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.
Read more about this topic: Ron Howard
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, howard, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“As God is my witness, theyre not going to lick me. Im going to live through this and when its all over, Ill never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folks. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill, as God is my witness, Ill never be hungry again!”
—Sidney Howard (18911939)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bondswe do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-ZeEv, Israeli philosopher. The Vindication of Gossip, Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“... weve allowed a youth-centered culture to leave us so estranged from our future selves that, when asked about the years beyond fifty, sixty, or seventyall part of the average human life span providing we can escape hunger, violence, and other epidemicsmany people can see only a blank screen, or one on which they project fear of disease and democracy.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)