Ron Howard says he walked onto the set of The Shootist in 1976 and found himself working through a feud that made the days feel strained. He was acting with John Wayne while Don Siegel directed, and he says the two men did not get along.
Howard revisited the story on Ben Mankiewicz’s Talking Pictures podcast, where he framed the experience as a lesson he has carried into directing. The reason it still lands now is simple: The Shootist was Wayne’s final film, and Howard was not just watching history from a distance. He was in the middle of it.
Howard said he got along with Wayne and Siegel separately, which made the split on set even more striking. Wayne, he said, liked Howard’s professionalism. Howard also said he had the nerve to ask Wayne if he wanted to run lines between setups, even though he noted that no one really would talk to him during those breaks. Wayne, Howard said, was perfectly friendly and agreed. The pair had a lot of scenes together, many with heavy dialogue, and Howard said it was fascinating to watch Wayne take a scene and shape it into a John Wayne performance in the most positive ways.
That scene-by-scene access mattered because Howard was studying to become a director at USC Cinema School at the time, and he said he was also picking up directing tips from Siegel on set. Siegel, who also directed Dirty Harry and Escape from Alcatraz, gave Howard a look at how a filmmaker works under pressure, even if the atmosphere around him was not calm. Howard said Wayne operated in a very closed little bubble, with a small group around him that included a man he would play chess with, and he said a lot of things were allowed to fester for a long period of time.
That is where Howard’s memory turns from anecdote into advice. He said his own strategy has been the opposite: go straight into a difference of opinion before it hardens into something petty and emotional. In his view, a creative concern should be talked through, not fed until it becomes a fight. He added that if you shine a bright light on a neurotic concern, most people will admit they were insecure about it. On the set of The Shootist, Howard learned that lesson the hard way. The part nobody has fully explained is what started the feud between Wayne and Siegel in the first place.
