HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOWARD ASHMAN ♥ Born May 17, 1950
I first met Howard when he came to my apartment to meet about collaborating on Rosewater. My first impression was that he seemed edgy and guarded. He wore torn jeans and a bomber jacket. He talked with a tight, intense energy, chain-smoking the entire time. And he was clearly very smart.
When Howard worked it was a total commitment. And every fiber in his being was brought to bear.
I wanted to throttle him on a regular basis. When we were working he could be controlling, impatient, demanding, cutting, arrogant and condescending. And yet, he was actually the most considerate, thoughtful, smart, compassionate, wise, generous and supportive friend I’ve ever had.
-Alan Menken
Howard was a brilliant, complicated artist. I was not as close to him as some, but I saw him happy and I saw him mad. I saw him frustrated, and I saw him howl with laughter. I saw him caustic, and I saw him be disarmingly vulnerable. And Howard was a wonderful actor.
We learned a great deal from him. Ron [Clements] and I felt that songs should advance the story, but Howard’s ways of doing that were revelatory. He liked his songs to have information and to carry essential plot material. To take the key story beats and through the use of music to underline them and drive them home. From Howard, I learned the importance of grounding your writing in the specific, rather than the general. I watched Howard’s zealous defence of his material and ideas, anchored by their relationship to the story being told. All ideas are not created equal. There are definite reasons why some support the story more strongly, and we learned from Howard that those ideas must be defended. We saw inventiveness and passion from Howard in equal measure, qualities that produced art that has stood the test of time. We learned lessons of showmanship, of staging and characters, of using subtext to put ideas over more powerfully. We saw how Howard could tap into his own vulnerabilities and humanity and empathetically invest those in characters and songs that revealed those emotions. And dammit, Howard was funny. And he had a gift for effortlessly weaving comedy and vulnerability in a seamless way that made his creations (and ours and others) live.
He has touched me, and far countless others. He was a leader, a mentor, a collaborator, a musical genius, and a friend.
-John Musker
The reason he could [perform] so believably wasn’t only that he was a great mimic – he was also empathetic. He really did “feel your pain” and it didn’t matter if your pain was that of a Mermaid who longs for legs, or, back when we were young, the pain of a kid sister who thinks she is friendless and alone. I think that was maybe his best trait, the one I appreciated and miss the most.
Howard didn’t often wear his heart on his sleeve, he could be tough and prickly as the best and worst of them, his humor could sting while it sent you rolling in the aisles. No, he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve, but those of us who knew and loved him and felt the warmth of that heart never had to look far to find it.
-Sarah Ashman Gillespie
(Source: andreistrizek, via howard-ashman)
(Source: rickmoranisgifs)
Howard Ashman songs: “Thirty Miles From the Ohio/Look Who’s Here” from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (lyrics by Howard Ashman, music by Alan Menken)
This number appears in the first collaboration between Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - a 1979 musical adaptation of the satirical Kurt Vonnegut novel of the same name. Performed by Frederick Coffin with a wonderful kind of inexperience that lends itself to achieving a higher truth of character, the song is a pivotal declaration of purpose. Rosewater paints a vivid portrait of what he intends to do and why through a series of simple comments, almost to himself as if he is realising a divine calling as the ethereal piano chimes gently on. The intensity of the music and the delivery of Ashman’s’ powerful words increase as Rosewater finds his passion; “Look who’s here! Look who’s home!”
This song is a brilliant, soaring example of Ashman’s way of creating art that can slip into the sublime, the beautiful, almost separating fully from his satire’s characteristic irony. But not quite, for it is only momentary that we are allowed into the alternate world of the sublime before we are jolted back into the absurd heightened reality of the play through Ashman’s biting wit (“I’m going to love these discarded Americans, even though they’re useless and unattractive”). We are confronted by the disappointing reality of our mundane lives, alongside a collective childlike hope for change that is manifested in the lyrical messenger Rosewater. Everything that exists in this masterful monologue exists as a truth inside every human witness to its theatrical climax. Seduced by the piece’s beauty and then struck down by the pitiful truth and very real pain of everyday helplessness, each witness is represented in the piece’s simple but ever-effective verse as they are confronted with the parallel need for home and purpose in a world full of cynicism and greed.
Eliot, where are you calling from? Any landmarks, give me a clue!
Thirty miles from the banks of the Ohio
I am standing on a bare and lonely street
In a town where the economy’s depressing
And the people are completely obsolete.
Oh the railroad hasn’t run through here for ages
And the factories are automated, too
So the pretty people leave this town at twenty
As does anyone with much of an IQ.
Now there’s no-one thirty miles from the Ohio
But the folks for whom this country doesn’t grieve;
No there’s no-one thirty miles from the Ohio
But the people so plain helpless they can’t leave.In the center of the town there sits a mansion
It’s my father’s legal residence, I hear
But because my dad is in the US senate
He resides there just one week in every year.
We’re about to throw those mansion doors wide open
Pry the boards off all the windows, tear ‘em down
We’re about to be the friends and brand new neighbours
Of the poor, forgotten folks of this whole town
‘Cause there’s no-one thirty miles from the Ohio
But the folks for whom this country doesn’t grieve;
Now there’s no-one thirty miles from the Ohio
But the people so plain helpless they can’t leave.Come home, Eliot.
Don’t you understand, Sylvia? I am home. I understand now that I’ve always been home. I’m in the town of Rosewater, the township of Rosewater, the County of Rosewater, in the state of Indiana.
What are you going to do there?
I’m going to care about these people. They can’t care about themselves! I see that now because America doesn’t need them. Not even for war. Not any more. So Sylvia, I’m going to become and artist.
An artist.
An artist. I’m going to love these discarded Americans, even though they’re useless and unattractive. That, Sylvia, that will be my work of art.Look who’s home, look who’s here
Here to loan you a dollar, or to lend you an ear
If you tell me you’re broke, then I’ll say have no fear.
Look who’s here
Spread the word, spread the joy
Look who’s come back to see us, that senator’s boy
If you say you need help, then I’ll volunteer.
Look who’s hereYou see the folks of this old town, they need somebody to care
They need some love, and they need some cash - and guess who’s got plenty to spare
Look who’s home, look who’s here
We’ve got us a voice and a friendly cashier
So let’s break out the wine, let’s pass him the beer!
Look who’s hereLook who’s here, look who’s home
Oh won’t you give me a smile, wipe off that tear!
Look who’s here!
Look who’s here!
Everybody!
Look who’s here![x]
(Source: rickmoranisgifs)
Howard Ashman songs: “Disneyland” from Smile (lyrics by Howard Ashman, music by Marvin Hamlisch)
Performed by Jodi Benson in the infamous 1986 Broadway flop Smile, the musical monologue “Disneyland” transcends time and place to transform the theatre’s atmosphere into that of a memory. The pure and basic expression of desire reverts all back to the infantile state of a lonely, broken, 11-year-old girl, not only believably, but spiritually, as she struggles to assure herself that her desire for fantasy is “perfectly okay”. The elements of character expressed through the lyrics and musical intonation renders all other elements obsolete - a full cerebral and emotional understanding is achieved, beginning with the initial high-pitched opening chords and concluding with a vocal and lyrical climax that echoes out, piercing like an archer’s arrow.
As the audience feels for both infant and adult Doria, it is possible they do not fully acknowledge that the full force of the character’s inner plight is only so alive because its power is within them - their emotional participation is involuntary, but vital to the full understanding of the number. The audience ogles up, glossy-eyed at the stage, unaware of how time has been rewound as they take the place of the 11-year-old child, alone in their theatre seats, witnessing something magical and heartbreaking.
For the most part, the themes expressed in the song (an immature desire for somewhere safe and happy with no regard for reality) should come across as overly obvious, cliché, or as all-out satire, but they do not. The pure artistry of the song’s authorship and performance rises beyond text, message, character, and even theatre, into the memories and emotional crevices of the audience amidst a darkened atmosphere of the lonesome soul. The song’s lyrics and music are perfectly in marriage with one another, and are so pure and so wonderful even out of any theatrical or dramatic context, that they exist as a truly great work of art (there’s no use in describing the musical or rhyming patterns, when such description could not do either justice, so I have included the lyrics below in full, as well as a link to listen to a live recording of the song). It is no wonder this number got a standing ovation each and every night the show was on Broadway. However panned the show was back in 1986, the power of “Disneyland” was never questioned, and is still celebrated today by those who remember it, and by those lucky enough to discover it buried beneath the decades.
Ironically, some of the imagery reflects Howard Ashman’s future work with Disney (“Magic carpet, please/Carry me away” is reminiscent of Aladdin, and Jodi Benson was the voice of Ariel in The Little Mermaid), and the entire number is oddly prophetic in its bittersweet tone and eerie self-awareness of a world of fakery, perhaps mirroring the theatre itself. True, “maybe it’s all fake”, but the emotion is true and alive to those who listen. Howard Ashman has given us Disneyland, and boy do I pray that I’ll stay.
Hot Sunday night, I guess the folks were busy fighting
Joe’d already left home
Eleven years old on my own, feeling nothing but lonely
There’s nothing to do, there’s nothing out there but the traffic
Down on State 93
So I’d sit through the night by our old black-and-white TV
That’s when I saw it, That’s when I heard it
Calling, Calling meDisneyland. Magic Kingdom
Disneyland. Close my eyes real tight, wishing hard I might, wishing hard I may
Find my way to
Disneyland, gotta get to
Disneyland, on a Western breeze
Magic carpet, please!
Carry me awayOh I know you’re gonna say the trees are paper mache, it’s done with mirrors, the magic there
Each little bird’s full of springs, you press a button it sings, recorded music fills the air
They’ve had the mountain refaced, it’s only plywood and paste, go on, say it!
I’ll turn around and tell you, I don’t care!
I don’t care.I will live in Disneyland
Make my home in Disneyland
Maybe it’s all fake
That’s a chance I’d take
It’s perfectly okay!
Someone give me Disneyland
Take me there!
To Disneyland
And when I get to Disneyland
I’ll stay![x]
(Source: rickmoranisgifs)
Little Shop of Horrors (1986) — Director’s Cut.
[…] Although [Howard Ashman] intended it to be endearing, he also intended it to be funny and not to be taken at face value. But when the plant ate our two lead characters, the early audiences responded with upset and anger. They’d come to care for Seymour and Audrey and wanted them to survive. But if our two lead characters were to live, it means the plant would have to die. In a phone call that I dreaded making, I had to tell Richard Conway that his masterful handmade special effects work in the final scenes had to be completely cut from the movie. It was a painful decision for all of us. For Richard and his talented team who has worked on it for almost a year, it was devastating. I then had to return to London with the main cast and crew to shoot a new ending in which Seymour kills the plant and he and Audrey live happily ever after. And the color footage and storyline of the extraordinary ending with the plant taking over the world would be lost forever. So we thought. - Frank Oz
“Oh, that he had one more song to sing, one more song”
Howard Ashman, May 1950 - March 1991
I love your stupid face (in no particular order)
104. Rick Moranis
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