Howard is a Poignant Tribute to a Songwriting Genius

 

Last summer, I went and saw my college’s production of Little Shop of Horrors. I’d seen this show numerous times (heck, I was even in a version of it in High School!), but it never fails to dazzle me. The songs, the puppetry, the dark sense of humor, it’s all just so up my alley. On this particular viewing, though, one of the songs hit me like it never had before. The song in question was Somewhere That’s Green, which features Audrey wistfully singing about her desires to move into a traditional 1950s suburban home. It’s a tongue-in-cheek parody of the classic “I Want” songs, with the joke being that Audrey wants TV dinners and a twelve-inch screen TV rather than to go somewhere over the rainbow.

It’s all so silly and humorous, yet, somehow, those final few lines got me all choked up. It had never happened before, but as Somewhere That’s Green wrapped up, I was dabbing tears away from my eyes. Maybe it was just my mood that day. Maybe it was because I was older now and better understood the concept of wanting something that seems so close yet so far away. Whatever the reason, the lyrics that songwriter Howard Ashman had penned for this tune had touched my heart like I had never heard the song before. That’s the power of a great lyricist.

This particular great lyricist gets an appropriately superb documentary with Howard. Hailing from director Don Hahn (who produced a number of animated Disney films like Beauty and the Beast), Howard chronicles the life of Howard Ashman from his childhood days in growing up in Baltimore, Maryland to his time establishing the WPA Theater in New York City to his time spent at Walt Disney Animation Studios writing the Oscar-winning tunes for movies like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.

In the second-half of the runtime, the tragic element of Ashman being diagnosed with HIV enters the picture. Ashman chose to keep his diagnosis secret from nearly everyone, including the folks at Disney. But he and his loved ones knew the time he had left was limited. Whatever time he had left, though, Ashman was going to use to express the sort of creativity he’d been exhibiting since he was a youngster.

Though Howard, like most documentaries, makes use of interviews with real-world people, it departs from traditional docs in how we don’t see these interviews. Instead, interviews with Ashman’s sister Sarah Gillespie and Ashman’s creative partner Alan Menken are merely heard as voice-over. These play over old photographs, footage of New York streets or images from the plays & movies Ashman wrote. The only person new get to see interviewed is Ashman himself through old TV interviews. Through this unique approach, which Hahn previously employed on the film Waking Sleeping Beauty, Ashman himself gets more centered in Howard. It’s a way of ensuring that a man who is no longer on this Earth can still be the most prominently-seen figure in his own documentary.

Hahn also proves very insightful on using lyrics from Ashman’s assorted songs to reflect the man’s mood at various points in his life. Lyrics from productions like Little Shop of Horrors, Smile and even a rejected tune for Jafar to sing from Aladdin take on whole new levels of meaning when placed against pivotal parts of Ashman’s life. Of course, the best use of one of Ashman’s songs comes towards the end when Alan Menken recounts a dream he had about Ashman the night this lyricists passed away. This was always going to be an incredibly moving moment but having it accompanied by a soft orchestral cover of Somewhere That’s Green, that just gives it an extra boost of poignancy.

Howard also makes one appreciate how Howard Ashman was always working as an underdog in his time as an artist. His own theater, WPA, was in such a rundown spot of NYC that Roger Corman observed that it looked like Skid Row from Little Shop! Even when he came to Disney Animation, it was in its bleakest period during the mid-1980s when the artists were being housed in trailers next to a bowling alley.

One can appreciate how much Ashman’s artistic fire endured even in these less-than-ideal confines. Similarly, Howard appropriately dedicates much of its runtime to exploring the AIDS crisis impacted Ashman’s life. At first, this was due to so many of his friends in the New York theater scene dying from the disease. This inspired Ashman to write a touching tribute song to New York’s LGBTQIA+ community entitled Sheridan Square. Of course, then the disease had a much more personal impact on Ashman himself when he was diagnosed with AIDS. Ashman’s partner, Bill Lauch, takes the viewer through Ashman’s struggles with AIDS in some of the emotionally vivid portions of Howard.

These pieces of narration ensure that Howard isn’t just a fluff piece promoting the Disney movies Ashman worked on. Lauch not only emphasizes Ashman’s struggles with AIDS, he and other interviewers are open about the stigmas attached to queer people who got this disease. So many people, including powerful politicians, painted a dehumanizing portrait of people living with this disease. Howard fights back against that perception not only through painting Howard Ashman as a fully-formed person but treating his sexuality as a natural part of who he was. Ashman’s sexuality doesn’t just come into play when he gets diagnosed with AIDS. It runs throughout the whole movie, including in segments where Lauch explains the cozy life he and Ashman built together. Lauch’s anecdotes paints such a warm and lovely portrait of the duo, thus ensuring that Howard doesn’t just focus on Ashman’s sexuality for tragic purposes.

At one point in Howard, Little Mermaid director John Musker notes that he and Ashman were watching a Little Mermaid float go down a road at Walt Disney World. As the float passed them by, Ashman, who was well aware of his terminal illness by now, turned to Musker and said “This is going to outlive me after I die.” Nearly thirty years after he passed away, Ashman’s works continue to enchant people. His bold creativity, his witty wordplay, his sense of empathy for his characters, these key components of Ashman’s work have all endured.

They’re the qualities that are emphasized so much throughout well-made documentary Howard. They’re the qualities that ensure that the world will always know characters like Seymour Krelborn, Ariel and Belle. And they’re the very qualities that ensure that someone can cry listening to Somewhere That’s Green for the umpteenth time.