This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Dan Tracy: Okay, I'm recording again.

[0:02] Joe Carroll: I'm recording too.

[0:03] Dan Tracy: I'm recording too.

[0:05] Joe Carroll: You see him take three.

[0:07] Dan Tracy: Wow.

[0:08] Joe Carroll: Sitting very close to wear looks a little crazy, but there's something about him.

[0:16] Dan Tracy: I th uh this is this close to being offensive.

[0:20] Joe Carroll: You're you're uh this is that was I don't know.

[0:24] Dan Tracy: That was welcome to guys who like musicals.

[0:26] Joe Carroll: Welcome to guys who like musicals.

[0:28] Dan Tracy: Dan and I were just singing poorly.

[0:30] Joe Carroll: And uh what a way to start.

[0:34] Dan Tracy: Um another week. Um this week we are, I guess we're veering a little bit, but we're really um trying to focus in on things that uh frankly things we love and things that you can see right now. So we are talking about the documentary Howard, which you can watch right now on Disney Plus.

[0:55] Joe Carroll: You can watch it. We watched it last night, and I didn't I'm not crying, you're crying. Here's the log line. He gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul.

[1:06] Dan Tracy: So an actor is saying his lines, and then out of nowhere, he just starts singing.

[1:13] Joe Carroll: Bob Six Symphony.

[1:22] Dan Tracy: Don't cry for me. Howard is about Howard Ashman, the lyricist of such Disney classics as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and The Little Shop of Horrors.

[1:42] Joe Carroll: Uh this is a documentary featuring never before seen archival footage, personal films and photographs, as well as interviews with Howard's friends and family. The film is an intimate look into the Disney legend's life, uh, his creative drive and the process behind the music spanning from his childhood home in Baltimore to his formative years in New York.

[1:59] Dan Tracy: Howard goes in depth to explore his journey to become the lyricist behind some of the most beloved and well-known classic family films in the world. He wrote the words to our childhood.

[2:12] Joe Carroll: Let's just call it what it is.

[2:13] Dan Tracy: Let's just call it what it is. I found a way to tie it into last week so that we have a good transition.

[2:19] Joe Carroll: Well, you were not enough to talk about.

[2:21] Dan Tracy: It's okay. I know you love transitions.

[2:24] Joe Carroll: I'm a big thing. I was appealing to your senses. And also, I'm sorry to everyone listening that we don't have a guest this week, but I'm also sorry.

[2:31] Dan Tracy: Yeah, because we're gonna nerd out about the guy who wrote such lyrics as Certain as the Sun, Rising in the East, Beauty and the Beast. The only reason that I know that the sun rises in the East is because of the lyric to that song.

[2:42] Joe Carroll: I every we won't talk about the public school system in Michigan. That's that's time that's for another day.

[2:48] Dan Tracy: Um so I don't know if you caught this, but there's a segment where he's bragging about how many people were interested in Little Shop. And he says that they settled on the Schuberts, David Geffen, and Cameron Macintosh.

[3:09] Joe Carroll: Ah the original producer of Little Shop off Broadway at the Orpheum Theater in New York City.

[3:15] Dan Tracy: Who produced Phantom of the Opera.

[3:17] Joe Carroll: Well done.

[3:18] Dan Tracy: Well done, Dan. You're a real podcaster now.

[3:21] Joe Carroll: Just in case journalist.

[3:23] Dan Tracy: Uh you're a journalist. Uh that's amazing.

[3:26] Joe Carroll: That's amazing. Um, this was such a remarkable documentary, and and uh, you know, I think that a lot of people frankly don't really know. They know Beauty and the Beast, they know Aladdin, they know this Disney Renaissance that that happened in the early, you know, late 80s, early 90s that we'll talk about.

[3:42] Dan Tracy: Um, but Howard Ashman is a name that if you don't know, he has certainly touched your life and your your history with musical theater because the best musical theater in the early 90s was on was Disney movies.

[3:57] Joe Carroll: You know, like that we you know, and and the revival of Broadway started in cartoon form.

[4:03] Dan Tracy: Right. Exactly, exactly. So we'll get into all of this. But this guy, you you this is this was a remarkable story, and something that will just it'll make you cry, it'll make you know, laugh and think, and yeah, um, it is such a celebration of of everything we love about Broadway, and you can check it out right now, which is all we're trying to do in this, you know, in this time.

[4:22] Joe Carroll: So we should, you know, while you're at it, you know, he wrote we can watch Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid. I wish I had time to do that this week and watch all those again because you know, like I mean, you know the movie, yeah.

[4:37] Dan Tracy: So there's uh you can see all of that stuff, and and Alex was saying, you know, we were watching it last night, and she was like, We have to watch all of these movies now. Like now we're just gonna do a Disney, we're doing a Disney week.

[4:48] Joe Carroll: Deep dive um deep dive. Um and it's fun, but it's also kind of a fun um sort of bridge because last week or two weeks ago we watched Robin Hood, the the original the Robin Hood from the 70s, Little John and Robin Hood walking through the forest.

[5:01] Dan Tracy: Robin Hood and Little John walking through the forest, laughing back and forth at what do you have the nest say? One of my favorites from my childhood. Like we I had that on a loop when I was when I was a kid.

[5:12] Joe Carroll: And then there was this gap in sort of Disney animation history from like the sort of middle, you know, like late 60s. That that was 1971, I believe, when when Robin Hood came out. And then, like, you know, the the sort of mid-70s into the 80s, where there was basically nothing.

[5:28] Dan Tracy: They talk about in the in the documentary how Disney animation was moved off the Disney campus to a bunch of trailers. And that is where they this Disney Renaissance started again with and we'll get into it, Little Mermaid.

[5:42] Joe Carroll: So technically with Oliver and Company and the Great Detective and uh Amblin Media, which is or Amblin Entertainment, which is Steven Spielberg's company, was the kind of the beginning, and then what secured it was Howard and Alan Menckin.

[5:55] Dan Tracy: Which is super super cool. Like this, yeah, anyway. So we'll get into it. We'll get into it, and I'm gonna run through some of this history.

[6:01] Joe Carroll: A lot of this, I'm I'm gonna really, because I did a lot of this research before we before I watched the documentary. So I'm gonna try and go fast through all this stuff and only cover the things that aren't in the documentary.

[6:12] Dan Tracy: Love to kind of add a little bit more uh texture to this guy's life. So uh obviously the beginning of the film all covers his uh Howard's childhood and going to going to college, and uh he eventually goes to grad school at Indiana University, and when he leaves Indiana University, he comes to New York and he founds the iconic off-Broadway theater, the WPA.

[6:35] Joe Carroll: And that he did for a few years, and that's where he wrote his first musical with Alan Menken called uh God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, which is a Kurt Vonnegut book that they adapted.

[6:49] Dan Tracy: And then they transferred that off Broadway, and that was when he started to really kind of catch steam uh in the community in New York. But he met Alan Mankin at BMI workshop, and his classmate was Maury Yestin, just sensible.

[7:05] Joe Carroll: It's got More yes and wrote nine in Lacage and Grand Hotel and Titanic. Um BM BMI workshop, for those of you who don't know, it's a uh composer and lyricist workshop where you go for three years and you participate with other composer lyricists, and a lot of uh iconic groups have gotten together working in this workshop, like Aaron Sinflarity, who wrote Ragtime and Anastasia, Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkie, who actually wrote Next to Normal at the BMI Workshop as part of their third year presentation.

[7:34] Dan Tracy: Andrew Lippa went there, uh Go Blue, he wrote Wild Party and Big Fish. Bobby and Kristen Lopez went to BMI uh of Avenue Q and Frozen, and Janine Tessori, who wrote Fun Home and Carolina Change and Thorly Montre Millie, she also went to BMI.

[7:50] Joe Carroll: So that was kind of where they got their uh that was where their their relationship originated, and that was uh kind of one of the foundations of of how they knew to write the way that they did.

[8:03] Dan Tracy: But their first real like commercial success was Little Shop of Fours in 1982. Howard was a director, librettist, and lyricist. It ran off Broadway for five years. It's the third longest running off Broadway show, and it's the highest grossing off Broadway show of all time.

[8:21] Joe Carroll: He won the Drama Desk Award for Best Music, the drama critics circle for best musical, and uh there is a lot of other stuff I have in here that we can talk about with Little Shop because there's a lot of really interesting details about why they chose to do the show the way that they did, and and I think there's a lot of cool history there.

[8:40] Dan Tracy: Just back to um God bless you, Mr. Rosewater. They did just revive it was not it didn't run for very long uh when it first opened um off Broadway, you know, 1979, and they transferred it. Um but the uh they did it off Broadway off center, Encore's off center in 2016 with um Sentino Fontana and uh Breno Malley James Earl Jones and there is a uh a cast recording of that so like there's a lot of great music in there that like people don't really know and so if you want to explore a cast album and like you know just kind of impress impress your friends like oh do you know like what Alan Macon and Howard Ashman's first show was because like it was actually this one.

[9:20] Joe Carroll: It's a wonderful uh there's a lot of great great music in there and um you know this this cast album it was directed by Michael Mayer uh at Encores Off Center and there's a cast album so oh sick it was yeah yeah awesome I saw they they played some clips from that and I was I was uh curious what production that was.

[9:20] Dan Tracy: So after the success of Little Shop of Horrors Howard directs and writes the book and lyrics for uh a show called Smile based on a movie with Marvin Hamlish who was the uh the pea got winning of the P got winner Marvin Wild yeah yeah because you put that in in this in our notes that like it is crazy and they talk about in the documentary that Marvin Hamlish obviously wrote chorus line um along with other things but like he was he was one of the heaviest hitters.

[10:08] Joe Carroll: He was Lynn Manuel yeah he was he he was the guy and and you know this was the first the first kind of I guess collaboration outside it felt like the first collaboration that that that Howard had outside of Alan Macon and it was like gonna be his ticket to Broadway.

[10:26] Dan Tracy: It was gonna be his like Broadway you know kind of the Broadway, you I don't know, entrance to the club if you win and then it just like totally I mean, failed.

[10:37] Joe Carroll: I hate saying failed, but it runs for 48 performances.

[10:39] Dan Tracy: Right. You know, and it's not as successful. A quote lost musical because it doesn't have a cast recording. But I've definitely heard girls sing from uh Neverland.

[10:48] Joe Carroll: Never we a lot of people in at Michigan in college did Neverland or Disneyland.

[10:53] Dan Tracy: Uh Disneyland, yeah.

[10:54] Joe Carroll: Sorry, Disneyland.

[10:55] Dan Tracy: Um, which is kind of a famous song from it.

[10:58] Joe Carroll: So there is some stuff that you find. But um, but yeah, uh, I thought that this was kind of cool.

[11:02] Dan Tracy: Yeah, um, that that Jody Benson played the lead in Smile, and after I mean, they talk about this in the documentary as well, but after the this uh, you know, smile didn't turn out as everybody hoped, that Howard gave her the audio the chance to audition for the voice of Ariel.

[11:18] Joe Carroll: Um, and she talks about that in the documentary, like you never know how things are gonna go, basically.

[11:24] Dan Tracy: Um, what a what a gift.

[11:27] Joe Carroll: Yeah, totally. And and it piggybacking off of that, I think the most striking thing about so he he has this show that completely fails, and then he literally runs away from New York, is the way it was described by Don Hahn triumphant.

[11:42] Dan Tracy: Didn't think I was not gonna get that in there. Don Hahn was the producer of Beauty and the Beast, and he produced the hunchback, and and he's the director of this movie.

[11:53] Joe Carroll: And he talks about Howard fleeing to Los Angeles because he was so humiliated and felt like he was he didn't want to expose himself to Broadway again because he felt like his self was identified in his work.

[12:09] Dan Tracy: And so he like flees New York after this terrible thing happens to him, and then he changes the world.

[12:15] Joe Carroll: Yeah, right, right. You know what I mean? Like it's such a good reminder.

[12:19] Dan Tracy: It was so inspiring to me because I was like, yeah, you're right. Like, it doesn't, there's no really such thing as failure. There's just like the next thing that you can do because hindsight's 2020.

[12:28] Joe Carroll: And when you look back, it's like, thank God Smile failed.

[12:31] Dan Tracy: Right. Because if Smile doesn't fail, who who knows if he just, you know, I'm sure we would have all of these musicals that he would have written in New York, it would have been fine.

[12:38] Joe Carroll: You know, like uh who this other path would have been amazing too. But the idea that we got we get the Little Mermaid and Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast because almost because of the failure of Smile.

[12:51] Dan Tracy: I think that's a very interesting thing.

[12:53] Joe Carroll: Yeah, it's a very sort of like, you know, that that that sound of music quote, you know, where where he, you know, where God closes a wind closes a door somewhere he opens a window.

[13:01] Dan Tracy: It's like, yeah, he opens this window in LA, you know, and uh and everything changes.

[13:07] Joe Carroll: It's cool, yeah.

[13:08] Dan Tracy: Yeah, yeah.

[13:09] Joe Carroll: He moves to Los Angeles and he writes the lyrics for a song in the movie called Oliver and Company, which is a animal representation of the Oliver story.

[13:21] Dan Tracy: Ah.

[13:22] Joe Carroll: And there's some iconic people in it. Joey Lawrence plays Oliver Twist, and Billy Joel plays the artful dodger.

[13:31] Dan Tracy: Wait, wait a minute.

[13:32] Joe Carroll: Yes, dude.

[13:33] Dan Tracy: Wait a minute.

[13:34] Joe Carroll: Yes.

[13:35] Dan Tracy: Bet Midler's in it.

[13:36] Joe Carroll: Wait.

[13:37] Dan Tracy: Stephanie Styles would be mad at you, dude. This is like a huge bit of Disney history that that is is worth checking out.

[13:43] Joe Carroll: Honestly, I I missed this. I missed I miss this completely.

[13:47] Dan Tracy: This with the Oliver and Company.

[13:49] Joe Carroll: I'm just looking it up right now.

[13:50] Dan Tracy: Wow, yeah.

[13:52] Dan Tracy: So while he's working on this, he hears about The Little Mermaid, Howard. Hears about The Little Mermaid, and he kind of dives into The Little Mermaid. And um, it was the first fairy tale that they'd done in 30 years, and he wrote all the songs for the film, and he talks about how they said, "Who do you want to bring in to write the music?" And he said, "I want Alan, Alan Menken." So that secures their relationship with Disney. And they make this little known story called The Little Mermaid. It was released in 1989 and it was a huge success. Um, they received two Golden Globe nominations and three Academy Award nominations, including two for "Kiss the Girl" and "Under the Sea." They win the Academy Award for "Under the Sea."

And then in 1988, while he's working on The Little Mermaid, Howard pitches an idea for Aladdin. And which is so cool in the movie to like watch because he played Aladdin in one of the adaptations of the play in college. And he comes in, and that was one of the coolest things to see like the deck that he created the treatment. I mean, you and I are working on treatments all the time that like he came in. He came in with this 30-page treatment and three songs, uh "Arabian Nights," uh "Friend Like Me," and "Prince Ali," and was like, like, could you imagine being in the room and and having Howard Ashman come in with that treatment and be like, "Okay, so listen to this." Um, like Alan Menken talks about in the film, like why seeing a Howard Ashman lyric in front of him for the first time and as a composer, like what that meant to him.

And we'll talk about our relationship because we we have a relationship with Alan Menken that's kind of cool, um, some stories about him, but we'll get to that later. Um, but uh that Aladdin story, you know, that was really, really, really remarkable. And really kind of what his fingerprint is all over all of these movies. But he sort of almost served as like as lyricist, book writer, director, star, you know, he kind of had like his hand on every part of these movies.

[16:04] Joe Carroll: Yeah, he was so story-obsessed, it seemed. Like he needed to have make sure that the story was being told in every single moment, so he couldn't help himself but to involve himself in the music and the way the actresses were singing and the way that characters were drawn and all of that kind of stuff, which is such a good reminder and is an awesome story. So they're working on Aladdin and they get approached to try and help Beauty and the Beast, which was floundering apparently during production. And um at this point he's learned that he's sick and has HIV at the time. That kind of starts this downward trajectory of his health, which later starts to affect how these productions function. And you can see a lot more detail about that in the film, but it's really hard, hard to watch.

Um, you just feel so bad for this guy who had so much potential and so much life, and you just see that get sapped, you know, out of it. I think it's worth mentioning, and I was gonna mention this later, but I think it's as good a time as any, to say like to remind people, and we're young guys-ish, you know, and it's 2020 and there's a pandemic, but there was an epidemic in the 80s and 90s that took an entire generation of musical theater performers, writers, composers, directors, people who you have I feel like we all have to remember like the world that could have been if Howard Ashman was still here, if this generation was not lost to the AIDS epidemic. Um, and I think in that time, you know, we'll get to this too, when he won the Academy Award posthumously for Beauty and the Beast, that his partner got up and said so eloquently in working on Beauty and the Beast, Howard faced incredible personal challenges, but always gave his best.

And what made that possible was an atmosphere of understanding, love, and support. That's something everyone facing AIDS not only needs, but deserves. There's an inscription at Howard's grave in Baltimore. It reads, "Oh, that he had one more song to sing." We'll never hear that song. But I'm deeply grateful for this tribute you've given to what he left behind for Howard. I thank you. Basically just encompassed the everything that one could want to hear about this fight with AIDS, you know, in a very public way.

[18:31] Dan Tracy: Yeah, that's a really good point, Joe. Uh, so Beauty and the Beast comes out after a few months after Howard passes, and it wins the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, and it became the first film, first animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Uh, it won the Academy Award for Best Original Score and Best Original Song, and which Joe just mentioned, and it received nominations for best sound.

[19:05] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[19:05] Dan Tracy: Yeah.

[19:06] Joe Carroll: No, no, no, no, no, no. I uh and then you're you were just gonna say it that in '94, uh it was adapted to a Broadway musical.

[19:13] Dan Tracy: Right. Um, iconic cast album. Yo, Terrence Mann, dude, listen. I just listened to that. Just listen to it over and over and over again. And I got there's a joke in here that it's the musical that made me want to be an actor professionally because we did it my sophomore year of high school. Uh, we were one of the first um high schools to do it, like in Michigan or whatever. And still, if I go back to Grand Rapids or East Grand Rapids, people will still bring that up as the best thing I've ever done. Do you remember when you were the beast to be in the beast? So my sophomore year of high school, and I was like, "Yeah, well, I've I mean yeah, I peaked at 16." So I just remember like it was the best. It was the best. And I am so it's very funny to relive, but it was the greatest. It was the greatest show. It's the greatest show I've ever done. That's it. I should have quit after that.

[20:08] Joe Carroll: I had the same experience with another show that we'll talk about on here in a couple weeks.

[20:14] Dan Tracy: Great.

[20:12] Joe Carroll: Um, great, yeah, great.

[20:16] Dan Tracy: Great.

[20:16] Joe Carroll: So the last show that that Howard had his hand in was Aladdin, which came out in 1992. The process of that show was a bit tumultuous. This 30-page treatment that Howard built with Alan was kind of thrown away. And out of the 16 songs that he wrote for Aladdin, only three of them survive. And then one of them was put back into the show when the Broadway production came out, which is "Proud of Your Boy." And uh we have a story about Alan Menken, and what opened my eyes to this story and this man was this time that Alan Menken came and did a workshop at school, and when he taught started talking about Howard, do you remember him crying?

[20:59] Dan Tracy: Yep, yep.

[20:59] Joe Carroll: He started it was brutal. He couldn't get it out. He couldn't, it was it was one of the coolest days ever. Um, Alan Menken, we went to school with uh Nora Menken, uh uh Alan's uh daughter, and uh uh Nora was a year older than us. Her senior year, uh Alan Menken came and did a masterclass. And that masterclass included, among other things, um, our friend Will Burton, friend of the podcast, getting up and singing "Proud of Your Boy" in front of him. And "Proud of Your Boy" is a song that obviously was put back into uh the Broadway version of Aladdin, and it was a song that was one of Howard's favorite lyrics that he had ever written because it was unbelievably personal. "Proud of your boy, I'll make you proud of your boy, mom, you know, as bad as I've been, mom," all of these things.

That it was incredibly personal. It was incredibly personal to Howard, and he was, you know, it was devastating that it didn't make it into the movie, but then they were able to put it back into the show. It became this musical theater phenomenon where a lot of people were singing it as an audition song before Aladdin came to the stage officially. So we knew a little bit about it. And it was the coolest thing ever. So Will Burton gets up and he has his binder of music, and and he's in they're talking about the history of uh, you know, Howard's history and and and Aladdin and the whole thing. And Will goes to put the music in front of Alan Menken to play it at the piano. Alan Menken's gonna play it at the piano for Will, and Will is gonna perform it in front of the entire uh uh school basically.

And he goes to put the music, and I have chills. He goes to put the music in front of of Alan, and Alan looks at him and he goes, "I don't need that." And he just looks up and and Alan Menken is watching Will the whole time. He never looks down at the keys, he never looks anywhere else, and he just watches Will sing this song and and play the music, you know, with no music in front of him. It was one of the coolest things. And everybody's crying. I don't care who you are. Like everybody was a mess during this time.

[23:10] Dan Tracy: Yeah.

[23:10] Joe Carroll: It was amazing. And then that, so that was a sort of uh a very emotional moment. The next thing that he did is is he plays uh Alan Menken sits at the piano and plays a mashup of basically every song he's ever written uh at the piano from from Beauty and the Beast to Hercules to you know all the Aladdin songs and just everything. So that and that was like this 12-minute uh medley of of all of his greatest hits. It was one of the coolest days ever. I might still have a recording of that on my phone.

[23:39] Dan Tracy: I definitely do.

[23:41] Joe Carroll: The work all day out in the sun dislave away. Why we devote full time to float none da sea. Look at this stuff. Isn't it neat? What do you think my collection's complete? What do you think of the girl? Girl who has everything. Great.

[24:02] Dan Tracy: So awards and critic considerations and critical response. Obviously, every we've talked about awards. It's one, they've won a bunch of awards for their shows. But I thought some of these things were cool. Little Mermaid has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 88 Metacritic score. Beauty and the Beast has a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 95 critic score and an A plus cinema score. And Aladdin has a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, an 86 Metacritic score, and an A plus cinema score. So these movies have obviously stood the test of time. They built our childhoods and our love for Broadway. And uh that leads us into impact.

[24:40] Joe Carroll: Yeah, seriously. So we talked about the Disney Renaissance earlier, um, but the 80s were a dark time for Disney animation. Um, you know, coming off the classics of, like I said, Robin Hood and Pinocchio, which they're making a remake of that's coming up. Um, and then you know, even back to Sleeping Beauty. And so this Renaissance that we call it was sort of uh, you know, the period between '89 and '99, where it was just like all the movies you know, you know, from Little Mermaid to you know, Hercules and beyond. I mean, it was just like that that decade of just like, you know, perfect Broadway animated movies, basically, you know, animated movies through Broadway.

[25:22] Dan Tracy: Um, I love this.

[25:26] Joe Carroll: Tarzan's like the cap.

[25:28] Dan Tracy: Yeah.

[25:28] Joe Carroll: Also a great love Tarzan. Don't care who you are, love Tarzan.

[25:31] Dan Tracy: Love Tarzan.

[25:33] Joe Carroll: Um, yeah, you know, so I think that one of the things about this, the impact of this that that I think is huge is like again, like we talk about Disney, the Disney animated movie of that time brought Broadway kind of back to life. I mean, uh in the same way too. I mean, yeah, there was a cool thing in there where Howard was talking about um how the final frontier of the Broadway musical is in animation.

[26:03] Dan Tracy: Yeah.

[26:03] Joe Carroll: And what's interesting about that, just for those of you who don't know, I'm not sure if we've ever covered this on the podcast before, but anybody who's been who was in New York in the 70s and 80s knew that Times Square was not a great place to be. And with Disney opening Beauty and the Beast on Broadway in 1994, it began the renaissance of Times Square. And the Disneyfication of Broadway and the revitalization of the center part of New York City was built on the back of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken's musicals. Like we do not have the industry and the this beautiful tourist attraction that we have now without those guys.

[26:47] Dan Tracy: Is it beautiful?

[26:47] Joe Carroll: And without these stories. Honestly, but like I'm not sure. But like beautiful now. All I want to do is like walk through the, you know, bright lights and and you know headache that is Times Square.

[27:00] Dan Tracy: Uh, but it's probably better than it was when people.

[27:03] Joe Carroll: No, totally. And it was just this thing that like, you know, they, you know, the Disney and and uh said it you said at the time, like or if we're gonna bring family musicals to Times Square, we have to know that that Times Square is not gonna be the cesspool that it was, and they completely, you know, revitalized it, you know. Kind of that was a very controversial thing back in sort of like the age of you know Giuliani as mayor, where like there was a lot of stuff going on in New York, but it was like here comes Disney, and we're gonna bring, you know, we're gonna revitalize Times Square, and that happened with Beauty and the Beast. Not to be political about anything there, but this is just an interesting piece of history of what the impact of all of this was.

Um, and then there the impact of like kind of the they took basically, in my opinion, like taught a generation about story song, about the idea that musicals are not just fluff, musicals are not just uh okay, we the story's going, and now we stop and we sing a song.

[27:57] Dan Tracy: They really are simple, yep. They rhyme perfectly, obviously, but mostly they're pushing the story, and the story is changing, and the character starts in one place and finishes in the other, and it's really, yeah. And it takes a lot of, a lot of writers say it takes an unbelievable amount of craft to make something seem easy. You know, like, yeah, it may sound easy to write, you know, "tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme," but you didn't write it and you couldn't, you know, like so I think that's kind of the fun part too, to be like, it's so masterful because it is so complicated. And then we'll get into this now, like because we're talking, we're gonna get to the music section because it's so, yeah, this is the most important part of all of this, you know, for us and for him.

But like then he goes and rhymes a million different things, but like one of my, we're gonna talk about this later, but like he rhymes "Shaw" with "Baklava" in "Friend Like Me." Right. You know, so I don't know. It's just he's, he was just a genius. It was just an absolute genius. So let's get into, we'll get into some of the music. This is the best part. Uh, we're gonna talk now in a new segment called Craft, kind of the craft of these composers and what they were doing. And there's a really awesome segment in the film where Howard's talking about "Poor Unfortunate Souls," and like "Poor Unfortunate Souls" is a great song because we all remember kind of the iconic behavioral, you know, mood of Ursula, but also when you look at the song on the page, like Ariel doesn't know who Ursula is, and by the end of the song, she's a human.

[29:46] Joe Carroll: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot going on in this thing that's like, you know, seemingly simple.

[29:54] Dan Tracy: Yeah, exactly. And all of these, I mean, "Kiss the Girl," another one brings us right to the edge of where like she's going to become a human and reclaim her voice. And you know, like, like, oh, oh my god, what's, it's almost a yes, almost a yes. Uh, it just, you know, it's so perfect. And then back to the like the very first song, the probably most iconic song in the movie is "Part of Your World." And it all, first of all, it didn't almost didn't even make it in the movie, which they talk about, which is insane now in retrospect. There was one person, I forget who it is, but the one person was like, you know, like, uh, you know, uh we, you know, I wanted to cut it, and I didn't want it in the movie.

It was Jeffrey Katzenberg, it was the head of, uh, he was a large job at Disney. I forget exactly what his title was. Um, and I guess it had not tested well. Like that's this, the story that was on Wikipedia is that they tested it in front of a bunch of kids, as they usually do test these movies, especially at Disney in front of the audience that they are trying to sell it to.

[30:57] Joe Carroll: Right.

[30:57] Dan Tracy: And the kids were like really like rowdy. Yeah, and so they were like, "Well, we gotta cut this song because it doesn't work for the kids." And Howard was like, "Absolutely not. We need a 'I Want' song." Yeah, you don't know what that is, but I know what that is here. Well, and that's what we want to get into because like the master, he was, he was such a purist when it came to musical theater, and it would like the idea of Eliza Doolittle and "My Fair Lady," "All I want is a room somewhere, you know, with, with ton with chocolate for me to eat, and you know, a room with lots of heat." He wrote that with "Somewhere That's Green." "Somewhere That's Green" in "Little Shop of Horrors" is that exact same model.

That has happened in every musical that you've ever seen, whether you know it or not. The second song in every musical is the song where the person, whoever it is, stands up there and tells you exactly what they want, and then for the next two and a half hours, they're gonna be chasing it. From "The Wizard and I" to, you know, "Orlando" in "The Book of Mormon."

[31:51] Dan Tracy: It is that is that's the model.

[31:53] Joe Carroll: So he said, No, children can handle this.

[31:57] Dan Tracy: Like, you know, the yeah, you know, part of your world is I want to be where the people are.

[32:02] Joe Carroll: I just want to be up where up with the people are, and I'm gonna take you on this journey for the next two hours.

[32:07] Dan Tracy: And it is it's mass, it's masterful.

[32:09] Joe Carroll: It's it's exactly everybody's still doing it.

[32:11] Dan Tracy: It's exactly what what musical theater is based on.

[32:14] Joe Carroll: Anyway, it was just so cool.

[32:17] Joe Carroll: So I know Seymour's the greatest, but I'm dating a semi-sadist.

[32:22] Dan Tracy: So I got a black eye in my arms and a cast.

[32:27] Joe Carroll: Still that Seymour's a cutie.

[32:30] Dan Tracy: Well, if not, he's got inner beauty.

[32:33] Joe Carroll: And I dream of a place where we could be together at last.

[32:38] Dan Tracy: There was also, uh, there's a cool thing in here where Alan Menken said that Howard changed his ability to write a song and changed his understanding of style. And he was talking about they weren't sure what direction to take the style of "Little Shop."

[32:57] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[32:57] Dan Tracy: And they settled on the dark side of Greece.

[33:01] Joe Carroll: It's just awesome.

[33:02] Dan Tracy: It's just awesome. Right.

[33:03] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[33:04] Dan Tracy: Um, and you can hear that too. He played, there's a clip we can play right here.

[33:08] Joe Carroll: Shingling, what a pretty thing to be happening.

[33:12] Dan Tracy: Look out, look out, look out, look out.

[33:14] Joe Carroll: That girl group rock and roll thing, which is so genius.

[33:18] Dan Tracy: Yeah, it's just, yeah, so good. Uh, you have this thing in here too from the show that the "Little Shop" commercial. It's just the, that is just never before in the history of the American stage have you seen such high drama.

[33:34] Joe Carroll: Suspense.

[33:37] Dan Tracy: And romance.

[33:40] Joe Carroll: It's bone chilling, it's spine tingling, it's a musical.

[33:45] Dan Tracy: It's a nifty laugh, right?

[33:50] Joe Carroll: Entertaining as it is exotic.

[33:51] Dan Tracy: "Little Shop of Horrors." Don't shop around. Go see it at the Westwood Playhouse.

[33:56] Joe Carroll: 1980s, what like what is this?

[33:59] Dan Tracy: At its absolute finest. Did you also catch? Speaking of "Little Shop," did you catch that Jack Nicholson is in the original "Little Shop" movie?

[34:10] Joe Carroll: Like, what?

[34:11] Dan Tracy: What is he doing there?

[34:12] Joe Carroll: I'm obsessed with that.

[34:14] Dan Tracy: Before "The Shining." It's unbelievable. And like this thing that, you know, again, he says, you know, everybody was like, "You're gonna what? You're gonna write a musical about 'Little Shop of Horrors'? That movie sucked. You know, like what are you doing?" And so I just am so glad that that Howard Ashman and people like him didn't listen to critics. You know, like they didn't listen, you know, they listened to the people that they wanted to listen to, and that that internal clock, that internal compass was so, you know, strong, because otherwise, "Little Shop" never gets made. You know what I mean?

[34:45] Joe Carroll: Right.

[34:45] Dan Tracy: Because he even, his agent, he's talking in the movie that give his agent was like, "This is a stupid idea." You know, right. Um, and but it's a testament to the understanding of, uh, and Joe and I are because we're writing together, we're focusing on this a lot now, but like when you have an understanding of the craft of something, you can tell any story you want, right? Like "Little Shop" is just an American musical comedy. It's not any, like it's stretched to its limits. It's almost a parody of the musical comedy, but that's exactly what "Book of Mormon" is. There is no "Book of Mormon" without "Little Shop." It's the same thing. "Book of Mormon" follows this exact formula of what Rogers and Hammerstein wrote an American musical to be.

[35:25] Joe Carroll: Exactly.

[35:26] Dan Tracy: Exactly. So super duper cool. Um, let's get to the fun.

[35:29] Joe Carroll: Let's get the songs we love.

[35:32] Dan Tracy: This is so now we're gonna, this is our favorite. Um, this I thought was very cool just for a second. I read this in "Vanity Fair" that, um, and it's actually, it's in the documentary as well, but Don Hahn said, uh, who directed the Howard documentary said that "Kill the Beast," right? From "Beating the Beast" was a metaphor for Ashman dealing with the debilitating disease of AIDS in an era when it was stigmatized, you know, and so there were so many of those underpinnings to the movie that people may not have seen. And this is something that like people maybe don't necessarily agree with, you know, people who are close to him, whatever. But I think that the idea, like, how could you not, as somebody who was dealing with AIDS at the height of the AIDS crisis, feeling, and he says in the movie that he didn't tell people for so long because he felt like he was gonna get fired from writing lyrics for Disney movies, for writing lyrics for family movies as this disease was stigmatized, you know, and politicized so horribly that like how could you not feel like the beast in this, you know, how could you not feel like everybody's chasing you with pitchforks?

And watching those clips with that in mind, I just, I just could, you know, you get chills and uh the what the guy must have been going through is he is he was trying to just all he wants to do is write a lyric and write a song, but how can you not infuse that with the part of you that is, you know, literally dying? I don't know. It's just it was, it was a lot.

[37:01] Joe Carroll: It's amazing.

[37:02] Dan Tracy: Yeah, I, you know, it, it, it's interesting when I was thinking about we're reading this book "Save the Cat," all of the shows he chose are out of the bottle stories. They're all of these shows are somebody who wants another life.

[37:17] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[37:18] Dan Tracy: Yeah, right? And like you can say that's an accident, and we're not gonna say that he's, he was trying to put his own life on the stage. Like I think that that's a controversial statement. But at least he understands this idea that he, uh, that the hand he was dealt was not a fair one.

[37:34] Joe Carroll: Right.

[37:35] Dan Tracy: And perhaps he was trying to teach himself through his work that the life he has can be a good life, you know.

[37:45] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[37:45] Dan Tracy: The "seaweed is always greener" lyric, you know.

[37:48] Joe Carroll: Yeah, yeah. Totally, totally, totally.

[37:51] Dan Tracy: Um, so we'll talk, we're getting into like, you know, the specifics of the songs and the stuff that we love. I so we're talking the goosebump test.

[38:00] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[38:01] Dan Tracy: I, if you even say the title of the war of the song "Beauty and the Beast," I, I get chills.

[38:10] Joe Carroll: I don't even, I don't even have to like, I don't even have to listen to it.

[38:14] Dan Tracy: I just have to think about the transition from when he's like getting all scrubbed up in the bath or whatever, and then he emerges.

[38:36] Joe Carroll: And that simple, simple pad of piano, and then we, we broke this down in college where it's a major, it's a major triad going up this, this the scale.

[38:45] Dan Tracy: Da da da da um ba-da-da-da-da. It's just like a major triad, "tale as old as time." Get out of here.

[38:56] Joe Carroll: Get out of here.

[38:59] Dan Tracy: Yeah. So it's not just, uh, it's not just a lyric or a feeling. It's like the, the reason that the rhythm and that the chord progressions are chosen is all because of the moment that it's serving, and the lyric is serving that too. It's just they were so good at that. You know, it's almost like the pinnacle of what Rogers and Hammerstein were doing taken in a contemporary context.

[39:21] Joe Carroll: Like you can follow that thread.

[39:24] Dan Tracy: My, my goosebump test is there are two. One is, um, the big swell at the end of "Part of Your World."

[39:32] Joe Carroll: Mm-hmm.

[39:32] Dan Tracy: To explore the show of the sea.

[39:44] Joe Carroll: Who wish I could be part of that out of the sea wish I could be, like after it swells to the crescendo, and then it's just like this quiet moment.

[40:11] Dan Tracy: Goosebumps right now, just thinking about it.

[40:13] Joe Carroll: Yep.

[40:13] Dan Tracy: And also when the elephant crashes through the door in "Prince Ali."

[40:20] Joe Carroll: Totally.

[40:20] Dan Tracy: You know, and that swell too.

[40:22] Joe Carroll: They just got me with their swells.

[40:24] Dan Tracy: Totally. The dynamics of those just always push me.

[40:49] Joe Carroll: In the document, we'll talk about Moti's favorite motifs. In the doc, uh, in the documentary, there's this picture of a lyric that he wrote.

[40:59] Dan Tracy: What is a beast and what is a man?

[41:01] Joe Carroll: And I thought the motif of that, back to what we were saying about his struggle with his health, that like the way the world would be viewing him and the way that they view another man, or the way, like what is, like that idea in all of the movies and all of his lyrics have to deal with this, this line between, you know, what is, what is good and what is evil, and what is, what is a beast and what is a man.

[41:25] Dan Tracy: I don't know. I thought that that the sort of lyric motif of that was amazing. And then, and then I just had this, this joke that he does talk a lot about the sun setting, the sun setting and the sun rising, you know, and I joked about it earlier that like the only reason you know, you can't say, uh, certain as the sun rising in the west, "tale as old as time," "Beauty and the Beast."

[41:45] Dan Tracy: No, yeah, the way that I know that the sun rises in the east is because of "Beauty and the Beast." It rhymes with beasts because it rhymes with beasts.

[41:55] Joe Carroll: That's amazing.

[41:56] Dan Tracy: The main part of this, and honestly, like you know, the reason we're here, um, our favorite lyrics, and I just there's too many to count, and there's too many shows to get, you know. But I think the saddest part of this is thinking about the shows that could have been and the lyrics that could have been. I think there's just such an air of that around everything about Howard is just like, God, what can you imagine if he had another 30 years?

[42:19] Joe Carroll: I know.

[42:20] Dan Tracy: And the shows that we'd have and the movies that we'd have.

[42:23] Joe Carroll: I know.

[42:24] Dan Tracy: You know, so anyway, but on a funny, happier note, um I um a couple of my favorites.

[42:30] Joe Carroll: What do they got?

[42:31] Dan Tracy: A lot of sand.

[42:32] Joe Carroll: We've got a hot crustacean band.

[42:35] Dan Tracy: A hot crustacean band. Also, everything about "Les Poissons" is hysterical, but the rhyme scheme of "Les Poissons," "les Poissons," he he he.

[42:37] Joe Carroll: Les poissons, les poissons.

[42:55] Dan Tracy: It's just me every time. And it's funny because it's just like the chef is not a bad guy, but the chef is a bad guy in the movie because there's a bunch of fish watching him. But like, if that guy's just like, he loves cooking fish, what's wrong with that?

[43:11] Joe Carroll: Well, it's bad if you are a fish, you know.

[43:13] Dan Tracy: Yeah, right. Um, yeah, what about you?

[43:17] Joe Carroll: I have a bunch here. Um I've I mentioned it earlier, but the seaweed is always greener in somebody else's lake. The grass is always greener lyric.

[43:26] Dan Tracy: That's great.

[43:27] Joe Carroll: And that consistent idea, I mean, that's probably my motif, right? It's like I mean "Somewhere That's Green."

[43:34] Dan Tracy: Yeah, "Somewhere That's Green."

[43:36] Joe Carroll: Um, even uh "Aladdin" has some of it, even though he hasn't written a lot of music like that, and like uh "Belle" in the opening of "In Belle." There must be more than this provincial life.

[43:50] Dan Tracy: Oh, Belle.

[43:51] Joe Carroll: Good morning, you know, this idea that like we're longing for a life that is different from our own that's better somewhere else.

[43:59] Dan Tracy: Yeah.

[43:59] Joe Carroll: But I want you in the grapevice somewhere.

[44:04] Dan Tracy: I want it more than Angel.

[44:06] Joe Carroll: Yeah, you better sing too. We're singing on this freaking thing.

[44:09] Dan Tracy: God, that's awesome. I've also always just loved "Kiss the Girl." Uh as we discovered last week, I'm a sucker for the romantic lyrics, and like when that just like when that groove comes in, you know.

[44:32] Joe Carroll: Sitting there a crusty wave. She don't got a lot to say, but there's something about her. And you don't know why, but you die in to try you wanna kiss the game.

[44:48] Dan Tracy: Did you hear something?

[44:49] Joe Carroll: Well, and in the desperation of Sebastian, like, right? If you know what I mean, like you did, I didn't even get really catch that until last night watching the documentary. We're like, he Sebastian, everybody needs them that they need this to happen, you know?

[45:02] Dan Tracy: Yeah.

[45:03] Joe Carroll: And it's so anyway, it's just fantastic. Um, and it's so specific and so amazing. Um, I think that the most replayed song is is almost like how do you pick in a way, like, for me it's probably "Beauty and the Beast." I think it's a perfect song. I think that "Suddenly Seymour" is also an amazing song that we broke down as is a lyric exercise in college, which is so silly, but really fun.

[46:06] Dan Tracy: With sweet understanding.

[46:41] Joe Carroll: Because something was happening, and then out of nowhere, something else happened. This version just kills me. Um, this production they did in LA. But I it's just it's uh it's so good. So those are probably my two most replayed favorite lyrics.

[46:56] Dan Tracy: Mine mine has gotta be "Friend Like Me." Um I was a big "Aladdin" guy.

[47:02] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[47:02] Dan Tracy: So it's unfortunate that I didn't have more Howard Ashman's songs in "Aladdin." I would have loved to hear some of what those other tunes were, but yeah, things happen. "Friend Like Me," "Prince Ali." Um I was basically had "Aladdin," "Lion King," and "Hercules" on repeat when I was a kid.

[47:18] Joe Carroll: So exactly.

[47:19] Dan Tracy: Um that was a big one. And uh the "Gaston" would be my most replayed song from "Beauty and the Beast."

[47:25] Joe Carroll: Yeah, I just enjoyed the rhyme scheme and the game of it and uh Yeah slick as Gaston no one's quick as Gaston no one's next as in grand obly flick as Gaston for the snowman in sound half as many perfect up your paragon. You can ask any Tom Dick or Stanley, and they'll tell you whose team they prefer to be on.

[47:53] Dan Tracy: You know, I was just a guy who liked musicals. So like I couldn't I couldn't latch myself into it's too predictable, but I couldn't latch myself into these like girl songs, like oh some of the guy songs.

[48:03] Joe Carroll: Well and you wanted to be roughly the size of a barge, you know.

[48:05] Dan Tracy: I'm sure like you go through these these you know pockets of time where you're trying to you know put on weight and look like him and Yeah.

[48:13] Joe Carroll: Exactly.

[48:14] Dan Tracy: God, that's funny. That's really really good. But I love what you said, the game of it too. Like that song is just it's a masterful, you know, it's a masterful game.

[48:24] Joe Carroll: It truly is.

[48:25] Dan Tracy: So we have the we have our performances category, which I think is more about shows, but I just think that Robin Williams as the genie, rest in peace, is uh so iconic. And I I wonder I this is the thing that I would if I ever got to ask, you know, Alan Menken or somebody, I wanna know who comes up with the voices that he came up with in "Friend Like Me."

[48:47] Joe Carroll: Mine is mine is Jerry Orbach as Lumière.

[48:50] Dan Tracy: Yep.

[48:50] Joe Carroll: Right again, like iconic rest of the thing. We're sitting there watching last night and Julie's like, Oh, that guy, which is my favorite thing that that we do when she recognizes somebody from something else. Oh, it's that guy.

[48:52] Dan Tracy: Oh, that guy.

[48:59] Joe Carroll: And I'm like, how do you know Jerry Orbach?

[49:02] Dan Tracy: Law and Order.

[49:03] Joe Carroll: Duh.

[49:04] Dan Tracy: Yeah. Also, the original Billy Flynn.

[49:07] Joe Carroll: Like, yeah, you know, right, right.

[49:08] Dan Tracy: Musical theater icon.

[49:09] Joe Carroll: He's he's an icon.

[49:11] Dan Tracy: He's a musical theater icon.

[49:13] Joe Carroll: Um, yeah, just so freaking cool. Um, and that footage was just amazing.

[49:19] Dan Tracy: So awesome. Um then I think, you know, for me, that the aging of this, you know, what holds up the best, what holds up the worst. I mean, the movies still hold up every single movie. Uh they're still iconic. There's clearly they keep making them over again.

[49:30] Joe Carroll: Exactly.

[49:32] Dan Tracy: I mean, yeah, exactly. They just, you know, he's still, you know, they just was "Aladdin" the last one they did of uh or was "Beauty and the Beast" the last one, you know.

[49:39] Joe Carroll: It was "Beauty and the Beast" and "Aladdin."

[49:41] Dan Tracy: Crazy. Um, and then I just I mean the sad thing is just the worst is I wish we all wish he was here, you know. Like I I wish that there was a you know I wish there were more shows. I wish that he had more time, and yeah, that's kind of the hardest part of that of that of the movie to watch.

[50:00] Joe Carroll: And then one of the things that I just I I was reading a bunch of stuff and there was this there was this quote that I I really loved um that Alan Menken um said about Howard. Um I guess the most important thing to know is if anybody has feelings that AIDS is God's punishment or something, then just look at the man and what he created and what it is in our lives and think about that.

[50:27] Dan Tracy: And then speaking of the way in which AIDS, the AIDS crisis cut down a generation of creative men and women, make an added, it would be great if Howard was alive. We could write a musical about all of that.

[50:38] Joe Carroll: So the idea that yeah, that just that breaks my heart. Think of just the music that could have been, you know.

[50:46] Dan Tracy: It crushes me because I think about like losing you. Like that's what it well, that's what it is. Like, what would I do?

[50:51] Joe Carroll: Yeah, like what what would you do?

[50:54] Dan Tracy: Your best friend and collaborator. And even more than best friend, like your artistic second half. Like he talks about how Howard like rebuilt how he makes like how could you go and make anything again?

[51:07] Joe Carroll: It's like, oh man, I just can't imagine what that was like for him.

[51:10] Dan Tracy: And that's what aged the worst for me is watching some of the footage of the way people treated um gay people and and people with HIV during this time. It's really disgusting to watch.

[51:21] Joe Carroll: And I see a lot of resonance in the way that people are treating Black Lives Matter and the way that people are are handling the pandemic. You know, it's like we just see the w the country kind of live in these cycles, and it's it's easier to look back on them now, knowing what you know, but it's also like we gotta see people for who they are first, you know.

[51:44] Dan Tracy: Even the people, even the beast, you know?

[51:47] Joe Carroll: Yeah, totally. It's like even the people that we don't love, you gotta find the what makes them human, and that's what he did in his work, and that's what we have to do as people.

[51:57] Dan Tracy: Yeah.

[51:58] Joe Carroll: Um and what aged the best is like I think he talked about how in the beginning of the documentary he's talking about, oh you know, I grew up on Rogers and Hammerstein and My Fair Lady and whatever, and Three Penny Opera and these other shows that that formed and Godspell, you know, formed the off-Broadway movement. Like, I'm just a student of my generation, and he is the teacher of our generation.

[52:22] Dan Tracy: Right.

[52:23] Joe Carroll: Right, right.

[52:24] Dan Tracy: And like he is that's he's he introduced our generation to what a musical can be, and totally and because you know that literally changed the Disney's trajectory from a company that was struggling to what it is today. And like you know that Pasik and Paul and Lynn Manuel Miranda and the Lopezes, they were watching these movies, and they were learning how to structure story around Howard Ashman.

[52:52] Joe Carroll: And so I think everything we have We should have had Benj Pasek and Justin Paul come on here because they wrote lyrics for the new Aladdin movie.

[52:58] Dan Tracy: Alright. Well, this was a new, I mean this was an idea you had to talk about this movie. Like we we just talked about it, like you know, a couple days ago we made the decision to talk about it, and I was like, maybe there's a world where we could send Alan Menken an email and he would talk to us. I don't know.

[53:11] Joe Carroll: I mean, we we got to meet him, you know, a few times, and um maybe maybe Benj Pasek and Justin Paul would come on and nerd out about like what you know what Howard.

[53:21] Dan Tracy: Benj would definitely come on, so we should we should do that.

[53:23] Joe Carroll: What hey, audience, hey, send me a DM. What show should we talk to uh Ben Chap about?

[53:30] Dan Tracy: Don't say "Dear Evan Hansen."

[53:31] Joe Carroll: Yeah.

[53:32] Dan Tracy: Um exactly. Um but that uh this was uh so again we highly, highly, highly recommend this documentary. Um check it out, watch all the Disney movies, and uh you know celebrate the life of Howard Ashman uh with us this week.

[53:49] Joe Carroll: And then what do you think, Joe? More Disney next week?

[53:50] Dan Tracy: I honestly might want to.

[53:54] Joe Carroll: Like "Hercules," maybe that's my socks.

[54:01] Dan Tracy: I think we could get her to come on.

[54:03] Joe Carroll: Let's talk about it.

[54:06] Dan Tracy: Next week on Guys Who Like Guys Who Like Musicals.

[54:11] Joe Carroll: Thanks for listening.

[54:13] Dan Tracy: Go on, unfold, you man, you take a glass and then you'll be our guest.

[54:17] Joe Carroll: We're our guests, be your guest.

[54:19] Dan Tracy: I'm already over five minutes, or I tale as old as time.

[54:30] Joe Carroll: True as it can be.

[54:40] Dan Tracy: Just a little change. Small to say the least. Both a little scare. Neither one prepared.

[54:48] Joe Carroll: "Beauty and the Beautiful."

[55:01] Dan Tracy: Thank you for listening to Guys Who Like Musicals. We are produced by Dan Tracy and Joe Carroll, your hosts. You can find us on Instagram at Guys Who Like Musicals or on Twitter at Musical Guys. For more information about us or our show, please visit our new website at Guys Who Like Musicals.com. You can find our merch store, our Patreon page, and more. Thanks for listening.