Hardly anybody, beyond a few TV Land fanatics, refers to Ron Howard, even jokingly, as Opie or Richie anymore. It was actually well before he left his acting stint on “Happy Days” that he first put on a director’s cap. His first hit was the 1982 comedy “Night Shift,” and his first smash came two years later with “Splash.” There have been glitches along the way (“Gung Ho,” “Edtv”), but he nabbed an Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind,” and his directing résumé includes “Parenthood,” “Apollo 13,” “Cinderella Man,” and most recently “Rush.” With “In the Heart of the Sea,” the story of the Essex, a Nantucket whaleboat that was rammed by a whale, and the resulting battle for survival by its crew – and which led to Herman Melville writing “Moby-Dick” – Howard enters a whole new arena, a movie mostly set on the ocean. But as always, he keeps it more about people than about the situation. He spoke about the film recently in New York.
Q: What drew you to this project?
A: I had long had an interest doing a movie set in the ocean. I don’t love the ocean; it’s not a place I go for recreation. But there’s something about the power and mystery of it that’s always drawn me to the potential drama of it. Years ago I was trying to get a movie made about the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, but I couldn’t get the resources together. Later I came very close to (re-)making the Jack London story “The Sea Wolf,” but that didn’t come together. But this one embodied everything those two movies offered to me as drama and cinematic potential. The screenplay was really strong. But probably most important was that Chris Hemsworth brought it to me. We had such a good experience on “Rush,” I knew I liked working with him, and he was really born to play [the film’s heroic character] Owen Chase.
Q: You actually shot on the ocean, and the cast had to keep losing weight for their roles. Did you feel it was a big challenge for them?
A: When we were on the ocean, every time I would apologize to everybody and say, “I know this is tough,” they would say, “Well, first of all, this is just a fraction of what the real guys that we’re playing went through, and secondly, it’s good for the performances. This is what we’re trying to play.” But I did see that the life was kind of draining out of these guys. I remember one time saying to [actor] Ben Walker, “Ben we’re going to have to shoot this scene, and Ben was just staring down, just lost (laughs). Even by the end of the shoot, when we were doing the stuff on the desert island, there were pathetic little snacks that would come out, maybe a cucumber with some olive oil and an almond on it. But everybody would take it and go over and hunch down and eat it quietly and kind of savor it. I felt both terrible and fabulous about it (laughs).
Q: The story is about leadership under dire circumstances. How would you describe your leadership as a director?
A: That aspect of my job varies from movie to movie, and cast to cast. My job is to channel everybody’s efforts and fulfill the possibilities of the story. And in doing so I’ve learned over the years to identify very early what various actors need. But I don’t try to put my stamp on a move; I try to create an environment where the talented people behind and in front of the camera can inform it, and I shape it. So early on, I had to let people know that [certain things were] important. At the auditions, and when the exercise regimens and dieting began, I had to let people know that it was a job requirement to be up to this. I’ll never forget the kind of commitment that the entire cast made on behalf of the characters they were playing in this movie. It was really inspiring.
Q: And you had your actors take sailing lessons.
A: The authenticity of this movie was as important to me as it had been on others like, for example, “Apollo 13,” where part of transporting the audience was to get the details right. And whether they know right from wrong, they can kind of sense it. So sailor school was just as important as astronaut school in “Apollo 13” or the boxing training in “CinderellaMan.”
Ed Symkus writes about movies for More Content Now.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Ron Howard and his cast were hungry to make a film on the ocean