Alan Menken
I think the thing that strikes you when you come back to 'The Little Mermaid' after all of these years is the simplicity and innocence. That's in the look of it, and that's in the sound of it.
A lot of the projects I've been involved with have been my babies, and I'm not going to give my baby to anyone else.
I have the ability to clear the decks and focus on what's happening in the moment. And I get to spend my life doing what I love to do.
TV is a medium where I've been an outsider for the most part.
There's such a rich trove of unheard Howard Ashman lyrics that we're so blessed to draw from.
For a while now, I try to ignore the hoopla, because if you buy into that, you have to buy into the criticism. All you can do is put your work out there and move on; you just never know what will come.
When 'Newsies' first came out, it just crash-landed with a thud; it won a Razzie for worst song of the year, and I felt such embarrassment. Fast-forward, and it's a hit on Broadway, and I win a Tony for the score!
My favorite thing is a brand-new project from scratch because you really never know how they're going to come to life. Going back for the third and fourth time to old ones is very gratifying, but it's not my favorite use of my creativity.
I love 'The Gospel Truth,' the song that opened up 'Hercules.' I thought that song was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed producing that and writing that.
Collaboration is being open to each other's ideas and benefiting from each other's perspectives in an open way. 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.Collection: Hard Work
If you write enough musicals you pretty much have a sense of where they should go, what you'll need, and when; how to pull people on that journey.Collection: Writing
Whether it's animated, whether it's live-action, whether it's Broadway, whether it's television, a musical is a musical is a musical. So, pretty much you approach the songs in pretty much the same way. The difference might be that in a film you have a close up. On stage you don't. So there are more songs on the stage because the songs are kind of the close up.Collection: Song
The best parts about writing a show are [its] first, second and 10th anniversaries. Everything else is relative levels of hell.Collection: Writing
I don't write songs for myself anymore. I only write songs on assignment. It's purely a business, but it is still so important to me emotionally.Collection: Song
Having a tradition is a great thing to work within, and maybe today [it] is the only way to really land musically dramatic work.Collection: Land
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.Collection: People