HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOWARD ASHMAN ♥ Born May 17, 1950
I first met Howard when he came to my apartment to meet about collaborating on Rosewater. My first impression was that he seemed edgy and guarded. He wore torn jeans and a bomber jacket. He talked with a tight, intense energy, chain-smoking the entire time. And he was clearly very smart.
When Howard worked it was a total commitment. And every fiber in his being was brought to bear.
I wanted to throttle him on a regular basis. When we were working he could be controlling, impatient, demanding, cutting, arrogant and condescending. And yet, he was actually the most considerate, thoughtful, smart, compassionate, wise, generous and supportive friend I’ve ever had.
Howard was a brilliant, complicated artist. I was not as close to him as some, but I saw him happy and I saw him mad. I saw him frustrated, and I saw him howl with laughter. I saw him caustic, and I saw him be disarmingly vulnerable. And Howard was a wonderful actor.
We learned a great deal from him. Ron [Clements] and I felt that songs should advance the story, but Howard’s ways of doing that were revelatory. He liked his songs to have information and to carry essential plot material. To take the key story beats and through the use of music to underline them and drive them home. From Howard, I learned the importance of grounding your writing in the specific, rather than the general. I watched Howard’s zealous defence of his material and ideas, anchored by their relationship to the story being told. All ideas are not created equal. There are definite reasons why some support the story more strongly, and we learned from Howard that those ideas must be defended. We saw inventiveness and passion from Howard in equal measure, qualities that produced art that has stood the test of time. We learned lessons of showmanship, of staging and characters, of using subtext to put ideas over more powerfully. We saw how Howard could tap into his own vulnerabilities and humanity and empathetically invest those in characters and songs that revealed those emotions. And dammit, Howard was funny. And he had a gift for effortlessly weaving comedy and vulnerability in a seamless way that made his creations (and ours and others) live.
He has touched me, and far countless others. He was a leader, a mentor, a collaborator, a musical genius, and a friend.
The reason he could [perform] so believably wasn’t only that he was a great mimic – he was also empathetic. He really did “feel your pain” and it didn’t matter if your pain was that of a Mermaid who longs for legs, or, back when we were young, the pain of a kid sister who thinks she is friendless and alone. I think that was maybe his best trait, the one I appreciated and miss the most.
Howard didn’t often wear his heart on his sleeve, he could be tough and prickly as the best and worst of them, his humor could sting while it sent you rolling in the aisles. No, he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve, but those of us who knew and loved him and felt the warmth of that heart never had to look far to find it.
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