but it was you know it was awesome and very friendly and fun and kid-friendly because it was just a great show and you got to see these dancers kind of you know do you know applying their their their talent in remarkable ways there were a lot of kids on that production too right so that was a lot of fun for me can you talk about though you you write about the costume and then you write it not being able to ever you wear these these wool stockings you know and the short pants and i wasn't used to any of that and these shoes that took forever to buckle up and uh uh you know it was re it was uh that was really uh you know all of that was really a really a drag but it was a but it was a you know it was it was a really fun production to be around i think they cast me because they thought it was cute that i couldn't really sing um and uh um but uh i'm now working on my first a musical as a director it's an animated film um and can't really say too much about it because it hasn't been fully announced but it's it's really great to be working suddenly on these you know and in a new a new genre and i'm almost you will not be singing i won't sing a syllable i'm no no uh i'm gonna ask one more question because then we're gonna we have some questions from the audience but one thing that i wondered as i was reading this i mean it's so much a very specific time i mean really it's sort of like the arc into what we know as modern television modern film and modern fame and i mean it was sounds like it was hard enough on you guys you know you're getting teased for being called opie or being asked where's your bear or whatever but what do you think i mean do you think you could have had the career careers that you had then now given like the social media and the constant you mean the press i mean you know it's different because um television was so dominant then that if you were on a number one show whether it was the andy griffith show or happy days it was it was it was it was you you were in you were leading the zeitgeist you were you you know you were on the vanguard of popular culture if if you were on a successful show which meant you were far more recognizable you know when when when happy days really broke through and fonz de mania kicked in the way it did it was it was it was like being in a boy band or something you know it just about doesn't happen with television shows um or movies uh anymore um it's part of what's exciting about the world today creatively uh is that you you know you can very successfully um target audiences write and and and create and direct you know for that audience less of a sort of a middle of the road kind of an approach and so outside of maybe the giant tent pole movies and a couple of tv shows that will break through you know that kind of thing doesn't happen i think our parents would have helped us navigate that i think they would have understood what social media was all about and and in a very logical way you were you know clint was talking about it you were talking about it dad didn't tiptoe around subjects he didn't think there was anything uncomfortable about the truth and he would be very pragmatic about that sort of thing and he probably would say you know if you go off and get yourself in some kind of a trouble somebody's going to have a camera and blah blah blah you know and then you'd and you'd you you'd navigate that and are you like that with your well well they're you know they're they're they're smarter than i am and especially about about social media and whatnot i i i go to bryce for advice you didn't want them to be chill child you didn't want them to perform no because um for two for a couple of reasons first and foremost we have four kids and i was incredibly busy not only directing but also as you know co-founder of imagine entertainment so throughout their entire lives i i've i've been on a you know on a very very demanding schedule cheryl's it was a afi writing fellow and continued her writing along the way so we were both very very busy we didn't have time to do what i knew that it took to be a great parent to a child performer an actor we couldn't devote that kind of time to one child and so we recognized that also i felt like um it would be unfair by by the time they came along you know uh opie as a character was it was like charlie temple or something it was kind of it was mythologized and and i i felt like there was there were you know there was just no reason to expose a kid to that kind of comparison um no matter how great they might be and so our our approach was um you know when when you're when you're 18 if you want to pursue it professionally great in the meantime do everything that you want to do as a student and we'll you know we'll support that which we which we did and it was easy to see early on with both kids but especially with bryce this was encouraging not only did she have talent you could see by the time she was in ninth grade that it was you know it's like when you see a great high school athlete and you realize well that person could be a pro she you know she was already there but but the other thing is she she she didn't care about opening night and getting the roses on stage that the parents brought up or whatever she she liked rehearsals she liked the process she didn't want the show she didn't want that to ever end and um she still feels that way now she's working behind the camera as well as in front of it and that's what she still continues to you know to fuel her what do you think about the social media thing and how it would have affected i well i just have a quiet confidence that mom and dad would have helped us navigate it is incredibly complicated because the social media which means basically everybody's got their own ability to have a newsletter you know and then comment on everybody's newsletter and it's just this massive amount of information that it's more nowadays it's more about fame and notoriety and when we were growing up job by job it was about getting the role and then doing it to the best of your ability in an old school kind of craftsman way knowing that that we both were doing an adult and that we had a responsibility to do our very best and i think today listen when i'm on sets now people are just at their phones you know logging into instagram and stuff and instead of having instead of having their mind on the job at hand which is creating a character and and doing that i you know um although i must admit every once in a while i just i just finished working on a a movie called the old way a nicholas cage movie that um you know i was it was a western you know it was a western and i played an old civil war veteran and i had my cell phone in my pocket so you know hypocrite yeah i know i'm talking out of both sides of my mouth okay so we have questions from the audience do we have questions from the audience well i think we have oh here we go we're not doing we have i'm sorry actually all of you shared but first i just want to thank our guests for that wonderful conversation thank you to everyone who shared their questions and i'm we can't ask them all but i'm going to pull out a few for our guests our first question comes from someone in the audience she sent this ahead of time by email named patsy and she talks about how she truly enjoyed watching the andy griffith show during the pandemic and said it was really good therapy for her so she says thank you very much she shares her favorite episode and i'll tell you what that is but first um did you have a favorite episode from the andy griffith show and why uh well there are a couple of episodes that people really uh you know that resonate with people and a lot of the opie episodes were dramaties you know they they weren't all you know rarely the broad zany episodes um and uh so they're you know one opie the birdman is well regarded and and that's the one where i really and i write about this in the book where i really really cried on screen for the first time and i felt it and understood it my dad helped me get to that emotional place and it was sort of a rite of passage among the other actors and i'll never forget that but my favorite episode was actually one that my dad wrote the story for um and it was based on on an event it was a little league game and in the game uh opie you know tries to score and is called out at home by andy the umpire and opie feels like that that was wrong and and a terrible call and is very upset and that it actually happened to me at a birthday party where i thought i had hit the on my birthday the game-winning grand slam home run and dad called me out at the plate um he was wrong he blew the call yeah but he he wound up uh writing that story and then somebody else wrote wrote the screenplay so that remains my my favorite episode okay well here's patsy's episode i'm sorry i gotta get patsy's up in here um she said her favorite episode is the early one about the slingshot mama bird and opie caring for the babies being ready to be oh that is the birdman that's that man that you brought up so you both have the same one sorry mary go ahead i just wanted to say you you talk in the book and i think clint does about like that you guys took pride in that you didn't use the glycerin tears that you how was the way you cried real tears yeah i clint stayed with that i at a certain point i shut that down oh really there was a certain point where i was i was as a young adolescent i was i was too embarrassed and i honestly just i it was um it was like i'm not gonna give him that and uh and and so they in fact i i'm sure this isn't allowed now the ammonia capsules yeah they they they we would give us these ammonia capsules which you take this horrible hit and uh and then your eyes would start to water and if you were in an emotional space which i could get to i i just didn't want to feel the burden of having to generate that and go to the place where i would where i would um you know get give that up it was just a kind of a male adolescent you know uh pride thing oh thank you uh okay so our next two questions are similar so i'm gonna ask them and they're for you both i'm gonna ask them both together because they're similar to around well the first one is from kara and she she asks both of you have you ever wanted to leave the business and the second question and this member of the audience didn't put their name but their question is did you ever consider rebelling and not pursuing acting as a career so um clint maybe you start wrestling with that well listen yes frustration yes uh for some reason god gave me a teflon psyche and you know throughout my childhood going on auditions i i was much more of a freelance actor than ron was and i would compete a lot and yeah it would piss me off but listen i i loved the process and i loved acting and i loved being around the people so you know listen psyche i would dust myself off and get back in there and in terms of rebellion the closest thing i ever had is in junior high school with mr campbell i really considered like zoning in and being a sports writer i thought that possibly i might just pitch the idea of acting and be a sports writer the problem is i did a little research and i saw that sports writers at the time they hit a glass ceiling awfully quickly and you know listen i'm a practical man and you know i'm i'm not an amateur anymore i gave up my amateur status 59 years ago so as a professional i thought well listen you know i love the business i like what it does for me and i like the fact that i can make some money at it and no i've never considered really rebelling and and telling the business of my goal oh yeah i never i i always wanted to do it i loved it i always loved it and i i think that's another reason why i was able to navigate it emotionally because i i wasn't looking for a reason to stop doing it i i um it was it it was very frustrating when i began to hit limitations and walls but but i did recognize early on that i really wanted to be behind the camera i really did not i i enjoyed acting i enjoyed being a part of it but i even then i felt a little limited and as i began to love movies and really watch it i i felt like i had i had a chance to be better as a filmmaker than i could ever be as an actor um and i i really i really wanted that i talk about this in the book but when we were doing the very first happy days pilot uh when it was an up spin-off of of a love american style i actually had the envelope and where i was accepted to usc as a cinema major and uh and i opened it and the first person i showed it to was marion who was there playing my mom and that first pilot and uh and so even then at 17 you know my my uh that that was that was my that was my dream my idea of rebellion was to not fulfill people's cliched sense of who i should be because i was an actor what kind of car i should drive what kind of parties i should go to and that's and that was that was really it i just chose not to not to live up to their you know their um the cliched sense of what it what speaking of cars speaking of cars and this shows you how high living ron and i were his first car was a volkswagen beetle and my first car was an amc pacer oh my god so i want to go back to something you just said that when you you know figuring out should you go to usc that's going to resonate with a lot of folks here and and your tv mom you asked her from for some advice um what advice did marion give you she she was just always so supportive i mean she she a hundred percent it made sense to her she knew i'd grown up you know in the business and she and henry winkler were always the two people on the show who were always saying you chase your dream you go for it um and um you know on the day when i left the show and i wrote about this as well i called the set and i did i talked to i talked to gary marshall and i talked to henry henry was kind of representing the cast and uh and and henry said you're going to be great we're going to miss you but go with god and uh and you know i always felt that from everybody on the cast they look i must have driven them crazy i mean i i had already directed marion and then i was doing shorts with donnie most and talking ants and williams had ideas and but but i was just non-stop with this whole directing thing i mean i must have been a real pain in the ass true [Laughter] okay our next question um is again for both brothers what experience did you share as brothers that most helped create the special bond that you have today sports yeah sports sports my my first memory is is waking up in the morning i must have been three years old so making him eight he had learned how to read he would get up early he would feed the cat go get the la times paper [Music] bring it into the hallway where there was a floor heater lay down and start reading the sports section and i would climb on my brother's back and and i would i would he would regale me with stories about don drysdale and sandy colfax and he'd read the box score tommy davis got two hits and and i still honest to god i still remember the warmth of being on his back and having him teach me about baseball and we've all it it you uh i baseball was is such a beautiful game and you know we we've we share that we still share about it we still share and go dodgers go dodge the uh i live in the east but i'm still a dodger fan the uh you know and later um i mean so playing and and you know clint was had has great hand-eye coordination and from an early age he was good enough that he could play in our wiffle ball games and he could play you know in those and and and my friends would sort of let him join and he was just good enough to hang in there and be a part of it and and so you know he became a really good young uh athlete i then started coaching um and loved coaching loved coaching kids sports and i coached this team it's in the book uh howard's hurricanes a basketball team for what five or six years and it was all clint and his buddies it was kind of a bad news bears scenario hey hey well he was good okay uh one more here uh and this one is for ron did you learn basics from your earliest directors that you still use in your work today definitely i learned so much from some there were a handful of directors that i really really followed and one of them was jerry parris different tone than most of the films that i've done uh but i mean night shift and splash would not have worked the way they had if i not had the tutelage of a guy like jerry paris but brilliant staging for comedy or drama he just knew how to move actors and and and and and and work with moments within scenes physically um connecting movement with an attitude he was really a great director really brilliant bob totten clint referenced i learned a lot from him and he was really the first director to look me in the eye at age 15 and say you say you want to be a filmmaker what have you written lately what have you shot what have you edited together get with it he thought i could do it but i had to get out and by god do it he was very important i learned a lot from george lucas on graffiti not because he spoke much because he was very introverted at that time and didn't talk much but when i saw the film and i recognized his attention to detail i began to understand what cinema the difference between cinema and what i'd sort of experienced in in in movies and um you know and i learned a lot from my dad who never directed anything that was ever filmed but directed a lot of theater and i and i used to um to spend time with him and you know so the the list went on i asked a lot of questions um i used to take a notebook and watch the way directors like don siegel on the shootist um and uh richard fleischer on the movie i did with him really experienced you know um uh filmmakers the way they staged where they put the camera i would ask them why why that shot uh why that lens they were very forthcoming i'm very grateful for that well one of the questions we always ask at our book club is we always like to know uh what our guests are reading and i so i was delighted uh before our discussion tonight when clint volunteered that he had recently uh read a book he loved so i'm gonna throw our question to you aside everyone's reading the boys but uh when you're done with the boys um what else um book do you recommend well there's a friend of mine a business acting friend of mine who uh has has had the most interesting life in the world and he wrote a book that is so riveting and it's it's danny trejo and he wrote a book called trail and it's about his journey from from being a juvenile delinquent into the prison system and then by god with the grace of god he ended up in show business and and and has lived a a beautifully clean life for now i don't know 40 something years so i would certainly i found it a page turn my wife cat and i who both know danny um we we it's a page turner and i certainly recommend especially if there is recovery in anyone any of your family members i certainly would would read treyo because it's just a beautiful beautiful book ron how about you um i i am revisiting a book actually right now um that i read i don't know maybe 12 10 12 years ago it's a history written by william manchester best known for winston churchill trilogy and churchill it's called a world lit only by fire and it's a really wonderful book it's history in a very digestible um way uh he really brings it to life uh and um and and you know it's it's it's it's about the birth of the renaissance and um and he looks at it from several different vantage points medici family magellan henry viii um and and martin luther it's really fascinating great writing great writer of course but also what what a remarkable time and the reason i'm rereading it again is you know we're going through we're going through a revolution it's it you know it's it's a it's information and technology but you know a lot of a lot of what we feel that that that sort of that destabilization um you know human beings live through that every so often and you know we are going through something that's as every bit as profound as the industrial revolution or the renaissance thank you so much of course mary is one of the best red people i know and i always love having you at a book club because she always has such great suggestions so mary will you jump in i will but i need to ask the question first i'm sorry you need to talk to me about the snow globe this is one of your snow globes yes clint makes snow globes on top of everything else which i forgot to ask about and this is a snow globe from start this is your star trek yes that's commander baylock and his puppet and that's um that was actually the very first snow globe that i made and that is amazing yes and i made i think i've made 26 snow globes since and uh i don't know about 12 snow globes in i was having a conversation with the fellow who's who sells me the kits they come with the kid it's you know do-it-yourself deal and he goes clint i i just want to let you know that you know you're on snow globe number 12 now and i've never had anybody buy more than two so i guess i i want to introduce you to my 21st century obsession [Laughter] mary thank you for asking that question i don't know how we almost missed it i was just like if you introduce a snow globe in the first act and i i titled them all and of course this one's titled but first the tronya we didn't even get to the toronto yeah all right so tell us what tranya is come on although everyone who knows that episode but tell us what tron is yeah tronya was the the the elixir the elixir that i offered captain kirk and his crew aboard the faserious when they came when they came to me and i was just sort of playing a game with them and in fact i just wanted company and uh i really wanted a drinking buddy uh so i offered tranya uh to the crew of of the enterprise and in real life it was oh in real life it was pink grapefruit juice out of a can so much for the magic of hollywood great thank you okay mary what are you reading i am i i most recently read the dutch house by anne patchett which is wonderful and i should mention um that ann patchett is coming to book club on december 9th he did not pay me i did not yes and the other is um i don't know if you've listened to the audio edition of the dutch house but it's read by tom hanks and the book is great the audio edition is um i've made my husband uh listen to it i think he's listening to it now and loving it he's in the audience so it's really good um i thought she'd be proud that i had read it with my own little eyes she kept saying you need the audio well all right okay tom hanks the book is great too i did read that i did be sure and say that when ann is here yeah it's fabulous too um well i want to thank you both for this wonderful conversation we have had for our events we always partner with uh booksellers and for this event of roman's books books locally was our independent book seller and all of you got included books from with your ticket for our virtual event this evening uh we also um partnered with the magic city bookstore in oklahoma oh fantastic and barnes and noble so um we had quite a few uh booksellers and um so i just wanted to mention those and thank them for fulfilling it i already heard people got their books uh very early ahead of it many people did so and then of course our guests here all got them tonight as we wrap up i always like to give our guests the last word before we end uh if there's anything they want to say so mary last word oh thank you very much this is i mean i could talk to you guys all all night long and thank you well thank you it's been a pleasure first of all i hope you enjoy the book um tell your friends uh and uh you know i've been since the moment we really sort of got serious about about putting together the proposal i had a feeling that that it was gonna work as a book and you know william moore has been great great to work with and but i've been looking forward to this week that we've just had which is clint and i together and you know getting to talk about this book and i think it's uh i like to think it's it's it's what it's what mom and dad would would have loved to have seen which is the the two of us you know with a reason to um you know to to to get out into the world together and and talk about our lives so uh you know thank you for for uh being a big part of that we've really been looking forward to it and i too want to want to thank you guys you know listen without an audience we're nothing you know and and also to mom and dad again um boy oh boy what what gifts they they bestowed on both of us and and and me and and the gentle and kindness that they they gave me it was you know unparalleled but also i want to make one more little pitch you know tom hanks reading an audiobook uh-uh ron and i read this one and and i've heard i've heard some of his and i know i heard all of mine and uh and and i you know i i think it's effective and it is you know we we're listen we got to admit it bud we're we're kind of unique creatures yes and uh i hope you guys enjoy and and you know god bless you all i really appreciate it yes thank you for coming out thank you so much you ron howard thank you clint howard and thank you married mac namara and good night to our book club readers thank you mary you guys excuse me we need everyone to please you

Channel: Los Angeles Times Events

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Length: 79min 58sec (4798 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 15 2021