Posted on: Sunday, December 23, 2001

Hollywood lunch date leads to perfect partner

By David Germain
Associated Press

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — One of Hollywood's most successful, prolific and enduring partnerships began 20-some years ago with an idle glance out a studio window.

Brian Grazer, who had a TV development deal at Paramount, peered from his office one day and spotted Ron Howard, who had played Opie Taylor as a child on "The Andy Griffith Show" and was starring as Richie Cunningham on "Happy Days."

A fledgling producer, Grazer had set himself the goal of meeting one new person each day who was working in the industry.

"So I called him, I go, 'Hey, my name is Brian Grazer.' I gave him my speech of, 'I want to meet you, can we get together?' We ended up having lunch," Grazer said in a joint interview with Howard at their Imagine Entertainment offices to promote their latest film, "A Beautiful Mind."

Grazer had some television credits behind him, and Howard had directed the low-budget, car-chase flick "Grand Theft Auto," plus some TV movies. But Howard, typecast as the all-American boy, was having trouble landing directing assignments on feature films.

"I could get meetings, and every once in a while someone would float me the 15th version I'd read of kooky guys smuggling pot over the border," Howard said. "But I couldn't get a serious movie or script going that I thought was any good."

Grazer managed to hire Howard to direct "Night Shift," a 1982 comedy starring Michael Keaton, Shelley Long and "Happy Days" co-star Henry Winkler. The film opened doors for producer and director, and helped separate Howard from his squeaky-clean TV image.

With Grazer producing most of his films, Howard has generated a string of hits — and a few misses — in genre after genre: science fiction ("Cocoon"), science fact ("Apollo 13"), adult comic drama ("Parenthood"), historical romance ("Far and Away"), sword-and-sorcery fantasy ("Willow"), action and thrillers ("Backdraft," "Ransom"), and media satire ("The Paper," "EDtv").

Commercially, Howard and Grazer have one of Hollywood's best track records. They teamed on last year's top-grossing "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas," and Imagine Entertainment, formed in 1986, has produced such movies as "The Nutty Professor" remake and "Bowfinger."