AllMovie

Esteemed American film critic Richard Schickel helms this feature-length documentary, originally produced for the Turner Classic Movies cable network as one installment in a loosely-knit series of films on the lives and careers of esteemed American directors. In this instance, multi-Oscar winning filmmaker Ron Howard narrates a panoramic overview of his own career on a project-by-project basis, from a first-person perspective. The chronological discussion commences by exploring Howard's period as an actor, on The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days and in films including The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1962) and The Music Man (1962). Howard then segues into a discussion of the various movies he made, why he made them, and the elements that went into each production - from his first film, Grand Theft Auto (done for Roger Corman in 1977) through his mainstream successes with Night Shift (1982), Splash (1984) and Cocoon (1985) and his Academy Award triumphs Apollo 13 (1995) and A Beautiful Mind (2001). He also discusses his Richard M. Nixon and David Frost historical drama Frost/Nixon (2008), still in the works and hotly anticipated at the time of this documentary's production.