Film-maker Ron Howard: ‘Honestly, my life has been a little too blessed’

Times change, and Ron Howard approves. In the first 10 minutes of his movie Thirteen Lives, the only voices you hear are Thai. This is only natural. The film is the true story of the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue, the mortal struggle in rural Thailand that seized the attention of the world. But Howard, 68, has made enough American movies to know that subtitling one at such length would once have been impossible.

“Oh, 10 years ago, there would have been a fight. Twenty years ago, there wouldn’t even have been a fight. The whole film would just have been in English. And I really think we have to thank Netflix for making the mainstream international. This is the age of Squid Game and Narcos.”

Thirteen Lives is not a Netflix movie. (In fact, the film was released by rivals Amazon.) But Howard likes to give credit where it is due. On a bitterly cold London afternoon, he is a warm beam of old-school Hollywood optimism. If you can still just about see a trace of the young star of 1970s sitcom Happy Days, his manner mirrors the sturdy, feelgood films he would later direct: Cocoon, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, Cinderella Man. These were movies that wanted the best for us all.

And now we are all, on screen at least, a little bit more ourselves. “For US audiences to embrace people expressing themselves in their own language, I find that so exciting as a director. And, honestly, as an American.”

Does this sound hokey in print? In person, your cynicism shrinks. Still, Thirteen Lives does eventually take on a more western character, because so did the effort to save 12 members of a Thai boys’ football team and their coach from a flooded cave system. That rescue — ludicrously unlikely — was led by British divers Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, played in the film by Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell.

Tham Luang inspired a stampede of movie and TV producers. The life rights of the rescued children were bought by Netflix. (The streamer recently released a series, Thai Cave Rescue.) Howard’s team interviewed everyone they legally could, the director trusting the scale of the story was enough for multiple tellings. “The rescuers gave us a lesson in the possible. Which sounds corny, but you don’t have to be corny to convey the power of the drama here. You just show it.”

Even so, filming was a plate-spinning endeavour: a logistical migraine of an underwater shoot, with leading men who brought their own commitment to authenticity. “When they were younger, Viggo and Colin maybe coasted on their looks. These days they’re actors before they’re stars,” says Howard.

Mortensen and Farrell persuaded him they should film their own diving scenes. He only learnt later that they suffered panic attacks in the process. Now he sighs like an exasperated sitcom dad. Wanting to emulate John Volthanen’s fitness regime, Farrell also lobbied the director to let him run the Brisbane marathon mid-shoot. As promised, he worked the next day. “But oh, he was fucked.”

Hearing Ron Howard swearing is as strange as you might think. But not as jarring as the role played in Tham Luang by Elon Musk, who publicly offered the rescuers an experimental mini-submarine. When the idea was rejected, he launched an ugly Twitter tirade against one of Stanton and Volthanen’s divers. Howard chooses his own words with surgical care. “I do know Elon a bit,” he says, calling the submarine plan “well-meaning”. The Twitter episode? “Unfortunate.” He chose not to reference Musk in the film but only, he says, for narrative clarity. “That stuff would just have been . . . distracting.”

Instead, the film strips events back to essentials. First screened to invited audiences in January, Thirteen Lives enjoyed what were reported as the best test scores in the history of backer MGM. In response, the studio planned a full theatrical release, with a high-profile awards campaign.

In the interim, MGM was bought by Amazon. The new owners sent the film to streaming in August after a single week in cinemas. Howard is again intensely diplomatic. “Covid was still causing huge question marks, and they were the investors. I didn’t want them compromised.” Yet his film had been made for movie theatres: the underwater photography state-of-the-art, the sound literally immersive. “Yes, this is a very cinematic movie. Do I wish many, many more people had seen it that way? Absolutely.”

Howard’s whole life has been tied up with the see-saw of TV and film. He began as a child actor on early 1960s TV: “Ronny Howard”, a six-year-old star of The Andy Griffith Show. It was the first time the medium was meant to kill off cinema. “And it dinged it. Then movies adapted.” Now he speaks too as the co-founder of a sizeable production company, Imagine, with his own stake in streaming. (His 1988 fantasy movie Willow is newly morphed into a series on Disney Plus.) “This is actually a great time creatively. We’re not in a moment where your only shot at getting something made is one of half a dozen studios.” 

He avoids the apocalyptic tone in which the future of cinema is often discussed. A happy new model is coming, he says. “We just need to get through this wonky time.”

More than the film industry has lately been wonky, of course. Amid the chaos of recent US history, even a figure as genial as Howard was caught up in the culture war. Before Thirteen Lives, he made Hillbilly Elegy, adapted from the coming-of-age memoir of JD Vance, now Trumpian senator-elect for Ohio. It was another career landmark. “The most extreme split I’ve ever had between audiences and critics. Which was frustrating. Critics seemed to be reviewing the adult JD Vance more than my movie.” 

A life lived in show business may be the simplest explanation for taking Vance’s account of the American “left behind” as pure family melodrama, as Howard says he did. “But the journalists saw something coming I didn’t — JD running for Senate. If I’d realised that too, I wouldn’t have pursued the project. Because it was unavoidably going to be politicised. I did ask JD about running for office, and he didn’t seem interested. He said he might write a second book. I don’t think he’s written it.” This may be as close as Howard gets to a public bad-mouthing.

For all the bunk of politicians and upheaval in the movie industry, Howard says his professional enthusiasm is still growing. “I have a lot of experience, so physically I’m less wiped out making a film than when I was at 30. Plus I’m not helping with my kids’ homework any more. On Apollo 13, I spent a lot of time coming home and doing 10th grade algebra. So right now I really want to be ambitious.”

One future project is ruled out, however. Howard grins when I ask if he’s seen Steven Spielberg’s cine-memoir The Fabelmans. “Terrific. I say that on the record.” But his own life echoes many of the same themes: a grand passion for the camera, the place of mass entertainment in hearts and minds. So would he ever make The Howards? The shake of the head is instant. “Movies need conflict. Steven has experienced drama. Struggle. Honestly, I think my life has been a little too blessed.”

‘Thirteen Lives’ is on Amazon Prime now