O’Hara revisits beautiful performance

Geoff Carter

Friday, Dec. 28, 2001 | 3:20 a.m.

"You feel like you're inside the film, as opposed to just observing it," says Paige O'Hara, the voice of Belle in Walt Disney Pictures' "Beauty and the Beast," playing at Luxor's IMAX Theater from New Year's Day through May 20. "It's the same film in terms of heart, but visually it's a whole new experience."

That O'Hara, one of the talents behind the film's unprecedented critical and commercial success, can be overwhelmed by "Beauty" more than a decade after its initial release says something wonderful, not just for the film, but for the Disney animation department's willingness to take risks. The animated classic -- to this day, still the only animated feature to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar -- has been reformatted for large-format IMAX screens.

Once again, "Beauty and the Beast" is without precedent, and even the Las Vegan who voiced the film's heroine couldn't see it coming.

"We had no idea it was going to (IMAX) two years ago," O'Hara says. She only knew that a sequence was being restored -- including a Howard Ashman/Alan Menken song titled "Human Again," and a scene in which Belle teaches the Beast (voiced by Robby Benson) to read -- but that was all. "I found out in the last year, and started talking to the directors to find out how they did it."

The answer to that question didn't come easy, to Belle or to Disney. Rather than simply blowing up the original negative to fit IMAX screens (which are eight-to-10 times larger than standard movie screens), animators returned to the original film elements, which were stored digitally on 9,000 CD-ROMS. In essence, Disney Animation re-assembled the film, frame by frame, note by note.

The finished product is little short of astonishing. As they did with "Fantasia 2000," the studio's last animated IMAX release, Disney builds a world in the Special Edition of "Beauty." The depth of the backgrounds is seemingly limitless. The characters are more kinetic, more colorful.

And the ballroom sequence, originally lauded by critics for its use of computer-assisted "camera angles," looks even better in the redux. It swoops and glides as gracefully as a falling leaf.

As full computer animation threatens to put cel animation out of business, seeing "Beast" in IMAX reminds movie fans of what classic animation really is -- moving artwork. No computer could duplicate or replace it. O'Hara, an artist herself, firmly agrees with what "Beast" co-director Kirk Wise said, when she was asked if computers shouldn't be allowed to take over:

"Kirk said, 'It's a format that should never be lost.' There's a place for computers -- we used them in the ballroom sequence. But I feel, as Kirk does, that (cel animation) is the reason the characters in 'Beauty and the Beast' look so real. You can see them breathe, see expressions that get lost in computer animation."

Computers or no, Belle wouldn't have been Belle without O'Hara's emotional, wholly genuine vocal performance. When O'Hara auditioned for Belle with 500 other hopefuls -- including Kathie Lee Gifford -- she felt the character immediately.

"When I read the script, there was so much of me -- a younger version of me -- that I knew instantly who the character was," O'Hara says.

The animators wisely allowed her to improvise, which she and Benson did as the animators videotaped them for inspiration.

"They take your gestures, your expressions and incorporate them," she says.

Allowed to face each other and act off each other from adjoining sound booths, the actors treated their roles as they would stage roles, almost to Benson's detriment.

"Robby would contort, make faces," O'Hara says, chuckling. "At the end of the day, Robby would ask, 'Why does my neck hurt?' "

Another life-changing experience was working with lyricist Howard Ashman, who died of AIDS shortly after the film was released. O'Hara sang the film's Oscar-winning title number to him over the phone -- remarkably, Angela Lansbury, who performs it in the film, doesn't like singing it herself.

"I really felt a strong love and bond with Howard," O'Hara says. She grins as she recalls one of the last comments he made about her performance in "Beast," during the recording of "Something There." After she sang the verse "New, and a bit alarming ...," Ashman said by phone, "Sounds like Streisand. Keep it."

O'Hara is continues to strive within her art. She's trying to stir interest in a Vegas production of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," a stage mystery that would allow theatergoers to bet on its outcome -- the identity of the play's murderer would change nightly. She records albums, performs on Broadway and off, and reprises Belle several times a year for home-video sequels and television.

But having an eight-story nightly performance of your best-known role right around the corner -- that's an artistic reward few will know.

"I feel blessed," Paige O'Hara says. And to prove it, seemingly unaware of herself, she smiles Belle's timeless smile.

archive