Ron Howard Almost Made Opie Porn to Fund Directorial Debut
While it’s unclear if Thelma Lou, Miss Crump, or Otis the town drunk would have been the object of his affections, there was a time in young Ron Howard’s career when he considered making a porno to fund his directorial debut. The tentative title? Opie Gets Laid. Shazam!
“It was right at the time where Behind the Green Door and Deep Throat were making millions of dollars, and it was the first wave of the independent film movement,” Ron told Howard Stern back in 1999. “Nobody was taking me seriously as a director, I could just see it.”
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Making sitcom porn to get people to “take you seriously” as a film director? Errrrr, OK. The man who found his thrill on Blueberry Hill as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days confirmed the story once again this week on In Depth with Graham Besinger: “Well, it’s true that it went through my mind,” Howard confessed. “It endured as a serious idea for probably two and a half to three seconds.”
Ron Howard’s brother, Clint — who also starred on The Andy Griffith Show as peewee cowboy Leon — is pretty sure America wasn’t ready to watch Sherriff Taylor’s kid knocking boots, even if it turned into some quick cash. “Yeah, Opie Gets Laid would have probably made Ron a million dollars and he could have gone off and made a movie,” Clint told Besinger, “but I’m glad he steered away from that because I don’t think anyone really wanted to see Opie get laid.”
To earn a million bucks in the 1970s, somebody would have wanted to see it. But not Opie’s real-life daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard. “A lot of times in life, I’ll think about the fact that my dad has a public profile that isn’t embarrassing,” she told Besinger. “It’s massive, and if he had done Opie Gets Laid, I just wouldn’t be in this business.”
Amazingly, someone did make Opie Gets Laid — but unfortunately, it’s not a sordid tale of Mayberry After Dark. This version, a low-budget indie, was the winner of the prestigious William Shatner Golden Groundhog Award for Best Underground Movie, with all of the quality that implies.
We would have preferred to see Ron Howard’s version. “What does it cost? $1,500?” he asked Howard Stern. “One time, one shot, Opie Gets Laid. Make it, you own it.”
But in all the important ways, it would have belonged to all of us.
