Counterfactuals: New, And A Bit Alarming
A friend recently posed to me the hypothetical (and I'm just now realizing probably rhetorical) question, "Where would we be if Howard Ashman were still alive?"
And my immediate response was "Well, Wicked probably wouldn't exist, or at least not in the form it does today."
Which led me down a rabbit hole of counterfactualizing an elaborate timeline in which Howard Ashman did not die in 1991, and continued to change the landscape of Disney and musical theater in a radical way.
(NOTE: This is all for fun and intended to be rather tongue-in-cheek. I do not have the ability to accurately predict this or any other alternate futures. If I did, I would become a time-traveling theatrical producer.)
You see, Howard Ashman's role in the shaping of a generation of childhoods began in 1987/88, when he was brought in to write lyrics for Disney's new animated feature, Oliver And Company. While working on that movie, he became involved in another project that was in the works, a musical adaptation of The Little Mermaid. Ashman became a significant creative force in the movie, and he brought on his previous collaborator Alan Menken (with whom he had written Little Shop Of Horrors and God Bless You Mr. Rosewater) to compose the music. Ashman became very involved in the storytelling and casting. In particular, he pushed for the casting of Jodi Benson in the lead role. He had previously worked with Benson in the musical Smile, which Ashman had written with composer Marvin Hamlisch (A Chorus Line). Curiously enough, though Smile was a flop, one song from it has proven to endure. A ballad sung by Jodi Benson's character, entitled "Disneyland."
Following the success of The Little Mermaid, Ashman and Menken were immediately hired again to repeat their success with Beauty And The Beast, and Aladdin. Sadly, Howard Ashman did not live to see Aladdin through to the end. Lyricist Tim Rice (Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita) was brought on to finish the job.
But what if Howard Ashman had lived?
Well, the changes start immediately. With Ashman able to see Aladdin through, Tim Rice is never brought into Disney. When production begins on both The Lion King and Pocahontas, the latter is seen as the more "artistic" project, and Ashman and Menken, as the A-Team, are designated to write the songs for that. In our timeline, Tim Rice was given the job of lyrics for The Lion King, and it was him who suggested Elton John for the music. But without Tim Rice in the room for Aladdin, he is not involved in The Lion King. Now, it is possible that Disney would have settled on Rice anyway, but for Aladdin, he was brought on in a hurry, and with this new timeline, Disney has the luxury to pick a more local, more recently relevant composer and lyricist. And since Ashman still has creative sway at Disney, I think he suggests his former collaborator Marvin Hamlisch, who in turn suggests David Zippel, a choice supported by Alan Menken, who had worked with him some years previously.
The songs for The Lion King being written by Hamlisch and Zippel rather than John and Rice means they are much more in a musical theater style than a pop style. While their version of The Lion King might be quite good, the iconic "Circle Of Life" opening is never written, and without that lightning-in-a-bottle magic, the movie fails to become the iconic touchstone of the Disney Renaissance that it is in our timeline.
Work on Pocahontas continues, and with Ashman available to write the lyrics, Stephen Schwartz is never brought on board. Now, both Ashman and Schwartz were famously very involved in the storytelling of the Disney movies they worked on, so it's hard to say how Pocahontas would play out in this alternate timeline. I think, though, that executive decisions from Disney trying to make Pocahontas a major, important, award-winning movie, ultimately override everything else, and the movie ends up looking pretty similar to the one we got in our timeline, except that Mel Gibson is replaced by a singing actor from the stage. And I think the same is true of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame as well. Ironically, I think Ashman's lyrical style would suite Hunchback less well than Schwartz's ultimately did, but the thing people ultimately remember best about Hunchback is the music, not the lyrics, and Alan Menken is still at the helm on that front.
With Stephen Schwartz not invited to join the Disney crew, his career takes a different trajectory. I can't say if it's changed for the better, but it's definitely changed for good.
Without being hired to write the lyrics for Pocahontas and Hunchback, Schwartz is never given his first solo songwriting project with Disney, Mulan. He is also then not subsequently poached by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Dreamworks to write the songs for Prince Of Egypt. Without an in at Dreamworks (which in turn was connected to Universal), Schwartz is unable to acquire the rights to adapt Wicked from Universal. (Or, if he is, it's with heavy supervision from the studio.) If Wicked does ever come to the stage, it's in a very different form from the Wicked we know and love today.
Instead of Stephen Schwartz, Mulan goes to David Zippel and Marvin Hamlisch again to write the songs. Dreamworks does attempt to poach them, but Hamlisch is too big a fish to be poached, and Zippel is too small for Dreamworks to care. "I'll Make A Man Out Of You" is never written, and a thousand memes are never born.
Meanwhile, Menken and Ashman are attached to Hercules. Now, Hercules is a divisive movie. The directors, Musker and Clements, were under a lot of pressure to make it a hit, and it was initially conceived as a sort of grand epic, following in the vein of Hunchback. A lot of the movie was reconceived around James Woods' unexpectedly comic take on Hades. It's hard to say what would have happened in Ashman were involved. Ashman was heavily involved in the casting of his projects, and may have turned Woods down. He might have insisted on more singing talent. As it is, Hercules kind of feels more like a "movie with music" than the full-on "movie musical" feel you get from Beauty And The Beast. Ashman might have steered the project more toward something in the latter area, or he might have just gone along with the ride. But in our timeline, Hercules was not a huge smash, and regardless of what direction it would take, I don't see it being a huge smash in that timeline either.
But snapping back to the 1994. Disney is working on launching its first Broadway musical, Beauty And The Beast. With Howard Ashman still attached, the musical in this alternate timeline is a bit stronger than the one we ultimately got, but it's fundamentally very similar, and enjoys a similar level of success. Emboldened to continue with Disney Theatrical Productions, Disney looks for another movie to bring to the stage. But without the juggernaut of The Lion King, they turn instead to another Menken/Ashman project, The Little Mermaid. Produced closer to the original movie, and with more of the original team attached, The Little Mermaid is more successful in 1997 than it was in 2008. It's hard to say exactly how it plays out with a different director leading it, but I suspect Jodi Benson returns to reprise her role as Ariel onstage, if not in the original cast, then as a replacement not long into the run. Donna Murphy, hot off two Tony awards for Passion and The King And I, is at least approached for the role of Ursula, though I don't know if she takes it. Ragtime wins the 1998 Tony award for Best Musical, and with Ragtime's continued success, Parade the following year is panned as being not just a downer, but a derivative downer.
Producers in Germany are uninterested in bringing over The Little Mermaid. Certainly not as strongly as our timeline's The Lion King. Because of this, along with no Stephen Schwartz to help push it along, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame does not get adapted for the stage at this time in Germany. It may follow later, but without the German market pushing it to be darker and more epic, if it ever is adapted for stage, it's more in the vein of Beauty And The Beast than the Hunchback that took the theater world by storm a few years ago.
At this point, Disney Theatrical Productions continue with Tarzan and Mary Poppins, which are largely unaffected by this timeline shift.
Without The Lion King on Broadway, Julie Taymor never gains her current level of notoriety. She is not hired to direct The Magic Flute with the Metropolitan opera, and she never writes Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.
Since Tim Rice and Alan Menken remain unpaired, King David takes a different direction. I don't know whose project this was, but it seems like a Tim Rice project, given that it closely resembles his work on Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. If it was a Rice-led project, he goes to Andrew Lloyd Webber to write the score. Lloyd Webber is happy to oblige, and with him attached, it actually gets a full theatrical production, and maybe a little notoriety. But at this point Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita are two decades old, and King David more or less fizzles out, just like it did in our timeline.
If King David was an Alan Menken-led project, I don't see it even getting off the ground without Tim Rice attached.
(Also without the Tim Rice/Elton John pairing, Aida the musical never gets made. Disney, for their part, did not use my idea of giving Aida a happy ending by having Godzilla smash through the wall of the tomb at the very end, thus freeing Aida and Radames.)
At the end of the century, Pixar comes along and kills the Disney Renaissance. Ashman and Menken stay as Disney's in-house songwriters, but nothing from the first decade of the 2000s is very successful. Glenn Slater is never brought in to write the lyrics for Home On The Range and subsequently The Little Mermaid on Broadway, and so he never starts his partnership with Menken. His resume is also not high-profile enough at this point to be approached by Andrew Lloyd Webber for his decades-in-the-making passion project, Love Never Dies. (And, following that, School Of Rock.) I think neither of these musicals are much affected though, because with Andrew Lloyd Webber's weight behind it, even if Glenn Slater was passed over, some other lyricist would have been found. Neither of these musicals are especially helped or hurt by Slater's involvement, and they turn out looking a little different, but basically having the same impact.
In some way, shape, or form, Enchanted happens in 2007, and Disney gains the confidence to try another big movie musical. 2009's The Princess And The Frog. Menken and Ashman are uninvolved in this project (Randy Newman wrote the score), and it comes out looking pretty much the same as in our timeline. It does fine, but not as well as Disney hoped, and the plug is pulled on all future traditionally animated movies. Production continues on Tangled more or less as it did in our timeline, with the one difference that Ashman is supplying the lyrics rather than Slater. So, a lot more internal rhymes.
Tangled is enough of a success that production moves forward with Frozen. As with Princess And The Frog, Ashman and Menken are not directly involved with this project either, but their influence is felt. You see, without Wicked to imitate, "Let It Go" is never written, and, in fact, the whole movie takes on a very different form. Idina Menzel, who never played her star-making role, is not cast as Elsa, and all in all, the movie is far less commercially appealing. Maybe it flops, maybe it just does meh and never gets a sequel. But after three tries, Disney has not managed to revitalize the princess formula, and while production on Moana may not halt, it is certainly downscaled. My suspicion, however, is that Lin-Manuel Miranda and The Rock are still brought on board (Miranda's career is largely unaffected by this timeline shift, since he doesn't draw huge influence from Stephen Schwartz, and never significantly collaborated with any of the above names until after Hamilton took off), and it's Moana that becomes the big surprise hit that revitalizes the Disney Princess genre rather than Frozen.
Now, I know what you're thinking. What about Dreamworks? Well, Prince Of Egypt and The Road To El Dorado do play out somewhat differently. The former because Schwartz is never poached from Disney, and the latter because Tim Rice and Elton John never paired up on Lion King, meaning no one has the bright idea to bring them back together for this. But in both cases, other songwriters are found (perhaps Ahrens and Flaherty?) and it is not the songs that make or break these films anyway. At this stage in Dreamworks Animation, they're trying a lot of new things, and it wouldn't be until 2001 anyway that they hit on their flagship, Shrek. Shrek owes a lot to having the Disney brand to mock, but that brand was in place with or without Ashman, and so Dreamworks is able to achieve its fame more or less as it did in our timeline. This then allows the Dreamworks branding to start to feed back into Disney's inspiration for both Enchanted and Tangled, meaning fundamentally not much substantive changes in Disney or Dreamworks output in the first decade of the 21st century.
So there you have it. If Howard Ashman had not died, Wicked would never have existed, and Frozen would have flopped. Like all timelines, this one's a bit of a mixed bag.
There's just one question remaining, and that is Alan Menken's independent projects. And these are very up in the air, because I have no idea where the idea to make a musical based on Sister Act, or Leap Of Faith, or The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz originated, or how Menken got involved. I suspect that Menken and Ashman would continue their stage collaboration independently of Disney, however, and who's to say what they would have come up with to follow God Bless You Mr. Rosewater and Little Shop Of Horrors? Something new, I'm sure, and perhaps a bit alarming!
And my immediate response was "Well, Wicked probably wouldn't exist, or at least not in the form it does today."
Which led me down a rabbit hole of counterfactualizing an elaborate timeline in which Howard Ashman did not die in 1991, and continued to change the landscape of Disney and musical theater in a radical way.
(NOTE: This is all for fun and intended to be rather tongue-in-cheek. I do not have the ability to accurately predict this or any other alternate futures. If I did, I would become a time-traveling theatrical producer.)
Howard Ashman and frequent collaborator Alan Menken
You see, Howard Ashman's role in the shaping of a generation of childhoods began in 1987/88, when he was brought in to write lyrics for Disney's new animated feature, Oliver And Company. While working on that movie, he became involved in another project that was in the works, a musical adaptation of The Little Mermaid. Ashman became a significant creative force in the movie, and he brought on his previous collaborator Alan Menken (with whom he had written Little Shop Of Horrors and God Bless You Mr. Rosewater) to compose the music. Ashman became very involved in the storytelling and casting. In particular, he pushed for the casting of Jodi Benson in the lead role. He had previously worked with Benson in the musical Smile, which Ashman had written with composer Marvin Hamlisch (A Chorus Line). Curiously enough, though Smile was a flop, one song from it has proven to endure. A ballad sung by Jodi Benson's character, entitled "Disneyland."
In said song, sung by Jodi Benson (pictured here with Anne Marie Bobby in a scene from Smile), the lyrics allude to a magic carpet. Later on, Howard Ashman would be the one to pitch Aladdin to Disney. Clearly the man was planning ahead.
But what if Howard Ashman had lived?
Well, the changes start immediately. With Ashman able to see Aladdin through, Tim Rice is never brought into Disney. When production begins on both The Lion King and Pocahontas, the latter is seen as the more "artistic" project, and Ashman and Menken, as the A-Team, are designated to write the songs for that. In our timeline, Tim Rice was given the job of lyrics for The Lion King, and it was him who suggested Elton John for the music. But without Tim Rice in the room for Aladdin, he is not involved in The Lion King. Now, it is possible that Disney would have settled on Rice anyway, but for Aladdin, he was brought on in a hurry, and with this new timeline, Disney has the luxury to pick a more local, more recently relevant composer and lyricist. And since Ashman still has creative sway at Disney, I think he suggests his former collaborator Marvin Hamlisch, who in turn suggests David Zippel, a choice supported by Alan Menken, who had worked with him some years previously.
The songs for The Lion King being written by Hamlisch and Zippel rather than John and Rice means they are much more in a musical theater style than a pop style. While their version of The Lion King might be quite good, the iconic "Circle Of Life" opening is never written, and without that lightning-in-a-bottle magic, the movie fails to become the iconic touchstone of the Disney Renaissance that it is in our timeline.
While looking at this picture, I want you to imagine the giant "BA-da-ba-BUM ba-da-da DA! DA!" opening from A Chorus Line. It works, doesn't it?
Work on Pocahontas continues, and with Ashman available to write the lyrics, Stephen Schwartz is never brought on board. Now, both Ashman and Schwartz were famously very involved in the storytelling of the Disney movies they worked on, so it's hard to say how Pocahontas would play out in this alternate timeline. I think, though, that executive decisions from Disney trying to make Pocahontas a major, important, award-winning movie, ultimately override everything else, and the movie ends up looking pretty similar to the one we got in our timeline, except that Mel Gibson is replaced by a singing actor from the stage. And I think the same is true of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame as well. Ironically, I think Ashman's lyrical style would suite Hunchback less well than Schwartz's ultimately did, but the thing people ultimately remember best about Hunchback is the music, not the lyrics, and Alan Menken is still at the helm on that front.
With Stephen Schwartz not invited to join the Disney crew, his career takes a different trajectory. I can't say if it's changed for the better, but it's definitely changed for good.
Without being hired to write the lyrics for Pocahontas and Hunchback, Schwartz is never given his first solo songwriting project with Disney, Mulan. He is also then not subsequently poached by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Dreamworks to write the songs for Prince Of Egypt. Without an in at Dreamworks (which in turn was connected to Universal), Schwartz is unable to acquire the rights to adapt Wicked from Universal. (Or, if he is, it's with heavy supervision from the studio.) If Wicked does ever come to the stage, it's in a very different form from the Wicked we know and love today.
Idina Menzel's career suffers from being no longer able to originate her most iconic role. Kristin Chenoweth fares better, though she is not as instantly recognizable to non-theater crowds. Joel Grey's career is entirely unaffected.
Instead of Stephen Schwartz, Mulan goes to David Zippel and Marvin Hamlisch again to write the songs. Dreamworks does attempt to poach them, but Hamlisch is too big a fish to be poached, and Zippel is too small for Dreamworks to care. "I'll Make A Man Out Of You" is never written, and a thousand memes are never born.
Meanwhile, Menken and Ashman are attached to Hercules. Now, Hercules is a divisive movie. The directors, Musker and Clements, were under a lot of pressure to make it a hit, and it was initially conceived as a sort of grand epic, following in the vein of Hunchback. A lot of the movie was reconceived around James Woods' unexpectedly comic take on Hades. It's hard to say what would have happened in Ashman were involved. Ashman was heavily involved in the casting of his projects, and may have turned Woods down. He might have insisted on more singing talent. As it is, Hercules kind of feels more like a "movie with music" than the full-on "movie musical" feel you get from Beauty And The Beast. Ashman might have steered the project more toward something in the latter area, or he might have just gone along with the ride. But in our timeline, Hercules was not a huge smash, and regardless of what direction it would take, I don't see it being a huge smash in that timeline either.
But snapping back to the 1994. Disney is working on launching its first Broadway musical, Beauty And The Beast. With Howard Ashman still attached, the musical in this alternate timeline is a bit stronger than the one we ultimately got, but it's fundamentally very similar, and enjoys a similar level of success. Emboldened to continue with Disney Theatrical Productions, Disney looks for another movie to bring to the stage. But without the juggernaut of The Lion King, they turn instead to another Menken/Ashman project, The Little Mermaid. Produced closer to the original movie, and with more of the original team attached, The Little Mermaid is more successful in 1997 than it was in 2008. It's hard to say exactly how it plays out with a different director leading it, but I suspect Jodi Benson returns to reprise her role as Ariel onstage, if not in the original cast, then as a replacement not long into the run. Donna Murphy, hot off two Tony awards for Passion and The King And I, is at least approached for the role of Ursula, though I don't know if she takes it. Ragtime wins the 1998 Tony award for Best Musical, and with Ragtime's continued success, Parade the following year is panned as being not just a downer, but a derivative downer.
Producers in Germany are uninterested in bringing over The Little Mermaid. Certainly not as strongly as our timeline's The Lion King. Because of this, along with no Stephen Schwartz to help push it along, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame does not get adapted for the stage at this time in Germany. It may follow later, but without the German market pushing it to be darker and more epic, if it ever is adapted for stage, it's more in the vein of Beauty And The Beast than the Hunchback that took the theater world by storm a few years ago.
Like maybe these guys don't get cut. And their roles maybe even get expanded! Wouldn't everyone just love that⸮
At this point, Disney Theatrical Productions continue with Tarzan and Mary Poppins, which are largely unaffected by this timeline shift.
Without The Lion King on Broadway, Julie Taymor never gains her current level of notoriety. She is not hired to direct The Magic Flute with the Metropolitan opera, and she never writes Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.
Since Tim Rice and Alan Menken remain unpaired, King David takes a different direction. I don't know whose project this was, but it seems like a Tim Rice project, given that it closely resembles his work on Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. If it was a Rice-led project, he goes to Andrew Lloyd Webber to write the score. Lloyd Webber is happy to oblige, and with him attached, it actually gets a full theatrical production, and maybe a little notoriety. But at this point Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita are two decades old, and King David more or less fizzles out, just like it did in our timeline.
If King David was an Alan Menken-led project, I don't see it even getting off the ground without Tim Rice attached.
(Also without the Tim Rice/Elton John pairing, Aida the musical never gets made. Disney, for their part, did not use my idea of giving Aida a happy ending by having Godzilla smash through the wall of the tomb at the very end, thus freeing Aida and Radames.)
At the end of the century, Pixar comes along and kills the Disney Renaissance. Ashman and Menken stay as Disney's in-house songwriters, but nothing from the first decade of the 2000s is very successful. Glenn Slater is never brought in to write the lyrics for Home On The Range and subsequently The Little Mermaid on Broadway, and so he never starts his partnership with Menken. His resume is also not high-profile enough at this point to be approached by Andrew Lloyd Webber for his decades-in-the-making passion project, Love Never Dies. (And, following that, School Of Rock.) I think neither of these musicals are much affected though, because with Andrew Lloyd Webber's weight behind it, even if Glenn Slater was passed over, some other lyricist would have been found. Neither of these musicals are especially helped or hurt by Slater's involvement, and they turn out looking a little different, but basically having the same impact.
You know, when Andrew Lloyd Webber was in the process of composing Love Never Dies, his cat wandered over his keyboard and deleted the whole score, forcing him to start over. So the next time you complain about Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, just remember that they tried to save us.
In some way, shape, or form, Enchanted happens in 2007, and Disney gains the confidence to try another big movie musical. 2009's The Princess And The Frog. Menken and Ashman are uninvolved in this project (Randy Newman wrote the score), and it comes out looking pretty much the same as in our timeline. It does fine, but not as well as Disney hoped, and the plug is pulled on all future traditionally animated movies. Production continues on Tangled more or less as it did in our timeline, with the one difference that Ashman is supplying the lyrics rather than Slater. So, a lot more internal rhymes.
Tangled is enough of a success that production moves forward with Frozen. As with Princess And The Frog, Ashman and Menken are not directly involved with this project either, but their influence is felt. You see, without Wicked to imitate, "Let It Go" is never written, and, in fact, the whole movie takes on a very different form. Idina Menzel, who never played her star-making role, is not cast as Elsa, and all in all, the movie is far less commercially appealing. Maybe it flops, maybe it just does meh and never gets a sequel. But after three tries, Disney has not managed to revitalize the princess formula, and while production on Moana may not halt, it is certainly downscaled. My suspicion, however, is that Lin-Manuel Miranda and The Rock are still brought on board (Miranda's career is largely unaffected by this timeline shift, since he doesn't draw huge influence from Stephen Schwartz, and never significantly collaborated with any of the above names until after Hamilton took off), and it's Moana that becomes the big surprise hit that revitalizes the Disney Princess genre rather than Frozen.
Just raising the point again that Moana, Elsa, and Anna all have still not been officially coronated as Disney Princesses, and neither has Eilonwy. No I will not let this go.
Now, I know what you're thinking. What about Dreamworks? Well, Prince Of Egypt and The Road To El Dorado do play out somewhat differently. The former because Schwartz is never poached from Disney, and the latter because Tim Rice and Elton John never paired up on Lion King, meaning no one has the bright idea to bring them back together for this. But in both cases, other songwriters are found (perhaps Ahrens and Flaherty?) and it is not the songs that make or break these films anyway. At this stage in Dreamworks Animation, they're trying a lot of new things, and it wouldn't be until 2001 anyway that they hit on their flagship, Shrek. Shrek owes a lot to having the Disney brand to mock, but that brand was in place with or without Ashman, and so Dreamworks is able to achieve its fame more or less as it did in our timeline. This then allows the Dreamworks branding to start to feed back into Disney's inspiration for both Enchanted and Tangled, meaning fundamentally not much substantive changes in Disney or Dreamworks output in the first decade of the 21st century.
So there you have it. If Howard Ashman had not died, Wicked would never have existed, and Frozen would have flopped. Like all timelines, this one's a bit of a mixed bag.
There's just one question remaining, and that is Alan Menken's independent projects. And these are very up in the air, because I have no idea where the idea to make a musical based on Sister Act, or Leap Of Faith, or The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz originated, or how Menken got involved. I suspect that Menken and Ashman would continue their stage collaboration independently of Disney, however, and who's to say what they would have come up with to follow God Bless You Mr. Rosewater and Little Shop Of Horrors? Something new, I'm sure, and perhaps a bit alarming!
Howard Ashman and Audrey II. You know, it still amazes me that somewhat at Disney looked at this and said, "Yeah, this is the guy we want for our big kid-friendly happy Princess musical."
Join me next time, when I'll explain how Stephen Sondheim not liking opera in 1960 led to Anne Hathaway winning an Oscar in 2013.
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