July 22 - Alan Menken

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On this day, in 1949, Alan Irwin Menken was born in New York, New York. The son of an actress and a piano playing dentist, Alan showed an aptitude for music at an early age. He learned to play the piano and the violin before moving right on into composing. By the age of nine, his original works were receiving Superior scores from the judges of the New York Federation of Music Clubs Junior Composers Contest. Alan graduated from New Rochelle High School in 1967 and moved on to New York University. He enrolled as a pre-med student, a nod to dear old dad, but graduated in 1971 with a degree in Musicology. From there, his plans went in one of two directions. He was either going to be a composer or a rock star. He got to have his cake and eat it too by becoming a rock star of composing.

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Shortly after his college graduation, Alan joined a musical theater workshop sponsored by Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI). He continued to participate in BMI workshops over the next several years, writing songs for potential musicals and then performing them around town in clubs like The Ballroom and Tramps. To make money during this period, he wrote jingles, accompanied ballet troupes, wrote songs for Sesame Street and was a vocal coach. In 1979, Alan would earn some modest success when he teamed up with an up an coming playwright, Howard Ashman, to create a musical adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. The show got great reviews but not so great box office receipts. It didn’t matter. The two men worked well together and were destined for bigger things.

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In 1982, Alan and Howard’s next collaboration opened just off-Broadway at the WPA Theater. Based on a 1960 dark comedy film by Roger Corman, Little Shop of Horrors got rave reviews and soon moved to the Orpheum Theater where it ran for five years, smashing the box office record for an off-Broadway production. In 1986, a hit movie version was released starring Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene, and earned Alan and Howard their first Oscar nomination. The success of Little Shop brought the duo the attention of producers at the Walt Disney Studios who were looking for the right people to turn their next animated film into a musical.

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The mission that Disney Alan and Howard in 1987 was a simple one: after years of the company’s animation product being subpar, they needed to help create a Disney musical that could stand up to comparison with Snow White or Cinderella. No pressure though. I’ve read stories about the song writing duo holing up with nothing more than a synthesizer, in one of those buildings in New York where every floor is just dozens of tiny recording studios lined up in a row. Every time the door to their studio opened, the music that spilled out into the hall caused other doors to other studios to open as everyone wanted to know what was going on in there. And that was before a full orchestra and talents of Jodi Benson, Pat Carroll and Samuel E. Wright were added. Needless to say, Alan and Howard did good. The Little Mermaid became the company’s first smash hit in years, due in no small part to its soundtrack. When awards time came around, the boys would earn an Oscar for Best Song (Under the Sea) while Alan picked up a second one for Best Score. The Disney Renaissance had begun and Alan was going to provide a pretty big chunk of the music for it.

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Alan and Howard rolled right on into their next project, another classic fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. You might have thought it would be hard for them to top their work in Mermaid, but they did. Their deft blending of romance and humor, spectacle and intimacy pushed Disney’s 30^th animated feature to a place cartoons had never been before: a nomination for the Best Picture Oscar. The boys also picked up not one but three nominations (and the win) for Best Song (Beauty and the Beast edged out Belle and Be Our Guest) while Alan again received the statue for Best Score. The ceremony would have been a magical evening of true celebration centering on Alan and Howard’s talents except for one thing. Howard wasn’t there to share in it.

During production on Mermaid, Howard had revealed to Alan that he’d been diagnosed as HIV+. As work progressed on Beast, so did Howard’s illness. Part way through production, meetings began to be held at Howard’s home and animators would be shocked as to how quickly AIDS was ravaging his body between sessions. Howard continued to work though, writing and rewriting songs and coaxing better performances out of Paige O’Hara and Robbie Benson, right up to the end of his life. Beast had its first screening for the press on March 10, 1991. Producer Don Hahn visited a barely alive Howard in the hospital to tell him about the incredibly enthusiastic reception. Four days later, he died.

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Work had already begun on the duo’s follow-up to Beast, Aladdin, when Howard passed away. Alan needed a new lyricist to work with (notes were his thing, not words) and he brought in the award winning Tim Rice to finish the songs for the film. Alan again picked up two Oscars that year, Best Song with Tim for A Whole New World and Best Score on his own. It should be noted that A Whole New World also won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year, the only time a Disney song has managed to do that.

Following Aladdin, Alan has collaborated with a number of lyricists, none of whom can hold a candle to Howard in my opinion but all successful none the less. He teamed with Jack Feldman for Newsies, Stephen Schwartz for Pocahontas (picking up two more Oscars), Stephen again for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, David Zippel for Hercules, which was a bit of a throwback to his Little Shop days (not only musically but because he and David had worked together back then, too), Glen Slater for Home on the Range and Tangled and Stephen once again for Enchanted. Alan has also scored some non musical films for Disney as well including Touchstone Pictures' Life With Mikey and the 2006 remake of The Shaggy Dog.

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In recent years, Alan has been quite busy revisiting old projects and adding new material to them. For the Broadway stage he's helped bolster Beauty and the Beast, Newsies, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. A stage version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame became the longest running show ever in Berlin, Germany. Alan has also been (for better or worse; don't get me started) part of the teams that have been turning classic Disney animated films into live action movies. He revised old songs and wrote new ones for the live versions of Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.

Outside of Disney (does that even exist anymore?), Alan has written music for a number of shows, several of which have had Broadway runs. His version of A Christmas Carol premiered in 1994 and became an annual event at Madison Square Garden for a decade. He's also written adaptations of Sister Act, A Bronx Tale and Leap of Faith. He is reportedly working on a stage version of Corrina, Corrina and had a reading of a new piece in collaboration with Jack Feldman and Harvey Fierstein called Greetings from Niagra Falls, but that production seems to have stalled.

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For basically writing everything everyone wants to put on their modern Disney playlist, Alan was declared an official Disney Legend in 2001. Not that he's done composing for the company by a long shot. He's currently working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on new music for the live action version of The Little Mermaid. And there's persistent rumors about a sequel to Enchanted (but don't hold your breath on that one). Alan is already at the top of the list of Living People with the Most Oscars with eight, but he's tied for third on the list of all time winners. I wouldn't be surprised if he pulls a couple more out of his little hat as time goes on here. Until then, we send good vibes Alan's way and wish him a happy 70th Birthday!

April 25 - Ron Clements

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On this day, in 1953, Ronald Francis Clements was born in Sioux City, Iowa. After graduating from Bishop Heelan Catholic High School, Ron hightailed it to Southern California to become a student at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. His professional career actually began in 1974 at Hanna-Barbera, but he was only there a few months before getting word that he'd been accepted into Disney's Talent Development Program. At that point, it was goodbye Scooby Doo, hello Mickey Mouse (even though not much animation was being produced with Mickey at that point) and he's never looked back.

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Ron came to Disney at a perfect time. For his first two years, he apprenticed under none other than Frank Thomas, the last of Walt's Nine Old Men to still officially haunt the studios. His first work, totally uncredited of course, made it into Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. By 1977, Ron was working on his own as a Character Animator, contributing to both Pete's Dragon and The Rescuers. For The Fox and the Hound, he'd been promoted to Supervising Animator and worked with John Musker, a Character Animator on the film, for the first time. Ron and John really hit it off, and became writing collaborators on Disney's next project, The Black Cauldron.

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The Black Cauldron's production process is notorious for its controversies within the company. A growing number of animators were horribly unhappy with the direction the project was taking, Ron and John among them. Only a few years before, Don Bluth had led a walkout of a whole group of employees over the same kind of complaints. Not wanting another mass exodus, Ron and John proposed to then head of the studio Ron Miller that an adaptation of the children's book series Basil of Baker Street be added to the production slate as an 'alternate' movie for staff to work on if they could no longer stomach Cauldron. Miller agreed, putting Jon and and famed storyboard artist Burny Mattinson in the director's chairs and giving Ron the task of adapting the story. When schedules shifted and became a whole lot tighter (mainly after Cauldron tanked), Burny was moved into more of a producer role and Ron became co-director for the first time.

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The Great Mouse Detective opened to positive reviews and financial success. Coming only one year after the disastrous Cauldron, Ron and John's little-movie-that-could literally saved the animation department by convincing the powers that be that they could still generate income (in spite of the fact that they let Vincent Price sing). As Detective was wrapping up production, the new bosses, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, held a meeting with all the animators to generate new ideas for films. Ron brought a two page synopsis of an adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid and a quick concept piece about setting Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island in space. Eisner rejected both. Within days, however, Katzenberg quietly asked Ron to expand on his treatment of Mermaid, eventually giving Ron and John the green light to write and direct it.

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When The Little Mermaid opened on November 17, 1989, it was a smash hit, earning over $200 million in worldwide box office receipts and ushered in the era that became known as the Disney Renaissance. It also cemented the partnership between Ron and John as a co-directing powerhouse. For their follow-up film, they reworked and resubmitted their idea for a space themed Treasure Island. It was rejected again. Instead they were given the helm of an adaptation of a story from 1001 Arabian Nights called Aladdin.

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The duo struck gold again in November 1992, as Aladdin went on to become the first animated picture to gross over $500 million. For a third time they submitted what was now being called Treasure Planet as their next film and, for the third time, the studio said no, thanks, why don't you two direct this Greek mythology project we're developing. They said fine, but when the time came to sign new contracts during the production of Hercules, they made sure that one of the stipulations was that their science fiction adventure flick was guaranteed to be their next project. Despite mostly positive reviews (and near universal acclaim for James Woods' performance as Hades), Hercules failed to score at the box office like its predecessors, taking in a paltry $253 million. While still a moneymaker, the Disney Renaissance was starting to wind down.

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Following the wrap of production on Hercules, Ron and John finally got to go to work on Treasure Planet, more than a decade after first coming up with the idea. In retrospect, the fact that the movie had been rejected so many times (and that they had to kind of force the studio into making it at all), should have been an omen for everyone involved. Changing the genre of established classics is not only hard but doesn't make people already familiar with the story happy. Treasure Planet opened in November 2002 to tepid reviews and dismal sales. It became the first Disney animated movie since The Black Cauldron to fail to make back its budget. It's not a bad film, but you'd also be hard pressed to call it a good film. The Renaissance was over.

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Ron and John inherited a concept called Fraidy Cat as their next project but the production was fraught with problems. When David Stainton, then president of animation, refused to green light the movie in September 2005, both of the co-directors resigned from the company in protest. The successful duo's absence wouldn't even last a year, though. By the spring of 2006, John Lasseter installed as the new chief creative officer of animation and he asked Ron and John to return to Disney to helm an adaptation of The Frog Princess.

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As the entire industry was embracing fully computer generated animation, Lasseter was willing to give traditional animation another shot. Ron and John were a perfect duo to head 2D animation's last hurrah. Their direction, along with Randy Newman's blend of zydeco and jazz, pushed The Princess and the Frog to the highest box office receipts in years, over $270 million, but still far short of what had been realized during the Renaissance. It didn't help that Princess opened a week after Avatar (Princess is clearly the superior movie, but there really is no accounting for taste). The 2009 film managed to earn four Oscar nominations (getting edged out by Up in most of them) but is, as of right now, the last film put out by a major studio using traditional techniques. Hand drawn animation is over.

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Traditional storytelling, however is not. After The Princess and the Frog, Ron and John became quite secretive about what they were working on. All they would say is yes we're working. After a couple of years of development, they finally came clean about the fact that, yes, they were moving into the realm of computer animation and their next story was inspired by Pacific Island cultures. The movie that came out in November 2016, Moana, became their biggest hit yet. With songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda and overwhelmingly positive reviews, Moana brought over $643 million in box office receipts to the table. The directing team was back on top of the animation world.

Since the release of Moana, John Musker, who obviously felt like walking away a huge success was the way to go,  has retired from Disney and the animation business. Ron hasn't made that decision quite yet. Despite the fact that his long time partner in crime has folded up his directing chair, Ron may (or may not) have another epic story in him just crying out to be told. Whether he goes for it or just spends a few more years, like his old mentor Frank did, guiding the new guys at the start of their journeys, Ron has undeniably spent the last 45 years creating the highlights of two generations worth of childhoods.And for that alone, he deserves a tip of the mouse ears. Happy Birthday, Ron!

February 22 - Lea Salonga

On this day, in 1971, Maria Lea Carmen Imutan Salonga was born in Ermita, Manila, Philippines. The first six years of Lea's life were spent i the upper class City of Angeles (her father owned a shipping company). Shortly after the family moved to Manila, she made her professional debut in a Repertory Philippines production of The King and I. Two years later, she was playing the title role in Annie and by the time she was 17, had appeared in a dozen shows as varied as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Paper Moon and The Fantasticks. Just that would be enough to make Lea a Superteen but there is, of course, more.

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In 1981, Lea's ten at this point, she recorded her first album, Small Voice. It reached gold status. I don't know what you were doing at ten, but I was too busy watching Saturday morning cartoons to make my gold record (at least that's what I'm telling myself). The success of Small Voice gave Lea the opportunity to have her own musical television show, Love, Lea, from 183-85. After her show finished its run, she became part of the Thursday cast (different casts performed on different days) of the popular variety show That's Entertainment when it debuted in 1986. Now, you could be forgiven for thinking that one girl couldn't possibly do more. You'd be wrong but you'd be forgiven.

Somehow, around the stage shows and television gigs, Lea also appeared in Filipino films like Tropang Bulitit, Ninja Kids and Pik Pak Boom. Along the way she earned a FAMAS Award nomination (it's like a Filipino Oscar) and won three Aliw Awards (think of something like a Tony). She began opening for acts like Menudo and Stevie Wonder when they came through Manila. Then, at the age of 17, she released her second album, Lea, and it went multi-platinum. So what does a wildly successful Filipino actress/singer do for an encore? She becomes a wildly successful international actress/singer. Duh.

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To be fair, Lea hadn't intended on extending her career past her teens. She was a biology major at Ateneo de Manila University studying for a career in medicine when a new musical came along and changed her plans. The producers of Les Mis were mounting an update of Puccini's Madame Butterfly but had run into a major problem: they couldn't find a young Asian woman in all of England who could handle the demands of their show. They began a worldwide search, asked Lea to audition and she blew them away. She originated the role of Kim in Miss Saigon on London's West End in 1989 and I don't know of the British capitol has ever recovered. After two years of dazzling European audiences, Lea and her co-star, Jonathan Pryce, crossed the Atlantic to open the show on Broadway. All told, Lea won a Laurence Olivier Award, a Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and became the first Asian woman to ever win a Tony for her performance in Miss Saigon.

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Lea became a Disney princess in 1992 (or at least the singing part of a Disney princess) when she sang for Jasmine in Aladdin.

And here we pause while I climb up on this soap box I just happened to find laying around. I can understand when you cast someone in a musical who has the star power you need to make a go of your picture but not the vocal chords, so you have someone who can sing, but can't necessarily act, take care of the soaring vibrato. What I cannot understand is when you hire a virtually unknown actor who can't sing to be in a musical and then relegate someone who can do both to half a role (or less depending on the spoken/singing ratio). The streets of New York (and Chicago and LA and any other place you can mention) are literally crawling with unknowns who can sing and act your socks off (and will be willing to do it for scale), so hire one of them for crying out loud. Because let's face it, while a whole lot of Aladdin fans know Lea sang it (and some of them already think she did the whole thing), how many of you can name the actress who spoke for Jasmine (without looking it up)? Exactly. It's Linda Larkin, by the way, and I'm not trying to disparage her performance, I'm just fed up with how things are done in general when it comes to casting musicals (don't even get me started on Russell Crowe).

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For the 1993 Academy Awards Ceremony, Lea teamed up with Brad Kane, the voice of Aladdin, to sing the Oscar nominated song A Whole New World (spoiler: it won). She returned to the Disney recording studio again in 1998 to provide (again) the singing voice for the title character in Mulan and it's 2004 sequel. She graciously continues to sing for both Jasmine and Mulan in video games, episodes of Sofia the First, and whenever else Disney is willing to cut her a check.

In the decades since Miss Saigon, Lea has basically traveled the world, giving concerts, earning awards for shows in London, Manila and the United States and releasing several more albums, only three of which went platinum (don't feel too bad though, another one also went gold). She's returned to Broadway several times, in 2002 as Mei-Li in Flower Drum Song, in 2016 as part of Allegiance with George Takei and, most recently, as Erzulie in the 2017 revival of Once on This Island. The 48 year old Superteen turned Princess turned International Sensation shows no signs of slowing down and I can't wait to hear where she turns up next. Happy Birthday, Lea!

January 11 - Pres Romanillos

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On this day, in 1963, Priscillano Antonio Romanillos was born in Zamboanga City, Philippines. When he was 6, Pres and his family moved to Queens, New York. At some point, his older brother, Bob, started to take a correspondence course in art. Bob quickly lost interest but the lessons, already paid for, kept coming. Pres began looking at his brother’s lessons, loved them and finished the course for him. When he grew older, Pres attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, eventually earning himself an MFA.

In 1989, as the Disney Renaissance was starting and the company was actively recruiting animators for the first time in years, Pres was hired on as an animation trainee. He cut his teeth on The Little Mermaid, impressing one of the supervising animators, Ruben Aquino, with his draftsmanship and passion. He continued to hone his skills on The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. By Pocahontas, Pres had been promoted to animator and worked under supervising animator Glen Keane on the title character. Pocahontas co-director Eric Goldberg said he was in awe of the sheer beauty that was Pres’ work.

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Pres made minor contributions to The Hunchback of Notre Dame but came into his own on Disney’s 36^th animated feature, Mulan. As supervising animator for the films villain, Shan-Yu, as well as the villainous sidekick, Hayabusa the falcon, Pres really threw himself into his work, albeit mostly subconsciously. He said in an interview once that he left work feeling sexy during production on Pocahontas, but when he shifted to Mulan, his wife kept asking why he was so angry all the time. Feelings below the surface or not, Pres managed to create a menacing figure in Shan-Yu that no one felt too bad about when he met his explosive demise at film’s end.

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Once Mulan was finished, Pres became another Disney casualty in the animation war of the time, when he followed Jeffrey Katzenberg to his newish studio, DreamWorks SKG. He came in during production on The Road to El Dorado as an animator. By Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, he was once again a supervising animator as he also helped design the Native American character Little Creek. Pres continued as a supervisor for Dunbar’s Crew on DreamWork’s 2003 film, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. Unfortunately for Pres (and Jeffrey and DreamWorks) none of those movies were a financial success. Following Sinbad, DreamWorks would abandon traditional animation altogether in favor of CGI. Fortunately for Pres, he was able to make the transition to computer animation and contributed to films like Shrek 2 and Madagascar.

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In 2007, Pres travelled to Spain, where he established the Enne Animation Studio with his artist friend, Scott Johnston. While there he completed a short film, The Old Chair, using characters from a blog he’d started in 2006, Life as a Pickle. Tragically, while in Spain, Pres would be diagnosed with leukemia. He returned to the States, underwent a bone marrow transplant and seemed to be on the road to recovery. He actually returned to work at Disney in July of 2009 as an animator on Prince Naveen for The Princess and the Frog.

Pres might have angered the voodoo gods through his work on Princess, though. In March of 2010, he not only suffered a relapse of his cancer, but the leukemia was much more aggressive this time around. Pres passed away on July 17, 2010. Following his death, Steve Hulett, a representative of the Animation Guild, declared that of all the animators who deserved a few more decades of artistic success, Pres was at the top of that list. He was only 47 years old.

December 29 - Duncan Marjoribanks

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On this day, in 1953, Duncan Marjoribanks was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Duncan grew up in a liberal family and was considered a far-out hippy type in high school. Painfully introverted, he was also incredibly smart and extremely talented at drawing. His talents would take him to the Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, Canada’s premiere school for animation located in Oakville, Ontario. Following his graduation from Sheridan in 1978, Duncan became part of a group that was hired by Hanna-Barbera prompting a move to Los Angeles, California. Duncan quickly became one of the studio’s top animators, working on shows like Scooby and Scrappy Doo and Godzilla. Then the great Animator’s Strike of 1982 happened. 

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The strike began as the union protested how much work was being sent overseas (where it was much cheaper to produce) and lasted for several months. The end result, ironically predictable, was that most US animation production disappeared. Duncan changed his career focus to designing characters and began freelancing for several studios. One of the projects he would work on, and his first as animator in a decade, was a short lived television series called Family Dog. It was created and directed by a guy named Brad Bird who was thoroughly taken with Duncan’s style and talent. Brad recommended Duncan to a friend of his, John Musker. John was starting a little project over at Disney about a mermaid and hired Duncan as the first animator on the team.

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Duncan became supervising animator for Sebastian the Crab on Disney’s 28^th animated feature, The Little Mermaid. He took Samuel E. Wright’s marvelous vocal performance and the basic character designs that had already been done and created one of the most endearing and enduring characters that had been seen in decades. Don’t believe me? Just watch the scene when Sebastian finally decides to help rather than hinder Ariel and get back to me.

The success of The Little Mermaid led to Duncan staying on with Disney and supervising again for the next feature film, The Rescuers Down Under, this time for the villain, McLeach. While this film did end up being less successful, it was the grueling schedule that really took its toll on Duncan. By the time the last frame had been drawn, he needed more than a vacation and actually took a year off to live in England. Which doesn’t mean he didn’t work. He provided some character design for a short-lived Hanna-Barbera show called The Pirates of Dark Water.

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In 1991, Duncan returned to the states, and Disney, to begin supervising work on another great sidekick, Abu in Aladdin. As if his previous work wasn’t impressive enough, now he would create a memorable character without using words at all. His work in the film can also be seen in the opening sequence with the shady salesman. Duncan went right from Aladdin onto the team for Pocahontas and once again supervised a villain, Governor Ratcliffe. His portrayal of Ratcliffe was more cartoonish than the other characters, which give him more of a presence, but still this side of overly flamboyant, so he remains believable. Duncan was then slated to supervise Megera for Hercules but that never happened.

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Around this time, Jeffrey Katzenberg was making his spectacularly messy exit from Disney and starting his own studio, Dreamworks SKG, with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. With big plans to stick it to his former employer, especially in the animation department, one of the first big talents Katzenberg poached was Duncan. The relationship didn't blossom the way anyone hoped. Duncan started out as supervising animator on Moses for Prince of Egypt but struggled with the job so much his only credit on the picture is plain old animator. He did some work on The Road to El Dorado, animating a few scenes with Tzekel-Kan and contributed some story ideas to Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron before leaving Dreamworks for good. He spent a year over at Warner Brothers, working on the animated parts of the box office bomb Osmosis Jones (he did pretty good work on the movie but left before it was finished, unhappy with the direction it was taking), before returning to the fold at Disney in 2000.

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Unfortunately, Duncan's return to Burbank came at a time when the studio was producing its worst picture since The Black Cauldron. As supervising animator for Mrs. Calloway on Home on the Range, Duncan managed some moments of greatness but the movie was a critical and financial failure. Following that disaster, he was trained in computer animation and contributed to the Bowler Hat Guy for Meet the Robinsons. Duncan then got the privilege of working on Disney's last hand drawn feature, The Princess and the Frog, as head animator for Big Daddy La Buff. 

In 2009, Duncan and Disney parted ways once again. The company had decided to stop using traditional animation techniques and Duncan didn't feel comfortable working with CGI. The only thing he's really done since then was a hand drawn short utilizing the characters from Kung Fu Panda. Which is really a shame. Hopefully some day the talent behind Sebastian and Abu, who has inspired so many animators still working today, will himself find inspiration in some new project and give us all a reason to smile again.

December 11 - The Muppet Christmas Carol

On this day, in 1992, the fourth Muppet movie, The Muppet Christmas Carol, is released in theaters. This is hands down, my favorite adaptation of the classic Charles Dickens story. And to think it almost never happened. After Jim Henson died on May 16, 1990, the fate of his Muppet creations was very much up in the air. He had been in negotiations to sell his empire to the Walt Disney Company for the supposed sum of 150 million dollars. With Jim's unexpected death, the deal fell apart, and, without the creative genius to lead the company, it was unclear what, if anything, the Muppets might do again. Thankfully, one of Jim's sons, Brian, grabbed the baton and ran with it.

While wondering what project might be suitable to keep his father's company going, a talent agent by the name of Bill Haber planted the idea of a Christmas Carol in Brian's brain. The idea was first sold to ABC as a made-for-television movie. Long time Muppet writer Jerry Juhl began working on a script and quickly decided to make Charles Dickens the narrator in order to retain the tone of the book. Various characters were looked at to play the three ghosts, combinations like Robin for Christmas Past, Miss Piggy for Christmas Present and Gonzo for Christmas Future. Ultimately it was decided that the darkness of the story demanded new characters for the ghosts and that the usual Muppet mayhem would come from the established characters playing all the lesser roles. A script was finalized and submitted to ABC. Executives at Disney saw a copy of it, however, and said Hey, why don't we make a theatrical release out of this? So they did with Brian as director.

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When it came time to cast Ebeneezer Scrooge, Brian considered several people ranging from Ron Moody (who played Fagin in Oliver!) and David Warner (who played Bob Cratchit in the George C. Scott version of Carol) to George Carlin. He ultimately settled on Michael Caine and, in my opinion, his choice was perfect. Michael said from the beginning that he was going to play Scrooge like this was a Royal Shakespeare production, no winking at the mayhem, no acknowledging that he was talking to puppets and not real people. It was a strategy that payed off marvelously.

The songs for the movie were written by Paul Williams, who also wrote the songs for the first Muppet movie. In a move that's proven somewhat controversial, Jeffrey Katzenberg decided to cut the song When Love Is Gone from the theatrical release. It's sung by Belle during the Christmas Past sequence and is about Scrooge loving her less and his money more. Katzenberg apparently felt that the song would lose the interest of the kids in the audience. Unfortunately, its removal makes the song The Love We Found, which Scrooge sings at the end of the film, much less poignant because we can't relate it back to him losing the love of his life. The real controversy arises, however, in the fact that some versions of the home video release of the movie include When the Love Is Gone and some don't. For those of us who like the song, it's difficult to know which copy we actually want to buy.

When it was released, The Muppet Christmas Carol received mixed reviews and was a modest box office success, coming in third behind its major holiday competition, Home Alone 2 and Aladdin. Since its release, it has become a bona fide cult classic. I know it's a sad Christmas season for me if I don't watch it at least once. In fact, if anyone needs me for the next 86 minutes, I'm not available.

November 25 - Aladdin

On this day, in 1992, Walt Disney Pictures' 31st animated feature, Aladdin, was released in theaters. Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, Aladdin is the fourth film to be released during Disney's Renaissance period. Ron and John have directed seven Disney animated features together including The Little Mermaid, Hercules and Moana.

Based on the stories from the Arabic folktale One Thousand and One Nights, Aladdin tells the story of a street rat who proves his worth and marries the princess with the help of a genie. The idea for the film originated in 1988 with lyricist Howard Ashman, who wrote a big story treatment, complete with several songs. The studio said no thanks. Later, during production on Beauty and the Beast, the project was partially revived and a new script written. Ron and John then came on board when they chose Aladdin as their next film, passing on a version of Swan Lake and what would eventually become The Lion King. In April of 1991, they showed Jeffrey Katzenberg a third script they'd written. He hated it, demanded a complete rewrite and told them that their release date in November 1992 wasn't changing. Luckily, by October of 1991, a script had been decided on and the production could barrel forward.

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Except, a good chunk of the script wasn't ever written down. When Ron and John conceived the character of the Genie, they'd always had Robin Williams in mind for it. Katzenberg tried to suggest John Candy, Steve Martin or Eddie Murphy, but the directors prevailed and Robin accepted the role. Not only did he accept, but he agreed to do it for scale pay, $75,000, instead of his current rate of 8 million, mostly as a thank you for the success of Good Morning Vietnam. His only conditions: the Genie couldn't be used for marketing purposes and couldn't take up more than 25% of the space in the film's advertising. Disney reneged on both conditions, causing a rift with Robin that wouldn't be healed until well after Katzenberg left the company. Luckily, all of Robin's almost entirely ad libbed dialogue for the Genie had already been recorded.

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Because let's be honest, the Genie is what really makes Aladdin (even if some of the references in it now feel pretty dated). The wildness of Robin's improvisations not only kept the animators on their toes but have made audiences crack up ever since. And since Robin was gifted at projecting sincerity and basic human decency as well, the Genie gives the movie its heart, too. Not that I'm trying to detract from the other voice actors in the film. If the only good thing in Aladdin was the Genie, the movie would have bombed horribly. The rest of the ensemble was marvelous, it's just that the first thing people remember about the movie is the crazy blue guy.

Whatever the cause, Aladdin was a huge success. It became the first animated film to gross over half a billion dollars. Funnily enough, it debuted in the number two slot behind Home Alone 2 with just over 19 million in ticket sales. It didn't become the number one film until its eighth week out and would be number one for five weeks out of its 22 week run.

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When awards time rolled around, Aladdin was showered with mentions. It was nominated for five Oscars (two of those for Best Song), winning Best Original Score and Best Original Song (A Whole New World). The Golden Globes smiled on Aladdin with Best Score, Song and a special award for Robin as well as a nomination for Best Picture. It also won an Annie Award, three Saturn Awards, four Grammy Awards and several others.

As much as I enjoy Aladdin, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the negative reactions to the film, especially from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. The ADC's first objection was about the way Aladdin and Jasmine are portrayed as opposed to the rest of the cast. The two main characters are decidedly a whole lot more white than everyone else and are presented as being more sophisticated than most of the other characters. It's a fair point but not one that much can be done about. The change the ADC could bring about was through its objection to one of the lyrics in the movie's opening song. The original line from Arabian Nights was "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face." For the home video release (and the Broadway show) the line was changed to "Where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense." My only problem with this lyric change is that the next line was left intact "It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home." In my opinion, the revised line doesn't flow with that and both lines should have been changed.