(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sat 20 December 2025 18:45, UK
Even the most self-assured and confident filmmakers don’t go into their latest movie expecting it to be the greatest ever made, unless their name is Quentin Tarantino. Since Ron Howard is one of the industry’s most wholesome and humble folks, it’s surprising there’s only one movie he knew he wouldn’t beat.
He’s a two-time Academy Award winner, one of the highest-grossing directors in cinema history, one of its most prolific and powerful producers, and a veteran’s veteran who’d notched dozens upon dozens of acting credits before he’d left his 20s before amassing dozens of features as a director, so he’s been around.
Throughout it all, though, he’s always been modest. Of course, not every Ron Howard movie is great, and many of them are passable at best, while a couple of them are borderline irredeemable. Has he made anything that could be called a stone-cold classic? That’s entirely up for debate, but if he has, then Apollo 13 is the closest he’s come to entering the pantheons of all-time cinematic greatness.
Pairs of hands don’t come much safer or reliable than his, even if no director really wants their legacy to be ‘solid-if-unspectacular’ and nothing more. Even though he’d been dreaming of stepping behind the camera since his days on The Andy Griffith Show, one undisputed masterpiece stopped him in his tracks.
It’s not a secret that the Happy Days alum is obsessed with The Graduate, but it wasn’t that. It seems unreasonable for a Roger Corman protégé who’d follow it up with light and frivolous comedies like Night Shift and Splash to fret that they’d never be able to reach the pinnacle of motion pictures, but Howard always had high hopes and big plans for himself.
When Deadline asked him if there was one movie he saw that was so good it made him question if he had the talent and capability to rise to the same level, he didn’t hesitate. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” he answered, which feels like an unattainable goal for someone who hadn’t even made their feature-length directorial debut at the time.
“I was just getting going, you know, working for Roger Corman, loving it, and along comes this movie that is hilarious, it’s gut-wrenching,” he explained. “It’s not just Nicholson; it’s the entire ensemble. It’s just crackling. But I would say I felt a little bit of that… It was a combination of joy, exhilaration, and a bit of intimidation.”
No shit, Ron Howard. Miloš Forman’s literary adaptation is one of the greatest movies ever made, anchored by Jack Nicholson giving one of the finest performances that American cinema has ever seen, in a film that became only the second in history to claim the ‘Big Five’ at the Academy Awards by winning ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Actor’, ‘Best Actress’, and ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’.
There are very few directors who’ve made anything as good as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, so there’s no shame in admitting he knew he’d never beat it. He’s had plenty of chances to try, but he hasn’t, and based on prior evidence, he won’t.
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