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Ron Howard has recalled being put in the “uncomfortable” position of watching John Wayne spar with director Don Siegel on the set of the 1976 Western The Shootist.
The Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind director, 72, was just 22 and at the height of his Happy Days fame when he starred alongside Wayne and Lauren Bacall in the drama about an aging gunfighter.
It would prove to be Wayne’s final film before his death in 1979 at the age of 72.
Howard, who at the time was studying to become a director at USC Cinema School alongside his acting work, remembered learning a lot from the experience despite the tensions on set.
Speaking on the Talking Pictures podcast, Howard described Siegel, who is also known for his work on classics including Dirty Harry, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Escape from Alcatraz, as a “very strong director.”
He added: “I also learned a lot in a rather uncomfortable way, because Wayne and Siegel were feuding. They did not get along. And I was getting along with both of them separately, just fine.”
Howard, who launched his own directing career just a year later with the 1977 road comedy Grand Theft Auto, said he befriended Wayne by asking to run lines with him.
“No one really would talk to him in between setups,” Howard remembered. “He had a couple of people: a guy he would play chess with, who was the still photographer who had worked with him on a lot of films. But it was a very closed little bubble that he was operating in.
“He was perfectly friendly to me, and he said, ‘Yeah, I’d like to run lines.’ And we had a lot of scenes together, heavy dialogue, and it was very interesting to see him take a scene and shape it into a John Wayne performance in the most positive ways.”
During these sessions, Wayne would also give Howard “an earful” about his disagreements with Siegel.
For the director’s part, Siegel knew that Wayne held the upper hand in any dispute. Howard said the filmmaker told him: “Hey, look: After about two weeks, if you’re the director and it’s you or the star, you’re gone. They can’t afford to go back and reshoot. I don’t care how much they love what you’re doing. You’re gone.”
Howard added that watching the two men would later inform his own approach about how to manage a film set.
“I felt that the key was that a lot of things were allowed to fester for a long period of time,” he explained. “The strategy that I’ve followed over the years is when there’s a difference of opinion, go right into it. You don’t have to make it a fight, but you’re there to achieve something together and talk it through.
“Don’t let it become something that’s petty and emotional when, in fact, it’s a creative concern or a neurotic concern. And if you shine a bright light on a neurotic concern, most people, even the most neurotic of them, say, ‘Oh yeah, I guess I was a little insecure about that.’”
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