(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Screenplays being bandied around Hollywood with plenty of buzz attached tend to draw interest from multiple high-profile filmmakers, but it’s hard to imagine Ron Howard and Spike Lee circling the same project when the two couldn’t be more different in almost every way.
They’ve both enjoyed lengthy careers with their fair share of commercial success, critical acclaim, and awards season recognition, even if there aren’t a pair of more diametrically opposed credits than ‘A Spike Lee Joint’ and ‘A Ron Howard Film’.
The former made his name as one of independent cinema’s most incendiary voices and an uncompromising auteur who wears their heart and beliefs on their sleeve, inspiring generations of future directors and refusing to bow down to studio politics or bite his tongue in the name of avoiding controversy.
The latter, meanwhile, is about as beige as big-name filmmakers can be. Howard’s filmography has racked up billions of dollars at the box office and spanned almost every genre in mainstream cinema, all of which he’s accomplished without developing anything close to a signature aesthetic or identifiable style.
Could Lee have helmed The Da Vinci Code, Backdraft, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Apollo 13, or How the Grinch Stole Christmas? Probably not, especially when the one time he acted as a studio hand-for-hire ended so disastrously. On the other side of the coin, could Howard have made Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, 25th Hour, or BlackKlansman? Don’t be fucking ridiculous.
And yet, at one stage, Howard was lined up to take the reins on a street-level thriller that eventually made it to the screen with Lee behind the camera, where it became his most blatant mass-market crowd-pleaser and the highest-grossing release of his entire career. They exist at opposite ends of the cinematic spectrum, which didn’t stop Lee from swooping in and stealing it from under his nose.
“Brian Grazer had this script by first-time screenwriter Russell Gerwitz, and Ron Howard was going to direct it,” Lee told Total Film. However, when Russell Crowe suggested that the duo behind A Beautiful Mind reunite for Cinderella Man instead, the director’s hesitance to prioritise Inside Man left the door open.
“I had a meeting with Brian [Grazer] about another project and before I got up to leave the meeting I said, ‘By the way, I’ve read the script for Inside Man, I’d like to direct it,’” he said. “He didn’t even know I was aware of the script, so that’s how the project came to be.”
The result may have been Lee’s most overtly commercial endeavour, but it was nonetheless shot with his unmistakable sense of style and socio-political consciousness. In Howard’s hands, it would have likely been a solid-if-unspectacular crime flick, whereas Lee seized the chance to reunite with Denzel Washington for the first time in over a decade to craft the biggest box office hit in his back catalogue.
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