Hello, this is Simon Brew. I'm the editor of Film Stories magazine and a very warm welcome to a special episode of the Film Stories podcast.

Come with me. And I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

And movies, movies that have stories.

That the story just sucks a man. This is just the beginning.

We would be honoured if you would join us.

Hello and a very warm welcome to film stories with Simon Brew.

I am Simon Brew, that's all you need to know about me.

What I try to do with this podcast though is I try to tell the stories,

as the title gives it away, of films. And I look at production stories, development stories,

behind the scenes stories, marketing stories, all the bits and bobs that go to make the films that we know and sometimes love, just that, the films that we know and sometimes love.

This episode is one of my occasional special extra episodes where I'm really,

really chuffed to be joined by a very special guest for this one. The guest in question is

producer, director and writer Don Hahn, who throughout the 80s and 90s, well throughout the 80s and

90s was heavily influential in Walt Disney feature animation.

He produced films like Beauty and the Beast and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

He went on to produce the live action Maleficent.

And then in 2010, he made and released a documentary called Waking Sleeping Beauty,

which I think is a really extraordinary film about basically where Disney animation was in the mid-80s to where it got to in the mid-90s.

And it's a very warts and all story that I'm thrilled to see has been put on the Disney Plus service.

Thinking about it, it might have been a 2009 film.

Don't hold me to it either way and do seek the film out.

Now, one of the people featured in Waking Sleeping Beauty is the late great lyricist composer, Howard Ashman, who is credited with really helping find the heart of films such as The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast and also in collaboration with his regular collaborator Alan Mencken was behind the musical Little Shop of Horrors amongst others.

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