Ron Howardnever really thought hed add documentarian to his resume.
I love directing scripted movies and television, and I wasnt sure the two things could be compatible.
WithThe Beatles: Eight Days a Week, its a survival story.
Credit: Vittoriano Rastelli/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images; Inset: Gregg DeGuire/FilmMagic
Thats a little bit likeDas Boot, its an adventure story.
All they have is each other, and theyre going on this journey.
You dont have to be an opera lover to be engaged by him, Howard says.
What made you want to delve into this nonfiction form of storytelling?
Brian had produced a couple of documentaries,Inside Deep ThroatandBeyond the Mat, and had fun with them.
They wondered if Id be interested.
Because you come and go with a documentary.
In fact, your objectivity is useful.
You still help work up the questions.
When you’re able to do them, you do them.
He said, You should take a chance and do it.
He really encouraged me.
I took that leap.
I learned so much because the world of Jay-Zs festival was not a world I knew anything about.
I was a complete fish out of water.
But that turned out to be kind of the good news.
I found this the same kind of experience withThe Beatles: Eight Days a Week.
Then the question was, whats next?
Its still incumbent upon you to find what it is youre fascinated by, and thats what youre sharing.
Its very much a cousin to the scripted projects that Ive done based on real events.
Its still a process of discovery and sharing.
Its saying what must be said based on what you might gather.
I still want to shape it into a movie experience.
Pavarotti went through that period of his life.
Lets find a performance where thats what hes going through.
Oh, this is about discovering love!
Well at this point, hes rediscovering romantic love.
Lets find a performance where it parallels that moment in his life.
He was great at connecting himself emotionally with what he was singing about.
Its not just technical.
It does express very relatable human emotions in powerful ways.
They really do make your hair stand up on end.
Were you a big fan of opera and his work?
I recognized that opera was powerful.
Id been to opera.
I was more fascinated by him as a performer, his journey, and his pursuit of excellence.
One of the big surprises for me was that he was not a prodigy.
She empowered him to do that.
One is Bonos interview.
I think Bono was probably inadvertently talking about himself a little bit too.
Theres this paradox there.
And their sense of loss now that hes gone and they miss him.
Theres something really profound in that.
I found that very, very moving.
Its a lot of wisdom in their words.
As people, we can learn a lot through their interviews.
Shes asking, What about Pavarotti the man?
That youre going to disappoint even yourself.
But that he could own that, and you could see it in his eyes.
I found that really moving.
In his own way, hes very telegenic, and that was kind of an X-factor, a superpower.
I also think that he knew he wanted to take it as far as he could take it.
I think he paid for that.
In the last 10 years or so of his life, critics were hard on him pretty regularly.
But its the negative ones that you feel, and I can attest to that.
Yet, he had the courage to say, Well, damn it, too bad.
