Ron Howard admits he did this after seeing ‘Star Wars’ in 1977

In 1973, Ron Howard starred in the George Lucas hit American Graffiti. In 1977, he went to see Lucas’ new film — a movie you may have heard of called Star Wars — during its opening weekend. What Howard said he did afterward shows how big of an impression the film made on him.

In the 3rd episode of the 2022 Disney Plus docuseries, Light & Magic, Howard briefly describes the moment. Earlier in the series, the future director admitted that when he was cast to play Steve Bolander in American Graffiti, he had no idea what the word “graffiti” meant. Perhaps the biggest disappointment in that excellent film is that there is actually no graffiti.

As I’ve pointed out before, I also found it incredibly interesting that the movie opened on Aug. 11, 1973 because that’s the same night that hip-hop music is credited as being born and one can successfully describe hip-hop music as “American graffiti.”

It’s safe to say that Howard now knows what graffiti is but prior to seeing Star Wars in 1977 he didn’t know much about what the film was about other than what Lucas told him during filming.

Howard explained that Lucas told him that it was a space opera that he wanted to create and that Lucas said he saw it as being a “Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon-type of movie, combine that with 2001: A Space Odyssey special effects but the ships go real fast.”

A few years after that explanation, Star Wars opened on Memorial Day weekend 1977 and Howard was there. He states, “I saw Star Wars the weekend it opened at Grauman’s Chinese Theater.”

Howard and his wife Cheryl had to wait in a long line like everyone else before having the pleasure of seeing the really fast moving ships.

What was his reaction? Well, he simply explains what he did immediately afterward:

“I walked out and all I did was say to Cheryl, ‘Want to see it again?’ and she said, ‘Yes.’ And we walked over into the next two hour line and watched it again.”

Ron Howard is like practically every fan of the Star Wars franchise. Clearly, he lived the ultimate Star Wars day by seeing the original movie twice in the same day on its opening weekend. Of course, he then went on to be so inspired that he made numerous hit movies of his own, including Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Howard may have had many Happy Days, but the force was strong on that happiest of days.