Howard
One of the many goals of a strong brand is to subsume the work of every individual who contributes to that brand into the Gestalt. wardrobes are designed by IKEA rather than someone with a first and last name, not just the script and the story but every little constituent part are made by Disney and not by the people who work for Disney. this is of course an illusion. decisions and choices cannot be made by abstract entities. every aspect of every good was considered and made by a specific individual or maybe a group of individuals whose job was to shepherd it into existence. it's easy to forget this fact, and it's also easy to ascribe a brand or organization's fall from creative grace as some sort of broad, nebulous thing—the vibes are off when in reality, Occam's razor rules the day: one or two extremely talented creative people were responsible for the thing or things that you really liked, and now they're gone.
Howard is a short and melancholy documentary about this phenomenon, following Howard Ashman (who wrote the lyrics for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, as well as the stage musical, Little Shop of Horrors).
Howard was brought in, in 1986 as a critically lauded but commercially unsuccessful lyricist to workshop what eventually became The Little Mermaid. He died of AIDS at age forty, five years later. And in those five years, he rebuilt Disney the median of musical he understood in and persuaded others into understanding that songs were foundational rather than decorative, and that the job of a songwriter was not just to add lyrics, but to forge the story, to cast the right voices, and to structure the film from start to finish. Throughout the documentary, everyone admits readily how frustrating and exacting Howard was to work with, especially because he was always right in demanding the best.
t is tempting to say that a part of Disney died alongside Howard, but one of the beautiful parts about institutions is that your contributions to them can outlive yourself. We were robbed of many great movies and many great songs, but people will still be singing "Under the Sea" and "Arabian Nights" for decades to come.