RonandClint Howardhad two of the most public childhoods you could imagine.
What made you decide you wanted to write a book about it?
RON HOWARD:There were a few things.
Ron and Clint Howard are the authors of ‘The Boys’.Eugene Gologursky/WireImage; HarperCollins
I had thought about it, and I’d been asked about it.
It was all about being Rance and Jean Howard’s kids.
And that compelled us to tell the story, especially after Dad passed.
Why did it make sense for you to write it together?
Ron, why don’t you talk about using what Dad wrote as sort of a springboard?
I went back to the reminiscences that Dad had written, and there was so much detail there.
Their roots did not suggest that they should succeed in Hollywood, and yet miraculously they did.
There is logic there.
Along these lines, [the book] looks at it from a parental perspective.
What was your writing process like?
How much were you swapping sections and revising each other’s work or trying to remember things together?
CLINT:Especially in the formation of our book, we started with an outline.
We also have a wonderful collaborator named David Kamp.
From the very early drafts, Ron’s pages [were] page-turning.
I loved hearing aboutThe Music Man.
And I loved hearing about even theAmerican Graffitistories.
Because Ron and I never talked shop as kids.
We never sat around and discussed the day’s work.
We talked about baseball, we talked about school.
RON:The real test was writing the book presentation.
It was very fluid, and it was also immediately, clearly cathartic.
I found it emotional.
I found it funny.
I can also see that our voices are different enough that there’s an entertainment value there.
Clint’s funny, and the way he phrases and thinks, it’s unique.
That’s reflected in the sections that he writes.
Why do you think you’ve managed to perpetuate that after all these years?
CLINT:The beautiful foundation that Mom and Dad that set down.
I didn’t go to college or anything like that.
I went to the same public schools that Ron went to.
I personally owe it all to the nurturing and the guidance that Mom and Dad gave me.
I miss them both terribly.
Mom passed away several years ago, and Dad, it was more recently.
Every day I’ll think about what the old man would say about something.
What would Pop think?
I’m always talking to my wife about Dad.
As far as I’m concerned, Dad is alive and well in my household.
That’s in many ways why our parents actually encouraged it.
I don’t think it was about being career film and television people.
There’s a lesson in that.
It’s just built into the nature of it.
RON:It affects everything.
Whatever the genre, whether it’s kids fantasy or sci-fi or real-life problems.
It really has been the foundation of my career all these decades now as a director and a producer.
What do you feel you each learned most about the other from writing this together?
But I also did not recognize how competitive he had actually been.
Not with me, but with the world around him, with the business.
Ron, he worked so hard.
And he kept his eyes focused on his goals so well.
He’s done that his entire life, and I so admire that.
CLINT:As we were writing, it was so tilted toward Dad.
We needed to bring out the beautiful thing that she did.
RON:There were a few things that were sort of difficult to revisit.
Some of the unsettled feelings that I had aroundHappy Dayswere things that I talked about a little bit.
But I’ve never delved into it in the way that I did in the book.
I also recognize how emotional it was then and how vitally important it was to me then.
Yet now putting it into perspective, I recognize that it was just part of my growth.
But revisiting that I found uncomfortable.
It was painful to put that into writing, but important.
But when I look back, I recognize it was not a straight line.
CLINT:I think differently than Ron on this, and partially it is our different career trajectories.
I was a character actor from an early age.
I was always zig-zagging.
I was always zigging and zagging.
It wasn’t like they were ham-fisted about it.
Mom and Dad had a unique way of operating.
It’s such a beautiful cool place to be, to be Ron Howard’s brother.
I get that question a lot as an adult.
People think that there’s envy or there’s conflict, and there really isn’t.
And as an artist.
What do you think your parents would think of the book?
CLINT:They’d love it.
They knew what they had accomplished.
They had that sense of gratitude, but also they believed they earned it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
