Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda Nerds Out Over Beauty And The Beast

Disney’s timeless animated classic Beauty and the Beast is getting the live-action treatment next year, but before that happens they will celebrate the original film with a signature collection edition.

One of the many special features will include a roundtable of sorts led by Alan Menken, who is the composer behind some of Disney’s best films, including Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast. Menken & Friends: 25 Years of Musical Inspiration will also include the talents of Robert Lopez (Frozen, The Book of Mormon), Kristen Anderson-Lopez (Frozen, Gigantic), Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton, In The Heights), and Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Pocahontas), who are on hand to discuss the classic film’s musical score.

It’s here that Menkin shares a bit of behind the scenes details on the making of Belle’s song throughout the town (via EW).

“Here we had this opening number that starts with Belle coming out of the cottage and then she’s going through the town. There’s bonjour and these counter melodies and then the bridge and then Gaston comes in, all this stuff is going on and then he (Howard Ashman) said we can’t send this. We cannot send this to Disney. Who asked us for what was it a seven and a half minute opening number. He said no honestly they’re going to laugh at us, and he was really getting apoplectic about it. They said it’s really good and he said I don’t want to send it, I’m embarrassed. Finally, he said go ahead and send it, fine, send it, and they liked it.”

It’s here that Manuel gushes about his favorite part of the song, which happens to be the bridge.

(“Can we nerd out for a second?” he asks the group) “Her favorite book is actually the story she’s going to live,” he added later. “So there’s this crazy bit of foreshadowing that’s happening, but it’s also that interrupting your thought to say how excited you are, is the kind of sophisticated, character-revealing lyric writing that [lyricist and Menken collaborator] Howard Ashman was so good at.”

The Beauty and the Beast Signature Collection Edition hits digital on September 6th and Blu-ray and DVD on September 20th.