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Howard Ashman’s Lecture at Disney

During the making of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, songwriter Howard Ashman held a lunchtime lecture for the film’s production staff. The lecture is frequently quoted and extended excerpts are occasionally included as bonus features on various documentaries and movie re-releases, but Disney has yet to release the entire thing completely uncut.

Here is – to the best of my abilities and resources – as much of the lecture as I could compile and transcribe. Hopefully someday we’ll get a video of the whole lecture. Until then, there’s this. Enjoy!

I don’t really feel in a position to have much to lecture about. There’s probably very few people in this room who know less about animation than I do. I’m brand new here. John and Ron have been teaching me. In working with this process, I am learning tons. That’s been really, really great for me.

My background is in musical theater. And it’s interesting, because I do think there’s a very strong connection and application between the two mediums. When I was approached with the opportunity to work for Disney, I leapt at it. I said, “What about animation? What about working in that department?” That was what I really wanted to do here, much, much more than anything in live-action. Although that is something I got to do. Because I’m really a musical theater person, and I can see a very, very strong connection between these two mediums. And I’d like to talk about why that connection exists. There are all kinds of theoretical basis for that. If you really think about the structure of an entertainment form, you can really draw a line [between the two]. We’ll get into that in a little bit.

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(via the-disney-elite)