It’s an actor’s dream to have a well of emotion to draw upon. Dad and I pulled ourselves together and exchanged conspiratorial smiles before I went home for the night. We knew that we were going to kick that scene in the ass.
A few weeks later, I flew to Vermont to join Dad and the rest of the production team on location. It was just one day’s work but probably the greatest of my life. This was the first time that the two of us had ever done a dramatic scene together. We had been scene partners in Gentle Ben, of course, and a few other projects here and there, but never in anything with such gravity.
The day didn’t disappoint. One more time, my old man elevated me to another level. I experienced a slight twinge of sadness, though, when the director, Michael Worth, gently told Dad that he needed to move his script out of the shot. He had been keeping it close by because his memory for learning dialogue was starting to fade—a tough state of affairs for the Man Who Was Always Prepared. I knew then that the end was near.
Rance Howard would pass a couple of months later. But on that beautiful fall day in Vermont, I was blessed to spend time on a set, one last time, with my favorite acting partner: my dad.
RON: Clint, I think it would be interesting to discuss what we learned about ourselves and our family in the course of doing this book. You first.
CLINT: Thanks for putting me on the spot, bud! Well, I would say that our childhoods were a much wilder, stranger ride than we realized when we were living through them. You don’t stop and contemplate the big picture when you’re a kid. But now I’m reminded of something that Gary Sinise’s character, Ken Mattingly, says in Apollo 13 at the start of their moon mission: “It’s gonna be one for the books!” Our journey has been one for the books. Or at least a book.
RON: Absolutely. I’ve also come to appreciate more deeply the crazy, potentially unwise leap into the unknown that Mom and Dad made when they ran off together to take their chances in show business. I suspect that because of them, I have been subconsciously drawn to the stories of people who take on outsize challenges with little regard for the physical or emotional risks. Like astronauts. And race-car drivers. And flawed geniuses listening to what’s in their heads more than the advice of so-called normal people.
And what a blast to revisit and reexamine these memories with you, Clint. Granted, they were not all as rosy as I had originally imagined. I used to think of my journey from The Journey to the present as a pretty straight line. But it’s been much more of an unpredictable zigzag than I thought. Before we did this, I sometimes fell into the highlight-reel mentality: The Andy Griffith Show, The Music Man, American Graffiti, Happy Days, directing. Now I get that I was equally shaped by projects that no one remembers, nor would I want anyone to. The mediocrities and stinkers had a damn-near equal effect in determining the path that I followed to adulthood.
CLINT: Ron, I love you and respect your beautiful mind, but I have a different take. From my chair, I have always seen life as a zigzag. I was never certain of where I was headed. Look at some of the parts I’ve played, starting at age seven: a six-hundred-year-old alien, a kid with a pet bear, a boy who predicted the end of the world, a young military cadet possessed by the devil, a twisted ice cream man who terrorizes neighborhood children, a nutty but earnest Cajun, and numerous flight controllers. That’s not a straight line. But it sure as hell was interesting.
My life has been no straight line, either. That really came into stark relief when I set it down on paper. But I find myself landing on one thought: I am humbly grateful to God for the life I have lived. Maybe it’s my age or my emotions getting the better of me, but I want to sign off by saying, “Sorry, Mr. Gehrig. I am the luckiest man to walk the face of this earth.”
RON: I second that. Can I ask you one more question?
CLINT: Fire away.
RON: Hey, where’s your bear?
CLINT: Oh, you want to play that game, do you? He’s on the floor in front of my fireplace, Opie Cunningham.
Acknowledgments