In 1976, Ron Howard was already nationally recognizable as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, but he regarded Roger Corman’s low-budget car comedy with near-contempt. After reading the script for Eat My Dust!—then titled The Car—Howard reportedly thought it was a broad, thinly written chase picture populated by cardboard characters. He nevertheless saw an opportunity: he wanted to direct, and Corman’s New World Pictures was one of the few places where an established actor could plausibly bargain for a first chance behind the camera. Howard proposed that Corman help finance Tis the Season, a comedy he had developed with his father, but Corman was not interested in that project. Instead, Corman offered a carefully hedged career deal: if Howard starred in Eat My Dust!, he could write an outline for another film; if Corman liked the idea and Howard agreed to appear in it, he might be allowed to direct. If even that failed, Corman promised Howard second-unit work on an action picture. Howard accepted, and the resulting project became Grand Theft Auto (1977), his directorial debut. The arrangement was classic Corman: no guaranteed promotion, no expensive promise, and every opportunity contingent on the producer’s approval. Howard’s bargain required him to endure a punishing schedule, filming his Eat My Dust! material in roughly ten or eleven days around Happy Days and The Shootist, but it ultimately gave him the opening he needed. He later admitted that his initial arrogance about the film was misplaced, praising Charles B. Griffith’s fast, economical methods and the indie atmosphere of the Corman operation. Eat My Dust! became New World’s first film to generate approximately $5 million in rentals, while Howard moved from television star to filmmaker through one of the most consequential low-budget career bargains of the era.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
Roger Corman’s 1976 Bargain That Turned Ron Howard Into a Director
Ron Howard / Eat My Dust! / 1970s
In 1976, Ron Howard was already nationally recognizable as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, but he regarded Roger Corman’s low-budget car comedy with near-contempt. After reading the script for Eat My Dust!—then titled The Car—Howard reportedly thought it was a broad, thinly written chase picture populated by cardboard characters. He nevertheless saw an opportunity: he wanted to direct, and Corman’s New World Pictures was one of the few places where an established actor could plausibly bargain for a first chance behind the camera. Howard proposed that Corman help finance Tis the Season, a comedy he had developed with his father, but Corman was not interested in that project. Instead, Corman offered a carefully hedged career deal: if Howard starred in Eat My Dust!, he could write an outline for another film; if Corman liked the idea and Howard agreed to appear in it, he might be allowed to direct. If even that failed, Corman promised Howard second-unit work on an action picture. Howard accepted, and the resulting project became Grand Theft Auto (1977), his directorial debut. The arrangement was classic Corman: no guaranteed promotion, no expensive promise, and every opportunity contingent on the producer’s approval. Howard’s bargain required him to endure a punishing schedule, filming his Eat My Dust! material in roughly ten or eleven days around Happy Days and The Shootist, but it ultimately gave him the opening he needed. He later admitted that his initial arrogance about the film was misplaced, praising Charles B. Griffith’s fast, economical methods and the indie atmosphere of the Corman operation. Eat My Dust! became New World’s first film to generate approximately $5 million in rentals, while Howard moved from television star to filmmaker through one of the most consequential low-budget career bargains of the era.
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