Movie buffs love nothing more than watching their favourite films over and over again. There’s a sense of comfort in watching something you love multiple times – after all, if it’s a great movie, you’ll probably discover something new about it every time. What if you were the maker of said movie, though? If you directed an acclaimed film that critics and audiences loved, and you came across it one night on TV, would you watch it? In truth, some directors and actors get a kick out of watching their own material, but others find it a soul-crushing experience. Ron Howard is part of the latter group – and outright refuses to watch his old movies.
Over the years, Howard has built a thriving Hollywood career making all kinds of movies. He has made comedies (Night Shift, Parenthood), fantasy (Willow), dramas (A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man), a kids flick (How the Grinch Stole Christmas), thrillers (Backdraft, Ransom), docudramas (Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon), and even a Star Wars movie (Solo).
Naturally, Howard has had some duds along the way, but more often than not, he has proven to be one of the safest pairs of hands in Hollywood. In fact, he’s been in showbusiness so long – since he was a child actor on The Andy Griffith Show – that even if he gets a bad review, he doesn’t let it derail him. “You have to trust your instincts,” he told The Independent in 2019. “But I also strongly believe you should ultimately read your reviews. I don’t read them carefully, but I do look at them after the dust has settled for me emotionally; after I know the way the project landed in the marketplace.”
Indeed, Howard believes that if he refused to read criticism of his work, he’d be doing his own filmmaking evolution a disservice. “To ignore critics and criticism can be pretty short-sighted,” he mused. “And I’d like very much to keep on growing.”
Interestingly, though, while Howard believes he should pay attention to what other people think did and didn’t work about his movies, he will never personally revisit them. For example, when asked by People magazine in 2024 if he’d seen his 1984 classic Splash lately, he admitted, “Frankly, I don’t go back and watch my movies, so it’s been a long time since I’ve seen [it].”
While this might sound strange to some people, it actually makes a lot of sense if you take a step back and think about it. Howard appreciates the experience of making a film, even telling People that his memory of Splash was “so much fun. We just laughed every day. It was such a buoyant, romantic, funny combination of story values and situations.”
However, once he’s made the movie and then familiarised himself with what critics and the marketplace thought of it, he’s done with it. He’s learned everything he can about it, and watching it again wouldn’t be helpful. In fact, it might be detrimental to pick over old ground. Instead, Howard is so obsessive about continually growing as a filmmaker that he admitted to The Guardian that he only needs four days rest after wrapping one movie before he’s raring to go on a new one.