‘NEW York City is the greatest,” says Ron Howard, director of ”EDtv,” the new movie that casts a sharp, humorous eye at the price of celebrity.
”People are moving, everyone’s out on the street, and somehow it’s just not done here to stop [when they see a celebrity] and swarm,” Howard said in an interview while in town promoting his new film. Instead, New Yorkers ”hesitate and wave or throw out a wisecrack and just keep moving.”
Unlike the character played by Matthew McConaughey in ”EDtv,” which opens tomorrow, Ron Howard has no illusions about celebrity. He has had an intimate relationship with it almost all his life, having grown up on our TV screens.
At age 6, he was featured on ”The Andy Griffith Show.” In 1973, he starred in George Lucas’ great ”American Graffiti,” and the next year returned to TV in ”Happy Days,” remaining with the hit nostalgia sitcom for 6 seasons.
At 23, he directed his first movie, ”Grand Theft Auto,” a chase film that cost a mere $600,000 but raked in $15 million. His most recent directing projects have included ”Backdraft,” 1995 Best Picture nominee ”Apollo 13” and ”Ransom.”
It was his production partner, Brian Grazer (”a quintessential Hollywood player, in the most entertaining sense of the word,” Howard says), who brought him ”EDtv,” the story of a regular guy (McConaughey) who agrees to have his life scrutinized by a TV show.
”I liked it for its comedic premise, but [unlike such other Howard films as ”Splash,” ”Cocoon” and ”Ransom”] I also thought it was a chance for me to draw on my own experience in a more personal way.”
The discombobulation wrought by Ed’s newfound fame is something that Howard knows all too well. ”There was a time at the height of ‘Happy Days’ when you couldn’t go to amusement parks or the movies. Of course, it would be ridiculously hypocritical to do a whiny piece about celebrity when it’s the life that we’ve all chosen.”
Howard says it was the TV part of the ”EDtv” story that drew him to it.
”You take this everyman, Matthew McConaughey, and he’s a fun guy who’s not going anywhere, and his brother [Woody Harrelson] talks him into taking a leap that people talk themselves into every day when they go on ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ and grab that spotlight. The byproduct is this bizarre whirlwind experience that includes sudden intimacy with people who don’t know him.
”Ed is also a book who gets judged by his cover … and that’s something I wanted to deal with as a guy who’s been categorized for most of my life.
”For a long time, people thought of me as a TV actor dabbling in directing. Then they thought of me as a director who only did comedy … Then I started making dramas, and people raised their eyebrows.
”But I stuck with it and did ‘Apollo 13’ and ‘Ransom.’ So last year, when I bumped into people and said I was working on a comedy, they said, ‘Oh, you’re going to try a comedy now? Have you ever done one before?”’