Carrie Fisher may be best remembered for playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars movies, but there was also a point in time when she was known around Hollywood as one of the most sought-after script doctors.
She’d sort of fallen into it by accident following the release of her semi-autobiographical novel Postcards from the Edge in 1987, and the gigs just kept on coming. Next thing Fisher knew, she was asked to rewrite Steven Spielberg’s Hook, starring Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams. From there, she was brought in, uncredited, to punch up a variety of films, including Lethal Weapon 3, The River Wild, and some of the later Star Wars entries.
Fisher’s contributions behind the scenes even extended to settling creative disputes. When Whoopi Goldberg butted heads with Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg about whether or not her love interest in Sister Act should be black, Fisher stepped in as the voice of reason. “Send Jeffrey a hatchet and say, ‘Please bury this on both our behalfs,’” Fisher advised Goldberg.
The comedian did as Fisher asked and received two large brass balls from Katzenberg in the mail a few days later, effectively resolving the issue and allowing production to move forward as planned.
28 Years Ago, Carrie Fisher Helped Rescue ‘The Wedding Singer’ From Script Trouble
Another movie Fisher helped get over the finish line was the hit 1998 Adam Sandler comedy The Wedding Singer. According to screenwriter Tim Herlihy, he got roughly halfway through the script before he hit a wall and wasn’t sure where to go with the story. That’s when they called upon Fisher to lend a hand.
Director Frank Coraci spent six months at Fisher’s Los Angeles home during that time, where they watched old romcoms like Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s to find inspiration.
Coraci credits Fisher with fleshing out the female roles and solving Sandler and Drew Barrymore’s will-they-or-won’t-they dilemma. However, in the process, she removed a lot of the more humorous dialogue, which created a whole other problem. As a result, they had to reinsert all the jokes or create new ones.
“I think there’s only one line of Carrie’s left in the movie. But she did that structural stuff that really saved our bacon in the second act,” Herlihy explained.
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