Interview: Jeffrey, Gregory Sherman on The Boys
Songwriters Wrote for Disney's Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book
Aug 20, 2009
With The Boys: The Sherman Brothers Story (opening August 21st), filmmakers Jeffrey and Gregory Sherman not only paid homage to the legendary songwriters who made classic musicals like Winnie the Pooh, The Jungle Book and Mary Poppins sparkle, but blew the lid off a family feud that had kept the cousins apart for most of their lives.
In Part #1 of this exclusive interview, Jeff and Greg talked about how they pitched The Boys to Disney. In this installment, the two cousins talk about what it was like to work with Disney, and candidly assess their fathers' very different personalities.
Did either of you have previous experience with documentary work?
Gregory Sherman: “No. We both are storytellers: we’re both writers, we’re both producers. I’ve done a lot of reality television – all different kinds of crappy reality television! – but the bottom line is that I’ve done a lot of that kind of work, and we both knew this was something we could do as storytellers. And there’s nobody better to tell this story than the sons of the subjects.”
Jeffery Sherman: “I went to UCLA Film School and I was mostly a writer/producer: I did some TV series and worked on movies: Boy Meets World, plus a series of movies called Au Pair for ABC Family. So we came at it from two different things: one was structuring from story and physical production, and telling story based on what you get from shooting.”
Greg: “But we’d proven ourselves, before we got started, with that 20 minute work-in-progress. A lot of times in Hollywood, people want to see a sizzle reel. We had more than that: we had a 25-minute “This is the basis of what we want to do,” and we showed style and how we wanted to go out there, and they left us alone.”
Jeff: “I half-expected some executive to walk in and say, 'Okay, here’s what we’re going to do!' and–“
Greg: “Nobody did that. They left us alone and they liked what they saw. They had a couple of notes at the end, like ‘Could you try a different piece of music under here?’ We said, ‘We tried it, we didn’t like it,’ and they said, ‘Okay, then leave it!’ It was like a dream in that regard, and we got the movie we wanted to do.”
How did this go over with your respective families? You’re digging up a lot of garbage–
Jeff: “We decided to do it respectfully–“
Greg: “There was no bad guy: it’s two very different personalities that created this incredible body of work and we allowed their personality differences to be evident so that you could understand what the dynamics were. Who said who did what and what that caused is so irrelevant to the bigger picture–“
Jeff: “What we wanted to show was that these were very distinct personalities that were so different that, when they came together, there was a chemical change and they did something that neither one could do alone. In that same regard, and as a consequence of being in that room for 60 years together, they needed time apart. It’s not a really horrible, ugly, Mommy Dearest story; it’s about any kind of collaboration. And I think the families appreciated that.”
Greg: “And they appreciated more what they were able to do as a consequence of this project, and they loved that we paid homage to our fathers and our grandfather, Al Sherman, who really teamed them up and gave them their confidence to go forward as a team.”
Jeff: “And I was able to immortalize these other people like my mother, Walt Disney, Mike Connor, their manager and others, and these people are gone. And that was important because it takes a village . . .”
Greg: “Further, once you know about these guys and what they went through to in their life, you go back and you listen to those songs more carefully. They’re not just some kiddie song on a Barney morning TV show: my kids like it, my kids’ kids like it, and the world likes it. We went to a festival in France, there were people all over the world there, and they were huge fans: they had the records and I think they expected our dads to be there! (laughs) 'Could you sign this?' People really know this stuff, and it’s lived and I think it’s because of what exceptional people our dads were.”
If you could give a thumbnail sketch of each of your fathers, as if they were a character in a movie, what would you say?
Greg: “My dad is eccentric, excitable, extraordinarily passionate, he wears his heart on his sleeve, he’s right out there, a bundle of energy. He’s like Tigger and if you were stuck in a room with Tigger for 60 years, you might want to find a window to jump out . . . or throw him out! (everybody laughs) My personal opinion!”
Jeff: “I see my dad: from a young age he was a poet, a deep thinker and a philosopher. He went to war and saw things in the world that he didn’t even imagine were there. And it struck him that he had to take his love of words and ability to communicate using words and find some vehicle to make the world better. And that vehicle was working with Richard Sherman.”
(In Part #3 of this exclusive interview, Jeff and Greg Sherman delve deeper into the making of The Boys, and discuss how their fathers' rift impacted their lives.)
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