Waking Sleeping Beauty Page #6

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by Michael about the costs.

ElSNER:
We just had to put

a financial box around all this creativity.

And without that, the end result

would have been complete chaos.

KATZENBERG:

It created a tremendous amount of friction

and difficulty between Michael and I,

not because he didn't believe

in the movie. He did.

Financially it just became so expensive.

And Michael,

who is fundamentally conservative,

just got very, very uncomfortable with it.

Cut. Let's do it again.

KATZENBERG:

And I was unable to control it.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

is one of those home runs

that Hollywood hits

every once in a while.

It's a movie like 2001 or Close Encounters

or especially like E. T.

that's a technical breakthrough

and a lot of fun both at the same time.

Roger Rabbit made headlines

and won Oscars for technical innovation

and returned just millions to the studio.

The top talent on Roger

was shipped back to Burbank

and put to work on Oliver and Company

and Little Mermaid.

It was like an injection of fresh, young,

international talent

that would pay dividends

for years to come.

Six months later,

Oliver and Company opened

on the same day

as Spielberg's Land Before Time.

Come on. Let's eat him!

SCRlBNER:
Well, by the end

of the three or four months,

we'd made 55, 56, 54.

And we beat Land Before Time

and it was like--

I think a lot of people were like,

"Hey, there's something--

There's something here."

The chaos that Roy ushered in when

he hired Michael was starting to pay off

and suddenly everybody was happy

to be associated with Toontown.

InTERVlEWER:
This is the first fairy tale

that Disney has done

MAN:
Take two.

in the last 30 years, three decades.

Why was Mermaid chosen?

Well, I mean, it was chosen

because we all went to a lunch

about three or four years ago

and all of us--

It was sort of a development-type thing.

And we were supposed to come in

with our three ideas.

I don't know if you can use any of this,

but this is sort of more the truth than,

you know,

what we may wind up saying later.

And basically they wanted to draw

on different ideas.

And one of the ideas that Ron brought in

was The Little Mermaid.

He had-- That was one of his three.

Jeffrey's friend David Geffen

called him about a songwriting team,

Howard Ashman and Alan Menken,

that he'd worked with on the off-Broadway

hit Little Shop of Horrors.

Peter had worked with them

on the same show as company manager,

so he brought them in

to work on The Little Mermaid.

SCHNElDER:
Howard was just coming off

a terrible disappointment

when his musical Smile

crashed and burned on Broadway.

He came to Los Angeles

to start over again.

Howard wasn't exactly the first guy who

sprang to mind when you said Disney.

He was born into a Jewish family

in Baltimore,

where he grew up on-stage in the local

Children's Theater Association.

He was gay, edgy, and loved musicals,

especially Peter Pan.

When I was approached

with an opportunity

to work for Disney, period,

I leapt at the--

I said,"What about Animation?

What about working in that department?"

That was what

I really wanted to do here,

much, much more

than anything, really, in live-action.

Because I'm really

a musical-theater person

and I do see a very, very strong

connection between these two media.

We had this character

in the original treatment, the script.

It was a crab character

that was kind of-- Would be--

Sort of look after the mermaid

and try to keep her out of trouble

and watch over her.

He was kind of a crusty, old,

crotchety character

The king's right-hand guy.

who worked for the king and was like

the conductor in the undersea world.

Howard said,

"Why not make him Jamaican?"

And our first reaction was,"Jamaican?"

I mean, it was like a total twist

on what we were thinking.

He rounds up all of these fish

and all of this stuff

to convince Ariel not to try

to become human.

And they more or less

put on a show for her

by playing all these instruments

and themselves.

Okay, we hear it start.

He starts establishing the rhythm.

The clams pick it up, and oysters,

and he's beating on lobsters, whatever.

It's all percussive

and it's all the undersea world

making the percussion.

[PERCUSSlVE MUSlC PLAYING

OVER SPEAKERS]

KATZENBERG:

There was electricity in the air.

I mean, there was real genius at work

and people knew it.

Howard, in a salesmanship way, I think,

trying to treat it

sort of a little more off-the-cuff,

but I think he had written all the songs

five minutes after he got the treatment,

but said,

"Now, here, say you had a song,

say it was called 'Part of Your World.'

It could be anything,

but say it was called 'Part of Your World'."

And then he had a-- And Alan--

We were in Howard's apartment

in Greenwich Village and it was--

Alan came over

and played it on the piano.

And Howard sang it right there

and it sounded great.

[ASHMAN AND MENKEN SINGING

SOFT POP MUSlC]

So really try to work

with just the intensity.

It's like it's about all that emotion

and then not letting it all out.

Not letting it out.

Not letting it out, but having it here.

That stuff. Really, it's--

Am I still a little too loud?

You're great.

Better that time?

You're great.

But you're right,

it gets a little bright here.

The intensity is better than--

Is better than noise.

Than Ethel Merman, right.

But you're not doing Ethel Merman.

It's inner intensity, though.

ASHMAN:

In almost every musical ever written,

there's a place, it's usually

the third song of the evening.

Sometimes it's the second, sometimes

it's the fourth, but it's quite early.

And the leading lady usually

sits down on something,

sometimes it's a tree stump

in Brigadoon,

sometimes it's under the pillars

of Covent Garden in My Fair Lady,

or it's a trash can

in Little Shop of Horrors.

But the leading lady sits down

on something

and sings about what she wants in life

and the audience falls in love with her

and then roots for her to get it

for the rest of the night.

KEANE:
I heard"Part of Your World,"

Jodi Benson singing that,

and it just captivated me.

I thought,"l have to do that."

And I went and told those guys,

"I really wanna do Ariel."

And they said,"Whoa, I don't know.

This is supposed to be a pretty girl.

Can you do that?"

I said,"Look, I have to do Ariel.

I can feel it in my heart."

MUSKER:

We were previewing for schoolkids.

And so the kids--

During that screening, a lot of the movie

was in black and white.

Certainly"Part of Your World,"

a lot of it was in story sketches.

KATZENBERG:

And the movie comes up on its feet

and we get to"Part of Your World"

and it's just not connecting.

The audience is restless.

I came out of that and just said,

"Don't think this is working."

MUSKER:
So Jeffrey was bound and

determined to cut"Part of Your World."

It was just like,

"Guys, face reality, you know.

It's not working, it's not there.

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