{"id":95544,"date":"2017-03-13T11:25:59","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T11:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=95544"},"modified":"2017-03-13T11:26:53","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T11:26:53","slug":"beauty-the-beasts-bill-condon-on-the-music-and-bringing-back-alan-menken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/news\/beauty-the-beasts-bill-condon-on-the-music-and-bringing-back-alan-menken\/","title":{"rendered":"Beauty & The Beast’s Bill Condon on the music and bringing back Alan Menken"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re the type of person who\u00a0can sing their way through most Disney soundtracks, from\u00a0Cinderella\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>to\u00a0Hercules<\/strong><\/em> to\u00a0Moana<\/strong><\/em>, you probably went mental when you found out that Academy Award-winning composer Alan Menken would be coming back to pen new songs for\u00a0Bill Condon’s\u00a0Beauty And The Beast<\/strong><\/em> remake.<\/p>\n

For the director, bringing Menken back was an obvious choice. After seeing and adoring\u00a0the original\u00a0Beauty And The Beast\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>in the cinema way back in 1992, it was clear to Condon that the music was just as important\u00a0as the story and the characters.<\/p>\n

“I saw [the film] as an adult, but I loved it,” Condon told us. “There\u2019s a famous review in the New York Times by Frank Rich that said, \u2018I\u2019ve just seen the best Broadway musical of the season.\u2019 I think that\u2019s what appealed to me most.”<\/p>\n

Condon believed that Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman were at least partly responsible for the film\u2019s massive success. “They brought all this craft to this animated film,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Let\u2019s face it: the musical film genre had been pretty dead for a couple of decades. They actually brought it back in animated form because it was an easier way for people to accept that people could break out into singing and dancing. On that level it worked beautifully just as a musical with a great score, and just thematically it was always so resonant, it was very beautiful and it\u2019s a perfect movie.”<\/p>\n

As strange as it seems, the new Beauty And The Beast<\/strong> <\/em>wasn\u2019t always going to be a musical. When Condon first got involved with the film, the bosses at Disney wanted to take an approach similar to those for the remakes of Cinderella<\/strong><\/em> and The Jungle Book<\/strong><\/em>, in that they planned on cutting the songs down and only featuring the essentials. But, as a long-time fan of the 1991 film, Condon wasn\u2019t having it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was so adamant about the fact that music is what this version is about to the point where I don\u2019t think there\u2019s one song in that original movie that shouldn\u2019t be here,\u201d he said, \u201cso we used them all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The partnership of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman has roots buried deep in the heart of the Disney Renaissance period. The pair had previously worked together on the musical adaptations of Kurt Vonnegut\u2019s God Bless You, Mr Rosewater<\/strong> <\/em>and, more memorably, Roger Corman\u2019s Little Shop Of Horrors<\/strong><\/em>. They finally made the move to Disney in 1989 for The <\/strong>L<\/em>ittle Mermaid<\/strong><\/em>, and then again a few years later for Aladdin<\/strong><\/em> and Beauty And The Beast<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Ashman sadly died in 1991, but Menken has been adding to the Disney songbook intermittently ever since, earning various music-related credits on Pocahontas<\/strong><\/em>, The Hunchback of Notre Dame<\/strong><\/em>, Hercules<\/strong><\/em>, Home On The Range<\/strong><\/em> and Tangled<\/strong><\/em>. He\u2019s also back for Condon\u2019s Beauty And The Beast, for which he wrote the score as well as three new songs.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It\u2019s so thrilling to watch somebody who, 25 years later, he\u2019s got it in his DNA,” Condon enthused. “He sits down at the piano and suddenly you\u2019re hearing new Beauty And The Beast<\/strong><\/em> music that fits in so perfectly, seamlessly, to what he\u2019s written already. It\u2019s exciting to watch. Getting to know him and hearing the kind of French impressionist music that inspired the score in the first place\u2026 He got excited by the opportunity to expand on that idea with the new songs.”<\/p>\n

Beauty And The Beast\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>is in cinemas from 17 March. Get all the latest fantasy news with every issue of SciFiNow.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n