from 2008
DON HAHN
talks about "Beauty and the Beast"

by Scott Wolf

Don is a two time Academy Award nominee who has a fascinating background and endless talents. He was at Disney when there was still a great presence of the great original Disney animators and he continues to thrive at Disney. Part of the fun of interviewing Don is his passion for his work and Disney animation, past and present. As much fun as it is to interview Don, it's fun to watch him when he's doing the interviewing, such as when he's moderating a panel discussion. It's an extreme pleasure to be able to bring you my interviews with Don Hahn.

SW: Was there ever a moment in your career where you thought,
"Wow, I've really made it"?

DH: I haven't yet. No, I don't think you do.

SW: What about being at the Oscars as a nominee for Best Picture?

DH: It's a weird thing, it's a humbling experience because I didn't make "Beauty and the Beast." I'm kind of the front man, I'm the Producer, so we got great seats. Elizabeth Taylor read my name that year. It's amazing but it's also humbling because you know there's six hundred people at a party somewhere who really did do the drawings and really did write the songs and really did the voices. So you're trying to be true to them and trying to understand that "I'm not Walt Disney," I'm lucky enough to work with these people, and I really mean that. So it's humbling - that's the general emotion that I got - I think most people do, we work in animation. If you talk to the "nine old men" or Glen Keane or whatever, yeah we're proud, yes we have egos, but it's a very humbling thing because it's an amazing team sport. That's generally how you feel, you're lucky enough to work with the people you work with. I was lucky to work with Woolie (Reitherman), I was lucky to work with (Robert) Zemeckis, or Kirk (Wise) & Gary (Trousdale) on "Beauty and the Beast" or Howard Ashman who was a genius.

SW: Yeah, speaking of "Beauty and the Beast," that followed the success of "Little Mermaid" which kind of resurrected the animated musical and kind of brought animation to new heights. When you were working there, was there a noticeable excitement over "The Little Mermaid"?

DH: Oh yeah. It was an explosion. There was stress about it, because it was like, "How do you beat this?" But, "Mermaid" was the flashpoint. "Rescuers Down Under" didn't perform at the box office but it was a huge technical achievement. It was the first digital movie of all time.

SW: It was completely digital?

DH: Yeah, animated or not. The whole CAPS system (Computer Animation Production System). It was drawn by hand but everything was tested and produced and colored in the computer. Now it's second nature, we shoot with digital cameras and films are released in digital cinema, but that was a landmark film that nobody really talks about.

When "Beauty" came around we always were afraid of being compared to "Mermaid" or feel like people will think we're just kind of repeating "Mermaid" so we really tried to step up and deliver. Again, it was a team effort. It was a perfect storm of people that made that movie. If you had to one person, I'd point to Howard Ashman during that era.

SW: How was he involved besides the music?

DH: It was more than that. He was an Executive Producer type person so he would come in and sit in on our early recording sessions, he sat in on our casting sessions. Jodi Bensen, for example, who did Ariel's voice was in "Smile" which was the Marvin Hamlisch Broadway show.

SW: Right, Howard Ashman did the lyrics and she sang a song about Disneyland.

DH: Right, she did that right before that, so he knew these people. Paige O'Hara (the voice of Belle), he knew from Broadway. We didn't know her, so he'd bring in these people to audition. He'd never pick them. He'd never override the Director's but he would say, "Here's an ensemble of people I know." "Here's 20 great Belle's" or "Here's 15 great Gaston's" and then we would all pick them together, Kirk and Gary, and Alan (Menkin) was there, and we would pick them, but, he would lead us to water again and again and again.

He also had an amazing appreciation for the films of Walt Disney. He always felt like "Beauty and the Beast," and "Mermaid," and "Aladdin" had to sit on the shelf alongside "Peter Pan," and "Cinderella," and "Snow White," and he said that. I have this great interview with him where he just talks about how important that is to him. Because of that, he felt like musical theatre had found a home in animation that it couldn't find on Broadway, that he couldn't make it work on Broadway but he could make it work in animation.

So he'd be the one if you had to point to at least an emotional centerpiece of that era, and he never got to see "Beauty and the Beast." He died before it came out, he died in March of '91 and the movie came out in November. He saw rough cuts of it... he hated it. (chuckles) I remember we took it back to New York in maybe late '90 or something and it was in pretty rough shape. I remember driving in the car afterwards, we got in the cab and going back to the hotel and he was like slumped in the back seat going, "There's not a laugh in it... it's just dead... it's stillborn... nothing works." He was just suicidal about it all, but, by the next day he was phoning in ideas and notes and writing new songs and throwing it out so it was what every artist goes through, that up and down. in London at the time, had a very successful commercial studio.

To make a very long story short, he signs on and after eight months we had twenty minutes of the film done and we showed it. It was very much like the Cocteau version of "Beauty and the Beast." Very moody, very European, very beautiful, but not a musical comedy kind of thing. No songs in fact.

So we threw that out and went back to the drawing board. Jeffrey (Katzenberg) talked Howard into doing songs for it, with the Purdums still on board. (Richard and wife Jill were working on the film together.) Then we worked on for another three months and the Purdums decided this is not the movie they would make, and with complete respect were going to step aside. And they did, I'm still friends with them, with complete respect.

Kirk & Gary had just directed "Cranium Command" in Florida (for Epcot), the little pre-show. Kirk was like 20, he was really a kid, and Jeffrey said, "Well, we need a Director, let's make you temporary Directors and we'll see how it goes." They ended up directing the whole movie and doing a great job. But, the story department on that movie was Chris Sanders who is now a director and Brenda Chapman who is now a Director and the head of story was Roger Allers who is now a Director and Kelly Asbury who is now a Director and directed "Shrek." Everybody on that movie in the story department has gone on to be the leaders in the animation industry, so it was a special time, really special time.

SW: I've heard Jeffrey say that looking back he felt he wasn't the easiest to work with. Did you feel that way?

DH: He was demanding. Really demanding. He was the carrot and the stick. He would be extremely demanding, always about the work, never personal, always about the work, but when something went well he was the first to call you on the phone the next day. When "Beauty and the Beast" got an Oscar nomination he sent 100 red roses to the lobby of the building for everybody. He was very generous along with being really tough on the work. But, it was a perfect storm of people.

You couldn't have had that era without him, without Roy Disney, without Michael Eisner, Peter Schneider, Frank Wells who okayed the money for the CAPS system. If you take out any one of those pieces it would be diminishment, but we had all those things and it just buzzed at a high level.

SW: What was Roy's involvement?

DH: I think you have to look at him as the emotional centerpiece of that era. It reminds me of the old stories of Walt Disney saying, "I didn't really write the music, and I didn't do the voices, and I didn't do the drawings, but I was like a bee going from flower to flower." That's what Roy did. A very self-effacing guy, very soft-spoken. Roy doesn't speak up in the room that much, but he's amazingly articulate on paper, so after a screening Roy would be in the room and say two things, then the next day we would get thirteen pages of the most beautifully written pros of what he liked, and what he didn't like. He just expresses himself in writing so that was really valuable.

So Jeffrey and Michael and everyone was able to defer to him and on important issues he really stood up for us so when we needed a computerized animation system that cost twenty million dollars but had no potential return on it, he pushed that through with Frank Wells, and that was done before "Mermaid" was a hit. People don't realize that. They think "Mermaid," "Beauty," and then we spent all this money but it was done before that. That's the kind of thing that Roy would do. He'd say, "I believe in animation. Even before it's a success you have to invest in it for it to be a success and I'm going to put my name forward and say that that's important. That's what this company's built on. So a really important role. He never came in and told us what to do. If he didn't like something, he'd be honest about it, but tremendously supportive from the wings.

SW: How did you find out “Beauty and the Beast” was nominated for Best Picture?

DH: It was about five o'clock one morning when they announced the Oscars and I got up early, sitting there in my pajamas, and turned the TV on and it was exciting.

SW: You heard about it on TV?

DH: That's how they do it. That's how everybody hears it. They broadcast it at five o'clock in the morning in Los Angeles which is eight o'clock in the morning in New York. The head of the academy and some actress gets up and announces all the nominees and that's how the world, including the nominees, find out.

So I was sitting there in my pajamas and it was really thrilling, but again that feeling of we did it, not I did, it was a real we did it. Then Katzenberg calls, Roy Disney calls, Eisner calls, Frank Wells calls, Peter Schneider calls. It was great because everybody shared the success so it was really amazing.

We had a great marketing department. This guy, Gary Kalkin was head of marketing and was an unsung hero. This may surprise people but he really calculated the Oscar nomination and marketed for over a year towards that point. You can't buy the academy, you can't buy a nomination, but you can showcase what you have. Like a political campaign, you can campaign and tell people what you're proud of. So we took the film to the New York film festival, we re-released the unfinished laser disc, we took it to Cannes, we had a show at the Whitney Museum. We did everything to tell people this is an art form, it's an American art form and it's back in a big way thanks to all these great artists, and we stand on the shoulders of "Mermaid" and the nine old men and all that stuff. That, plus a good movie, turned out to be an Academy Award nomination.

SW: And the first animated feature ever nominated for Best Picture.

DH: There's only one first, and that was "Beauty."

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