(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
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(INSTRUMENTS TUNING)
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(MAN COUGHING)
CONDUCTOR: Okay so, from the top.
(MUSIC STARTS PLAYING)
It's quiet, I think we can... quiet. You know what I mean?
-You know what I mean? -Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
So, it's got the same value, but it doesn't have the little turn there.
Yeah.
-It's a quiet village -Yeah!
And "provincial", you want "chill", right?
-Provincial. -In this poor provincial town.
-Yeah. -Mm-hmm.
(ORCHESTRA PLAYING)
Little town, it's a quiet village
Every day, like the one before
Little town, full of little people
Waking up to say
-MALE SINGER 1: Bonjour -MALE SINGER 2: Bonjour
-FEMALE SINGERS: Bonjour, bonjour -MALE SINGER 3: Bonjour
DON: It was the summer of 1990
and we were all gathered in New York City to record the songs
for Beauty and the Beast.
Howard Ashman, and his songwriting partner, Alan Menken,
had already won Oscars, Golden Globes, and Grammys,
and had captured the imagination of a generation.
Right from the moment when I met her Saw her
I said she's gorgeous and I fell
Here in town there's only she Who is beautiful as me
So I'm making plans to woo and marry Belle
(MUSIC STOPS)
-(APPLAUSE) -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
DON: We knew something really special was happening that day.
But what we didn't know was that in nine months,
Howard would be gone.
SARAH: Howard and I were raised and grew up
on a street called Flannery Lane in Baltimore.
It was a street of row houses.
Each... There was a... would be a row of ten houses
and then a little bit of a break between them,
and... and another row of ten.
Howard loved to tell stories, and my job as his kid sister
was to be the best audience.
We were home alone and... and Howard often was taking care of me home alone.
And he... Howard just said, "Wait here," and left me downstairs,
and I could hear him upstairs.
I heard the door closing,
I heard... I heard things going on, and Howard had wrapped a Turkish towel
from the bathroom and wrapped it around his head like a turban.
So, Howard called me upstairs to his room, which was at the top of the stairs,
kind of a long, thin, steep stairway, and...
the lights were off in the room and the blinds were down.
I remember it being dimly lit.
He put something over the lampshades and he started showing me around,
and it wasn't his room anymore.
He started showing me around this land he had created.
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYING)
SARAH: He had done it with little plastic cowboys and Indians
and soldiers, but he had painted them, he had covered them with tissue,
he had put glitter on them, he had made them into characters
of his own, more interesting characters than cowboys and Indians.
And he put them in these little vignettes, these little scenes.
And he took me scene by scene and told me stories
about what I was seeing.
Just, you know, "Look over there, there's Tink," or "There's Peter Pan
"or Tiger Lily," and some of the scenes, there was... there was one with a mirror
that was maybe... It was either a lake or a... ice-skating rink.
He was using every creative part of himself to do that.
He was gonna lead me to this place that was unlike any place
that we would know in Baltimore County, Maryland.
It was Howard having a great time, Howard enjoying himself
and bringing you along on that journey, bringing you along with him.
SHIRLEY: And Howard used to put on shows in the backyard
and he would write the... write the play
and cast it, and all the kids in neighborhood were in the show.
And every bedspread I ever had, and old sheets and whatever,
became curtains and costumes and I never could throw anything away.
SARAH: My dad's name was Ray, Ray Ashman.
He had a variety of jobs, but the one I remember had to do with working
for an ice-cream cone factory, and Dad began
by actually delivering the cones on a truck.
SHIRLEY: Howard's father, at first, when we said
Howard should take dancing lessons,
"No, no, no, no, no. Not a boy, he doesn't take dancing lessons."
SARAH: Dad was really funny, he was a very funny man.
I learned something from him about storytelling, which is,
I remember once telling him a joke and he laughed, and the next day,
he had taken the joke I told him, the punchline, and he made it into a story
about himself.
You never say, "So there's this guy who walks into a bar,"
you say, "Funniest thing, I walk into a bar," that was my dad.
SHIRLEY: He took How... He tried to take Howard fishing
and introduce him to baseball, and Howard just was not interested.
They went fishing and they sat on the bank and they put their rod
in the water and they both sat there and Howard wasn't...
And Ray wasn't a fisherman either, but he thought it was the thing you do
'cause, I mean, he's your son and you have to do these things.
So, they sat there and he looked at Howard and Howard looked at him and he said,
"Howard, are you having fun?" and Howard said, "No, not really, Dad.
"Are you?" He said, "Frankly, no. Let's go home."
(LAUGHING) So they left and they came home, no fish.
SARAH: My mom was a very semi-professional singer
at one point.
She was on a local TV show once singing.
You know, early on, my mom was the star.
Just the star kinda transferred to Howard,
but there was always this periphery of showbiz.
SHIRLEY: And then when Howard was about six or so,
we went to see a show.
It was a children's show, kids were on the stage.
When the kids came on and they started to do things,
Howard poked me in the arm and said, "Mommy, I wanna do that. That'd be fun."
So, I... figured out how do it,
introduced him to some people, and we got him into CTA,
Children's Theater Association, and I thought it would be good for him
because he liked to imitate all the characters in... in the show,
in Peter Pan, and he'd do Captain Hook, and he could do anybody you wanted.
and he could do anybody you wanted him to.
You'd just say, "Howard, do so and so," and he would do it.
HOWARD: I had lots of friends who played pianos and sat around
with the Rogers and Hammerstein vocal selections for a long, long time.
When I saw Mitzi Green do Gypsy at... at Ford's in Baltimore and...
Um, I don't remember who did My Fair Lady, but sure, the usual stuff.
I think everybody of my generation sort of grew up on the same shows
and fell in love with the same shows at the same time.
SHIRLEY: He wrote poems for everything. For birthdays, holidays, anniversaries.
Then, the poems led to stories.
And the stories led to plays and lyrics
and the lyrics always told a story.
HOWARD: And I used to make musicals out of anything that moved
when I was 14 years old. When I was in high school,
I used to just musicalize my... my laundry list
and it was sort of a hobby.
SARAH: Howard and I were the first in our... in our family to go to college.
And we didn't have parents saying, for instance, "Yale is a good place
"for you to go if you want to go into theater," and we didn't have that.
So Howard's first year was... he went to, um, Boston University
and then he went to Goddard,
and the joke in Goddard is that it was hippiest, dippiest
college ever known to man, you know, they didn't have grades.
It was... it was totally Bohemian.
He seemed perfectly happy there... (CHUCKLING)
...and he did a lot of theater there,
and he got into experimental theater, and it was more off-beat theater.
And my mother's story is,
you know, at one point, he's writhing naked on the floor
right in front of her, it was not a... it was probably not a great moment
for either one of them.
He spent a summer at a theater program and he met Stuart White.
Snooze, at the time his name was. Snooze White.
Ironically, Snooze was also from Baltimore, but they didn't...
had never known each other there.
KYLE: And by a certain point, during the summer,
they had become a secret couple.
SARAH: Stuart was a... just a ball of energy,
he was, um, like a sprite.
And he was just a wonderful actor, um, but he was passionate about directing
and that's really what he wanted to do.
And they fell in love.
And when it was time for graduate school, Indiana was the school
that they both applied to, they both got scholarships
by being in the act... in the professional acting company,
and they got to live together, really, you know, um, set up a home together.
I remember Howard seeming very happy there.
NANCY: I met Howard in 1971
at Indiana University in the theater department.
And I was a freshman and he was part of the Indiana Touring Company
um, as an actor.
Well, I don't think he really thought of himself as an actor,
but he was an amazing actor, but that's not what he wanted to do.
He really wanted to write and direct.
He was going for his master's in playwriting and he was going to do
his take on the Snow Queen for his master's thesis.
He was gonna write the lyrics for the songs and he was gonna direct it.
So everybody, everybody and their brother and sister wanted to be
in this production.
Howard was extremely charismatic and he had all manner of groupies
at all times.
KYLE: Howard had a sort of a fierce... liveliness.
And Stuart had kind of a boyish flamboyance.
And together, they attracted
huge numbers of people to their company.
NANCY: Stuart and Howard together were an amazing force to be reckoned with.
And they were a great match 'cause Howard was gonna write
and Stuart was gonna direct, so they made it through
Indiana University together and then moved to New York.
(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING)
NANCY: New York in the '70s was really scary and dirty.
It was terrifying.
KYLE: It was simultaneously glamorous and threatening.
DENNIS: I got mugged a couple of times, but there was a lot of energy,
there was a lot of creative energy and you could... you could feel it.
NANCY: Howard was not in the coterie of New York theater.
He didn't have a relationship that a lot of the actors and directors
who had been affiliated with Yale.
(CHUCKLING) His friends, we were his friends
from Indiana University, and we were nobodies.
HOWARD: When I first got to New York, I was drawn into a project
as a book writer 'cause at that time, I was something of a playwright,
and I was getting produced a little bit when I first got here.
Little one-acts and things.
SARAH: When he moved to New York, there was no money coming in
from any of this stuff, and there was a time when he thought,
you know, "Theater is not gonna do it for me
and maybe I should be in publishing."
NANCY: He was writing cover copy in publishing because he needed money.
He was assigned to edit the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Scrapbook,
and he was just over the moon to be doing this because he had watched it
as a kid and loved it and he was going to get to come out to California
and go to Disney to work on it, and it was his absolute favorite project.
But his heart really wasn't in being a book editor.
He really wanted to write and direct.
KYLE: There were so many young people who were attracted to the arts
and couldn't get jobs, um, doing what they wanted to do,
so they started their own institutions.
And Howard called one day and said, "What do you think of the idea
"of starting a theater?" And I said, "Sure."
Stuart actually found it. It was a... a loft,
it was sort of a theater classroom.
It was on the second floor.
NANCY: The WPA was a hole-in-the-wall theater. (LAUGHING)
It was dark, it was dreary,
and, you know, it was upstairs from,
I don't know, some really skeevy donut shop.
-(SIREN WAILING) -(HORN HOKING)
KYLE: At the time, everyone we knew said, "Don't do it.
"Lower Fifth Avenue is a ghost town, there's nothing there.
"People won't go there, it's scary at night.
-"Don't do it." -(SIRENS WAIL)
Then a Korean (CENSORED) house, uh, took over on the top floor and they were,
needless to say, more successful than the other rentals in the building.
SARAH: Basically, they took a hole-in-the-wall,
they took a big, empty nothing,
and they built a theater in there, they built a black box theater in there.
NANCY: It just had a really good stage space,
and we were a little 99-seat theater.
KYLE: The idea was that I would be the managing director.
Howard and Stuart would share the duties of artistic director.
NANCY: Howard was...
picking plays, Stuart was directing plays
and, um... they had this theater to kind of play with.
ALAN: It was this.... like this sacred clubhouse.
Very sort of cozy.
Almost like a... I don't know, like a... like a theatrical monastery or something.
PETER: And it was one of those extraordinary,
magical places because anything was possible.
Broadway was not necessarily the pinnacle, it was this extraordinary
off-off-Broadway movement.
NANCY: Stuart got to New York
and something had been unleashed in Stuart.
KYLE: He... He was involved in a lot of behavior that
a more mature person
would not get involved in and he wanted more adventures,
specifically sexual.
Howard wanted more domesticity.
And I think he went along with it
until he couldn't go along with it anymore.
NANCY: And... And he used to sometimes refer to Howard as "grandma"
'cause Howard was like, the parent
and Stuart was just like, "I'm out here, I'm having fun.
"It's New York City. Look out, here I come."
HOWARD:
KYLE: Stuart was definitely self-destructive.
We were walking up Eighth Avenue one day, talking about getting older,
and he said, "I have no intention of living to be 39."
Howard said to me that the WPA had essentially come about
because he wanted to save their relationship.
And that didn't work.
NANCY: They broke up and it really affected the family
because you kind of had to pick sides, which was like a divorce.
KYLE: Stuart... Stuart went away.
I always said yes to Howard and Stuart
because I believed totally in both of them.
Stuart was not so fortunate to find that when he went outside the WPA,
and a lot of people said no to him and thought he was kind of a diva.
I think that for my own survival, I had to pick Howard
because I was able to still keep working with him.
There was a clarity to the fact that Howard was moving in a direction
that was really significant... and I wanted to be a part of.
ALAN: I went from accompanying ballet classes
to accompanying singers to writing songs for Sesame Street,
and everybody was struggling to make their way.
So, there's a good deal of competition between writers and getting their shows on
and who was going to, uh, just get op... basic opportunities.
We met through... Actually, the person who first called me was Maury Yeston,
.and, um, and said, "Alan, there's this, uh, book writer named Howard Ashman
and he's interested in doing God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater."
And I was a Vonnegut fan, but he said, "But he wants to write the lyrics."
And I said... "Okay, I'll meet with him." And the guy who shows up at my door
has torn jeans and, um, a, uh, a bomber jacket.
I remember it was a brown leather bomber jacket
with a fur collar and it's pulled up in the back so it's like, you know,
he's got the collar up and I... and I think,
like a wifebeater kind of shirt on... (CHUCKLING)
...and he walks in and he's chain smoking, I think he's unshaven, and you know,
"Who is this guy?" And Howard had actually been meeting with a number of other, uh,
composers, but he chose to work with me, and so we began working together.
I remember first having an impression, well look, you know,
I'm going to, uh...
You know, we'll sit down together to write these songs and...
I'll help him out because I'm a lyricist
and he probably doesn't know about that, but I'll try to make
this as easy for him as possible, and so I'd make some suggestions
and I remember seeing his finger. Howard had very long...
Point... and his finger would just point at the lyric,
he said, "No, just do it like that."
(LAUGHING) I said, "Okay."
NANCY: Howard had a very strong idea
about, not just what the words should sound like,
but what the music should sound like.
Even... Even though he wasn't a composer
and he didn't play a musical instrument, he had a wonderful singing voice.
And it was all in his head, everything was in his head
and I think he made Alan work really hard to get it to sound exactly right.
HOWARD: I had been afraid of writing lyrics,
and I was first drawn in with a lyricist
and... and composer as just the book writer,
I got very frustrated.
Um, I got very frustrated 'cause there were things I wanted
the songs to do and I found it very... I didn't know why I wasn't just doing it
and I was shy about writing lyrics, and then I... I started writing them.
Found out not only that I was fairly good at it, but mostly,
that I like writing lyrics better than anything in the world.
Writing lyrics is a lot more fun than writing, uh, dialogue for me.
MALE SINGER: Welcome to a flowing font Of truth and good and cash
ALAN: And there, in front of me, for the first time,
there was a... a lyric of Howard's sitting in front of me at the piano
and I remember the visceral sense of what it was like
to sit in front of a Howard Ashman lyric for the first time.
When Howard and I were in the room, it was pure creative energy.
It was no holds barred wrestling. (LAUGHING)
Um, there was only one rule, and that rule is,
don't leave this room without a good idea and a good song.
And, uh, you know, he would push, he would cajole, he would be thrilled,
he would sing, he would... you know, um, I was never happier than when he said
"That's it, that's it, that's it."
Cheese nips, little cheese nips
Bet they dip ‘em in Kraft sandwich spread
Bet they’d eat a whole Velveeta
Bet they’d love it, I wish I was dead
ALAN: We were rehearsing, you know, scene by scene,
and one day, um, the door opens...
and I think, I just heard somebody go... (GASPS)
NANCY: "Oh, my God! Kurt Vonnegut's here."
(CHUCKLING) And we were all looking at him,
really nervously and, you know, I just remember he... he kind of
had a stern look... while he was listening and watching everything.
The rehearsal ended, or the read-through ended, and we stopped
and he just got up and with a big smile, went skipping out of the room
and we knew, "Okay... (LAUGHING) ...We're okay."
He liked it. He liked us, he liked us.
Rosewater got really good reviews when it was at the WPA
and Warner Brothers jumped on as producer.
It eventually moved to the Entermedia Theater,
but moving one of these little gems didn't always translate.
HOWARD: It's... it's not a good idea anymore
to take a small intimate story and do it
with lots of wagon sets and treadmills and encumber it
with tons of realistic scenery and, uh, and produce it on Broadway.
It seems that the smaller the story, the more, uh, people-oriented
and less energy-oriented the story is, the more it wants a smaller house.
KYLE: His specialty was not doing big.
To me, it's always been...
our first great lesson that what works
in a tiny space like the WPA, where your expectations are modest...
and the element of surprise is more present...
and the people are a few feet away from you,
and they're talking about things that you can relate to,
is an entirely different experience than paying top dollar
and sitting in a larger theater where you're at a distance
and you're, perhaps, feeling more judgmental.
And it was... an almost total nightmare.
NANCY: The producer sent from Warner Brothers,
she, at one point, wanted to, um, fire Howard
and there was a lot of tension.
KYLE: It failed completely.
Walter Kerr...
not... not only dismissed, but trashed it in the New York Times.
After my adaptation of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater was done,
which had been something of a succès d'estime
and had been very successful
off-off-Broadway, much less successful commercially.
um, I decided that the next thing I did was going to be something
attention-grabbing with a cast of not more than eight people.
Um, and also, that it would have some
sort of large gimmick sitting in the middle of it
so that people would have to notice.
-I'm hungry. -I don't care what you are.
Can't you see I'm knocked out? I just killed a man.
I'm a murderer.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
HOWARD: I saw the film when I was about 14 years old
and, uh, I think it was past my bedtime and I was lying in my room
down in the basement and it came on and it was a...
It's a tongue-in-cheek horror film. It was a horror spoof,
and I thought it was maybe the wittiest thing
I'd ever seen. (CHUCKLING)
It was a very strange sort of cultural phenomenon
because legend has it that it's one of the lowest budget films ever made.
Um, it was made in two days on a bet in 1960 on the set of another film.
The plant is a lot of fun.
It's the... It's the plant that attracted me to it.
Nobody has done, to my knowledge, a monster movie for the stage.
We've had horror pieces for the stage. I don't think we've had
a genuine monster epic for the stage.
NANCY: And I just remember, we were sitting around and he goes,
"That's gonna be my next project."
And we just looked at him and said, "You're crazy. This is horrible.
"It's a cheesy, stupid movie. Don't do that."
And he... he's so funny
'cause he, of course, didn't listen to anybody.
Didn't care... (CHUCKLING) ...what we had to say.
And just said, "No. I... I think this is it. This is the one."
HOWARD: The first thing is to make,
with any adaptation, is to make the story coherent.
Musicals need fairly simple and direct and convincing plot structure
because you get to talk so little.
Um, the plot of the film of Little Shop of Horrors
falls apart in the second half, and it's...
it's, uh, funny and it's all great get-out when you're 12, and when you're 30,
you know, you get bored after the first half hour
unless you're stoned and still in college.
Oh, my God! Don't stop now!
HOWARD: When you're adapting, you're taking a point...
Adapting is like reading
and talking to a friend about what you read.
Adapting is saying, "This is what struck me about that thing I saw,
"about that that I read, about this... this story that appeals to me."
Um, and so the process of communicating your experience to another person
is what adaptation is.
I saw the film as hip and funny and smart in a certain way and I want you
to have the experience that I had when I saw that film
so I transform it, and that's directing, that's book writing, that's lyric writing,
that's... that's conceptual work, and to me, that's all one thing.
ALAN: Howard changed my life permanently in terms of my approach to songwriting
in his embrace of writing in a style.
He wanted it to be as close as possible to that style.
And the initial approach to it was, you know, very kind of jazzy
and just off-beat, as in the original Corman movie,
and then we kinda scrapped it and came back to it when Howard said, you know,
"The idea is we're gonna...
"we should do this as the dark side of Grease."
MALE ACTOR AS SEYMOUR: Well, you remember that total eclipse of the sun
a few weeks ago?
MALE SINGER: Da-doo
MALE ACTOR AS SEYMOUR: I was walking in the wholesale flower district that day.
KYLE: It should be doo-wop rock n' roll and Phil Spector girl group rock n' roll.
And that made so much sense and it just,
you know, totally came together.
That's how it was born. I had my own theater, the WPA.
My agent said it was a darn good thing I did because no one would produce
such a crazed notion. She saw the film and told me I was out of my mind.
Heard the first draft and said she liked it, but she could...
that I would never be able to get it produced.
So, we produced it ourselves at the WPA and it was, more or less,
instantly successful.
MALE NARRATOR: Never before in the history of the American stage
have you seen such high drama...
You don't meet nice boys when you live on Skid Row, Mr. Mushnik.
MALE NARRATOR: ...suspense...
...blew their guts all over the floor.
MALE NARRATOR: ...and romance.
Suddenly Seymour
MALE NARRATOR: It's bone chilling, it's spine tingling, it's a musical,
it's Little Shop of Horrors.
Here is Howard Ashman, he is the writer, lyricist, and director
of Little Shop of Horrors which is running at The Orpheum Theatre.
-That's right. -BOGGS: And it's a very funny play.
It was named by the Outer Critics Circle and it also got Drama Desk Award
for outstanding lyrics for the Little Shop of Horrors.
-Yeah, the Drama Critics' Circle too. -BOGGS: Must feel great...
-Hmm? And the Drama Critics' Circle too... -BOGGS: What was that?
-...that's the inner. -BOGGS: Congratulations,
it must feel wonderful
to be able to put something like this together, make it happen
and have it run. You're a real trailblazer, as he said.
-HOWARD: Yeah, that's very kind of him. -JERRY: Yeah.
-It's true. -HOWARD: That's very kind of him.
I feel like a granddaddy.
-(WOMAN CHUCKLING) -BOGGS: Now this is what I wanna find out.
Why did this man say you're a trailblazer?
What did you do that really nobody had done
quite as well or succinctly before?
Personally, I didn't do anything but I... As I said to Jerry,
Godspell blazed the trail for us.
There's a history in New York of off-Broadway musicals
and I guess it goes back to Threepenny Opera at the Theater de Lys
in... in the mid '50s. And then there's Dames at Sea,
which I was trying to write the Dames at Sea of horror movies
-when I wrote Little Shop. -BOGGS: Uh-huh.
I was patterning myself after a very, uh...
-I don't know, a very succinct kind of... -BOGGS: A form.
A kind of form and genre.
Little Shop of Horrors is very, very, very deliberately
-a conventional American musical comedy. -Right.
In fact, it's... it's parodying American musical comedy.
-BOGGS: Uh-huh. -The second number
is the one where the girl sits on the trashcan
-and sings about what she wants... -Right.
...like Eliza Doolittle did once upon a time and Fiona Mc...
Whatever her name is in Brigadoon.
Women have been doing that in musicals for years.
The difference is that our girl, Audrey, is... is singing
about a toaster and a tract house and, uh, a garbage disposal, uh,
-instead of a castle in the sky somewhere. -BOGGS: Right.
A matchbox of our own
A fence of real chain-link
A grill out on the patio
Disposal in the sink
A washer and a dryer
And an ironing machine
In a tract house that we share
Somewhere that's green
KYLE: It felt like you were just seeing something
that... that these really, really talented people
had thrown together in a garage somewhere, and somehow, they got these great actors
and these great sets and costumes and they're putting on
this incredibly professional-looking show in this dump, you know? (CHUCKLING)
KYLE: Howard was very clear when we did Little Shop of Horrors
that it had to stay off-Broadway.
And there was a lot of energy suggesting that, "Well, if... if the show
"is gonna be... if it's gonna be a big show,
it has to be on Broadway."
But then there came that magic moment that Roger Corman said
"You know, this is perfect, you walk out of the...
"the, uh... this theater and there you are on Skid Row."
We had offers from about 30 producers in New York and we went
with the Shubert Organization, David Geffen and, uh, Cameron Mackintosh
from London, um, as a sort of conglomerate,
and they moved it from the WPA into the Orpheum,
uh, where it's been... where's wood to knock?
-(KNOCKS) -Ever since.
EBERT: Our next movie is named Little Shop of Horrors
and this movie has finally done what so many movies have been trying to do
for a long time now, it captures some of the same magic
as The Rocky Horror Picture Show,
which, of course, is a long-running cult hit,
and I think that this movie might be the next big cult film.
Feed me, Krelborn. Feed me now.
(GROANS)
It was quite successful as a film, and why was it successful?
I think it probably has something to do with the fact that the use of music
within the piece... is not straight, doesn't take itself seriously
as opposed to, uh,
the West Side Story approach, where things are absolutely serious
and we're supposed to pretend they're not singing.
Um, here, we're always working with tongue-in-cheek,
and I think that's probably easier for people to accept,
A, and B, the music is in a... pop style
and they're generous toward it, they'll accept it, uh, in a way
they may not accept the more operetta-like style
that most of our musical theater is written in,
so I just think I'm real lucky.
BILL: I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio
and I was adopted at the age of about three months.
We grew up in Cincinnati, I went through Catholic schools
and managed to get kicked out of a Jesuit high school
when I was a junior... (CHUCKLING)
...and then went on to Ohio State, um, up in Columbus.
And, um, started out right away knowing I wanted to go into architecture.
The end of December 1979, I graduated
and I came to visit my uncle in New York City at that time
and I brought my portfolio and resume and I went around to a couple, uh, offices
that he had worked with and I got a... a job offer from one of them.
So, in January 1980, I moved into a studio apartment
on West 34th Street, and that started my adventures in New York City.
It was a Saturday night, I think, at a... at a bar in the Village
and I imagine Howard had probably been to see Little Shop that night
and, um, we just sort of locked eyes and, uh, started talking
and, uh, we... we just really clicked.
Um, a few days later, he called and asked if he could take me on a date,
and I said, "Sure. I'd love to go on a date."
He said, "Ha... Have you ever been to the Grammys?"
Little Shop, Little Shop o' Horrors
BILL: He said, "Well, my cast album is nominated
and I wondered if you'd like to go with me."
Uh, but, um, you know, we really started seeing each other
very seriously, uh, quickly.
We had sorta had this flush of cash from Little Shop, and so he said,
um, you know, "I'd like to rent a place for the summer
"and let's go look at some things,"
so we did and by, uh, Memorial Day, you know,
we were kind of playing house together in East Hampton.
NANCY: Bill, for Howard, was very much an anchor.
He was the life partner that he always envisioned himself having
'cause he wanted somebody who was true and loyal and stable.
BILL: The commitment to each other just occurred in a natural way.
We didn't ever sort of sit down and say, "Well, let's, you know, let's build a life
"together, let's..." Uh, I think when... I think the real commitment came
when we said, "Let's build a house together."
NANCY: I think the house was a symbol of their relationship, of, you know,
Howard's belief in Bill, Howard's loyalty to Bill, saying,
you know, "Here is this ar... young architect and I'd love to see him
"create something wonderful
"and we'll live in it and it'll be, uh, you know, amazing."
BILL: After two years together, we were...
we were well aware that we were committed to one another
and that we were in a, uh, a real relationship,
a spousal-type relationship.
Federal health officials consider it an epidemic
yet you rarely hear a thing about it.
At first, it seemed to strike only one segment of the population.
Now, Barry Peterson tells us this is no longer the case.
BARRY: Bobby Campbell is fighting for his life,
one of a rapidly growing group
whose battle has fascinated and frightened modern medicine.
There is a one-in-five chance a victim will die within the first year
of the illness.
It's a disease first detected in the gay community
that has now spread beyond that.
A disease experts are now calling a national epidemic.
There are more lives claimed, victims claimed than...
than toxic shock and Legionnaires' disease combined,
and yet most of the country doesn't know about this cancer.
-FEMALE JOURNALIST: Why? -Well, I think,
it's because it's a gay cancer.
SARAH: I remember, um, Howard calling me and saying, "Have you heard about...
"have you heard about the, um, the gay cancer?
"Stuart has it."
When Stuart was sick, Nancy and I had got on the phone with Stuart
and we hadn't spoken to him for years because when they broke up,
we just went with Howard and... and we were very, very angry with him,
but we both called him, we caught up a little bit
and we said... He was living in Connecticut and we said we wanted
to come see him and he said when he felt a little better,
he didn't want anybody to see him right then.
KYLE: Stuart became sick before we even were clear
on what we were calling the disease. I... think we all felt
that he was going to recover... and he didn't.
NANCY: It affected all of us, and it especially affected Howard
because they grew up together as young men and...
they... they... they had such... They had a tumultuous, passionate,
uh, and artistic relationship that was so important
to all... both of their development.
KYLE: When Howard realized that he was going to die, um,
the fact that they had been...
that they had had a deep love became more important than the fact
that they'd had an emotional break-up. And he went to visit him all the time.
NANCY: And then Howard also lost a really close friend named David Evans.
And David died from AIDS, so by this point in time,
Howard was saying goodbye to so many people.
BILL: He wanted to... to do something creatively
that expressed his state of mind
about it that he couldn't really express in another way.
Sheridan Square was, sort of, the heart of the gay culture in New York City
and I think he wanted to... to reference that place as a community
in grieving and loss.
And if some good rises out of everything Then the phoenix is rising there
In the eyes that are scared But softer tonight
On Sheridan Square
BILL: It was painful
because everyone had friends and lovers who were getting sick and dying
and it was incredibly scary because you never knew
when it was gonna be your turn.
MALE REPORTER: The most popular spectator sport in America
is not the Super Bowl or the Olympics or the World Series.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
MALE REPORTER: It's the beauty pageant.
NANCY: So, the next show that Howard decided to tackle
after Little Shop of Horrors
was a musical adaptation of the movie Smile.
She's a typical high school senior She is thoughtful and bright and clean
-She is caring and kind -She reads books to the blind
-She's no older than 17 -And she usually works on...
MARVIN: This show sings, this is a musical.
This is begging to be a musical.
If we don't do it right, we made a mistake.
People having careers like mine just don't get to do this very often,
and it's a gift to be able to do it.
JODI: Up comes this audition for Smile
and there's this great new show, Howard Ashman, Marvin Hamlisch.
I'm like, "Oh, my gosh! Are you kidding me?"
'Cause my first LP that I ever bought
was A Chorus Line and a chorus Little Shop was another one
that you just... You knew everything about it, so I thought,
"This is gonna be incredible."
JODI SINGING: Find my way to Disneyland
Gotta get to Disneyland
I had six callbacks, so I went in and of course, you know,
Marvin's eating his corned beef pastrami, some type of really big,
messy New York sandwich that when you take a bite,
everything falls out, but Howard was always so sweet
and so attentive, he'd sit at the edge of his chair and he would take
these notes and you could see he was on a mission.
He fought for an actress who could sing, not a singer who could act,
he really did, and it was at that moment that I thought, "I have work with this guy
"'cause he gets actors."
(PIANO MUSIC PLAYING)
I sense a feeling in this place It's making me a basket case
The stakes are too high, They unnerve and unglue me
I'm so strung out, I'm so done in I hope it won't affect my skin
I'm too young to die Why's it happening to me?
NANCY: For Howard, it was the realization of a dream and his passion
and this was the opportunity working with this stellar cast,
working with someone of Marvin's caliber.
This was his ticket to Broadway.
I think it's going well. I think it's...
The bottom line is, I think it's going well.
We are absolutely, as far as I'm concerned, on target
where we have to be now and what we have to do.
We know exactly what we have to do between now and December 11th.
DIANE: December 11th, the backer's audition.
Everybody's here,
including record company magnate and producer, David Geffen,
and representatives from the Shubert Organization,
Broadway's most powerful producers.
The question is, "Will they come up with the rest of the money
or does the curtain go down on Smile right here?
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING\} -DIANE: The answer?
It was nearly a disaster.
NANCY: When the workshop was done, it was really good
in this small, confined space, but the idea of moving it forward
and putting it on Broadway was going to be very expensive,
a big production, and I think the producers got nervous.
SARAH: Shubert and Geffen said no, and Howard did not take well to no,
and wasn't used to getting no, and was kind of shocked by that.
BILL: I don't know. I don't know what it was that scared David
and the Shubert Organization, the way they didn't tell Howard
but it hurt him.
SARAH: I think, to him, it felt disloyal.
Understanding that there was a great deal of money to be lost,
um, but still, I think, to him, it felt disloyal.
NANCY: Howard was going to persevere, no matter what.
Um, Marvin and he were finally able to get other producers on board,
raise the money that they were gonna need, and continue with the production.
JODI: You could definitely see the shift of pressure really going onto Marvin
and Howard and a lot more of the arguing between the two of them.
KYLE: They never really clicked in... in a way that made the writing process easy.
MARVIN: Mm. See, up to now it felt right. (VOCALIZING)
-HOWARD: Let me tell you something. -MARVIN: Yeah, go ahead.
-HOWARD: Honestly. -MARVIN: Yeah?
-MARVIN: That's not gonna be the melody... -HOWARD: But...
-...is it? -...but the problem with "Winners All"
-MARVIN: Right. -HOWARD: The problem with that
as the hook is this.
They say some got to lose But we don't care to lose
If I do that, if I... it's grammatically so inconsistent to say
"some win, some lose, but we're winners all".
-It makes no sense at all. -HOWARD: Uh-huh.
MARVIN: That's what's driving me crazy.
KYLE: Marvin was the star.
Howard didn't have the Tony and the Pulitzer and the... (CHUCKLING)
...Oscars and... that... that Marvin did,
so he couldn't really pull his... his weight with decisions.
-FEMALE JOURNALIST: Is it a hit? -Who knows?
NANCY: The opening night audience in New York,
we went crazy for it. We... We loved it. We just loved it.
SARAH: After the show, we went
over to the New York Times building to wait for the paper.
The other person going over there was Marvin Hamlisch,
and we didn't have to look at the paper 'cause we actually stood there
and watched Marvin's face fall, and we just knew.
JODI: I truly don't think I saw Marvin again.
He just became reclusive and disappeared.
KYLE: And that was it.
Howard just knew that that... that was probably gonna end it.
NANCY: He was pissed.
He was really mad at the New York theater community.
Really mad.
I feel my self-confidence Constantly shrinking, Mom
What am I doing here? What was I thinking?
NANCY: I don't think I'd ever seen anything stop him.
I don't think I ever before had seen anything...
let... the wind out of his sails, and this certainly did that.
It was really devastating.
I think he felt, maybe, ashamed, and he needed to get away
and be out of town and not be seen by anybody,
and I think that's why Jeffrey caught him at just the right time.
DON: Jeffrey Katzenberg was the head of Walt Disney Studios at the time
and he had been courting Howard to come to L.A.
"Dear Howard, I'm glad we had a chance to get together.
"The prospect that you and Disney will be able to co-conspire
"on some projects is exciting to us all.
"The combination of Howard Ashman's talent
"and the Walt Disney name is a home run waiting to happen.
"With best regards, Jeffrey."
JEFFERY: David Geffen, you know, who was, uh, one of my best friends then
and very much a mentor to me, and... he said to me,
"Well, you know, you really need to meet Howard Ashman,"
and, uh, so that's how I came to... to meet Howard for the first time.
NANCY: Uh, I'll never forget, we were having Seder
at Howard's apartment, it was Passover.
And Jeffrey calls in the middle of the Seder, almost like Elijah.
(LAUGHING)
Waiting for Elijah to show up, and it's Jeffrey on the phone,
and I don't know why, but of course Howard picks up the phone
and takes the call... (LAUGHING) ...in the middle of the Seder
'cause it's Jeffrey.
And Jeffrey's hawking him like, "When are you coming?
"Did you... Are... When are you gonna sign?
"When are you coming? Come on!"
(MUSIC PLAYING)
DON: The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California
was the wellspring of great animation for decades.
But by the 1980s, that legacy had begun to dwindle.
And the Animation Department was moved off the lot
to some warehouses in Glendale, California.
Well, here's another lovely location they put us in.
Come on, let's go see who's in here.
DON: So, Howard gets to L.A. and I think he's, you know, in his mind,
he's probably thinking he's gonna go to this really nice campus
and, uh, you know, be there with the Seven Dwarfs and kind of
this iconic place where Walt Disney made his films.
But instead, Disney animation have been moved off the lot,
like three miles down the road into an industrial park,
and... and all of a sudden, Howard's in a trailer.
NANCY: It was like, "Really? (CHUCKLING) This is the Walt Disney company."
I remember thinking that, going, "We're in a trailer in a parking lot
"next to a bowling alley?"
DON: So, when Howard first got to L.A., he had a lot of meetings set up
with live-action directors and producers.
One of the first things he did was write a script with Tina Turner
about her life story, called I, Tina.
But somehow, he never felt connected to the live-action business
and, uh, in Hollywood, like on Broadway, he always felt a little bit
like an outsider.
Then he gets over to Animation and... and you get all these people
that are into cartoons and...
and they're, you know, wearing their underwear on their head
and... and that somehow, I think, felt like a comfortable fit for Howard.
HOWARD: Scary, isn't it?
My background is... is in musical theater and it's interesting 'cause I do think
there's a very, very strong connection and application between the two media.
When I was, uh, approached with an opportunity to work for Disney, period,
I left after... I said, "What about animation?
"What about working in that department?" That was what I really wanted to do here.
There's just something about the Disney fairy tale cartoons,
going all the way back to... to Snow White and then to Pinocchio.
I mean, I... I grew up on Pinocchio and Peter Pan, and the idea
of doing one of those is like, there's all these library books
on the shelf, there's... there's Snow White and there's Sleeping Beauty
and there's Cinderella, there's Peter Pan, there's Pinocchio
and to try to make something that fits comfortably on the shelf
with those, I mean, that's like...
What a... what a difficult thing to do, but what a great thing to try to do.
It's neat 'cause animation
is almost a place that you can use a whole other set of... set of skills
and... and way of working.
Uh, it might be one of the last, maybe the... the last great place
to do Broadway musicals... (CHUCKLES) ...is in animation.
Um, it's a whole other world.
NANCY: Jeffrey said, "Who do you want to work with?"
And he said, "I'll bring Alan, I'll work with Alan."
ALAN: My first trip to... to L.A.,
it was so exciting. I mean, there was the palm trees...
(CHUCKLING) ...and Sunset Boulevard, it's a very exciting time.
Um, when we came out to work at Animation, it was a surprisingly
small operation at the time.
My... you know, my first contact was with, uh, Peter Schneider,
who I had known previously as the company manager
on Little Shop of Horrors, and Peter was the vice president,
in charge of animation.
And John and Ron, my first distinct impression of them was...
"Oh, my God, they're so... Well, middle American."
They're so... (LAUGHING) ...so kinda white bread.
One of the first things after Howard read the treatment, he's had this idea.
We had this character in the original treatment in the script,
it was a crab character
Howard said, "Why not make him Jamaican?"
And, um, our first reaction was,
"Jamaican?" I mean, it was like a total twist
on what we were thinking.
Howard was involved really early in this project and we went to New York,
met with Howard, and he... Just based on the treatment,
the first script was written, sort of did a placement kind of, of songs,
but I think he had practically written all the songs, you know,
five minutes after he got the treatment, but he said, "Now here...
say you had a song, let's just say it was called "Part of Your World",
it could be called anything but let's just say it was called
"Part of Your World", and then,
he and Alan, we were in Howard's apartment in Greenwich Village and Alan came over
and played it on the piano and... and Howard sang it and right there
and, uh, it sounded great.
DON: Howard sat down when he first got there,
and using The Little Mermaid,
he literally taught us how to tell a story with songs.
MIKE: What? What did he just say? (CHUCKLING)
Your lead character needs a want. They have to have a strong want,
and then a want song, and you're going, "Okay."
Not even having a clue about that stuff
before Howard was around.
You would've thought we would've known that.
CHRIS: You could bring any creative problem to him
and I would still say, to this day
he's probably the only person I've ever met that, I think,
ninety percent of the time, if I went to him with something I was puzzling over,
he would have a take, it would be concise, and probably right.
ROB: I was, you know, designing Ursula. Uh, in the script she was described
as a Joan Collins-esque character, so all the designs were of a very thin,
sort of high cheek-boned woman with black hair.
ROGER: She was kind of like a... a punk biker mama or something.
She was really freaky.
ROB: And I did a design based on Divine.
Boom, boom, boom, boom D-I-G means look, D-I-G means hair
ROB: And that design was put on a board with a bunch of other designs
and then the day that Howard Ashman came in to look at the designs,
he zeroed in on that one.
ALAN: Pat Carroll's wonderful, but you haven't heard the witch's number
uh, until you've heard Howard perform it, or for that matter, Audrey Two.
-I mean, he's... (LAUGHS) -And you never should.
The men up there don't like A lot of blabber
They think a girl who gossips is a bore Yes, on land it's much preferred
For ladies to not say a word and after all Dear, what is idle prattle for? Come on...
Everybody would rather write for Captain Hook than for Peter Pan.
They're just more fun, I don't know why, but...
And Ursula is an especially fun villain,
not only 'cause she looks like an octopus, so you have that great movement
with her lower regions, but she's also very sophisticated, uh, as a character.
She's much more verbal, and as a lyricist that was fun for me,
um, because I got to make more rhymes and more puns and more sophisticated
kind of humor with her.
I kinda see her song as a... a comedy number,
first of all, and a character number, um, and then third, talk about things
that are driving the plot forward.
At the beginning of that song, uh, Ariel doesn't even know who Ursula is
practically and by the end of that song, she's a human.
So, a whole lot changes in that... in that little three-minute sequence.
Come on, this poor unfortunate soul
(CACKLES)
FEMALE ANNOUNCER: Good evening, it's my pleasure to welcome you
to the 92nd Street Y
for the opening evening of our series, "Plays Into Film".
This series originated when a creative work conceived
in one medium was translated into another medium.
We're delighted that Mr. Menken and Mr. Ashman are here tonight.
Please join me in welcoming them, thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Um, I wanna first say how happy I am
to be interviewing Howard Ashman
and Alan Menken this evening, and that they were able to join us
to talk about their experiences with Little Shop of Horrors.
A whole category of issues I think that it would be interesting
to get into this evening is the whole world of the musical movie,
which is beginning to undergo
somewhat of a renaissance in Hollywood.
Um, do you not think that... that making a... a film out of a musical
is a different process entirely
-than making a film out of a play? -HOWARD: Oh, yeah. I think..
-And do you wanna speak to that? -HOWARD: Yeah, it's an exercise in stupid.
(ALL LAUGHING)
HOWARD: It's true. But, I... I don't know why people think that film musicals work
'cause I... I think they did during the Depression
and maybe during part of the '40s and early '50s, but...
but I think it's very hard, just the nature of... of the medium,
and when people start to sing, it's pretty silly in the theater,
and it's even sillier when you're taking a picture of it...
-(FEMALE INTERVIEWER CHUCKLING) -HOWARD: ...and...
FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Could you talk about that a little bit?
The changes that occur between what happens onstage
and what happens on film and in this case,
-some of the changes were fairly dramatic. -HOWARD: Very dramatic.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER: And could you just speak to that?
HOWARD: Yeah, um, films get test marketed
and, uh, films are toothpaste, you may be surprised to learn,
and in the course of doing previews of this film,
and... and looking at the cards
that people write after they see those screenings,
there were... I read them. I saw these cards that came back.
These people who had been rounded up, these 15 to 17-year-olds
who had been rounded up to decide what America was gonna see that year
and they basically were saying things like,
-"Why are they singing?" -(FEMALE INTERVIEWER LAUGHING)
HOWARD: And... so add a parenthesis.
I... I feel very fortunate that we've, I think,
found ourselves in the one area in films where musicals might work,
-and that is in animation over at Disney. -ALAN: Yeah, it seems like there might be
a little corner of the world there in animation where Broadway skills apply.
And I think there might be a whole...
BILL: Howard had seen his doctor a few days before this event
at the 92nd Street Y, prior to that, I'd say for the last few weeks
before that, um, Howard had... had been noticing white patches on his throat
and in his tongue and we both knew what that was, it's thrush,
and it occurs in people with compromised immune systems, um...
And the doctor wanted to do a test for HIV and Howard said, "No,
"we're not doing that because I could lose my insurance
"um, if this goes on my record," uh, so the doctor compromised and said,
"We'll do a test for T-cell count."
FEMALE INTERVIEWER: What do you think the future
of the American initiated musical is?
HOWARD: I don't... I really don't know.
-I... We're all real depressed. -(ALL LAUGHING)
HOWARD: I don't know.
BILL: He called him with the results of the T-cell count the afternoon
of that 92nd Street Y event, um, and they were so low
that it was apparent that he had HIV.
We were both sort of shell-shocked, shattered, and, um, I said,
"So, uh, you can't go to this lecture tonight, obviously, this is..."
Like, I... I was just, you know, literally shaking.
Um, he said, "No, I'm going and... and, um, there's no reason not to,"
and so we both got in a cab and went to the 92nd Street Y.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Howard, do you have a theatrical project
in your future?
HOWARD: No, not really. I might. I maybe will if I ever get up the nerve,
but, uh, no, not right this minute, I don't. I'm kind of resting.
(FEMALE INTERVIEWER LAUGHING)
Okay, thank you all for coming this evening
-and I will see you next week. -(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
-When I lighten up, I have a tendency... -Lighten up.
-Maybe I should stand back a little. -Yeah, a little bit.
JODI: I got the sense that Howard felt so badly
about Smile closing so drastically and horribly...
that Howard gave me a chance to audition.
Um, those very first few days, I remember being incredibly nervous.
He was such a perfectionist about a monologue that just happened
to be put to pitch, which is what "Part of Your World" is.
And... and what I did is I would get to the point,
after I'd do it like, 25 or 30 times.
I'd say, "Howard, can you please just give me the line reading?"
"If I can just imitate you."
(SINGS) Ready to stand. (SPEAKS) Do that for me.
Ready to stand and ready to know What the people know...
You were doing more voice than that...
-Yes. -...when we're recording, right?
-A lot more. Let's keep that little... -A lot more.
SARAH: I think that the diagnosis... Uh, clearly everything changed.
But I think the work really did keep him going
and kept him believing and almost willing him
to continue on and to live.
By the way, performance was fabulous.
-I understand. -By the way.
-Make it more intimate. Standing in... -HOWARD: Yes.
Standing in front of the Lunt-Fontanne Theater
trying to sing to 1,500 people. (CHUCKLES)
Up where they walk, up where they run
Up where they stay all day in the sun
Wanderin' free wish I could be Part of that world
(MUSIC PLAYING)
HOWARD: Yeah, I think we wanted to make songs
that would tell the story,
songs that would really move the story forward
and really push the plot along
and keep things driving ahead so it's not like,
you stop and sing a song, it's... You get to a certain point
where the crab has to convince, uh, the mermaid
not to go up, uh, above the water
and change her life so he has to sing "Under the Sea" and she has to sing
"Part of Your World" because she wants to go up to dry land so badly,
and "Kiss The Girl" is a great example, um, because if she doesn't...
If the prince doesn't kiss the mermaid, the worst thing in the world
is gonna happen, she going to... she's gonna lose him and the whole...
I don't wanna give the plot away.
But it's, uh, it's a real,
uh, tense situation, and that's where the song comes
so they're always driving the plot.
-HOWARD: Great. -You're not gonna get a better recording.
HOWARD: That's great.
-Are you people happy? -Yeah, we're thrilled.
-HOWARD: We're touching its soul. -FEMALE WORKER: All right.
GLEN: I remember on "Part of Your World" song
had animated and Jeffrey sat in the movie theater
and... and, uh, afterwards Jeffrey said, "Ah, we gotta cut that song, it's boring."
CHRIS: It was natural that if you got to a slow song without a lot of imagery,
guess what? Especially to kids, they're gonna wiggle, you know,
and we were all trained wiggle detectors.
JEFFERY: You know, I said to everybody, "I think you really oughta think
"about cutting that song out of the movie,"
and, you know, Howard Ashman said, "Over my dead body,"
you know, "I'll strangle you."
ALAN: I think Howard loved the process and he hated when people interfered
with his control.
NANCY: When we were working on Little Mermaid,
one day, I went to the copy machine,
lifted the lid and found a memo, and I picked it up and I said,
"Oh, well, I've got to return this to whoever left their memo here,"
and when I read it, uh, the memo was all about Howard taking too much time
and asking for re-dos and costing the studio time and money
and maybe he needed to be fired.
ALAN: Howard was very smart and said, "Look, these movies launch
off of this kind of a song."
Every one of the movies had some version of it,
whether it's "When You Wish Upon a Star" or whatever example you want to choose.
It maybe temporarily kind of
hard to make work, but in the big picture, you have to have this song.
You have to have those earned heart moments.
ROY: I don't wanna compare him to Walt, but on the other hand
he had that kind of influence on everybody.
It was... it was a remarkable amount of influence.
If... If Howard said it, you... you know, it was gospel.
ALAN: You know, so we had lots of battles about it, um, and ultimately he was right,
and not only did it stay in the movie,
but it's one of the more memorable moments in the movie.
NANCY: He would go to the Disney offices, do what he had to do that day
and then he would come home and then he would be hooked up
to, um, like, intravenous medical equipment
to give him fluids and medicine.
So, we kind of turned our living room into
a little bit of a hospital room for him.
BILL: At first, it was pretty... it was pretty easy to conceal
because by all appearances he seemed fine,
you know, for... for a year, even two, um, you know, he was functioning pretty well
and, um, you know, it was a more gradual thing.
PETER: It never crossed my mind that he had AIDS,
but I do know that there were certain days that Nancy Parent had to get him off
the couch and patch him up and send him to work.
BILL: When we got the... the news about Howard's health,
um, it really sort of shook everything,
you know, I mean, his... his work at Disney,
the house, what are we gonna do, um, now that we have this news?
And so, we agreed that we would go ahead with the project and we rented a house up
near the construction site of our... our house.
We were living in Beacon, which was close by.
It was a... There was a lot to... to manage, and the worst of it
was that it had to be a secret and that all of this was going on
and for the longest time, um, we couldn't tell anyone.
Um, you know, what it makes you do is it... you wanna go away, you wanna hide
and not have to explain, so that's part of what, um, leaving New York City was.
ALAN: If we were working in my studio on I... I can't remember what song,
but if he wasn't getting what he wanted, he would get frustrated.
He wanted to tape some version of the song, and he had the Walkman Pro.
The Walkman Pro in those days was the crème de la crème of Walkman.
And he had this little microphone that he was putting in it
and the microphone was probably not very expensive, but it was...
The mic was not getting good connection, it was intermittent.
Well, any... most pers...
people would simply go, "Okay, gotta get another mic."
Howard took his Walkman Pro and smashed it against the wall.
He said, "Don't go near it... don't touch it."
At those times, you know, I would think, "Is it me? Is it... Am I just that...
"(CHUCKLING) ...that inept as a composer that he's that frustrated or..."
I'd say, "Excuse me for a second, I just have to go do something,"
and I would leave the room and literally cry. I just...
It was so hard.
PETER: And I suppose that has do with the fact
that he knew he was sick.
Of which we didn't know.
But I'm sure the frustration of being sick, of knowing that your life
is probably gonna be shortened and you have no time left,
that I was not gonna get it done, I don't have time
to get it done correctly, and these idiots are standing in my way.
So how do I get it done? Get out of my way.
(PLAYS DRUMS)
(PLAYS PIANO)
ALAN: In the midst of working on Mermaid, we were also working on Aladdin
which was so exciting.
The initial take on Aladdin was a wink at the Hope/Crosby Road pictures.
I sure wish I had a drink.
ALAN: A wink at the Fleischer Cartoons, it was very stylish, very buddy
and, you know, "A Friend Like Me", which was pure,
you know, Fats Waller craziness.
DON: It was pretty clear that Howard was just nuts about Aladdin
and it made sense because he played Aladdin onstage
in Baltimore when he was just a kid.
But now, while he's working on Mermaid, he walks in the door with this
thirty-page treatment and half a dozen songs
that plug right into it, and they weren't just the kind of
pasted-on songs, they were these intricate,
storytelling songs done with this craft that only Howard and Alan
can do, and it just blew everybody away.
ALAN: Our work as songwriters...
-I can maybe start with... -(PLAYING PIANO)
...doesn't simply start with the first note.
It starts with both the rhythm...
-HOWARD: Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. -...and the content of what
-leads up to the song. -HOWARD: Dialogue, dialogue.
-ALAN: What is within the song. -HOWARD: More dialogue.
-ALAN: What happens the moment after that? -HOWARD: Dialogue.
ALAN: Exactly the moment we end the song.
(MUSIC CONTINUES PLAYING)
Arabian nights, like Arabian days Everything that...
ALAN: All of those little, tiny choices are ones that Howard was a master at
recognizing and being able to control getting those into place.
CHRIS: Those first three or four songs, "Friend Like Me", "Prince Ali",
they don't get written by anybody else.
ALAN: The stuff that was coming out of Howard's pen was just...
Lyrically, it was just unbelievable.
Prince Ali! Amorous he! Ali Ababwa
Heard your princess Was a sight lovely to see
And that, good people, is why He got dolled up and dropped by
With sixty elephants, llamas galore With his bears and lions
A brass band and more With his forty fakirs
His cooks, his bakers His birds that warble on key
Make way for Prince Ali!
Splendid, absolutely marvelous.
DON: I think a lot of people figure that when you're Disney,
you just have no problems at all when it comes to telling a story.
It just somehow shoots out of your eyeballs and you're done.
But that's so not true because Disney is just people,
and... and people sitting there with pencils and paper, uh, at a desk,
trying to make things entertaining and funny
and feel empathy and emotion for the characters.
And a lot of times, it just doesn't work out
and it all comes crashing to the ground.
It is about understanding the fabric of the character of Aladdin
and I don't think we do yet.
We had screened the movie for Jeffrey and we went to Don Ernst's office.
Don Ernst, the producer of the movie, he said, "Come on in here,
"come on in here, guys." Like, "Yeah, what's going on?"
"Yeah, I talked to Jeffrey. He hated it, he hated it.
"He hated every minute of it."
So later we talked to Jeffrey and... and we said, "You hated it?"
He said, "Yeah, oh, it didn't work at all. I was working on the guest list
"for my wife's, uh, surprise birthday party, all during the screening."
So, Aladdin went on hold for re-writes and in the meantime,
everybody got on a plane and flew down to Walt Disney World in Florida.
HOWARD: My friends are real nervous 'cause I basically hate everything I do.
-(REPORTER CHUCKLING) -And everything I'm connected with,
my friends are very... This is like the first thing I've ever done,
that I go... they say, "How's the movie?" And I go, "It's really good."
(LAUGHING) It's... I really like it.
HOWARD: (CHUCKLING) Normal movie.
HOWARD: Yeah.
HOWARD: It's interesting, no creative process
is without some element of, uh, of tension,
of conflict. There's plenty creative tension, especially...
BILL: Howard had to go to do this press junket
and sit for, I don't know, eight hours a day.
During that period, he had a catheter in his chest
and was taking daily intravenous treatments
that we knew how to do and I helped him with
and, uh, you know, it was to control infection.
This was before anyone knew about it.
Uh, it was expected that we would go on rides
and... and we had a, uh, a handler take us around and go on roller coasters
while he was queasy... (LAUGHING) ...trying to keep the secret,
trying to keep him on his two feet
and handling the... the question and answer periods,
uh, for two days in a row.
That was really tough.
The seaweed is always greener In somebody else's lake
JOHN: I do remember Howard talking and he just said, "You know,
"when I saw this parade, I burst into tears when I saw it,"
and he said, uh,
"'cause I had just had the feeling this would live on after me."
At the time I just thought, "Oh, he's just... He was so moved
"because he thought something I did is gonna live on," and I had no idea
that there was this other context.
FEMALE ANNOUNCER 2: And the Oscar goes to...
(LAUGHS, PANTS)
Alan Menken and Howard Ashman for "Under the Sea"
-from The Little Mermaid. -(AUDIENCE CHEERING, APPLAUDING)
I won't do fish jokes, just, uh, say a couple thank yous.
At Disney to Jeff Katzenberg, Peter Schneider, to Sam Wright
who sang the song, all the words. Mostly, though, to John Musker
and Ron Clements, whose movie Little Mermaid really is.
-I feel really lucky, thank you. -(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)
ALAN: At the Governor's Ball afterwards,
we sat there with our... our three statuettes
and Howard said, "You know, I want you to know I'm really happy tonight,
"and, um, when we get back home, back to New York,
"we really have to have a... a very serious talk."
I said, "Well, what... what about?"
You know, I was thinking, "Do you not wanna work together anymore? Is..."
Why my brain couldn't form something was wrong
with Howard is beyond me, and then I guess the...
You know, the Oscars were on a Sunday night,
I guess, and we probably met that Tuesday, um, up at his house.
Um, I came into his living room
and he said, "Well..." I said, "What? You know, what's... (CHUCKLING)
"...what do you wanna talk about?"
He said, "Well, you know, I'm sick."
And all of a sudden, you know, a million dominoes just went...
(IMITATES DOMINOES FALLING)
He.. you know, and he said, "Look, I...
"Uh, I feel good that I'm telling you this now
"because I know you're taken care of."
What... You know, what was he doing? He was basically saying, "I'm gonna die."
At the... What? He wasn't even 40 yet. "I'm gonna die and I'm glad
"to know at least that you're taken care of."
CHRIS: Because in those days, it was a death sentence.
So, you were being told this man that you love, that you were having
this tremendous amount of fun with and creating all this work
as a group together was gonna die in a very short amount of time
and that is very sobering.
PETER: I was angry at Howard when I heard the story.
And I was angry because he didn't show up for every single recording session
on the music of Little Mermaid.
He couldn't travel.
And he made an excuse why he couldn't be there
and I was angry 'cause he hadn't told us earlier.
If we had just known, we would have moved the recording session to New York.
NANCY: Howard really didn't want people to know.
He was... he was afraid being judged
and criticized and what people would say, what people would think.
PETER: Howard said to me, "I didn't wanna tell you because...
"I didn't know how Disney would react. Here I am, a gay man,
"and I'm working on this movie for kids, and I didn't wanna be fired."
JEFFERY: He loved making these movies and said that that is what he,
more than anything else, cherished the most and wanted to do
with whatever... whatever time he had left in his life and he didn't know
at that point, none of us knew, how long he would have to live,
but he knew he was sick.
NANCY: He was terrified, but he wasn't gonna stop.
Nothing was gonna stop him from getting the stuff done that he had to do.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
GARY: Somebody had showed me the, uh, the... the reel and it was... you know,
it was sorta slickly done, but it was, like, not very inspiring.
It was just like... Somebody... somebody, uh, described it
as animated masterpiece theater.
And evidently Jeffrey said, "Put, uh, Howard and Alan on it
"and they'll do to this what they did to Mermaid and it'll be great."
BILL: He knew that going to California
was not gonna be easy, uh, and eventually, not even possible.
So, he had to, uh, talk to Jeffrey candidly.
SARAH: When Howard came back and we said, "So what did Jeffrey say?"
He said, "He became a nice Jewish man. He became 'how's your mother handling it',
"you know?"
JEFFERY: And he just said, "You know, I know I am getting weaker
"and I don't have the stamina
"and I'd just like to have every ounce that I have to the creative process."
And I said, "Great. What do you need and... and how can I help you?"
And he said, "Well...
"I'm gonna need more of the film making to come to me than for me
"to come to the film making and, uh, somehow or another you need to cover that
"for... for me," and... and I said, "Well, fine.
"The only other way I can do it, Howard,
"is just to say, you know, you are a diva... (CHUCKLING)
"...and you're worth it to the movies and to the company and, um..."
You know, just sort of say to them they're to start going to you.
ROGER: Wait a minute, we have to pack up all of our storyboards,
and all the equipment, we have to take them all apart
and what... like six or seven of us, we have to get on a plane,
go upstate New York, reassemble it
to take it to Howard? It was like we were taking the mountain to Muhammad.
Why? You know, it just... it...
At the time, it felt like, "Well, Howard, you know,
"has the... the golden Oscar on his mantel so we have to come to him."
DON: So, we all arrive in this place called Fishkill, New York.
It's North of New York, and we unpack and there's... there's storyboards
and there's paper and pencils and crayons and Twinkies and everything
that an animator needs to get their job done.
Howard came in every morning,
and he always brought donuts with him, and then we would start to work.
It got really intense because Howard had these incredibly specific points of view
about things and it was difficult and some days it went great...
(FIRE ROARS)
(SIZZLES)
-...and other days, not so much. -(DOOR SQUEAKS, SHUTS)
HOWARD: Hi, Linda. This is, uh, Howard and Alan here and we're gonna give you
a, uh, rough sketchy demo version of the opening number.
Okay? Okay.
DON: So we storyboarded the beginning of Beauty and the Beast
as just a non-musical moment.
Belle goes off, she leaves her father's house, she goes into town.
She meets Gaston, she meets LeFou, she buys a loaf of bread, she gets a book
and she comes home.
And Howard says, "Well, let me take that."
Little town, in just a quiet village
Every day like the one before
Little town, full of little people
DON: So he goes off with Alan and he musicalizes that
into this amazing kind of operetta that does exactly the same business
all in the context of a four or five minute song.
But he's terrified about sending it into Disney.
ALAN: We sent "Belle" and "Be Our Guest" and I thought this was great stuff,
he didn't wanna send it out.
He said, "We can't send this, we're gonna get laughed at.
"Who asked for a six-minute opening number
"with countermelodies and... I mean, what are we thinking?"
I think he feared humiliation.
Both of us are people who have a huge part of ourselves
that relate to the world through our work
because our work is... that's our emotional conduit.
Something needs to... to take off there
-to compensate for... -I know David had felt
that it had to build back in.
I mean, I remember you saying that. That you didn't...
That you shouldn't... That you didn't feel you should jump
-right into tempo. -Right.
Do you want it to get faster sooner?
You're asking... I mean, yeah. It's not really sort of building into it.
-This is not a tempo question. -(INDISTINCT) One...
Yeah, I know what you're saying. That it doesn't hit...
Well, a lot of the orchestra thought so 'cause it's so much softer there.
-MALE VOICE: Okay. -ALAN: That could be it.
MALE VOICE: Can something sustain...
MALE VOICE 2: Well, there's a lot of chorus there.
One time on American Airlines when I went back, to my delight,
they put it in a little pot on a little tray with milk...
A little milk and sugar thing.
-And the teabag should be in the pot. -And the teabag should be in the pot.
-JERRY: Steeping. -Steeping.
Because if the water isn't boiling, it doesn't make tea...
-Right, yes, yes. -...out of the teabag.
-The water from the tap. (CHUCKLES) -(LAUGHS) You know that.
You know, I... I told you I have a terrific collection of teapots.
You wanna know anything about tea, I could tell you.
(INDISTINCT)
JERRY: It is with deepest pride and greatest pleasure
that we welcome you tonight. And now, we invite you to relax, pull up a chair,
as the dining room proudly presents... your dinner.
Be our guest, be our guest Put our service to the test
ALAN: They were incredible. At that session,
I remember it was both Jerry Orbach and Angela at the same session.
I mean, it was musical theater heaven.
KIRK: There was just an incredible thrill to be able to walk into that studio
in New York and have this full orchestra and this full chorus,
performing this stuff live, I mean, we created the soundtrack
to Beauty and the Beast like... like a Broadway cast album.
What I admired about Howard was he never gave vague direction.
He never gave any direction that was, like, kinda namby-pamby
or wishy-washy,
he was very specific right down to... to, "When we get to this word,
"could you stress this word more than the previous word?"
He.. he was just extremely specific and... and focused as to what he wanted.
The orchestra, it's fine there anyways.
Yeah, the orchestration gets real big there.
Maybe I should talk to Danny about
pulling it down a little bit so that you, you know, you don't have
-to scream to get over it. -Well, we're separate tracks aren't we?
That's true. I'm just wondering if what you're hearing
-and you can't sing it. -Yeah.
Uh, I'll play it... play it up and play it down.
-We'll see how... which is better. -Great.
Great, and we should... similarly, we should... we should get at least one
on this build sec... build section. (CLEARS THROAT) Um...
So, one point too, for you, "Our Guest"...
It's a guest, it's a guest Sakes alive, well I'll be blessed!
Wine's been poured and thank the Lord I've had the napkins freshly pressed
With dessert, you'll want tea And my dear that's fine with me
While the cups do their soft-shoeing I'll be bubbling, I'll be brewing
I'll get warm, piping hot Heaven's sakes! Is that a spot?
Clean it up, we want the company impressed We've got a lot to do!
HOWARD: That's such a good take.
Dave, I think that's the take.
-Let's give a listen. -DAVE: Yeah.
Why don't you wait... Let's wait till Jerry and Angela come in, okay.
("BE OUR GUEST" RECORDING PLAYING)
Course by course, one by one
Till you shout, "Enough I'm done!"
Then we'll sing you off to sleep As you digest
Tonight you'll prop your feet up But for now, let's eat up
-Be our guest, be our guest, be our guest -Be our guest, be our guest, be our guest
-Please, be our guest -Please, be our guest
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ALAN: It was such a poignant contrast.
Um... the joy of... and... and the magic of that movie and...
the... and the... and the fact that he was
look... literally staring death in the face
at the age of, you know, 39.
CHRIS: I remember one night I wanted to push, as I did often,
to keep going to do something late because I... from a production standpoint
I knew we had to do it, and I don't remember who took me aside
but said, you know,
or maybe even Howard said, "You know, I just can't do it tonight,"
but there was... Somebody brought me in to the inner circle that night
because... when you're... when you're with somebody
and it's so gradual, it wasn't that obvious to me,
and then the moment somebody actually tells you, you go, "Oh. Oh, yeah.
(TAPE RECORDER BEEPING)
JOHN: Uh-huh.
JOHN: Yeah.
JOHN: Mm-hmm.
-JOHN: Right. -HOWARD:
-JOHN: Right. Right. -HOWARD:
-JOHN: Right. -HOWARD:
ALAN: And by the time we went back to Aladdin...
um, Howard was now openly sick.
We needed a song for Jafar, or we wanted to try to have a song for Jafar,
and Howard chose the moment where Jafar is now triumphant
and one by one, everything is being taken away from Aladdin.
Well, at that time, Howard was suffering these neuropathies
and he'd lose the sensation in his fingers or he'd lose his voice.
He'd lose part of his eyesight, he'd... Things would just go.
And he had Jafar singing this song called "Humiliate the Boy" and it's a gleeful...
(VOCALIZING)
And one by one, we're taking everything away from Aladdin,
stripping him down to nothing.
And all of us, I think, recognized that there was
a pretty strong subtext to this.
PETER: Great artists give you a way of looking at the world
that you never saw before and that...
The only way they can do that is to show you their world.
And I think Howard showed us his world through his lyrics
and his storytelling.
BILL: To me, "The Mob Song" in Beauty and the Beast
is trying to... to just imbue some point of view
through a very subtle way,
and he didn't want to make political theater,
but I think he wanted to present characters
that cast some kind of light on certain topics.
We don't like what we don't understand In fact it scares us
And this monster is mysterious at least Bring your guns bring your knives
Save your children and your wives We'll save our village and our lives
We'll kill the beast
BILL: The "Mob Song" is a perfect manifestation of people
seeking a... a, uh, scapegoat for their troubles
and identifying a villain and wanting to exterminate it.
Um, there was a lot of ignorance about AIDS and people did still believe
that you could get it from casual contact
and... and that the only people that got this disease were degenerates
and... and people that deserved it, um, and so to identify yourself
as one of those... was asking for... To be shunned.
THOMAS: You can never take Beauty and the Beast
away from the AIDS epidemic
because it's a movie that speaks to its time,
and this is an AIDS metaphor,
metaphorically done at a time when I don't even know if the creators
of it were aware that they were creating it.
SARAH: People who question the Beast and the "kill the Beast",
and was he talking about AIDS, and... I always think...
I... I believe it's a bunch of hooey, I don't think
he... he put his personal life in anything
he wrote or did, but what there really was with Howard was great empathy,
which means that he could put himself in the other person's place.
It's not that he really wanted to be a mermaid who got legs.
But he put himself in Ariel's position, in Ariel's life, that's... that's empathy,
and from that... from that place, you can write that character.
I think that's the definition of an artist.
PETER: I think that was the genius of Howard, was that he was not political.
He was human, he dealt with human issues and human thoughts.
Talking about the kindness of the human spirit.
I think that was Howard's gift to all of us.
(SLOW MUSIC PLAYING)
BILL: You know, if I have a regret about the... the... How we planned
the last few years of our life, it would be centered mostly around
the decision to build the house and sequester ourselves up there
away from the city.
Those last few months were a very chaotic period
of hospitalization and... and obligation to his work demands.
We weren't able to really spend a lot of time just sort of
being with each other as partners,
um, and, you know, he... he couldn't climb steps
so he had to sleep in a separate room.
Most of my interaction with him,
at that time, was about, "What do you need?"
Giving him medications,
making sure he got meals, it was about following program.
I had designed this house for our future together
and we had no future together, so then I'm left with the remnant of it.
I think we probably,
uh, had... had our goodbye long before, um, he was actually gone.
ROGER: By that time, and I don't know if it's just 'cause the illness
was so beating him down, he got gentler, I remember.
He was pretty feisty in the beginning, and I'm sure it's because of all his anger
at having to have this stupid disease, you know, and to know that...
there wasn't really any cure, so it was the whole anger of...
damn it, he's just hitting his stride and the stupid disease
is gonna just cut him short.
CHRIS: We were so in the middle of working that... And those last sessions
on Beauty even before we were really deep into Aladdin, we were holding the phone
up to Howard in the hospital. I mean, that's pretty heavy stuff.
ALAN: We were writing things on hospital beds.
I wrote "Prince Ali", I... I hauled a keyboard
to St. Vincent's and we wrote it, you know, literally on his hospital bed.
JODI: I went to the hospital and I remember, you know,
kissing his cheek, holding his hand, and just telling him that he's loved.
And I remember walking out of the hall...
and I broke down.
JEFFERY: So, we went to see him and, you know, he was, you know,
80 pounds and... you know, lost his sight
and, um, barely had a whisper of a voice.
DON: Beauty and the Beast was still months away from being done
so we went to visit Howard and, um, we all were really aware
that this was probably the last time we would see him.
And I bent over to say my goodbyes and, uh...
and tell him what he meant to us
and... and I said, "Howard, you wouldn't believe it,
"I mean, it... People love this movie, who would've thought?"
And Howard said, "I would've."
ALAN: And morning of... of March 14th...
I wake from a dream, and in the dream I'm visiting Howard at the hospital
and I, um, I go to see him.
He says, "Hey, hi," and he says, "Help me up, help me up."
So I put my arm behind his back and I just gently lift his body up,
but it has no weight... and I look and I see he's wearing a black robe
and I put him on the bed.
And I... I woke from that dream and I remember looking at the clock
and whatever the time was, it was six something.
-That was when Howard passed. -(SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING)
(WHIMSICAL MUSIC PLAYING)
SARAH: It was Howard having a great time, Howard enjoying himself
and bringing you along on that journey. That's what that day in Howard's room
was about that he created just for me, this world, um, a fantasy.
What we got was... was the tip of the iceberg.
God knows what he would've done, but it would've been spectacular.
Howard and I shared a home and a life together, and I'm very happy
and very proud to accept this for him, but it is bittersweet.
This is the first Academy Award given to someone we've lost to AIDS.
KYLE: Since he passed away,
I keep thinking I'm going to recognize that kind of talent
in somebody else I run into, and I haven't.
ROGER: It's really in animation history and in, uh, film history
and in musical history, I feel like Howard's mark is indelible
and it's ongoing, it has not diminished over the years.
Howard's gift was so strong and his light was so bright
that, uh, it's... it's just as strong today as it was then.
ALAN: He was the force behind what all this has become.
And it came from his heart and his intellect.
And he didn't get to live to see it, but his work lives on.
HOWARD: Maybe he's right. Maybe there is something
the matter with me.
I just don't see how a world that can make such wonderful things
can be bad.
Look at this stuff, isn't it neat? Wouldn't you think
My collection's complete? Wouldn't you think I'm the girl
The girl who has everything?
Look at this trove, treasures untold
How many wonders can one cavern hold? Lookin' around here you'd think
Sure, she's got everything I got gadgets and gizmos aplenty
I got whozits and whatzits galore You want thingamabobs? I got 20
But who cares? No big deal I want more
I want to be where the people are
I want to see Want to see 'em dancin'
Walkin' around on those Whad'ya call 'em? Oh, feet
Flippin' your fins you don't get too far
Legs are required for jumpin', dancin'
Strollin' along down a What's that word again? Street
Up where they walk, up where they run Up where they stay all day in the sun
Wanderin' free, wish I could be Part of that world
(MUSIC PLAYING)