The little mermaid beauty and the beast

The second highest-grossing film of 2017 didn’t have a superhero, a spaceship, or even a fast car in it. It was a tale as old as time—one that’s been told at least a few times by Disney itself. But as the world fell back in love with Belle, her prince, and the anthropomorphic crockery that populate this version of Beauty and the Beast, musical fans and Disney die-hards also reckoned once again with the tragic backstory of one of its creators.

Howard Ashman, the show’s genius lyricist, didn’t live to see the original animated movie premiere in theaters back in 1991—but his legacy lives on in works including Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Little Shop of Horrors, an impressive run for a talented man cut down in his prime by complications from AIDS. In Howard, a new documentary from director Don Hahn premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, Ashman’s friends, family, and collaborators reflect on how the brilliant man was, and the many songs and stories he never got to tell.

Ashman’s legacy has never exactly vanished. His longtime creative partner, composer Alan Menken, said in a phone call that thanks to Broadway re-stagings of their classic Disney collaborations, sequel films, international concerts, and so on, the world that Ashman created has remained a vital part of the culture in the 27 years since his death. And now, with Disney on a live-action remake kick, Beauty and the Beast dominating the box office, and live-action productions of Aladdin and The Little Mermaid in the works, a whole new generation will have a chance to be part of that world.

The time was ripe for legendary Disney producer Don Hahn, a man with credits that stretch from 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit to 2017’s Beauty and the Beast remake, to ensure via this documentary that even as Ashman’s family-friendly confections enjoyed a renaissance, the darker story of his life got the attention it deserved.

Ashman was grappling, at first secretly and then openly, with AIDS throughout the process of creating The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and a good portion of Aladdin. The closing credits to 1991’s Beauty and the Beast are dedicated to him.

In the documentary, Menken recalls that “Prince Ali,” with its dizzying list of intricate lyrics—“his forty fakirs, his cooks, his bakers, his birds that warble on key!”—was written from Ashman’s hospital bed at St. Vincent’s on an electric keyboard the composer had brought with him. Bill Condon, director of 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, was quick to illuminate how Ashman’s illness informed so many of the hits we know by heart, in an interview with Attitude:

It was his idea, not only to make it into a musical but also to make Beast one of the two central characters. Until then, it had mostly been Belle’s story that they had been telling. Specifically for him, it was a metaphor for AIDS. He was cursed, and this curse had brought sorrow on all those people who loved him, and maybe there was a chance for a miracle—and a way for the curse to be lifted. It was a very concrete thing that he was doing.

In the documentary, Ashman’s sister, Sarah Gillespie, doesn’t exactly agree with that assessment—but Menken believes the truth lies somewhere in the middle. “The parallels that people see, and I see them—God, they’re remarkable to see,” Menken agreed. “But I don’t think he did it consciously. It just wasn’t like him. He was so all about the musical, and the story line, and serving the characters, and serving the story arc, and that was it. But boy, the subtext is there, clearly.” Speaking to Den of Geek in 2010, Hahn said that the pitchforks-and-torches song “Kill the Beast” was a metaphor for Ashman “dealing with a debilitating disease, in an era when it was stigmatized. And so, there were so many of those underpinnings to the movie that people may not have seen.”

Ashman’s talent and perspective led a generation of musical songwriters to regard him as one of their gods. Menken is currently working with some of those songwriters: Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda (for the live-action Little Mermaid) and La La Land’s Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (for the live-action Aladdin). Those three, in addition to Frozen composer Robert Lopez, are “boys who literally grew up on our music,” Menken said. “They just wanted to hear the stories. ‘What was it like? What’s Howard like?’” Thanks to this documentary, even budding songwriters without direct access to Menken can experience the Ashman legacy for themselves.

Disney’s habit of cherry-picking Broadway phenoms to work in the realm of animation started, really, with Howard Ashman. Coming off the giddying highs of Little Shop of Horrors and the disappointing lows of his follow-up, the widely panned pageant-musical Smile, Ashman was primed for a change. Jodi Benson, who worked with Ashman on Smile and then was plucked to voice Ariel in The Little Mermaid, told me over the phone that Disney had offered Ashman freedom, in a way, after a frustrating collaboration with composer Marvin Hamlisch had left him feeling stifled and “shackled.”

In the 1980s, Disney animation wasn’t what it has become. After a string of tepidly received films like The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, and Oliver & Company, the department was in such disgrace that it had been moved off the main Burbank lot to a series of humble trailers in nearby Glendale. John Musker and Ron Clements—who still work for Disney animation to this day, on successful projects like Moana—were hired to direct The Little Mermaid. But as Benson recalled, in many instances, they wisely got out of Ashman’s way: “If you were smart, you would just let him go and drive the train. Ron and John were smart.”

Ashman was afforded far more creative input than your standard lyricist, and became something of a shadow director on the Disney projects he undertook. Hand-picking trusted collaborators like Menken and Benson to join him, he built what we still consider to be the classic Disney animated-movie model from the ground up.

Alan Menken and Howard Ashman at a recording session for The Little Mermaid in 1988. Courtesy of Disney Enterprises

Treating every session like its own mini-Broadway show, Ashman would play all the parts and encouraged his voice actors to physically embody the roles they were playing, rather than listlessly singing into the microphone. Benson, who has an active voiceover career to this day, said, “The directors that I’ve had the privilege of getting to work with now, they really have taken that from Howard. They know how to play all the parts. They are in the studio with me, they’re actually in the booth with me, which is what Howard did. Which is kind of unusual.”

Watching Ashman do exactly that in parts of the documentary’s archival footage is invigorating. Knowing that he was fighting for his life at the same time is sobering. Menken said that reliving a particular session with the late Jerry Orbach and Angela Lansbury, as they recorded songs from Beauty and the Beast, was a personal highlight of the documentary: “The juxtaposition of seeing Angela Lansbury and Jerry Orbach in the control room, and all of us so excited, and seeing Howard sitting there, knowing that the burden rested on him. And I knew at the time, so the burden was on me as well.”

The documentary holds plenty of behind-the-scenes gems even for those who are not Disney-obsessed. Ashman’s pre-Disney work in the New York theater scene was always challenging and incredibly innovative. From trying to put Kurt Vonnegut to music in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, tackling the surreal world of pageantry in Smile, or, most ambitiously and successfully, turning a cheesy 60s movie about a talking plant from outer space into the musical-theater classic Little Shop of Horrors, Ashman was never one to shy away from a fight. When it came time to translate Little Shop from hit stage show into a mainstream Hollywood film starring Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, and Steve Martin, Menken recalled that Ashman adamantly stood his ground against the studio brass. “They said, ‘Listen: we’d like to change the lyric to “Suddenly Someone,” ’cause it could be a hit song instead of “Suddenly Seymour.”’ Howard said, ‘It’s “Suddenly Seymour.” Sorry.’”

Howard Ashman and Ellen Greene in rehearsal for the original stage production of Little Shop of Horrors in 1982.Howard Ashman and Ellen Greene in rehearsal for the original stage production of Little Shop of Horrors in 1982. Courtesy of Peter Cunningham.

This certainty in his own creative vision caused friction at Disney as well, to the point where Ashman was almost fired from the company. “He was a team player, but quite honestly nobody could even fathom getting at his level. Nobody,” Benson explained. “Alan could keep up with all that, but there’s not a lot of people that could.” But Ashman’s staunch commitment to his own point of view clearly paid off for Disney—and won him two Oscars.

Because Ashman simply couldn’t win every fight he faced, that second Oscar for Beauty and the Beast was awarded posthumously after he succumbed to complications from AIDS. Menken got emotional when saying what he hopes a new generation will learn from Ashman’s struggle with the disease. “I guess the most important thing to know is, if anybody has feelings that AIDS is God’s punishment, or something, then just look at the man, at what he created, and what it is in our lives, and think again about that,” he said. Speaking of the way in which the AIDS crisis cut down a generation of creative men and women, Menken added, “It would be great if Howard was alive. We could write a musical about all that.”

Howard premieres Sunday, April 22, at the Tribeca Film Festival.

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