Here is a video clip taken featuring legendary actors Angela Lansbury and Jerry Orbach from the upcoming film Howard, which will have it’s world premiere at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. The clip shows Angela Lansbury and Jerry Orbach recording the original track “Be Our Guest” for Disney’s Beauty and The Beast (1991), and how lyricist Howard Ashman was deeply involved with the writing and recording of his song. The clip also features interviews with composer Alan Menken and Beauty and The Beast director Kirk Wise about the magical recording process. Howard Ashman was responsible for the iconic soundtrack to B&TB, along with other Disney classics like Aladdin and The Little Mermaid.
Howard, directed by Don Hahn (Producer of The Lion King and Beauty and The Beast, director of Waking Sleeping Beauty ), is the untold story of Howard Ashman, the creative mind and brilliant lyricist behind Disney classics Aladdin, Beauty and The Beast, The Little Mermaid and creator of the musical, Little Shop of Horrors, whose unparalleled career and vibrant life were cut short at 39 years of age, when he was felled by the AIDS epidemic.
Howard Ashman a Jewish kid from Baltimore grows up in an average family with a extraordinary love for musical theatre. After college he opens a theatre in a derelict section of New York and struggles to put on shows, until his adaptation of Roger Corman’s film Little Shop of Horrors becomes a huge off off broadway hit and catapults him into the limelight. Finally on Broadway, he collaborates with the Oscar and Tony winner Marvin Hamlisch and together they produce a disappointment, Smile. Embarrassed he flees to Los Angeles and takes up with a struggling gang of artists in a warehouse— Disney animators who have just been kicked off the studio lot until they can prove themselves. Howard with Alan Menken write the Oscar® winning songs for The Little Mermaid. While the film becomes a global phenomenon, Howard is diagnosed with HIV—which he kept a secret in this time when AIDS is a death sentence and gay men are at the margins of society. Howard writes the lyrics to Beauty and the Beast from his hospital bed and dies before he can see the final film. The legacy of his work lives on in Broadway productions and live action remakes of Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid and Aladdin for a new generation. The writer and screenwriter for this documentary is Don Hahn.
Tribeca Film Festival Screenings
Sunday, April 22 @ 2:30PM – Cinépolis Chelsea 7
Monday, April 23 @ 6:15PM – Cinépolis Chelsea 5
Tuesday, April 24 @ 3:30PM – Regal Cinemas Battery Park 5
Thursday, April 26 @ 7:00PM – Cinépolis Chelsea 5