Howard Ashman may not be a household name but the songs he wrote have certainly played in your home. A new documentary on Disney+ about the lyricist behind Disney animated classics like “Aladdin,” “Beauty and The Beast,” “The Little Mermaid” gives insight into the life of an artist whose life was cut short at 39 years.
Using a combination of archival footage, new interviews with the people who knew him best and lots of music, “Howard: The Howard Ashman Story” tells the story of a young boy who let his imagination run wild, creating dioramas with plastic figures and toys, doing shows in his backyard, complete with costumes and props when most kids were still making mud pies. Of a kid who could imitate any actor from any play he ever saw and who became a storyteller, writing musicals while still a teenager.
After college he struggled in NYC before starting his own theatre with a group of like-minded creatives in 1977 called the WPA. It was at this hole-in-the-wall theatre above a seedy donut shop off-off-off Broadway, that he found his calling. While working on a 1979 musical adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s “God Bless You, Mrs. Rosewater,” he discovered his remarkable ability to write lyrics that cut to the heart and soul of whatever story he was telling.
When “God Bless You, Mrs. Rosewater” failed to translate to the Great White Way in a splashy Broadway production he decided to create something with a limited cast but with an attention-grabbing gimmick at the centre. For inspiration he looked to Roger Corman’s cheesy z-grade “Little Shop of Horrors.”
That adaptation was a giant hit but his next project, “Smile,” a flashy Broadway musical about a beauty pageant in Santa Rosa, California, co-written with Marvin Hamlisch, flopped, taking the wind out of his sails.
That’s when Disney Studio Head Jeffrey Katzenberg called, offering Ashman found a new home and creative inspiration. “Animation may be the last great place to do Broadway musicals,” Ashman says in the film.
There, working with composer Alan Menken, he wrote a trio of scores for three classic films that are still beloved today.
At this point in the doc “Howard: The Howard Ashman Story” is a slickly produced biography, mainly told in Ashman’s own words, detailing the creative life of a prolific, perfectionist songwriter.
The film deepens in tone when Ashman’s HIV diagnosis is revealed during the production of “The Little Mermaid.” The day of the diagnosis he did an on-stage interview at New York City’s 92nd Street Y. When asked what his future plans are, he replies that he doesn’t have any. It is a shattering insight into the mindset of a man just handed a death sentence.
Knowing his time was limited, Ashman worked on the three Disney films at the same time, creating a trio of films that would become the bedrock of the Disney Renaissance, while keeping his illness a secret from everyone except life partner Bill Lauch. It’s a heartbreaking illustration of the shared experience of many people with AIDS who struggled to keep their condition a secret for fear of losing work or relationships.
It’s here that director Don Hahn’s decision to not feature talking head interviews becomes clear. The interviews are all done off camera, focusing the story on the subject. You can hear the emotion in the voices of Ashman’s loved ones as they discuss his last years and their words are made all the more powerful by the images of Howard that dress the screen.
“Howard: The Howard Ashman Story” is more than a nostalgic behind-the-scenes doc. It’s a touching portrait of a man, who, like so many gay men of his generation, ran out of time.
Check out episode twenty-six of Richard’s web series, “In Isolation With…” It’s the talk show where we make a connection without actually making contact! Today, broadcasting directly from Isolation Studios (a.k.a. my home office) we meet Jay Baruchel. He’s been acting since the age of twelve and has appeared in everything from “Knocked Up” and “Tropic Thunder” to “The Trotsky” and “She’s Out of My League” to the action-fantasy “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and “This Is the End.” He’s probably best known as the voice of Hiccup in the wildly successful “How to Train Your Dragon” franchise but he says, despite all the success in front of the camera, what he really wants to do is direct.
“I was really lucky in that my parents would give me a kind of film or music 101,” he says in the interview. “Whenever they would tell me something they would explain why it matters. Why they care about it. What the landscape that it came out in was like and then, of course ,then they would get into sort of inside jokes. They also showed me “Monty Python the Holy Grail” and pause after every punch line and be like, ‘Do you understand why that’s funny?’ This is called dry humor. Literally. Verbatim. This is called dry humour. Then dad bought me “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” on VHS for my ninth birthday. And that started my collection that I’m still crippled by because I still buy physical media. But I’ve never stopped. Somewhere in there I realized that as much as I adore writing stories, I realized that movies were the thing.”
Two years ago he wrote and directed the sports comedy “Goon: Last of the Enforcers.” Now he appears both in front of and behind the camera in “Random Acts of Violence,” a genre film that asks serious questions about how we relate to violence in art.
Based on a 2008 Image Comic, “Random Acts of Violence” begins with comic book writer Todd (Jesse Williams) suffering a case of writer’s block. His series, a grisly and successful adaptation of a real-life serial killer dubbed Slasherman, is coming to an end and he doesn’t know how to wind it down.
On a press tour from Toronto to New York to promote the final issue, Jesse and friends, visit the scene of the Slasherman’s crimes. As the group fall victim to a series of heinous copycat crimes the film asks, “What are the real consequences when life (and death) begin to imitate art?”
I talk about that with Jay in this interview but we started by reminiscing about the “beforetime” when we could go to the movies. I asked him what movie memories stand out for him when he thinks back to the theatre experience…
NOTE: The language in this interview is NOT suitable for all age. NSFW!
Watch the whole thing HERE on YouTube or HERE on ctvnews.ca!
On the August 1, 2020 encore presentation of “Pop Life” we talk with the multi-Gold and Platinum-selling Bif Naked. She has been called a Punk Princess, Rock Goddess, and Legend… she’s all that and more. Add to the list, Cancer Survivor, Mentor and Entrepreneur. With a new tour, a new record and her own CBD brand, Bif is busier than ever. She found time to stop by the Pop Life bar to talk about the record that made her take up music over medicine, how her cancer diagnosis changed her and taking risks.
Then, the “Pop Life” panel, award-winning Sports Activist Shireen Ahmed, the designer behind Toronto’s first Indigenous Fashion Week, Sage Paul and Roxy Earle the founder of #MySizeRox, talk about how risk taking has changed their lives and how to approach taking chances.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s exciting talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Meat Loaf, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
