Ron Howard: Saying Goodbye to Andy Griffith | Trending Now

0:01Hey guys, Graham here. It's Friday, which means we get to share with you another one of our most popular clips from a past interview. This week, Ron Howard.

0:16You wrote about your dad. Here he was in his first full year of living and working in California, expecting to at last fulfill a dream deferred by the Korean War. And then some good fortune broke his way. But it wasn't in the form of a bonanza of work for him, but for his little kid of all people. Maybe that turned into his superpower in terms of being your acting coach. I mean, it was basic actor studio stuff. It was Stanislavski, but distilled and presented in a way that I, at four and five and six years old and Clint even earlier, two, three, four, we could understand it and participate in a process.

1:03And line by line, he would say, see, here's the situation. Now, Opie doesn't want to do his homework. And, of course, his dad wants him to do his homework. But Opie's trying to explain why he doesn't have to do his homework or whatever the scene might be. So when he says this line, oh, Pa, I don't think that's really very important. You know, he's just trying to get his dad to stop pressuring him. You know, so you just break it down in the most granular way to the point where sometimes there'd be a scene in the Andy Griffith show where Opie was getting away with something. I sort of remember asking him, geez, would that work for me?

1:50And my dad very quickly said, no, this is a scene in a TV show. And in real life, you would not get away with that. So don't even try it. Dad's special gift was he wasn't intimidated by anybody or any situation. He was with Andy Griffith and Don Knotts and Aaron Rubin and Sheldon Leonard and these very powerful people in show business. And yet dad was the guy that would raise his hand and say, you know, excuse me. I don't think this is going in the right direction. I think that you're writing Opie to be too bratty. And, you know, listen, I think that might get you guys laughs. But I believe if you have a really good, honest relationship between Opie and his father, that it will play better.

2:36And, you know, my God, for a 30-year-old guy from Oklahoma to stand up. Just when he gets his foot in the door in show business, he's putting himself in a position to get kicked right in the chestnuts, you know. And yet he did it in a way to where Andy listened and Sheldon listened. And they came back and they said, you know, you're right, Rance. You're right. Let's try to make it, you know, more of an honest relationship. Boy, didn't that set up the show well. Didn't that decision to not make Opie a little jerk work out really, really well for the Andy Griffith show? That's pop. I want to take you to, if I could, a moment where after the Andy Griffith show's wrapped, you're 14.

3:23It's a wrap party. and Andy gets on the mic and says he wants to say something. Take it from there. We didn't really have big wrap parties at the end of each season, but this was different. We were the number one show in television, and yet Andy wanted to move on, and that's what was going to happen. And I was okay with it. You know, I wasn't, like, all year tormented by this. I was really interested in sports, already beginning to think about directing. Loved going back to regular school, even though there were always some challenges there. But when it hit on that last day of shooting, and then we went to the wrap party, this was it for the Andy Griffith show.

4:16And Andy was up there on the microphone talking. I just started sobbing. I realized I was leaving something behind that was more than a job. It was a way of life. It was a big part of my life. These people were like family. And I was going to miss them terribly. And I suddenly didn't know what it was going to be like to not have that show in my future. And those people in my future, almost 20 years later, we did a reunion movie of the week and I was asked to come back and be grown up Opie and I was directing by then I'd left Happy Days I was busy but Andy asked if I would do it and I sure said I would do it and my sense of who they were as kind of wonderful people and how lucky I was to know them and to be working with them

5:16was completely unspoiled by my experience with them 20 years later. It was just great that I could realize that those childhood memories were accurate. One quick thing before you leave, please consider giving the podcast a rating and review. Those go a really long way in helping us reach new listeners.