DISNEY DOC. DIRECTORS: Jeff & Greg Sherman of THE BOYS

Today, we are concluding our spotlight on the new school of Disney feature film directors begun last week with ByRon Howard and Nathan Greno of TANGLED - now in Disney Digital 3D in movie theaters nationwide - and continuing yesterday with Don Hahn of WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY, with a indepth conversation with Jeff Sherman and Greg Sherman, the directors of THE BOYS documentary - now available on DVD - tracing the glorious career of their famous songwriting fathers, even if life was anything but "A Spoonful of Sugar" behind the scenes. MARY POPPINS to THE TIGGER MOVIE, CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG on screen and on Broadway to BUSKER'S ALLEY, the Beatles, The Beach Boys, and much more, The Sherman Brothers' career continues on in their twilight years as their sons carry on the tradition of incisive, emotional storytelling in THE BOYS documentary just as their fathers have done in their hundreds of beloved songs - some, such as those from MARY POPPINS, Academy Award winners. The rich legacy lives on with the Sherman Sons in THE BOYS, new on DVD this week.

It's A Sherman World After All

PC: Could you describe your relationships with your dads?

JS: My relationship with my dad, Bob, is wonderful. My dad is a real non-Hollywood guy. He would come home from work and throw the baseball glove to me and we'd go out and play catch. He never made his job a big deal at home. I would know that he was a songwriter because he would bring home demos and we would go visit soundstages and recording sessions and things like that, but his friends were usually, you know, normal people and all that. So, I grew up very non-Hollywood in a way. He was always a terrific guy and very supportive - I was artistic myself, with music and things like that - and he would always encourage me. Just a wonderful, great guy.

GS: My dad, Richard, is an extremely ebullient, wonderful, special human being whose gift is constantly in motion. Oftentimes, we would be at the dinner table and he would get quiet - which was rare - and he would just run off and start playing the piano! He had that gene in his spirit that was consistently in motion and he was constantly creating. It was a fascinating thing to watch. But, he is one of my favorite human beings in the world due to his just unbridled joy and optimism. It's a real deal - that's how he really is.

PC: Your affection shone through in THE BOYS.

JS: The big thing that Greg and I both feel is that our dads are our heroes, for many reasons, and I think that comes across in the movie.

PC: It really does. What was your first memory of having that feeling towards your father?

JS: I remember when I was a little kid they were making MARY POPPINS at the Disney lot. I knew my dad worked for Disney, and the coolest thing about that was that he had Disneyland. (Laughs.)

PC: A rite of passage to this very day!

JS: That was really cool. But, my dad took me around and all of the soundstages were devoted to MARY POPPINS. So, on one stage was the carousel with the green screen behind it, and another stage was the rooftops of London, another was where they ended up shooting "Boy Meets World" on Stage 2 - which was this huge stage and there was Cherry Tree Lane where the movie begins.

PC: That must have been incredibly exciting for a kid - or even an adult.

JS: Oh, yeah! I mean, my dad took me around the studio and showed me all these things, but when you are a little kid you see a soundstage and it doesn't look so real to you, you know? I mean, it's cool, but it was like, "Whatever." My dad took me to the commissary for lunch and Walt Disney walked in.

PC: Wow! What was Walt Disney like?

JS: Walt Disney was a wonderful guy. He not only knew the names of all their employees, he knew the names of their families.

PC: That's a lot to remember!

JS: I remember he walked up to me, he knelt down and said, "So, Jeff, I understand that you took a look at our sets for MARY POPPINS today." And, I said, "Yeah," - I'm holding my dad's hand - Walt said, "What did you think?" and, I said, "Well, I dunno." And my dad's hand went limp! Disney said, "What do you mean?" and, I said, "I don't know if people are going to believe this." So, he skipped his lunch and he took me by the hand and took me back over to the soundstage where the rooftops of London were. He said, "What's wrong? This looks pretty real to me!" And, I said, "Well, I don't know, ‘cause you can see all that stuff over there." So, then he put his hands in a little square - like you do to make a camera [viewfinder] - and he said, "Look through this," and he showed me. "That's what people are going to see. That's called movie magic and you can never tell your friends!" And, as I went back, I realized that this was a pretty major thing. I think that's my earliest memory of who my dad was and his contributions there.

PC: What a great story! What about you, Greg?

GS: I think for me, I had a slightly different take on all of this because I am younger than Jeff, and one of the impetuses for us doing this film - at least for me, in particular - is that I don't think I really appreciated what this body of work meant to the world - or even, really, to me - and how much it informed people's childhoods. So, as a kid, growing up, I took it for granted that my dad would run to the piano and was constantly banging on the piano.

PC: So you didn't have an especially high opinion of him, really? He was just your dad.

GS: I remember he was always doing these G-rated movies, and it was the early seventies, and I remember thinking "Oh, they just write for the kids' movies." Then, all of a sudden, Ringo Starr recorded "You're Sixteen" and I was about nine years old and my dad had the number one rock and roll song in the country! That was cool! Now, we're OK! (Laughs.)

JS: (Laughs.)

PC: What a thrill!

GS: Honestly, I think it was definitely a driving force for me, creatively, to be able to come to grips with what they had done and be able to connect their body of work to the men themselves. It was something that, in the course of doing the film, I really came to appreciate it even more than before.

PC: You really rediscovered their work and found a new appreciation for it.

JS: As did I. When you are growing up in it, it's project-to-project, piece-to-piece. I mean, Greg and I are both in the business ourselves and you kind of take for granted when it's your dad doing it.

PC: Too close to home for perspective.

JS: Yeah, it's so close to you. When we went back and started researching this movie and really mapping out what they have done from 1950 until now and all the things they've done - it's really overwhelming that two men were that prolific and that consistently good at what they did and that those pieces last generation after generation and are translated all over the world.

GS: That's another thing, too, that Jeff just touched on: that their dynamic and their ability never diminished. They were consistently writing great songs.

PC: Totally! The new CHITTY songs included.

GS: From 1950 to THE TIGGER MOVIE to the new songs for the CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG stage production - all quality, interesting, intricately intelligent, yet accessible melodies and lyrics that, I think, define who they are as songwriters.

PC: Could you take me through the process of putting together THE BOYS? There's a lot of obscure clips - those Academy Awards acceptance speeches are a particular treat.

GS: My dad Richard was really good at keeping files of everything - whether it was photos, or illegally obtained footage, or things like that - that we were able to unearth. Then, we had to go about getting the rights to all those things.

PC: That takes forever! Just going through all those materials must have been very time-consuming.

GS: Well, let me take you back one step: Jeff and I did the classic tax-advance/credit cards/loans from family and friends to try to put together a little work-in-progress because there was no one really biting on doing it as either a Broadway musical or a biopic, which is what we wanted to do, originally.

PC: That doesn't mean you can't still do them.

GS: Yeah, but, we kind of got the hair-brained notion that our dads hadn't seen each other in years and they were going to be there together at the opening of MARY POPPINS in 2006, so we decided to roll camera. There were going to be some luminaries there that we could interview and we could put together a little documentary because, you know, it's one thing to list off a bunch of songs that they had written and have people say, "Oh, yeah, I know that song," but, it's another thing to hear it and see where it takes you emotionally.

JS: And see where it came from and all that.

GS: So, we put together what was essentially like chapter headings of what we would do if we did a full documentary and that's what started this process for us.

PC: What was your take on doing the documentary idea, Jeff?

JS: When we started out - as I said, my dad is just so humble and shy and there weren't going to be a lot of interviews of him or any things like this - we worked with one person in particular, who is a Disney guy who knows everything. He kept coming into the editing room and dropping off another interview and this and that. One day - it was so fantastic - we were doing the section on "Feed The Birds" and he said, "How would you like to have footage of Walt Disney feeding birds?" - which is in the movie.

PC: What a great clip that is!

JS: Yeah, he was the editor of Walt's coffee table book so he knew a lot of this stuff. Stuff just poured in. We ended up with tons and tons of stuff.

PC: What a wonderful turn of events.

GS: Another interesting thing is that Jeff and I have been in the business for a long time - as writers, as producers - and, in doing fiction it's all about building up your characters and building out a storyline in three dimensions. What we had to do with THE BOYS, since it's non-fiction, was the exact opposite and whittle down. We had a voluminous amount of material to work with and it became about accenting the right moment with the right photo and the right songs and finding a way to do that while still being storytellers, first and foremost.

PC: Did you find it was the same for you, Jeff?

JS: As we got to know our dads, we sort of did a big chronicle of their lives. Then, we put the songs they were writing at the time next to it and it became like a Da Vinci Code kind of a connection because what we found was that in songs that everyone knows, they come from their lives. They're songs about their partnerships.

PC: Can you give me an example?

JS: The first big song they wrote for Disney was "Let's Get Together" [for THE PARENT TRAP] and it's about two siblings who didn't know each other and decided they would be better as a team. The last song they officially wrote together was for CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG for the London stage - and it came to New York - and it's called "Teamwork", all about the value of working together as a team. So, in its own way, the film accomplishes what we wanted it to do, which is: we wanted to tell you who our dads are and how these songs really reflect their lives and how that honesty and simplicity - the well-crafted simplicity - of those songs relates to everybody on a very human, basic level.

PC: Did they ask not to appear onscreen together?

JS: They didn't need to specifically ask that. They live ten thousand miles apart and they don't really get together very often now.

GS: Yeah, I would just like to add that when they are interviewed together my dad gets very quiet. My dad will just shut down.

PC: You can see that in the archive clips in the film, as well.

JS: I think it's pretty evident in the film, I think, that from earlier interviews, that, yeah, in order to do this correctly we had to interview them separately and get their - what they actually coined as - their "stereo-optic" view on the world, which is how they approach songwriting. You need both channels to be able to produce that.

GS: Frankly, in so much of the archival stuff we found and other people found for us, they were always interviewed together. So, this way, they could open up and you get to know the individuals.

PC: Was there any footage you wanted to put in that you couldn't find or couldn't clear to put in the film?

GS: Sure. I think whenever you are doing something as personal as a film about people you know and love, there are always limitations in terms of what you can and can't put out there. As Jeff and I stated earlier, our dads are our heroes and we never wanted to do anything that would offend them and, oftentimes, if we were coming close to that line or crossing that line, we would pull it back a little bit just to make sure that we weren't in any way causing them to become dismissive of our project.

JS: And Greg and I made an agreement right at the very onset of this, which was: there is no bad guy in this relationship. They are just two very dissimilar men who came together with those dissimilarities and there was a chemical change when they would work together and they made these amazing things together. That's what we really wanted to get across.

PC: Between WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY and THE BOYS, Disney is really showing the light and dark side with these very revealing documentaries. They are not completely flattering, in any way. That's so commendable, on Disney's part.

GS: We were really impressed with that, actually - I mean, the company, in general, but Disney, specifically, allowing us to show the three-dimensional qualities of their partnership and the things that others wouldn't. You know, it wasn't all sweetness and light that brought these songs about. It wasn't little animated butterflies that would feed sheet music over into the animator's office to have it done. (Laughs.)

PC: Definitely not - as is made very clear.

GS: You know, there were some difficulties in the creative process to make these songs so lasting and memorable.

JS: And, the other side of it is that there was a rough period - the part where Alan Menken is talking about, you know, The Sherman Brothers sort of fell out of mode with Disney - but, they were welcomed back and they had a huge hit with THE TIGGER MOVIE. They have been completely honored by the Disney corporation since. Just the fact that they let us make this movie at all and put their money into it to let people know who our dads were is a great tribute.

PC: They're a big part of the Disney legacy.

GS: They just got a door and a window on Main Street in Disneyland, which is very high honor. It was very exciting for us to be there for that.

PC: Do you think Alan Menken has taken on the mantle of the great Disney tunesmith for the twenty-first century?

JS: I'll tell you what, Pat, my dad was the one who just presented Alan with the award on Friday. It was Alan's suggestion. He said he couldn't think of anybody better to do that. My dad - speaking for Richard - is extremely thrilled with what Alan has done over the course of time and carrying that torch in a very brightly lit way into the next millennium.

GS: In interviewing Alan and Stephen Schwartz and all these composers we have - there's tons of them - there's a mutual respect. Especially for Alan Menken, I think, because what he did is carry on the tradition of what our dads were doing but made it his own, too. So, it's a beautiful thing.

PC: What would your dads think of 3D and the new era of digital film now? What do you think of it?

JS: I can speak for what my dad would think because I haven't asked him personally, but, for me, it seems kind of gimmicky. It seems like it's the decline for what I perceived as the great escape - at least it is for me. To go to a movie theater, and to now have to resort to this because the days of the movie house is dying out. Maybe it's cyclical, but maybe it's signaling the end of an era where we can go to a dark place and see a film in a communal form and see something that takes you to another place. I would hate to see that die out.

GS: Speaking for me, when there is any innovation - I went to film school and studied all this stuff - and there was always the time where, you know, TV came out so they got Todd AO and widescreen and stereo sound. I think you always have to compete for the marketplace and, you know what, my kids love the 3D stuff. If they have a choice to go to the 3D or not, they always go to the 3D. I think if it's successful then people want it and they will do it again. AVATAR and other movies like that have proved it can be a good medium.

PC: And Disney with ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

JS: I think, though, that our dads would both agree that, as long as it's a great story then it's great.

GS: If it's used in a gimmicky way, then probably not. But, if it does help the story and expand the story then it can be a potent tool.

PC: Where do you place your fathers in the great pantheon of American songwriters? What will be their legacy?

GS: Hopefully, this movie will underline their legacy. I mean, when you put it all together and you go all the way from the early Gene Autry song all the way to Broadway productions, and everything in between, it's a pretty remarkable body of work that I really don't know anyone else who comes close to that. Of course, we're a little prejudiced! (Laughs.)

PC: Just a bit!

JS: But, in terms of their legacy, I think they celebrated joy - I think they did that musically and they did that memorably. For their optimistic view of the world, one that was reflected, certainly, with Walt Disney, and he recognized that, but, well beyond that, to other films like CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG and CHARLOTTE'S WEB and SNOOPY COME HOME. There's a celebration of joy of life that defines our dads' music and their legacy.

GS: There's another thing, too, that I think comes across in the movie - and, also in the bonus material - they didn't just write songs to sell records, they were trying to say something. "Feed The Birds" is about charity. "It's A Small World" is about world peace and getting along and all people coming together. If you look at all their songs, it's in a subtle way - it's that "Spoonful Of Sugar" in a way - that you get that message - maybe it will change you, maybe it will have a positive effect. I think that's probably their biggest legacy, that these songs will go on forever and they will say optimistic things that people really need to know and think about.

PC: Also, thank you for the excellent bonus features on the DVD.

JS: We're glad you liked it. We loved putting it on!

PC: Julie Andrews comments were so divine in the film.

GS: She was so lovely.

JS: She could not have been more gracious or more happy to be there. You know what's fascinating? I'll tell you: in doing these interviews, and we did a lot with our family and the people that were closest to our dads and worked with our dads and, to a person, - whether it was Julie or Dick Van Dyke or Angela Lansbury or Debbie Reynolds - none of them knew that our dads had this rift between them. That's how well they kept this guarded secret. We could have done a collection of mouths dropping if we wanted to put one together.

GS: We were supposed to get like ten minutes with Julie, and she said, "Ask me anything you want. You can stay as long as you want." And, the lovely thing is, after the interview - we were at the Carlyle Hotel in New York - we were going down to lunch in the elevator and this woman got in a few floors down and saw Julie and she almost fainted! That's how powerful she is. She was just so down-to-earth and compassionate and really respects our dads and acknowledged that it was our first feature film and how much she adored them and how much they meant to her.

PC: I was totally unaware The Beach Boys had recorded one of your dads' songs. In addition to Julie Andrews, BrIan Wilson has also participated in this column so could you tell me about that?

JS: I always loved that song. My dad would always listen to my record collection and I loved the Beatles and I loved The Beach Boys - that was my era. I guess our dads were looking for somebody to play these songs and my dad was listening to my Beach Boys record and, you know, he just fell in love with them. I think they were just kind of starting out, they were a very young band at that point. We have footage of them in the film, of them playing, and they look like they are nineteen years old!

PC: They were!

JS: It was super cool.

PC: Ringo of the Beatles and all of The Beach Boys!

JS & GS: (Laughs.)

PC: Define collaboration.

GS: It's the ability to be bigger than the sum of the parts. In other words, you find the best way to go about something because you respect each other's talents and you go in a direction that elevates both of you to a higher place than you could have gone individually.

JS: I write alone and I wrote in teems and I've also done a lot of TV staff writing. What I've found is that, if the spirit is correct - if there is a very positive thing and you are all working towards the same end - it's always going to be better than anything you can do by yourself. I would say that's true for the movie we did because we each could have made this movie, but we couldn't do it as well as we did it together.

PC: What's next for your dads?

GS: Well, my dad is still writing all the time. He just did the love theme that was featured in IRON MAN 2. So, he's just going to continue writing. His longtime friend and collaborator Milt Larsen and he have a play that they are trying to mount. There's talk of other shows, too. It's wonderful to see this renaissance for them.

PC: What's next for both of you?

GS: Jeff and I, individually, have projects going in all different mediums - film, television and other outlets.

JS: I have a couple of things. I'm actually personally happy because I worked on BOY MEETS WORLD and they are finally releasing Season 4 and I wrote five of the episodes. That comes out in December.

PC: No way! BOY MEETS WORLD was a 90s classic!

JS: Interestingly, I am working with William Daniels - Mr. Feenie - we are doing a feature together.

PC: From 1776 and A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC on Broadway, too.

JS: It's an amazing project. It was a lovely, lovely play by this amazing Canadian playwright Joanna Glass. I have a company called Traveling Light Partners and we are doing a number of things. We have three movies that we are producing right now. Just a bunch of stuff.

PC: So, THE BOYS was the true labor of love?

JS: For us, this was such a thrilling personal journey, this documentary. As hard as it was, it's lovely to have been able to do it.

PC: No news on BUSKER'S ALLEY?

JS: Don't know. (Laughs.)

GS: No. We think it's one of the most outstanding, adult, sophisticated song scores they ever wrote.

PC: I agree.

GS: We'd love to see it. It's a beautiful thing.

JS: It really is.

PC: No progress whatsoever?

GS: You know, as we were doing the film, Tony Walton was set to direct it and it got a book by A.J. Caruthers, so it was like old home week with all these wonderful people that had populated their lives for so many decades. So, we don't know what the future is with that - we'd love to see it be a bright one.

JS: I don't know if you know this, but BUSKER'S ALLEY started early in the sixties with A.J. Caruthers bringing my dad the story idea. They watched this old movie called SIDEWALKS OF LONDON with Charles Laughton - who directed and starred in it as Charlie as Busker - and they adapted with A.J. and worked on that. It's a long time coming, and it's such a beautiful, heartfelt play. Really, again, now that you know who these guys are from our movie, you are going to understand that those songs really come from their heart and their own life experience.

PC: It's such a fantastic score. I can't wait for it to re-appear.

GS: It's fantastic. Jim Dale was on it for awhile. He's on the DVD extras.

PC: Thank you both so much. Send my very best to both of your dads!

JS: Thank you so much, Pat.

GS: Have a great one, Pat! Bye.

 

Test and expand your Broadway knowledge with our new game - The Broadway Match-Up! How well do you know your Broadway casting trivia?	Play the Daily Game, explore current shows, and delve into past decades like the 2000s, 80s, and the Golden Age. Challenge your friends and see where you rank!
How well do you know your Tony Awards history? Take our never-ending quiz of nominations and winner history and challenge your friends.	Can you beat your friends? Play today’s daily Broadway word game, featuring a new theatrically inspired word or phrase every day!