Alan Menken

What I look for in a partner is a skill, a voice of their own so I have a strength to go up against. They definitely have to be able to get out of their own way. I can't take somebody being precious about their work. ”

I'll always work with my collaborator in the room so I have a reaction on a note-by-note basis. I know in my gut when something works for me, and I'll fight for it, but I'm a very easy re-writer. ”

Often my best work comes from somebody trying to stretch me in a direction that I wouldn't normally want to go in. It's not something I fight at all. ”

I'm an architect. Before you start pouring the concrete, you build a foundation that is solid so that when you take the scaffolding down, it holds - forever. So that when junior high schools are doing 'Hunchback,' a 12-year-old as Frollo still works on some level. ”

For a while now, I try to ignore the hoopla, because if you buy into that, you have to buy into the criticism. All you can do is put your work out there and move on; you just never know what will come. ”

I work in a dramatic context, meaning we write with a lot of character specifics, a lot of story specifics. There's a lot of architecture in our songs. ”

Part of the job is knowing how to use this medium in the most effective way for the story you're telling, so for me, to pick a genre I want to do is a little harder. I would say it's more about thinking, 'What genre will work for what kind of story?' And then, when all of that comes, I embrace it and run with it. ”

Truth be told, of course, what I enjoy most is reinventing myself and doing new projects where I work in new genres, or I get to find what the voice of a particular musical is. ”

Collaboration is all about rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and helping each other to constantly improve a piece. And, it's also about spurring each other on to doing really great, hard work - it's easier to do it in a collaboration than on your own. ”

Most of my collaborations, certainly post - Howard Ashman but even with Howard, are music first. ”