A rescue team attempts a seemingly impossible task in Director Ron Howard’s drama, Thirteen Lives.
Howard’s film tells the miraculous true story of the 2018 Tham Luang Nang Non rescue where an international team of divers assembled to save a group of 12 young boys and their soccer coach who are trapped in a system of flooded caves in Thailand.
On August 6, after the DGA membership screening in New York, Howard discussed the making of Thirteen Lives during a Q&A moderated by Director Akiva Goldsman (Stephanie).
During the conversation, Howard spoke about the spirit that permeated the set even though the actors — who volunteered to do most of their own stunts — endured challenging underwater shoots in sets built to recreate the Thailand caves in which the story took place. “Here’s the thing about this movie, there was no bitching. It’s not that it wasn’t allowed, it’s that it was utterly inappropriate. People did not complain. Cold. Wet. You know movie rain is still rain and everybody is still soaked. People would of course get uncomfortable or think I was doing too much coverage or whatever they might wanna’ bitch about, but they would never say it because they’d look over and they see the real Rick Stanton or the real Jason Mallinson, or they’d think about the kids and what the kids really did and what the thousands of volunteers endured and they just wanted to tell the story. Everybody did and, honestly, that kind of spirit is what really prevailed.”
Howard’s other directorial credits include the feature films Splash, Willow, Parenthood, Backdraft, Far and Away, The Paper, The Missing, The Da Vinci Code, In the Heart of the Sea and Hillbilly Elegy; as well as the documentary features Pavarotti, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years and Made in America; and the documentary television series, Breakthrough: The Age of Aging. He won the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for Apollo 13 (1995) and again for A Beautiful Mind (2001). He was also nominated for his features Cocoon (1985) and Frost/Nixon (2008).
Howard has been a DGA member since 1978 and currently serves as the Second Vice-President of the Guild. His DGA service also includes previously holding the Fourth Vice-President post, as well as participation on the Eastern Directors Council and the Theatrical Creative Rights Committee.
You can listen to Howard's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.