HOWARD
Disney+, 3:00 a.m. ET
DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE: Some of the best new offerings on Disney+ are the behind-the-scenes documentary specials and miniseries that probe the levels of creativity behind the spells cast by Disney movies, animation, rides, Broadway shows and so on. This new special, Howard, is about lyricist Howard Ashman, whose hit collaborations with composer Alan Menken included the Disney-reviving animated musicals The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. This new biographical profile, Howard, makes some very revelatory connections between the lyrics and the lyricist, and – to its credit – makes central, rather than shies away from, Ashman’s life as a gay man, and the fact that he was one of the first famous victims of the AIDS virus. Ashman’s collaboration with composer Alan Menken was an Off-Broadway musical from 1979, Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You. Mr. Rosewater. It opened at the WPA Theater, such a tiny and Off-Off-Broadway place that you got a folding chair when you bought your ticket, and carried it upstairs to set up your own seat in one of two makeshift rows around the “stage.” I know, because I saw that production, with my friend Mark Clark, a fellow graduate of Nova High School in Davie, FL. (Apparently, Menken himself played the keyboards at that tiny, charming musical, but who knew?) Opening this documentary, by the way, is a scene of Ashman in the recording booth with Paige O’Hara, as she was recording one of her songs as Belle in the animated Disney movie version of Beauty and the Beast. She, too, is a graduate of Nova High – as is Eric Gould, one of the TVWW editors here. Good school. Good crowd. And, regarding Howard, good documentary.