Alan Menken
I work in a dramatic context, meaning we write with a lot of character specifics, a lot of story specifics. There's a lot of architecture in our songs.Collection: Architecture
Any musical form that has been around long enough to have cultural resonance beyond just being a cutting edge kind of communication - but, especially, when it begins to reflect on a time and reflect on a culture - is effective in a musical.Collection: Communication
When I was younger, I'd get very invested in things. It's a hard lesson to learn, but you have to know that if you want to find gold, you've got to love the process of digging.
The act of writing a song involves a degree of letting go of yourself, and that's very much being a child.
Collaboration is being open to each other's ideas and benefiting from each other's perspectives in an open way.
When I first started working at Disney animation, I can't tell you how many people said to me, 'Oh, man, take a powder.' Nobody takes animated musicals seriously. I swear.
The job, when you write film underscore, is to be ignored. That comes with the gig, no question about it.
I'm not interested in being the producer of somebody else's song.
Music is a gestalt. Songs are a life force and they have specific vocabulary to them. You hear a few notes, and they take you into a world of association.
For a brief period, I had a gentleman's farm in Pennsylvania, but even then, I kept a place in New York.
I'm very proud of 'Will the Sun Ever Shine Again.' That was a song written very close to the 9/11 event.
Live-action films are very much a director's medium, and that director is going to be a very strong voice, a stronger individual voice than you'd have in animation.
I see my songs and shows almost like a mosaic - part of a bigger picture.
In animation, the directors are part of a huge team of animators who all have opinions, too. It's a much more democratic process. Also, the animation executives oversee things more.
Songs should have an infectious melody and rhythm.
I can't get into the underlying psyche of someone like Robin Williams, but he was at that level of fame where he was somewhat self-protective.
I have a team who I respect immensely, so if they have opinions, I'm interested in hearing them.
I was always a composer since I was a kid, but the BMI Workshop is where the networking really all stems from. So many writers and influences and ways of communicating all sprang out of the time I was a member of that workshop.
As a kid, I loved classical music. Composers like Beethoven were like rock stars to me. Then there were the real rock stars: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan.
There's plenty of examples of films where they're greenlit to move forward, and they want to get X actor. And they don't get X actor, so they go with Y, and it doesn't turn out to be as good of a movie as it should have been.
Music can be witty, but it's not funny unless it's conceptually funny.
I have lots of personal feelings of my own, but at this stage in my life and career, I'm very much driven by assignment.
It's writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that's broader than just figuring out a song. You're also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements.
When I write the music for any of my songs, I write as a composer-lyricist in my head.
Whatever I gain from writing lyrics, I feel I lose a little bit for the musical aspect by having that lyrical burden on me. But when I'm liberated from worrying about the words, frankly, I feel I'm a better composer.
Most of my collaborations, certainly post - Howard Ashman but even with Howard, are music first.
My first success was 'Little Shop of Horrors,' and I had been working for years on jingles.
There was a jingle house called Lucas/McFaul in New York, and they called me 'the demo king.' I almost never had the big final - in jingles, you have the big final, and then you sing on it, and you make a good deal of money.
Truth be told, of course, what I enjoy most is reinventing myself and doing new projects where I work in new genres, or I get to find what the voice of a particular musical is.
'Snow White' was really hip for its time. Walt Disney was basically using Sigmund Romberg and operetta in the telling of the story, and through animation - that was revolutionary.
I always wanted to have a villain song for Hades in 'Hercules,' but I couldn't figure out how we would have Hades sing.
I always felt great about what I wrote for 'Newsies,' but 'Newsies' was a total flop.
A villain number is a very valuable thing to have, but if you look at most musicals, one way or another there's an antagonist number.
Composing easy? I find it easy if - big if - the idea is right, if I have the right collaborator, and if my collaborator is in the room. I like my collaborator to be in the room.
Most things that I write are in very specific forms. A score will have a shape and profile, and then the more emotional and intimate moments will come.
If you're writing for yourself as an artist, you are always pulling on your own experiences.
I've been very fortunate as a composer to be involved with projects that have really propelled my scores forward. I'm very proud of it.
I always wanted to be a composer, and I sort of went in to NYU as pre-med because I just thought, 'Well... who actually becomes a composer?'
What brought me to Disney was the new regime, which is now the old regime - came over with Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, Jeffrey Katzenberg - and all these people really wanted to reinvigorate the animated musical, so they came to Howard Ashman and me. That was my entry into Disney.
I've always juggled a lot of projects because at least half the projects you do get shelved. So you have to do a lot of things in order for things to move forward.
I'm not intimidated by embracing a familiar form and what's familiar about it and making it my own. It is, I think, one of my gifts.
Part of the job is knowing how to use this medium in the most effective way for the story you're telling, so for me, to pick a genre I want to do is a little harder. I would say it's more about thinking, 'What genre will work for what kind of story?' And then, when all of that comes, I embrace it and run with it.
I've said, for a long time, my favorite part of my career is when I'm creating a new thing where I'm pulling from a new place.
The things I tend to do best are the things that are the most overtly emotional, whether it's sentimental or whether it's celebratory or whether it's conflicted.
Collaboration is all about rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and helping each other to constantly improve a piece. And, it's also about spurring each other on to doing really great, hard work - it's easier to do it in a collaboration than on your own.
You're creating a score that has to have an emotional and story logic to it. You want a dramatic arc. You want all the songs to push story forward. That's the same whether it's for stage or film or television or whatever.
A lot of what I've done has a rock edge, even going back to 'Little Shop of Horrors.'
Of my Disney material, 'Tangled' is my most pop-oriented.
The reality is that people need to be coaxed toward a musical. They need to understand why it's a musical.
Most successful musicals need to attach themselves to something bigger than themselves, a concept that will make people feel immediately connected to it.