Interview: Daniel Breaker of “Shrek: The Musical”

Posted on October 16, 2013 at 11:25 am

First it was a book by William Steig. Then it was a sensationally successful series of animated films, featuring the voice talents of Mike Meyers, Cameron Diaz, and Eddie Murphy. Then it was a blockbuster Broadway smash hit musical starring Sutton Foster, Daniel Breaker, and Brian d’Arcy James as the ogre. And now the musical is available on DVD, bringing the Broadway experience into the living room. I am a huge fan of Daniel Breaker’s work in “Passing Strange,” so it was a thrill to get to talk to him about playing Donkey on stage in Shrek the Musical.

What’s the first thing you did when you found out that you were going to be playing Donkey?

I guess I wondered if this is really happening or not. You know the part really came out of nowhere for me. I was actually on vacation with my wife and my newborn so I guess you wouldn’t call it vacation. My new born, he was only two weeks old when I got the call for that part. There was actually a lot going on at that point right when I got the call. My wife is a director. She was about to start rehearsals for a play called “Ruined” which takes place in Congo and which later won a Pulitzer and so we were on that path. And then “Shrek” came in and now we have this newborn so that was a very, exciting, and exhausting, and stressful for the first couple of months. But that’s just a part you can’t really say no to. I mean when somebody calls and asks me to play the donkey, that’s not really something you pass on.

It’s kind of a challenge because you’ve got people coming who have a strong idea of who the Donkey is. You want to make it your own but you also want to make them happy. How do you walk that tightrope?

Well, you know, what’s interesting about the version that we did is that the animated movies are very specific, right? And what was great was that when we translated that idea onto the stage, no one was pressuring anybody to make a direct steal from the movie to the stage. I think what we were doing was we’re taking some the benefits that come with live theater and applying that to the iconic story. So there was no pressure to impersonate Eddie Murphy or impersonate Cameron Diaz’s voice. If anything, we were celebrating the story even further by taking it unto a live medium. And then we’re almost coming full circle here by bringing it back to the screen with this DVD which, I think, captures all of the living, breathing excitement of the live stage performance and bringing you just a little closer so you can see certain elements and nuances from the acting that you might not see when you’re watching it on stage. So I think it sort of ups the pleasure of watching the story even further.

Donkey’s got a lot of the best lines in the show.

I think Donkey is such a great part because I think there’s a little Donkey in all of us. I think he is a little bit of a weirdo. He wants a friend. He wears his heart on his sleeve. I think that’s something that we all strive to be like. So, you know, I find him utterly thrilling. And just from sort of like the theater nerd in me, I feel like he is one of these ancient Commedia characters. I think he is completely honest in every single moment of his life. He does not know how to lie. That doesn’t live in his blood. I find it actually so thrilling to be that open and vulnerable on stage. Every night was so much fun. And also, the cast is just extraordinary. I had such a magnificent time playing opposite Brian d’Arcy James. I think even on those exhausted days when I was sick or I was tired, it was just seeing him up there and his very honest eyes and thinking, “Alright. I’m going to do this anyway. We’re going to have a great time.” So it was a thrill every step of the way. And Sutton Foster — that girl was a machine. I don’t know how she got through that thing of like throwing the green costume, and taking it off doing a tap number, and then just walking around right after a big tap number as if she was not even winded like she just crossed the street. I mean she is extraordinary. And she also makes everything look so easy. And then Christopher Sieber who played Farquaad, the fact that he is the tallest guy in the cast and he was the one on his knees. I thought that was some form of cruelty. He was wearing that 50 pound rig on his costume and he was still a trooper the whole way.

I love to see families go to the theater and teach kids about this role of the theater. What’s it like to perform in front of so many kids with their families?

It’s a thrill because you know that if a family is willing to drop the Broadway money to bring their kids to a show that they really actually want to be there. That’s quite an enjoyable experience to have and to watch, you know because sometimes I feel like a little like “Okay, the dad doesn’t really want to be here. It’s football season. He’s going there because his kids wanted to go,” and then five minutes later, he can’t help but crack a smile at how extraordinary this show is. So it’s a lot of fun to entertain in that respect. Also I was a dad by the time I started the show so it’s just nice to raise this child while also doing this show that is designed for children.

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Interview: AJ Michalka of “Grace Unplugged”

Posted on October 13, 2013 at 3:59 pm

AJ Michalka stars in “Grace Unplugged,” the story of a girl who wants more out of life than singing with her church’s worship band. When she has some success as a pop singer, she has to decide whether secular success is as meaningful as a life using her gift to praise God. I spoke to AJ, best known as half of the sister duos Aly & AJ and 78Violet about playing Grace.

What made you want to play Grace?

I was inspired by the film, wanting to be part of it as an actor. It’s a beautiful family film, an inspiring coming-of-age drama about this young girl who really wants to branch out and become an adult artist and get into the music industry, going on the road and creating her own music, her own identity. She ends up really finding herself. It’s a very sweet film. I wouldn’t have done this movie if she hadn’t learned a lot as a character. I love that about her. She’s really driven. She has the willpower to do it. Sometimes she goes about things in a weird way. She doesn’t always give her parents the respect they deserve. But she’s a young girl; we can all relate to that.

What do you want people to get from the movie?

I hope this movie opens up a lot of conversation, between fathers and daughters especially. I hope they talk about compromise. So many people think they need to sell themselves short or give up a part of themselves to succeed in this industry. Even if you’re not in the industry, people, especially young women, should know you don’t have to compromise your morals or who you are as a person to achieve some career goal.

How do your acting and singing careers give you different opportunities for creative expression?

They are so different and bring different pressures and different creative energies. There’s this instant gratification that is so special with music when you’re playing a show live or creating a song from the ground up. As an actor, there’s that rush when you go to the theater and see that something you are a part of has really come together. But they do go hand in hand and help each other. I’ve noticed I am a more comfortable artist when I am on stage because I’ve learned to deal with the pressures of being an actor. I feel more comfortable, whether it’s doing an interview or being part of a photo shoot. Musically, I’ve been trained that if something goes wrong on stage, you just kind of go with it. Both of them have similar pressures about performance. And doing both made me more confident and less nervous.

You and your sister got started very young.

I started performing professionally when I was about nine. When we were 12 and 14 we got signed for recording and musical performances. We knew what we wanted to do at an early age, whether it was professional or not. It wasn’t, “Maybe we’ll get signed or book a job,” but “We want to do this, we love entertaining, maybe just for pleasure or maybe as professionals.” We knew it was something special we wanted to do. So when it took off in a bigger way, it was just the icing on top. We always tried to be very professional on the set. I was around a lot of adults who were good examples. We never wanted to be those child actors who become adults right away, like some child performers who want to grow up very fast and start acting like those little robots, but we knew we had to take it seriously as a profession. We were getting paid, we were on a set, so we took it seriously as professionals. We still stayed children, which is nice, and that is partly because our parents are so normal. And I couldn’t really do it without my sister. We really have been grounding for each other. Especially as a musician. I don’t really see myself as a solo artist. But even when I’m acting, she’s my first phone call. She really helps me get through things.

What other things do you do to stay grounded?

So many people surround themselves with people who say yes to everything just to keep their job. I like to surround myself with people who are going to be honest with me. If I’m about to do something that is not going to enhance me as a person, or if I am about to make some tricky mistake, I want someone there who will say, “Look, AJ, this is not necessarily the best decision.” And my sister will be the first one to do that.

What do you do for fun?

My sister and I are both active, really athletic. We kick-box and it is fun to be outdoors. We take the dogs to the dog park and we ride horses. We love being outside. We love to go camping in Joshua Tree. I love being around nature; I got that from my mom. We also like to invite people over for game night or a movie.

Would you like to kick box in a movie?

I would love to do an action movie. I feel like my body would be ready to kick into gear for something like that!

What was the biggest challenge in playing Grace?

Really, making sure I wasn’t playing AJ. We’re both musicians, we’re like in a lot of ways. But when I’m on stage, I’m very comfortable. I have my sister with me. I know what I’m doing. My goal was to strip away the comfortability and play a girl who has no idea what she is getting into. I wanted to be true to someone not used to playing a live show. And I wanted to be sure to bring some nuances to the character. She’s a sweet, fresh-faced Southern girl, but I wanted to make it my own.

And what is your favorite advice?

Separate yourself from the industry as soon as you come offstage. Let it go, come down from that high, and get into who I am as a person. When I’m done, it’s time to settle down and relax and snuggle up with my dog, read a book, call a friend. That’s how you can sustain being normal.

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Interview: Galley Molina of “I’m In Love With a Church Girl”

Posted on October 2, 2013 at 8:00 am

I’m in Love With a Church Girl is inspired by the true story of writer/director Galley Molina. It stars Ja Rule, Stephen Baldwin, T-Bone, and Michael Madsen, and will be in theaters on October 18. I enjoyed speaking to Galley about what inspired him to make this film.

You wrote this story while you were in prison, I understand?

I had started writing mostly as an escape so it was unintended. I would write so much, kind of like a release. When I was writing, I could feel the leather in your car and smell your food, your favorite food, so I just started writing these stories. And as I started writing and it started coming together, I realized I had a lot of friends who would read them inside. They’d be like “hey man, this is really cool, man” and it got to the point where a lot of the inmates were like, “Hey you gotta go read these stories, man, they’re cool.” When the Church Girl story was done I had some real good friends ‘cause I I was serving while serving time so to speak while I was in the chapel – and a lot of the guys would say, “I want to meet a church girl,” or “Is this really true?” So it just became one of those things where you got to minister, you got to share, you got to inspire, you got to release at the same time. So that’s kinda how it started. My intent was just to possibly publish some books when I got home, but it turned into obviously more than that – it turned into a movie and the rest as they say is history.

How do you bring your faith onto a movie set and keep everybody on the same message?

I believe that you can’t just talk about it; you got to be about it. We had a really blessed set I will say, most of the time, I hear stories now ‘cause I talk to a lot of producers and filmmakers now and there’re like, “Ah man I had this story and I had that story” and they were all these nightmares. If you watch the youtube videos, or if you go to the website and you watch some of the behind the scenes videos, you’ll see our first day on the set. And I opened up in prayer. And obviously, we can’t assume that everybody’s a Christian or that everyone believes in God or that there’s not any other type of faiths on the set. So I prefaced by saying, “Hey this is a faith based film, we’re honoring God, we’re going to pray to God, I don’t want to offend anybody but this is what it is.” And so, aside from that, it’s no different than your daily walk. I don’t want anybody to see me saying this and doing that or think I fear who’s watching me. Or who I don’t think is watching me. It’s the same way on set. The spirit was definitely present on the set because we didn’t really have any situations through the whole thing so I guess to answer your question; it’s just that we’re not any different on set than we are at church.

Even though this is a fictional story, some elements of it are based on your life right?

I had to be careful how I said those things, moving forward as my lawyer was telling me, “Hey, you can’t say this is based on your life but you can say loosely based.” There are a lot of similarities – a lot of the story is true – some of it’s not true. The things that I felt needed to be changed in the story — we just got our rating yesterday for the film and it’s a PG, not PG 13. I think we didn’t need to show certain things. There’s no cursing in this film. There’s no violence, not any heavy violence, no sex scenes – nothing like that. I didn’t need to tell a lot of those things or show a lot of those things, you could just kinda say things without having to say them. When you see these people on the screen, you’ll be like, ‘oh these are some very serious individuals’ or you assume that what they are doing is wrong. But yes, for the most part, this is based on my life and the love story part and the tainted past and going to church, so yeah I’d say it’s very loosely based on my life.

So how do you go about casting somebody who will essentially to play you?

Good question, you know it’s funny when we were casting this film, I went out to Hollywood actors, like real legitimate actors, went through the real agencies with real offers, we spent a lot of money on this film, we spent millions of dollars on this film. We didn’t go out like a lot of films, and even a lot of films in our genre with very limited resources and limited budgets and try to create something that we didn’t have the resources or budget to do. So when I went after real Hollywood talent, I shone the light I guess you can say, they didn’t take it seriously or when they saw the word “church” in the title they were not going to stereotype or type cast an actor into a church film. So that was hard. They didn’t even want to read the script. So we re-grouped and God – there’s a story in the Bible that says go to your cupboard and bring me your jars, and basically what it means is everything you need is inside your house right now. My relationships over the years have been embedded in the media industry and a lot of it was in music, so if you notice, a lot of the cast, they’re musicians, they’re rappers, they’re singers, T-bone, and Ja Rule and AJ and so it just ended up being that way. And then to try to find a pool of talent that can really act, there’s not this huge Christian pool of talent out there, or at least that are admint, “Yes I’m a Christian actor” or “I’m an actor and I’m Christian,” so I couldn’t put a Yankee hat on Kirk Cameron and say, “Hey man I need you to play Miles Montego,” that just isn’t gonna work. And they all did such an amazing job and we’re really excited to see peoples’ reaction when they see Ja Rule act in this film.

I have a theory that musicians in general can do very well in acting because you’re telling a story with a song. And also a lot of acting has to do with sense of rhythm and timing and I think that is something they understand.

You’re 100 percent right. I never really heard it put that way. I’ve always looked at it as for example, rappers, why do rappers get on the road? They are very passionate people. They are really passionate people and acting is passion. And like you say, they know how to memorize lines because they memorize songs and to hear it that way is great. It’s telling a story in a different way so that I totally agree with you.

What is it about movies and music that communicates so powerfully with people?

I think first of all, they are the biggest platforms in the world; television, film and music. It’s global; I mean it’s even bigger than a book. Obviously a full feature film – everybody goes to a movie or ends up seeing a movie on television, everybody can hear a record on the internet or their iPod or on the radio. I think that’s how we communicate these days – that’s how trends are set – that’s how news is relayed from one side of the world to the other, so at the end of the day, it comes down to it is the biggest platform in the world – is the media – and second of all, that’s why I think – and to answer your question- we have to be very responsible in how we use it. Now can you say… imagine if the apostles had jets or internet. How fast would the Word have spread?

Can you imagine that because –think about it- these guys with Jesus – Jesus only walked a certain portion of the earth – he didn’t walk the around the world, he didn’t walk on all the continents so if they had been able to get on a jet or send a text over to the next country – the Word would have spread that much faster. So, us as musicians as filmmakers, as producers and directors, labels, CEO’s – we need to make sure that when we’re using these platforms that we are being responsible. As Christians we need to make sure we’re Christ honoring and not pound people over the head with it. But just be responsible with it and try to entertain at the same time. And so I think everyone is always going to be drawn to the movies. Like Israel Houghton said, you may not be able to get someone to go to church with you, but you can definitely get them to go to the movies with you.

I think that’s it right there. And what are you going to do next?

We’re gearing up for the next two films – we’re gearing up for one that’s called the The Promise, and it’s based on a song Shout to the Lord by Darling Chet and next will be a couple of scripts which I co-wrote which has been really fun. We’re doing the story of Job – a modern day man but we’re calling it Boj- we’re spelling it backwards – which is really cool. That story wrote itself in today’s time. It wasn’t a hard reach for that script. But I will say that these next couple of films will be very epic. We’re bringing in the same director who did Church Girl, a lot of the same team. These movies are going to be very epic in the sense there’s nothing really urban about these films as it was on Church Girl. A-list actors. Faith-based films have never been done like what we’re planning. I believe we raised the bar with Church Girl, as far as production level. You can see just by the trailers the quality of this film. Not talking about the content, just the production of the film could be put up against any Universal Lionsgate film. We use the same cameras, the same crews, the same lighting and all that type of stuff same as Union films, WGA, SAG but these two films man are gonna be real epic, meaning proportion, twice the budget. And we can spend 10 million dollars like Hollywood spends 25 million, the same way we did Church Girl. It’s about being good stewards with it and so we’re excited. Those are the next two films, Israel and I are partners now, everything that we do – we merge our companies together. We did this last record together, the G Step 7 record which is an amazing record. I think it will be a staple in the church for a long time to come. We won a Grammy on that record this year. We’re gearing up for a couple of more records, we released that “Darling Chet” record, we’re doing Bible study curriculums. RGM stands for Reverence God and Media, which means that any form of media that we can put our hands, our thoughts and our hearts to – to spread the Gospel – that’s what we’re gonna do. So definitely in the next two films, we start pre-production real soon here – and the next couple of months will be the next couple of more records and one of the things that I think I’m really excited about to be honest, is a television show that we’re developing as a sitcom. It’s a faith based sitcom, it won’t feel so faith based, but it is from front to back. We’re in the mists of developing that now for network. So that’s going to be one of our fun baby projects ‘cause it’s coming together.

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Interview: Ron Clements and John Musker of “The Little Mermaid”

Posted on September 30, 2013 at 3:59 pm

After Walt Disney died, the studio he founded faltered, especially Disney animation. Following the powerhouse classics like “Peter Pan,” “Dumbo,” and “The Jungle Book” (the last animated film Walt Disney supervised personally), the animation division became mired in struggles that produced disappointments like “The Black Cauldron.” The documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty tells the story of Walt’s nephew, Roy E. Disney, executives Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner, and a new team of animators, writers, and producers brought the studio back for another series of instant classics like “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast.” The movie that was the turning point was this week’s DVD/Blu-Ray Pick of the Week, The Little Mermaid, one of my very favorites. It was a thrill to speak to the writer/director team of Ron Clements and John Musker about how it all came together.

Tell me how you first started working on this movie, because this was a big transitional moment for Disney animation.

RC: Well, I actually pitched the movie. This was around I think 1985. \I’m bad with dates but this was period of shortly after those kind of a big transition at Disney. Mike Eisner and Roy Disney and Jeffrey Katzenberg came. Roy Disney came back to Disney. He had left for a while. Michael had this thing called “Gong Show.” He’d come over from Paramount Studios. I guess they had that there. It was a way for generating new ideas for animated films or for any films. But in this case, animated films. So he got a group of story people and the directors together in a room. The idea was that everyone was supposed to go out and find five new ideas for animated features. Then, we would meet again in 2 weeks and pitch the ideas. They called it the “Gong Show” because if your idea was not good, it got a gong. So I took that very seriously and I looked for ideas. That same night I went into a bookstore in North Hollywood. I picked up a book of fairy tales, just kind of looking for ideas. I came across The Little Mermaid. I don’t know if I had ever read the story before so I was reading it on the bookstore. As I was reading it, I got really excited because Hans Christian Andersen writes very visually and very cinematically. The images just kind of leap off the page. I thought, “This could really make a great movie. I wonder why they’ve never done this.” Then, as I got through the story I realized maybe part of the reason is that it’s a very, very sad story. It kind of starts sad and then it gets sadder. Then she dies in the end.

So I was thinking about trying to come up with a way to put a little difference in the story so then it would have a little happier ending. I wanted to make the witch more of a villain than she was in the story and turn it into a little bit of more into a fairy tale. So I wrote up a two-page treatment with the basic idea. There’s only one character name in the treatment and that’s Ariel. I called her “Ariel” in the treatment. I’m not sure why but I sort of liked that name. Probably a good name for a mermaid. I also looked for four more ideas because they wanted five ideas. There were other ideas that I came with that I wrote two-page treatments for. But when we reconvened, he said, “Just pitch your best idea.” When they got to me, I said “The Little Mermaid.”

It was gonged.

Partly because Disney had “Splash.” They were working on a sequel to “Splash” which they never actually made. So they gonged it. But I gave them the treatment anyway and the other treatments. A couple days later, I got a call from Jeffrey Katzenberg. He went through the different treatments. Then, he said, “Michael and I looked at this ‘Little Mermaid’ thing and we think it’s really good. We want to do it. We want to put it into development,” which I was very excited about because I was really depressed when it got gonged.

One reason I love this movie is the traditional, hand-drawn animation.

JM: Growing up, I was always a fan of this animation. I drew my stuff. In college, I was a cartoonist at The Daily Northwestern. So I draw myself. I was an animator. But basically, I went to Northwestern to major in English, wound up in college for two years. Studied animation there. Came to Disney. My first week at Disney was the week that “Star Wars” came out. But anyway, I got to learn from Eric Larson, who’s one of the “Nine Old Men.” He was sort of the mentor for the younger animators. Literally, you would take your animation to him and he would take a piece of paper and draw, show you how you could improve the acting and the timing and the phrasing and staging and all that sort of stuff. It was really a craft that was passed on from one to the other. But as a kid, certainly, the Disney animated films seemed more vivid to me than a live action film.

There was something about the caricature element, I think not only are things sort of bigger and broader but you can get to the essence of things. So it really had a very strong appeal. I saw “Sleeping Beauty” when I was like 6 years old at the Mercury Theatre.

Then when I came to Disney I was in the company of these wonderful artists. People like Glen Keane, like Mark Henn, who were brilliant animators who could really bring these things to life. Watching it, it was a magical moment always when you see the first animation come to life, like when I saw the first animation on Ariel or on Sebastian or the Genie when we did Aladdin. It isn’t a drawing anymore. It’s a real character. You started treating them that way. Even the animators get protective with their characters. “My character wouldn’t do that.” “Sebastian wouldn’t do that.” They’re all grounded on recognizable human behavior identified through your reliability.

The medium with which you tell the story has evolved over the years. I love 3D animation. I love hand drawn animation. Certainly, the big compelling emotionally evolving stories, wonderfully done in 3D. I like Brad Bird and John Lasseter. But I still draw myself since I am fond of this kind of magic trick, where you can take all this expressiveness and power of drawing and add the element of performance and time. I do feel like animated films really combine a lot of different of art forms, film-making and writing and drawing and painting, to a certain extent even sculpting. It’s a wonderful medium to work with as a craftsman because it’s such so rich and so varied and so expressive.

One of my all-time favorite Disney villains is Ursula the sea-witch. So tell me about developing that character.

RC: She was really a fun character to develop. I think John and I had a lot of fun with her. We had met with Howard Ashman fairly early on. We talked about the songs. Mostly, about where they might go. We talked about the witch’s song. Howard always saw the witch as Joan Collins, the “Dynasty” villain. When we wrote the script, we actually were thinking Beatrice Arthur a little bit. Then, when we went to casting, we wanted to try to cast Beatrice Arthur. Actually, I don’t think we ever got past her agent. They were insulted that we were thinking of her as a witch. I don’t think that they liked the idea. Pat Carroll then actually auditioned for the role. She did a great job. She really was just right. So that all worked out really well. Also, the other thing about the character is we developed her. She didn’t start out being part squid or part octopus. Before that, we explored her as part manta ray and part fish. Then we saw a pretty simple drawing, putting Ursula on an octopus body with tentacles. That was like “Yeah, that’s it.” That’s right. We studied octopus footage just to see how they move. There was a very kind of seductive and yet scary aspect. It’s just the sinuous way they move. So it all kind of came together. John and I, we like villains. She was certainly fun to do.

And this movie also has one of my favorite Disney princes.

RC: I’m glad to hear you say that. I mean, because princes are tough. They are always tough. The toughest character to animate. That’s why in Snow White, you only see the prince at the very beginning of the movie and at the end of the movie. They’ve always kept the princes to a minimum. Same with Cinderella. Cinderella has a little better prince. But still, they’re hard to draw. They’re hard to animate. The acting is tough. A realistic girl is hard but guys are harder to do. Girls are more fun to draw. Guys are tough to draw. So it’s got to be a really good animator. Only the best animators really can do the prince. But it’s not the most fun character to animate. We really wanted him to be more of a character, more likeable and to get more of him. Even though, it’s a little bit of a kind of a thankless job. Even for the actors and the animators. It’s like it’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it.

Tell me a little bit about the challenge of underwater scenes and what that’s like for animators.

RC: When we first proposed it, we knew that it was going to be really, really challenging. I mean, for a lot of reasons. But one of the big reasons is two-thirds of the movie takes place underwater. All that requires a lot of effects animation. We have two kinds of animation in these animated films. We have character animation, the artists who animate the characters. They’re kind of like actors. We always feel they are actors with a pencil. Glen Keane and Mark Henn did Ariel. That’s what they do. Then, we have effects animators. Effects animators do the non-character stuff that moves which is like water, waves, or bubbles. Or fire or smoke or light effects, anything that moves that isn’t the character. This probably had more character animation than any Disney movie project since “Fantasia.” And it really had a lot of effects, even with the character stuff — like whenever Ariel is underwater, her hair has to move all the time. Hair moving underwater is tricky. We had a lot of meetings about hair. One of the extras in the video is some of the live action footage that we shot for reference to see the hair floating.

JM: You need people who have to do all the bubbles and all the underwater patterns and all that. We had a budget and the schedule and everything so we really did have to pick our spots. Like “Here’s where the water is got to be, so it’s got to be the A level in this scene. In this other one, the water is not quite as important. This one is quick scene, we can kind of punch this one a little bit. But this one is got to be really the top of the line.”

The crazy thing is even to get the production level we want on the original film, we want some hand inking. They’ve gotten away from hand inking in fact, certainly. So we sent some of the bubbles in the movie actually to mainland China. They were inked in China.

Why does this story have such enduring appeal?

JM: You see at the heart of it, “The Little Mermaid” is the father-daughter story. It’s an overprotective father. There’s a daughter who is kind of adventurous and rebellious and wanting to see a new world. How do they resolve that? That story is still in place today.

Interview: “The Little Mermaid’s” Jodi Benson

Posted on September 29, 2013 at 2:27 pm

It is always a delight to speak with the sweet-voiced Jodi Benson, who plays Ariel in this week’s DVD/Blu-Ray Pick of the Week, The Little Mermaid. She has also provided the voice for characters including Barbie in the “Toy Story” movies, Weebo in “Flubber,” and Helen of Troy in Disney’s “Hercules: Zero to Hero.”

I love the story of how you originally were cast in the role.

I was in the Broadway musical called “Smile” with Howard Ashman and Marvin Hamlisch around ’84 and ’85. When the musical shut down rather quickly, Howard was in the middle of pre-production of “The Little Mermaid”. He was kind enough to invite all the girls in the cast to audition for the movie because they were looking for actresses who could do their own singing.

I’d never been in front of the microphone like that. I’d never done voiceovers so I just kind of went in, created what I kind of thought she would sound like, saying a little bit of the song. A year and a half later my tape was selected. So it was just a huge, huge surprise and a huge blessing.

What did they tell you about the character?

Basically, there was a little thumbnail sketch. We had most of the script. Then, they just said that she’s headstrong. She’s tenacious. She’s passionate. She has a lot of drive. Between the dialogues that they had and a little bit of the pencil sketch, I just kind of went in and started going for it. But directors Ron Clements and John Musker and Howard Ashman were there. They were just directing me all the way until they got exactly what they wanted.

Do you feel that there’s always an element of acting in any song?

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it is. It’s a story song. “Part of Your World” is definitely a story song. That part of it is what I love. I love any kind of story song that way. That focuses so much on the music and the notes per se as just really trying to create a feeling for the character. Howard was just brilliant at doing that.

The traditional Broadway structure which is used in this movie is that ten minutes into it, Ariel sings a song about her dream. That really kind of what sets the whole story going.

Absolutely. It’s beautiful when you have that ”I want” song. Howard would say, “You want to root for them. You want everything to work out for them when you hear what their heart is and what they’re trying to describe.

Getting to record “Part of your World” with Howard there at my side I was in such good hands because he had already laid down the demo. He knew exactly what he wanted and what would work. It’s very different than singing it on stage or in a Broadway setting. So we just try to create a much more intimate feel.

When you were interacting with the Sea Witch, were you in the same room together? Or were you separate when you were recording?

The first day we recorded all together. We did a read-through together with the cast. Then, we all recorded together with plexiglass in between us, which was really smart on their part. Because you got to react off of each other. You got to play off of each other as if you were on stage.

The second day on, we were separate and would go one-on-one. But you already done all that work and you kind of knew in your mind and in your ear, you could hear what the other character had already brought to the table. So that was really, really helpful. Unfortunately, we don’t do that anymore. But that was really great for our project.

When your family watches the movie, what do they think about it?

Oh, they love it. My kids love it. We just got back from Walt Disney World and riding the attraction. It’s just amazing. We’re all so blessed, so thankful and just incredibly thrilled that it has such great longevity. I would have never guessed that this job would be the job that just keeps going. It’s wonderful. Just really wonderful.

What is it about this story that makes it just so enduring, so touching?

It’s a classic fairy tale. Ron Clements really twisted the end and there was a great team over at Disney. Just adding the element of Howard. Howard was genius. They were so smart to bring him in and to create this music to add to it. Every element came together perfectly. It was at the right time. It was really at the right time for the studio. I just think the longevity of it in getting to enjoy it as a family is just great. I think introducing it is pretty special for a family member to say, “I grew up with this film. This is how I felt about it. I’m so excited to share it with you.” I think it makes it really cool for families to get to do that together.

And you are Ariel in the theme park attractions, right?

I’m Ariel everywhere. So it’s good. She’s an ongoing character. It’s an ongoing job, an ongoing voice and I’m thrilled.

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