ALAN MENKEN: It’s the first to even attempt it. I knew that going in, but I always felt Pixar would attempt a “break into song” musical. The closest they came was with “When She Loved Me” in Toy Story 2, but that was still just montage material.
Were there a lot of songs that didn’t make it into the film?
Yes. A, a lot of songs that didn’t make it in. B, a lot of song spots that didn’t make it in. The first song we wrote was the same music for “When Will My Life Begin” but called “What More Could I Ever Need?” and it was much more about celebrating Rapunzel’s life at the tower. Everything is just great here, just perfect! But then we thought the message was a little too positive. I also wanted to have an opening number for the prologue, have it sung as a story-song in a Cat Stevens tone, with incantation within it. But at the end of the day they wanted to stay with the traditional prologue. These guys do have good instincts. The score we have is the score that this production could comfortably support.
Has it disappointed you that the marketing for the film hasn’t highlighted at all the fact that it is a musical?
Or that they used a Pink song in the first trailer? “Disappointed” isn’t the word. There’s a certain level of frustration, I guess. But that’s also the reality. The reality is that people need to be coaxed toward a musical. They need to understand why it’s a musical. “Do I have to hear people sing their thoughts and feelings? Oh, no!” And then they love it. But I think people need permission to love it. With Chicago, it was the strong critical reaction telling people “This is really special!” That made people want to see it. Had they gone out and said Tangled is a musical — well, we’ll see how it does at the box office. That’s something that is, as President Obama would say, beyond my pay grade. I trust that at the end of the day, people who enjoy musicals will realize what Tangled really is.
