It's confession time. Up until a few weeks ago, I didn't know much about Lin-Manuel Miranda. Yes, I've been living under a rock apparently and missing out - big time! In case you don't know, Mr. Miranda is composer, lyricist and performer who created two Tony award winning musicals, In the Heights and Hamilton. In fact, his musicals have won multiple Tony awards and Miranda is an Emmy, Grammy and Tony award winner. In the world of theater, Mr. Miranda is a game-changer. Do yourself a favor and listen the Hamilton soundtrack (warning: explicit language).
It's probably no surprise if you know anything about Disney that they seek out the very best for their projects. So, for Directors John Musker and Ron Clements (The Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Frog, Aladdin) and producer Osnat Shurer (Oscar-nominated Pixar shorts One Man Band, Boundin’) to bring Miranda on board for Moana seemed like a natural idea, and it definitely worked in their favor. Miranda, alongside Grammy-winning composer Mark Mancina (Speed, Tarzan, The Lion King) and Opetaia Foa’i (founder and lead singer of the world music award-winning band Te Vaka) created beautiful songs for the Moana soundtrack.
An interview with Lin-Manuel Miranda
1.) Being a part of the Disney family is dope.
Lin-Manuel told us that he was a huge Disney fan from a very young ago, so we wanted to know how it felt to now be a part of this family. He replied, "It's pretty dope... It's amazing. I think the most exciting part, for a Disney geek like me, was the story meetings. I’ve had a little Hollywood experience, and there’s nothing like the Disney story experience. You sit at a table, a lot like this, except it's perfectly round, and the notes are not from execs... the notes are from Jen Lee, the co-director of Frozen, from Pete's Dragon, who’s working on Inside Out, and did Big Hero 6. Like, everyone who actually makes the thing are the ones who are kicking the tires on your story, and making it better. And that was my favorite part of the process."
2.) The day he got the job for Moana was truly life changing.
I'm sure that creating Hamilton was no easy task, so it's pretty incredible that Lin-Manuel Miranda was able to split his time between Hamilton and Moana. He told us about the day that changed his life. "This is the weird day that changed my life. I woke up on a Wednesday, and my wife's a lawyer, she was off to get on a plane, to go to a business meeting somewhere else, and she said, 'I think you might be a father. I have to go to the airport.' It was like, six in the morning, and I was like, 'That’s great -- what?!' I called her at noon once her flight landed, to confirm that I hadn’t dreamt the thing she told me, and then I got the Moana offer that afternoon. Then that offer came with a plane ticket to New Zealand, where the rest of the creative team was already doing music research at this specific music conference New Zealand. So I went.. and I didn’t see my wife, and then I got on a plane to New Zealand, and I'm sitting with this secret that we're five weeks pregnant. So, it was one of those really insane, life-changing weeks. So that was two years and seven months ago."
So, how did he balance the two? He said, "It was a great oasis during the writing of Hamilton. Every time I was sick of the founders, I'd go sail across the sea, over to Maui and Moana. I did a lot of the writing in the theaters. A lot of the early demos are Pippa Soo and Chris Jackson [from the Hamilton cast] singing Maui and Moana, because they were my in-house band. were my demos. I have a ton of Pippa demos, I think you’ll hear on the deluxe edition. When it comes out, you’ll hear Marcy Harriell, singing a cut Moana song that was called "More", Marcy was my Vanessa for "In The Heights" for many years. So, you know, it was sort of all hands on deck to help me demonstrate these songs."
3.) He wrote "How Far I'll Go" in his childhood bedroom.
There are SO many great songs on the Moana soundtrack and we wanted to know which was his favorite. Lin-Manuel told us, "I'm really proud of "How Far I'll Go." I literally locked myself up in my childhood bedroom to write that song to get to my angst-iest place. It's not about being miserable where you are. I was 16 and knew where I wanted to go, but the gulf seemed so large."
I went method on that, and really because it's a challenging song. It's not, 'I hate it here, I want to be out there.' It's not, "There must be more than this provincial life." She loves her island, she loves her parents, she loves her people. And there’s still this voice inside. And I think finding that notionof listening to that little voice inside you, and that being who you are... once I wrote that lyric it first appears when Gramma Tala tells it to her in the opening number. It then had huge story repercussions. The screenwriters took that ball and ran with it, and that was exciting to see, the sort of give and take between the songs, and the story at large."
4.) His list of favorite artists and lyrics is long... really, really long.
Lin-Manuel certainly has a style that you can pick up on, kind of like an accent is how he puts it. We wanted to know what lyrics or artists have inspired him along the way. He said, "If I were to limit it just to Disney, I could talk to you for three hours about it. I think that’s how you figure out who you are, is you chase your heroes. I chased Ashman Menken, I chased Sondheim. I chased Jonathan Larson, I chased Biggie, I chased Tupac. And, in falling short of all of those, I end up with that style that is an accent I can’t hear. With Disney in particular, for me, Howard Ashman is sort of the master of the lyric that is both iconic and conversational... I think of 'Part of your world' and, 'Look at this stuff', as she’s stumbling, and trying to find the words, you know? Or, Belle in Beauty and the Beast, saying, 'It's my favorite part, because you’ll see,' interrupting her thought to say something else, because she’s so excited. Those are the moments you chase, as a songwriter, because they’re the ones that really feel real. I chase that in, in Hamilton... It just feels like the way people talk. That’s always what I'm chasing in a really good lyric because it just feels like the way people actually speak. And then helps you bridge that divide of these people bursting into song. That’s an impossible leap for a lot of people. People who don’t like musicals are like, 'Why are they singing? Why aren’t they just talking?' If you make the lyric feel really conversational, it's much easier for them to bridge that gap."
5.) Besides his kid, there are a few things that get Lin-Manuel out of bed in the morning.
A creative mind like Lin-Manuel's probably never rests. But, we wanted to know what really motivates him to get out of bed in the morning and what his endpoint would be. He said, "My kid is what gets me out of bed in the morning, and before that my dog got me out of bed in the morning." Of course of us mothers could relate and laughed. He went on, "Honestly, I think for me it's a balance of, and it's always been like this but now, it's sort of lopsided on the other side, I think you balance the things you’ve been dying to do all your life and the opportunities that come along, that you didn’t maybe think of, that are so amazing, that you’d kick yourself if you didn’t try to be a part of them."
This mindset motivated him to participate in Mary Poppins Returns (AMAZING!). He said, "So, to that end, is Mary Poppins Returns. Who would have dreamed that there'd be a sequel to Mary Poppins, much less, you get to go and sing and dance with Mary Poppins all day."
We all LOVED the song "You're Welcome." It is so catchy and we couldn't stop singing it everytime anyone said "Thank you" for anything. We asked Lin-Manuel what it was like to write that song for Dwayne Johnson. He said, "It was that FUN. It allows for us to get a lot of information about Maui. He's a lot of different things on different islands. Who else can pull off the quote 'You're Welcome' and you still like him?!" You cast the wrong actor and it's Gaston; it's that's guy's a jerk. But he sings it, and he arches his eyebrow, and he grins, and you’re like, 'I love this guy.'
7.) His son's name is a small nod to The Little Mermaid.
We asked Lin-Manuel what his favorite Disney movie or character was and he replied, without hesitation, The Little Mermaid. "That movie came out when I was nine years old. I saw it when I was on a play date with my friend... This crab starts singing a Caribbean calypso tune and I was never the same again. I used to get up on my desk in fourth grade and sing it. I remember calling in sick from school, on March 19th, because that was the day it came out on VHS, and I didn’t want to wait ‘til school ended. I wanted to go to the drug store that morning. So I was sick, and I had a stomach ache! And I saw Little Mermaid at 10 A.M."
If you're a child of the 80's you can certainly remember VHS tapes with the soft, squishy plastic cover and Disney sing-a-long songs, which Lin-Manuel reflected on to tell us more about his love for The Little Mermaid. "I remember getting the Disney sing-a- long songs, which came out before the movie. They just had'Kiss The Girl' and 'Under The Sea' and then like, nautical themed Disney movies throughout time. So I know all the words to 'Whale of a Tale' from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. So, it's that level of obsession. And really, I think because of Sebastian the Crab, that song was unlike any other Disney tune I heard... it just felt like, 'Oh, you can go anywhere.' I think, probably, my desire to sort of start writing stuff began with that movie."
Knowing his son's name is Sebastian, I asked Lin-Manuel if that name was a small nod to that character. He laughed and said, "It is a nod to that. It's not the only reason. I don’t think my wife would let that fly. It's mainly because Sebastian is one of the great bilingual names. It helps that already had great affection for the name since my youth though.
Special thanks to Louise Bishop of MomStart.com for the photos for this post!
Here's official information about Moana from Disney:
Three thousand years ago, the greatest sailors in the world voyaged across the vast Pacific, discovering the many islands of Oceania. But then, for a millennium, their voyages stopped – and no one knows why.
From Walt Disney Animation Studios comes “Moana,” a sweeping, CG-animated feature film about an adventurous teenager who sails out on a daring mission to save her people. During her journey, Moana (voice of Auli’i Cravalho) meets the once-mighty demigod Maui (voice of Dwayne Johnson), who guides her in her quest to become a master wayfinder. Together, they sail across the open ocean on an action-packed voyage, encountering enormous monsters and impossible odds, and along the way, Moana fulfills the ancient quest of her ancestors and discovers the one thing she’s always sought: her own identity. Directed by the renowned filmmaking team of Ron Clements and John Musker (“The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” “The Princess & the Frog”) and produced by Osnat Shurer (“Lifted,” “One Man Band”), “Moana” sails into U.S. theaters on Nov. 23, 2016.
Check out the Moana trailer here:
Moana Official Website / Facebook / Twitter
Moana arrives in theaters everywhere on November 23rd.
Disclosure: Amazon links are affiliate links. Thanks to Disney for inviting me on this press trip!
Amber Ludwig says
Omgosh he sounds like such an awesome and down to earth guy!! What an amazing person!! I bet that working with Disney is just truly amazing! I love how he wrote one of the songs in his childhood "angsty" bedroom lol!! That made me laugh!!