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Stephen Schwartz and Alan Menken on Enchanted
By Fred Topel | Image property of Walt Disney Pictures.
Experienced lyricist and musician duo Stephen Schwartz and Alan Menken are used to doing Disney music. In Enchanted, they had to send up a formula that they themselves helped invent. Both the animated first act and the live-action follow-up feature music in the style of Disney Oscar-winning, soundtrack selling history.
Enchanted Music
"I think the first challenge for us was finding that musical pallet and lyrical pallet and performance pallet that really spoke to everybody and said that we are in the world of early Walt and to have that place to start," said Menken. "For me, in any musical, getting audiences in and getting them to go, ‘I get it, I’m with you on this journey’ is the biggest and most important challenge."
Distinguishing early Disney from the more modern Disney of their straight music was an important distinction. "I tried to channel the classic Walt Disney sensibility and then just push it a little bit further in terms of choices of words or certain lyrics," said Schwartz. "To me in ‘True Love’s Kiss’ where she says, ‘These lips are the only things that touch,’ once I sort of found that tone of it, then it was just a matter of trying to find decent joke."
That is where the parody comes in. In the last couple decades, Disney had already started to instill humor in the music. "We’ve always had tongue in cheek, I gotta say," said Menken. "I mean Howard [Ashman] and I from Little Mermaid on, it was always a little tongue in cheek and, as Stephen says, post modern approach to it. As far this, all I had to do was just play it straight. I just had to play it hyper straight, so to speak, and be in Walt’s world. Be in that world where completely innocent, completely optimistic and they fall in love in a flash. So that provides the entry into what happens and everything gets twisted when they come into our world and she’s still our animated heroine. The song possibilities just become so much fun."
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Real fans may spot similarities between the spoofy Enchanted music and some of the duo's straight work. "Certainly, 'That’s How you Know’ is a send up of the Disney production number that began when Alan worked with Howard Ashman in ‘Under the Sea’ and ‘Be Our Guest.’ And then we did one with ‘Topsy Turvy’ in Hunchback of Notre Dame, so we were definitely spoofing ourselves. And also, ‘So Close’ the number in the ballroom has deliberate references, including the camera move, the famous camera move of Beauty and the Beast."
As longtime fans, the duo enjoyed going back into the Disney vaults and cherry picking reference points. "All of us were just looking at the prototypes and going, ‘Oh, this is great. This is great.’ And then [director] Kevin [Lima] would go, ‘Let’s look at this number from Snow White, let’s look at this number from Cinderella.’ That was it was hard, that opening because I finally said, ‘Stephen you have got to come into the room with me. Kevin is in town. Kevin, you have got to come into the room.’ Close the door and I literally ended up writing what is now ‘True Love’s Kiss’ with them in the room to make sure we all approved the same thing at the same time, because we would all go, ‘Oh, that’s good, but let’s try that.’"
Enchanted opens to theatres on November 21st.
For stills, the trailer and more movie info, go to the
Enchanted
Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Walt Disney Pictures.
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