9. Even with all those cooks in the kitchen, the film’s cast and crew ended up reporting for work with an unfinished script.
“It was very difficult,” Ardolino admitted to the Chicago Tribune in June 1992, once the finished product was safely in theaters. “It was difficult because the script was originally written for Bette Midler, and when Whoopi came in, adjustments had to be made.”
He added, “‘Everybody thought that the adjustment would only take a couple of weeks. But a couple of weeks wasn’t enough time.”
Divine intervention not imminent, they just started rolling with what they had. “It put Whoopi and me in a difficult position,” Ardolino said. ”It’s problematic to be shooting out of order and then suddenly you come to a scene that hasn’t been written yet. What precedes it? What follows it?'”
But they obviously made it work, a credit to everyone involved.
“Whoopi had some problems with the studio at some point, but she and I, we had to actually do it, which meant that every day there had to be a scene that was shot,” the director said. “We never had a blowup, nor did we have a situation where we didn’t get something in the can every day. We both complained from time to time because it was difficult, but we got along just fine. There was a lot of stress, but I think that we did our best. Whoopi is very creative and we challenged each other.”