Howard in Popular Culture
Howard appeared as himself twice in The Simpsons. In "When You Dish Upon a Star", Homer meets and befriends Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger and Howard. Later in the episode, Howard is injured when trying to jump from a truck to the RV that Homer was driving. In the end, he pitches Homer's movie idea and gets it greenlit. Another episode ("Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder") Homer and Howard are fighting each other while appearing on The Springfield Squares. Later, Howard gives Homer the inspiration to spend more time with his kids and offers him some money that Homer refuses at first but then takes. Howard yanks the money back and drives away.
When he hosted Saturday Night Live in the 1980s, Eddie Murphy called him "Opie Cunningham".
In the South Park episode "Ginger Kids", Cartman asks a crowd of fellow gingers to name great Americans with red hair, the only name they can think of is "Ron Howard". When asked to name a second, one responds "Ron Howard" again.
On a VH1 special about the 100 greatest child stars, many of the interviewees considered Ron Howard to be the most successful child star of all time, considering his two major television acting roles and his directing career.
In the series finale of the Emmy Award-winning, critically acclaimed series Arrested Development (which he executive produced and narrated), Howard appears as himself in an epilogue at the end of the episode and refers to himself as "a Hollywood icon".
In Season 1, Episode 3 of Stroker and Hoop on Adult Swim, Stroker and Hoop run a detective agency whose first client needs them to make Ron Howard stop controlling his mind.
In October 2008, Howard reprised his roles as Opie Taylor and Richie Cunningham for the first time in over 20 years when he appeared in a video on funnyordie.com in which he endorsed Barack Obama and urged people to vote. The video, titled "Ron Howard’s Call to Action", also features Griffith and Winkler. In the video, Howard shaves his beard and wears a wig in order to recreate the way he looked when he was younger.
Ron Howard made a cameo appearance in the 2009 music video for Jamie Foxx's song "Blame It" alongside Forrest Whittaker, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Samuel L. Jackson. In the video he is shown holding a glass of champagne.
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Famous quotes containing the words howard, popular and/or culture:
“The improved American highway system ... isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway ... he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson’s nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“For the people in government, rather than the people who pester it, Washington is an early-rising, hard-working city. It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
—Michael Harrington (1928–1989)