His fascination with struggle

In making his boxing film “Cinderella Man,� Ron Howard, as methodical and prepared a director as Hollywood produces, diligently scoured all those who’d already studied the “sweet science� -- everyone from directors Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann to actors Robert De Niro and Will Smith, to boxer Sugar Ray Leonard and novelist Norman Mailer. From the latter two the director finally came to understand the strategy of boxing. “A lot of what you’re doing in the ring is to try to use rhythm and patterns to almost lull your opponent,� explains Howard. “Then you disrupt your own pattern and create openings. It’s all about trying to create slots where you can get a punch in to either score or knock out.�

It’s the hypnosis of expectations, and in a way it’s the strategy behind “Cinderella Man,� a film that arrives with all the soft-focus, honeyed expectation of an old-fashioned inspirational sports story done by a respected Hollywood stalwart, but one who’s somehow never gotten the reverence of some of his flashier peers. Yet, then Howard unexpectedly jabs, and seizes the moment, delivering what may be one of his most sentimental films in a 30-year, 17-film, billion-dollar-grossing career.

The $88-million “Cinderella Man,� which opens Friday, is the true-life Depression-era tale of James L. Braddock (played by Russell Crowe), a beaten-down former fighter who boxed his way back from utter destitution to become the surprise heavyweight champion of the world. Along the way, he magnetized the hopes of a nation mired in poverty and hopelessness. Boxing movies tend to be tales of narcissism, the search for personal glory and its unexpected costs, but Howard has fashioned a survival tale set against the soul-and-family-destroying poverty of 1930s America. Howard wanted Crowe to approach the fights less as sport than as combat.

“I don’t think [Braddock] loved fighting. He wasn’t driven by that desire to wear the champion’s belt. It was just the thing he could do to separate himself from the struggle that everyone was facing,� says Howard, who quotes a line from the film, after Braddock’s been warned about fighting champion Max Baer, who’d already killed two men in the ring. “You think it’s any different for the guys who are working swing shift? People are dying all the time out there.�

Sitting in his plush Beverly Hills office, Howard says he’s always been fascinated by the Depression, ever since he heard tales from his parents of growing up in Oklahoma, where the grown-ups made plans on how to protect their farms in case of food riots, and his dad traveled 10 miles to the local pool hall to hear the famous Braddock-Baer fight on the radio. In fact, in high school Howard made his first full-length movie, Ken Burns-style, interweaving photographs and interviews he’d done with his parents and their friends about the Depression.

“I remember being so devastated by the faces in the photographs, these shellshocked faces with these urban skylines in the background. These were people who’d had the rug literally pulled out from under them. They thought their lives were headed in one direction and suddenly it had gone in the hideously opposite direction.�

His interest stood in stark contrast to his public persona. Even today at 51, gravity hasn’t totally altered Howard’s trademark toothy grin, the one that helped make him the poster child for 1950s American optimism, and a star on such TV shows as “The Andy Griffith Show� and, later, “Happy Days.� His longtime producing partner and friend Brian Grazer recalls meeting him right before the pair made the comedy “Night Shift� in 1982. “He had all these intense movies he wanted to make. One was about the Depression, and it was so intense and incompatible to what he appeared to be that no studio would meet with him.�

Now the red hair is gone, leaving a smooth bald top, the inevitable sign of maturity. Howard appears weary, having just arrived that night from Europe where he had overseen rehearsals for his next film, “The Da Vinci Code,� and visited his daughter Bryce on the set of her new film, “As You Like It.� Although an air of amiability seems hard-wired into the DNA, he lays out his thoughts with the thoroughness of a college professor, and calls back -- twice -- to clarify seemingly minor points.

In a sense, the most noticeable afterglow of his previous life as the iconic American boy are the choices he’s made in his private life. Although he seems the quintessential Hollywood director, he moved to Westchester County in New York almost 20 years ago to escape the industry’s fishbowl effect. As he explains, in Hollywood, “the indexing of people’s position is very immediate and a part of the cultural and social fabric. That’s a little antithetical to relaxing and keeping a creative open mind.�

He also never let any of his four children act professionally until they were adults, in part so they wouldn’t have to contend either with their dad’s long shadow, or the risk of getting stereotyped as a kid.

“If you’re interested in [acting] as your life’s work, it’s almost an impediment to have been a child [actor],� says Howard. “They discount all the experience you’ve gained and tend to look in other, ‘fresher’ directions because the kid carries the baggage of earlier characters. That’s particularly true if you wind up on the TV set.�

He himself, in fact, left acting before it left him, because he says, “I don’t have a performer’s personality. I like taking charge a little more. I’d rather be driving the car.�

In the last 10 years, ever since “Apollo 13,� his films have become steadily more assured, as he’s felt freer to pursue the topics that interest him. Indeed, he’s made a series of period films, from the western “The Missing� to the Oscar-winning “A Beautiful Mind,� and his trademark optimism as a director has played less like Hollywood shtick than as a knowing commentary about American naivete and can-do belief in itself.

Grazer says he thinks Howard identifies with Braddock. “He is a gentle guy, quiet and shy, and he doesn’t have a lot of quirks or odd characteristics that bring attention to himself, and yet I know [Ron] thinks he’s very strong. When he’s pushed, he’s immovable. He’s scary tough. If he feels pushed or cornered -- that’s his word -- he will dig his heels in and that’s the end. There are times when I’ve suggested to studio executives how to talk to him. Try to stay away from declarative sentences. If you feel strongly about something, just offer it as a question and you’ll get what you want.�

Howard is also meticulous, a ferocious researcher. In prepping “Cinderella Man,� he assembled all the fight footage and archival footage of Braddock that he could, as well as documentaries about the period, newsreels from the Depression, films that dealt with the New York of the ‘30s, movies set in the Depression like “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They� and “Ironweed,� as well as postwar Italian realist films “about people trying to survive.� It was one production assistant’s job to keep the films running on a continual loop through the five TV monitors kept in the art department and production office during the making of the film -- and people would look up and inevitably get caught up in a James Cagney moment or “On the Waterfront.�

“The thing I think the director needs to do, or at least a director who works in my style, which is not isolated auteurism, but kind of a unifying leadership approach, is to get everybody seeing, feeling, sensing the same movie,� says Howard.

The fight sequences also had to be elaborately choreographed, because Howard wanted each one to represent a different, clearly understandable psychological challenge. One fight deals with the biochemistry of coping with the shocking pain of a broken bone. In another, Braddock discovers a boxing power he didn’t know he had. In the last Baer battle, he literally is fighting for his life.

“Each and every time, it was a survival match,� says Howard. “I remember saying to Russell, it’s almost like this guy keeps getting dropped behind enemy lines and has to fight his way home.�

“I felt like I understood Braddock,� he says. “I understood putting family first.�

As in a “A Beautiful Mind,� Howard’s protagonist is anchored by his relationship with his wife Mae, played by Renee Zellweger. Yet in “A Beautiful Mind� it was a relationship between a sick man and his caretaker -- here it’s the story of two equals.

“You read Studs Terkel’s book, ‘Hard Times,’ and you get a sense of how so many people really were stripped of their dignity as a result of the struggle and their poverty. You read Braddock’s letters to Mae, and you realize he’s one of those guys,� says Howard. “He could have been in that book, and yet they survived. And their marriage endured. She loved him and he felt he’d let her down. He wasn’t living up to his responsibility as a father and yet there was no self-pity in the letters. Just a sense of regret, even remorse, but not a hint of giving up. It’s an unsentimental case study in the power of love, not so much in the pursuit of happiness but as an ingredient in their survival.�

Even as he finishes putting “Cinderella Man� out in the world, Howard is already fast at work on “The Da Vinci Code,� the movie version of Dan Brown’s novel. The bestseller about the search for the Holy Grail has generated not only controversy but also sparked legions of tourists to trek around Europe looking at the art and sites described in the novel.

Howard’s cagey about revealing much about the film, other than to say it was hard to cast because everyone wanted to be in it, and that he’s asked his “Splash� and “Apollo 13� cohort Tom Hanks to play Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, “Amelie’s� Audrey Tatou to play cryptologist Sophie Neveu, and Ian McKellen to take on Leigh Teabing.

He points to his latest reading, a thick art history book with a Madonna painting on its cover. Still shrink-wrapped, it weighs about three pounds. “Langdon would know all about this stuff,� he says. “It’s like cramming for a test and then you forget about it later. I used to be able to tell you how to get to the moon.�

When pressed, he finally admits one reason why he’s interested. Like “Apollo 13� or “A Beautiful Mind� and “Cinderella Man,� the book offers an avenue by which he can take a slightly arcane topic and bring it to a mass audience.

“I’d like to do a movie that deals with the evolution of women’s roles in our culture and religion, but that’s very hard to imagine being a high-profile film that a lot of people would see,� he muses. “Yet somehow, Dan Brown gives us with his novel a story that has touched a lot of nerves and created a lot of controversy. I just think that the book is on to something.�