How Does a Moment Last Forever marks the first collaboration between Menken and Rice in over two decades; the last time they worked together had been in the "Beauty and the Beast" musical. Menken believes that the songs he and Rice had written for the musical would not have translated well to the screen due to the structural differences between the two formats. One of at least nine significant changes made to the film specifically for the remake, "How Does a Moment Last Forever" was conceived to explain Belle's backstory. Her quest to find out her mother's fate serves, in the plot, as a foundation for
Jack Ketch in 1828. He is mentioned in the Charles Dickens novels "Oliver Twist", "The Pickwick Papers" and "David Copperfield" and in the C. M. Kornbluth science fiction story "The Marching Morons" (1951). More recently, Jack Ketch plays a role in Neal Stephenson's 2003 and 2004 volumes "Quicksilver" and "The System of the World", the first and last volumes, respectively, in his "The Baroque Cycle" series (though the last volume is set in 1714, well after the death of the historical Jack Ketch.) A Jack Ketch character appears in Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book". Jack Ketch is featured as a non-speaking character