Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: 'Aladdin' composer had to cast spell twice Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 16:20:05 EST Message-ID: Lines: 131 \SE E;LIFE \HD 'Aladdin' composer had to cast spell twice \BY Gary Arnold \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES Alan Menken doesn't want to leave the impression that he regards "Aladdin" as a disappointment. After all, he wrote the musical score and readily affirms the advance consensus: "It's a sensational movie." Having won Academy Awards for best musical score and best song for both "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast," Mr. Menken is the pride of the Disney studio, and his association with the company remains active. But Alan Menken's enthusiasm for "Aladdin," the story of a boy and a genie in his magic lamp, inevitably is tempered by his recollection of the earliest incarnation of the film - the show he and his late songwriting partner Howard Ashman presented to Disney production executives back in 1988. He thinks of that as a potentially sensational movie, too, and can't help missing it. Especially now, since most outsiders will tend to mistake "Aladdin" for the last Menken-Ashman musical. In the chronology of their own collaboration, "Aladdin" was the Disney commission that came between "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast." Conceptually, it eluded their creative influence. "It was predicated on the original song score," Mr. Menken says during an interview at the Madison Hotel. "We had started work on 'Aladdin' in 1987. 'The Little Mermaid' was probably going into active production about that time. It was another year before we got involved with 'Beauty and the Beast.' "We wrote the entire score and demoed it on tape as usual. There were nine musical numbers in the original 'Aladdin' - six songs and a trio of reprises. It was a very full score with book and lyrics. It began, as the movie still does, with a song called 'Arabian Nights,' but it was a far more lavish curtain-raiser in the original version." Mr. Menken's sense of that presentation was that Disney President Jeffrey Katzenberg and his associates liked it a lot but had serious reservations about the tone. Those misgivings led to a protracted rewriting and script-development process that kept "Aladdin" on a back burner and ultimately shifted its priorities away from the song score entirely. "I don't know exactly what transpired after that point," Mr. Menken says. "It would have been Howard's department. They probably asked if he wanted to rework the show. I would guess that he was [angry] and declined to. At that point Jeffrey would kick it around with one or more of the writers they rely upon to repair material considered unworkable for one reason or another. We were busy with 'Mermaid' again, putting the finishing touches on that. Then we went straight to 'Beauty.' " The difference between "Aladdin" as a demo and "Aladdin" as a movie, he says, is that the latter "doesn't really rest on the songs." Mr. Menken acknowledges, "I feel that acutely, as proud as I am of the songs that are there and the music that enhances the show. Howard's original book was acerbic and funny in a darker way. "The finished 'Aladdin' doesn't have a strong storytelling stamp of Howard's. His contribution is reflected almost exclusively in the songs we wrote. He didn't live to hear a completed score." Mr. Ashman died of AIDS complications in the spring of 1991. That was six months before the release of "Beauty and the Beast." Mr. Menken says his partner had difficulty working in a sustained way starting about six months before his death. Script changes in "Aladdin" cut the original score in half. Only the genie's introductory song, "Friend Like Me," survived more or less intact. Born and raised in New Rochelle, N.Y., Alan Menken resides with his wife and two young daughters in upper Westchester County. He was a musical prodigy, skillful on the piano at the age of 5 and enthused about becoming a composer "as soon as I knew that such things as composers existed." However, there was a catch. "We were a very musical family," he explains, "but also very dental. My father is a dentist. My father's father is a dentist. My father's brother is a dentist. My father's sister's husband is a dentist." Mr. Menken envisioned himself as a classical composer in the same league with Beethoven and Brahms during his prodigy years, then acquired a fondness for popular music in his teens during the early 1960s. He recalls Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger as particular favorites during that period. He attended New York University, promising to think seriously of a medical career but remaining attracted to music. His parents agreed that the best available schooling made sense and consented to his enrollment in a theater workshop program conducted by the eminent authority on the musical comedy stage, Lehman Engel. "I flourished there," Mr. Menken fondly recalls, "and met a lot of people who were destined to become important to me. We showcased a lot of shows, learned the craft of writing musicals. And along the way I met Howard." Specifically, Mr. Ashman was looking for a collaborator on a musical adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater." A native of Baltimore, educated at Goddard College, Boston University and Indiana University, Mr. Ashman had moved to New York City and approached the musical theater from a different direction. He was a literary agent and aspiring playwright, then a theatrical manager, the artistic director of the off-Broadway WPA Theater from 1977 to 1982. "I was more active and established as a songwriter than when we met in 1978," Mr. Menken recalls. "Howard had no songwriting track record at all. I'd been performing in cabarets, writing jingles, running around on musical jobs all over town. I didn't know the guy, but I liked the Vonnegut book and thought it was worth a try. When we had our first work session, I very quickly got a sense of who I was in the room with. An incredible talent. More than that, it eliminated all my worries about not being the entire package of composer and lyricist. Here was somebody who wrote book and lyrics and was able to go between them seamlessly." Mr. Menken didn't learn of Mr. Ashman's illness until the night after they had won Academy Awards for "The Little Mermaid" in March of 1990. "We flew back to New York the next day," he recalls, "and Howard said, 'We gotta talk.' Maybe I should have known he was ill, but I didn't. He seem plagued by so many different problems at that point in his life. I guess it had reached the point where it was too inconvenient not to let me know. Even now I don't know how I feel about that." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM