The MickeyBlog Interview: Don Hahn
On August 7th, Disney+ will add a documentary named Howard to its streaming service.
As part of the promotional campaign for the project, MickeyBlog and others in the Disney community received a rare opportunity.
We got to interview legendary producer Don Hahn.
About the Interview
“Who is Don Hahn?” you may wonder.
Well, have you watched Beauty and the Beast or The Emperor’s New Groove or The Lion King? Hahn produced all three.
Hahn also directed and narrated Waking Sleeping Beauty, a documentary you may have seen on Disney+. If you haven’t yet, watch it.
During the late-1970s and early-1980s, Disney animation faced a crossroads. The Nine Old Men had passed the baton along to the next generation.
Sadly, this transition didn’t go seamlessly, as the most celebrated animation studio ever floundered for a time.
In fact, before Hahn worked on several Disney Renaissance classics, he produced The Black Cauldron.
Film historians know this project as the most expensive animated movie made up until that time…and a box office failure.
Members of the animation team, including Hahn, faced an impossible predicament in living up to the Nine Old Men’s standards.
Still, people like Hahn, Kevin Lima, and Glenn Keene embraced the glare of the Hollywood media spotlight and learned from their mistakes.
A friend who worked at Disney at the time describes Hahn and his cohorts as the backbone of the Disney animation during its reemergence.
What Is Howard?
When you’ve done everything that there is to do in the industry, as Hahn has, you sometimes choose more personal projects.
With Howard, he returns to the past to celebrate the life of an Academy Award-winning talent who tragically died too young.
Howard Ashman won two Academy Awards and two Grammys by the age of 40. He also happened to be a gay man writing beloved children’s tunes for Disney.
The inclusive company always walked this tightrope before the world became more accepting and less bigoted, perhaps most famously with Old Yeller’s Tommy Kirk.
At the time, Ashman lived happily in a committed relationship with Bill Lauch, who would later accept an Oscar on his late lover’s behalf.
I cordially invite you to watch the YouTube clip I’ve attached above, which hints at Howard’s unrivaled storytelling abilities.
A complex man, Ashman became known for his fiery temper and his mastery of words.
The documentary encapsulates that seminal time when Ashman’s words redefined Disney’s legacy.
However, Howard also details the incongruity of one of the most recognizable talents in musical theater working for Disney while suffering from HIV.
The lyricist eventually died from the disease, but he struggled with it for nearly three years.
In fact, he informed his musical partner, Alan Menken, of his illness only days after they won their first Oscar.
You can already tell that this story is heart-wrenching and bittersweet.
Hahn placed the onus on himself to inform others about the man he knew, someone whose music has brought boundless joy into the lives of millions.
Most of the interview focused on Howard rather than Hahn’s track record. Here are a few highlighted excerpts.
Interview Excerpts
Roughly 15-20 people participated in this chat. So, I won’t transcribe everything.
The most memorable aspects are the ways that Hahn describes Howard, the subject of the documentary.
During the conversation, Hahn’s love and respect for his dead friend shined through his replies. Some of it is just excellent life advice, also.
Here are two of his stream-of-consciousness replies:
“I think he had all those insecurities that we all have about our work. And I want the audience to see that. And I wanted people to see that, you know, like, we all have aspirations in our life and in the creative sides of our life. If Howard can go through some of these struggles, we certainly can, too.”
Later, he added:
“Sometimes, we think of artists as just having the gift or not. You either have the talent, or you don’t. You either can draw, or you can’t. But I think what I want people to see is NO! There’s work. There’s just plain work that goes into it. And it’s hard work, and it’s long hours, and it’s a commitment. And that’s part of genius, also.”
Question about Howard’s Impact on Hahn
Then, someone asked a great question. “Is there something (Howard) taught you directly or indirectly that you’ve carried on with your work, including with this film?”
Hahn replied in detail:
“The one thing Howard had maybe above anything else was clarity and persistence. He was really clear about what he wanted. And sometimes, I think in my life, for sure, you’re trying to, kind of, you know, be vague and be polite and all that stuff. And Howard wasn’t. He was incredibly big-hearted and everything else, but he was not afraid to just say, “This is how I see it. And here’s how I see this point of view, and here’s how I see the story point.”
“Howard was much more than a lyricist. He was a dramatist, he was a writer, he was a producer, he was a book writer, he was a director. So, he had a fearlessness about just saying what he thought. And in the arts, in particular, I think that is so important. And to work with someone like that was sobering.
“Because I’m not sure we were that way at Disney back then. I mean, I’ve been around the studio since ‘76. And we made a lot of movies. I think we were more apologetic then, maybe, you know, wondering what Walt Disney might have done or something.
“But the clarity of having someone walk in the door and say, ‘You know, I think Sebastian, this English crab, should be Rastafarian, and I think the music, even though it’s a Danish fairytale, should be set in the Caribbean because that music is just so much more lively than Danish music, nothing against Danish music.’ So, having these big, sweeping ideas and articulating them, it was just very brave.”
Howard’s Vision
Another contributor asked Hahn to detail how Howard “developed his vision” for his creations.
Hahn responded:
“Like with any movie, we start with a script or a storyboard. Howard learned all that from American musical theater.
“You know, he was a student of Lerner and Loewe and Rodgers and Hammerstein and a student of musical theater and Tin Pan Alley and American musicals in general.
“He had his Master’s degree in it. So, he was an encyclopedia of all that.
“And so even though he didn’t invent those things, he was able to teach us and articulate those things in a way that we hadn’t done before.
“You all may have seen his lecture that he gave at Disney when we were doing Mermaid, where he sits down and just says, ‘Here’s the first song. It’s patterned after this. Here’s this song. It’s patterned after that.’
“And it was like a sit-down Master’s class in musical theater. So, he got it through education and learning his craft and then was able to adapt it.
“And a lot of his musicals were parodies on that traditional kind of craft.
“So, something like Little Shop of Horrors is pretty much a comedy, and I think he had a strong tongue implanted in his cheek, as he would say, when he put girl-group rock and roll into a Roger Corman film. It was like, ‘This was absurd. I hope you like it…like putting Caribbean music into The Little Mermaid.’
“So, he saw the fun, the kind of wink, in doing those kinds of things, in mashing up these different styles. And so that’s really what he added to it all.
“It was a very traditional structure in terms of an opening number, an ‘I Want’ song, a villain song, a ballad, a dance number, whatever.
“But he put with it this really interesting spin of trying different stylistic things on top of it. And it was really effective for him.
MickeyBlog’s Questions
MickeyBlog also got to pick Mr. Hahn’s brain about Howard.
We asked:
“Could you describe the moment when he won an Academy Award, what that was like for you?”
And then also, if you would, a project that you’ve encountered since then that you thought the whole time, “Oh, I wish he was alive. That would have been perfect for him.”
Hahn replied:
“Well, he had first won the Academy Award for The Little Mermaid, which was great. We were slaving away on Beauty and the Beast at the time that happened. So, we were really happy for him.
“When he won the award for Beauty and the Beast, it was bittersweet. We were in the audience because Beauty and the Beast was nominated for Best Picture.
“So, I had really good seats, like, next to Katzenberg and Sylvester Stallone and places where animators usually don’t sit.
“So, it was bittersweet because that’s the year that Billy, his partner, got up, and it was the first year an Academy Award had been won by a person who had died of AIDS and an openly gay person.
“Those things didn’t matter, really. It was really about rewarding someone who had done a great body of work.
“So, it was emotional, and it’s become somewhat historic just because of those unfortunate milestones. So, it was a bittersweet night. It was terrific, and it was unfortunate Howard couldn’t be there.
“Then, your last question, your second question is really, yeah, I wish Howard could still be around on every film. You know, after Beauty, I worked on Lion King, and it was so different…and not because of the talent.
“I mean, we had Elton John, for God’s sake, and he’s an amazing musician. But Tim Rice works very differently. He’s more of a poetic writer. It was just a different person in the room.
“And so, at times, you’d just think, ‘Wow! I’m so used to working with this sort of Broadway/New York sensibility.’ Now, Tim comes in. He has the equally interesting, brilliant kind of West End/London sensibility for his writing. But it’s so different.
“So, a lot of making movies is just the learning curve and learning to work with your new collaborators. And on any movie, it’s that. You know, it’s never the same – every movie’s unique.
“And you try to put together a family, especially as a producer, a family of people who cannot just get along – because sometimes they don’t get along – but who can communicate and make the same movie.
“So, yeah, there’s been a number of times.
“And there’s been times like on Hunchback of Notre Dame, Stephen Schwartz and Alan Menken were brilliant to work with. Stephen Schwartz is amazing.
“So, there are times when you have that kind of chemistry again. But, you know, there was only one Howard, and it’s hard to replicate that talent.”