MoviesOnline recently sat down with Stephen Schwartz (Lyricist) and Alan Menken (Composer) at the Los Angeles press day for their new film, "Enchanted,” directed by Kevin Lima and featuring music and lyrics by the award winning musical duo.

Alan Menken, who has won more Academy Awards than any other living person, is world-renowned as the composer of the songs and scores to "The Little Mermaid,” "Beauty and the Beast,” "Aladdin,” "Newsies,” "Pocahontas,” "The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” "Hercules” and "Home on the Range,” as well as the songs to the stage and film versions of "Little Shop of Horrors” and the score for Disney’s recent film re-release of "The Shaggy Dog.” The Broadway version of "Beauty and the Beast” recently closed after a smashingly successful 13-year run. "The Little Mermaid – The Musical” will premiere at the same Theater on Broadway next month. Menken’s other work includes Madison Square Garden’s stage and NBC film productions of "A Christmas Carol,” plus the stage productions of "King David,” "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater,” "Real Life Funnies,” "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,” "Weird Romance” and "Der Glockner Von Notre Dame.”

Menken’s collaborators have included: Howard Ashman, Stephen Schwartz, Tim Rice, Lynn Ahrens, David Zippel, Jack Feldman, Glenn Slater, and David Spencer. In addition to winning eight Oscars, he has been nominated 14 times. He has also won seven Golden Globes and 10 Grammys, as well as the London Evening Standard, Olivier, New York Drama Critics, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. His other achievements include: Billboard’s #1 album ("Pocahontas”) and #1 single ("A Whole New World”). Alan Menken is the recipient of The Disney Legends award honoring those individuals whose body of work has made a significant impact on the Disney Legacy. His upcoming projects include stage versions of "The Little Mermaid,” "Leap of Faith,” and "Sister Act.”

Stephen Schwartz previously collaborated with Alan Menken on the Disney animated feature "Pocahontas” (which won Academy Awards for Best Song and Best Score and the Golden Globe for Best Song) and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” He wrote the songs for the DreamWorks animated feature "The Prince of Egypt,” which also won an Academy Award for Best Song. Also for Disney, he provided music and lyrics for the original television musical "Geppetto,” seen on "The Wonderful World of Disney,” and the theme song and other material for Disney Channel’s current "Johnny and the Sprites.”

For theater, Schwartz has contributed music and/or lyrics to "Godspell,” "Pippin,” "The Magic Show,” "The Baker’s Wife,” "Working” (which he also adapted and directed), "Personals,” "Rags,” "Children of Eden,” and the current Broadway and international hit, "Wicked.” His other credits include English texts for Leonard Bernstein’s "Mass” (in collaboration with the composer); the title song for the play and movie "Butterflies Are Free;” and, for children, a picture book "The Perfect Peach” and a one-act musical, "Captain Louie.” He has released two CD’s of new songs entitled "Reluctant Pilgrim” and "Uncharted Territory.”

Under the auspices of the ASCAP Foundation in alliance with Disney, he runs musical theater workshops in New York and Los Angeles. Mr. Schwartz serves on the board of governors of ASCAP and the council of the Dramatists’ Guild. Additional awards and honors include four Grammy Awards, and four Drama Desk Awards.

Menken explains the genesis of the project and their recent collaboration. "I actually became involved with the film years ago when it was in the early stages of development. My active involvement picked up once again in the fall of 2006. Stephen resumed our collaboration, which was a great opportunity for both of us to work together again.” Schwartz elaborates, "Alan called me and asked me if I’d be interested in doing the lyrics for this project. I read the screenplay, which I liked very much, and met with Kevin Lima and Chris Chase. It all meshed, and I felt very lucky to be able to climb aboard the train, even relatively late.”

The longtime collaborators and multiple Oscar winners are very specific about what they look for in a project. Menken (who supplies the score and five original songs) explains, "Number one, you look for a story in which music can play a vital role. It’s got to have a style that allows the characters to sing and clearly for a project like this it starts in a world of animation, a world of enchantment, and then finds its way into the real world. It’s one of the best opportunities that I can think of for a new film score, because it can pull from the magic of animation and then move towards contemporary music in the same score.”

Schwartz reasons, "The biggest problems with doing live-action musicals is justifying why the characters are suddenly bursting into song in the middle of very real sets and very real situations. So one of the great things I thought about "Enchanted” was that the concept itself allowed the characters to sing in a way that was completely integral to the plot of the story.”

Stephen Schwartz and Alan Menken are fabulous people and we really appreciated their time. Here’s more of what they had to tell us about their recent collaboration on "Enchanted”:

Q: What were some of the challenges you faced writing a score that was part parody and part tribute to the classic Disney musical?

ALAN MENKEN: I think the first challenge for us was finding that musical palette and lyrical palette and performance palette that really spoke to everybody and said that we are in the world of early Walt and to have that place to start. 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. 

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: Just to respond, I think you articulated what the assignment was which was to do precisely that. To try to deliver both numbers as numbers that would be kind of a tribute to the history of animated features, but also be satirical of them and exist on both levels at the same time. That was the trick.

Q: Was it a nightmare trying to find the right tone?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: Tonally? No, it wasn’t a nightmare, because


ALAN MENKEN: No, it didn’t matter. It was just finding the common denominator.

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: For ourselves, part of it was to understand and to be able to articulate for ourselves what the assignment was which is pretty much as you’ve described it.

Q: How different was it from when you’ve done straight Disney?

ALAN MENKEN: Well, we’ve always had tongue in cheek, I gotta say. I mean Howard and I from ‘Little Mermaid’ on, it was always a little tongue in cheek and, as Stephen says, with a post modern approach to it. But as far as 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 it’s 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 then become so much fun.

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: 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. I mean, to me in ‘True Love’s Kiss’ where she says, ‘These lips are the only things that touch,’ that sort of idea was -- once I sort of found that tone of it, then it was just a matter of trying to find decent jokes.

ALAN MENKEN: And her very first words where she goes, ‘When you meet the someone who is meant for you,’ we looked at Snow White and she speaks it in that little warbley singing and then I demo’d it [imitates Snow White] just like that. (Laughs)

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: He’s one of the best Snow White’s you’ve ever heard.

Q: The only characters who sing in the movie come from the animated world, correct?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: That is correct. There is a number where all of Central Park kind of joins her.

Q: Is that because they are from that world?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: Yes, that’s the conceit, that’s the brilliant notion that Bill Kelly had when he created the idea of ‘Enchanted.’ And as we’ve told some of the other groups we’ve spoken to, we heard about this movie, the title and the concept, a long time ago and I for one was extremely covetous about trying to get involved with it, because I thought Bill Kelly’s concept was so clever. I had no idea if Disney was even thinking of it as a musical at all.

ALAN MENKEN: Well, I was actually involved with it about four or five years ago as he wrote an opening number in an earlier incarnation. But then it went back into development


STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: The concept was that people in 2D animation sing and people, needless to say, in real life don’t. So, putting that up against each other and allowing, having the Patrick Dempsey character who kind of speaks for us, for out point of view, to respond to this girl singing. I really don’t dance and all that stuff.

ALAN MENKEN: Please, don’t sing, don’t sing.

Q: Do you guys miss the 2D animation world and do you think this movie could generate a renewed interest in it?

ALAN MENKEN: First of all, I love it. It’s there forever for all of us to look at, god knows. I miss the process. I am so happy where my life is, it’s not like it’s a lack. But those animators and the storyboards and going to those buildings and there was a wonderful purity of process in the world of animation. It’s different than the world of live action where every film is its own production and the outside world comes in a lot more. Animation you still felt sort of the scent of Walt, even in the days of ‘Mermaid,’ ‘Beauty,’ ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Pocahontas.’ It was a wonderful place to be


STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: I miss the level of art, frankly. Just the beauty of what the animation looked like. I do miss that a little bit. That seems to be thus far impossible to achieve in CGI.

Q: They can’t do it?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: They can’t capture it at all.

ALAN MENKEN: And you guys have possibly interviewed some of the animators and there was a wonderful naivetĂ© and pure artistic vision with them that was great to be around.  And they still are there and John Musker and Ron Clemmons are working on a new project over there with Disney.

Q: Alan, you worked on ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ that was based on a Roger Corman movie. Did you ever think you’d see the day when Broadway would be doing versions of ‘Flashdance,’ ‘Wedding Singer,’ and ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’?

ALAN MENKEN: Never really thought about it one way or the other. You know if people think there is a buck to be made, nothing surprises me. 

Q: Were there any variations on themes you’d come up with in your previous films that you used here to remind people of earlier songs?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: Well, certainly, ‘That’s How you Know’ is a send up of the Disney production number that began to be perfected, or actually began when Alan worked with Howard Ashman in numbers such as ‘Under the Sea’ and ‘Be Our Guest.’ And then we did one together in ‘Topsy Turvy’ for ‘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.’

ALAN MENKEN: And we brought in Robbie Buchanan to arrange it and Robbie actually had arranged the singles of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘A Whole New World’ and ‘Colors of the Wind.’ 

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: It was fun to both spoof, if you will, the old Disney films of the 40’s, but then to take a couple pokes at ourselves too. That was fun.

Q: Did you go back and look at ‘Snow White’ and ‘Whistle While You Work’?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: Absolutely. ‘Snow White,’ ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ we looked at very carefully in terms of how music was used, what the style of music was in terms of how they got into musical numbers and so on.  We were really trying to channel that world.

ALAN MENKEN: All of us were just looking at the prototypes and going, ‘Oh, this is great. This is great.’ And then Kevin would go, ‘Let’s look at this number from ‘Snow White,’ let’s look at this number from ‘Cinderella.’ That’s why it was hard, that opening. Because you want to catch – 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.’

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: ‘Happy Working Song’ came really fast. That was pretty easy.

ALAN MENKEN: That was fast. ‘That’s How You Know’ was so much fun to create those counter melodies one on the other and then open up into this chorus. 

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: But to answer your question, ‘Happy Working Song’ is obviously pretty much out of ‘Snow White’ and ‘Whistle While You Work’ and that little thing where they do the dishes and Dopey with the soap bubbles and everything. We really looked at that. So, there is a bit of reference to the busy little mice in ‘Cinderella,’ but basically it’s ‘Snow White.’

Q: There are so many comic lyrics in this such as ‘Even though you are vermin.’

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: It’s always good to be able to use the word ‘vermin’ in a song.

Q: Was it your intention to make more of the lyrics comedic?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: Absolutely. And I’m pleased it worked.  We were definitely going for – I was looking for jokes.  Definitely.

Q: Can you give us a progress report on ‘Mermaid’ on stage? Did you think it was doable as a theater piece?

ALAN MENKEN: I really hadn’t thought about ‘Mermaid’ for the stage especially because of the challenge of being under the sea. As everyone knows, that was one of the difficulties. And once Francesca Zambello came on board as director and she’d worked a lot with George Tsypin and his sets use light in this brilliant way where it takes on light and can reflect it to look aquatic or to look like the sea, along with all the other stage craft that is available to us, then it became possible. It had actually been in the works for about five years though. We’d been working on it in various ways. We had our first preview last night on Broadway. I got emails from a number of people who have all said that it went really, really well. 

Q: How close do they stick to the movie?

ALAN MENKEN: The original songs by Howard Ashman and I are all there. Ten new songs as well with Glen Slater, that’s the name of the lyricist.  And I think it’s quite seamless.  Like ‘Beauty and the Beauty’ it’s going to be a very seamless experience and audiences seem to love it.

Q: We heard there is an Idina song that may be on the "Enchanted” DVD but isn’t in the film?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: Yeah, isn’t that so weird? I kept saying to Kevin, ‘You have Idina Menzel in this movie and she’s not going to sing?’ We did have a closing number which was in fact the title song called ‘Enchanted,’ but what happened was that stylistically by the time we got to that point in the film, because she was never an animated character, it didn’t actually work stylistically for her to sing.  So, I actually think Idina is wonderful in the film.

Q: Why not have her sing at the end of the movie in the animated world?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: We talked about it. But the amount of time we would have had to spend with her in the animated world, it didn’t seem justified. There were reasons why practically, tonally and stylistically it didn’t work. And actually, if a different actress had been playing the role of Nancy, it never would have arisen.  It was just because it was Idina, but Idina is a wonderful actress and I think she’s terrific in the movie without singing.

Q: So, there is a title song called ‘Enchanted’?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: Yes.

ALAN MENKEN: There were two songs. Also, there was an alternative to ‘So Close.’ People were like ‘We love the song, but could you
’ So, I wrote another song called ‘Enchanted.’ But that was a ballad.

Q: Are you thinking about making a sequel now that you have a great singer in the animated world?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: That had never occurred to us, but thank you for suggesting it. No, truly. The idea of a sequel, I don’t think it ever really occurs while doing a film. A film proves popular, those are always business decisions if someone wants to make a sequel and then you think about it. But actually that hadn’t occurred to me. But for whatever reason they decide to continue it, that’s great.

ALAN MENKEN: But maybe someday, if it happens, people will think we had brilliant foresight.

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: That’s right. We’ll take credit for it. ‘Yes, that’s why we had Idina in the first place!’

Q: What else do you have coming up besides ‘Mermaid’?

ALAN MENKEN: Besides ‘Mermaid’? I have a musical ‘Sister Act’ opening in London next fall. And ‘Leap of Faith’ is being directed by Taylor Hackford on Broadway. It’s going to have a workshop this spring and then open the following season.

Q: They are all based on movies


ALAN MENKEN: I don’t know why people are surprised by that. Broadway is basically an adaptation medium. It’s so much and films are a vital, important part of our culture.

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: Also, movies because of the way they are structured, frankly, they lend themselves well to musicalization because there are technical reasons why the storytelling, the way it occurs in a movie lends itself well to musicals.

Q: In ‘Leap of Faith’ is there a lot of new gospel music and are there any other styles?

ALAN MENKEN: Yes, very heavily gospel. A little bit of country and a little bit of rock and theater. By the way, Stephen is working on an Opera.

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: I am recklessly and foolishly working on an Opera. I am doing an opera based on, again, a film, ‘Seance on a Wet Afternoon,’ a film from the ‘60’s that starred Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough. And the premiere is for the Opera Company in Santa Barbara, as a matter of fact, for 2009.

Q: How are you changing it?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: Well, they are singing. (Laughs).

Q: How is the libretto different from the screenplay?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: To some extent it’s not. I did make some changes in terms of the story. I brought a character on stage who is referred to in the original, but isn’t in the film, which is the ghost of the son.

ALAN MENKEN: And independent of anything that may come from this, Stephen and I are also looking for another film project.

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: So, if you have something let us know.

ALAN MENKEN: Well, we have something in mind.

Q: The sequel to Enchanted?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: There you go!

ALAN MENKEN: We should live so long!

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: I have an informal poll that I’m taking for obvious reasons. I’m asking everybody that we’ve been talking to what your favorite song in the film is.

Q: Academy Award consideration?

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: Exactly. It’s awards season and they ask you which song you want to submit!

(then they poll us for our favorite song and ‘That’s How You Know’ wins)

ALAN MENKEN: ‘Happy Working Song’ and ‘That’s How You Know,’ that’s what’s emerging. A consensus is emerging. [Laughs] Thank you!

"Enchanted” opens in theaters on November 21st.