Most of you reading this no doubt know Carrie Fisher for one thing–her iconic role as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy, a role soon to be revived for the upcoming The Force Awakens. Some of you out there with a little more knowledge of Fisher’s career beyond Star Wars might also be aware that she’s also been a prolific author, with such novels as Postcards from the Edge and Surrender the Pink to her credit, not to mention her non-fiction works like Wishful Drinking, which she later turned into a successful one-woman stage show.
But Carrie Fisher has had yet another career, one that even the most die-hard fans might not be aware of. For many years, she was one of Hollywood’s most prolific script doctors. For those of you not familiar with the term, a script doctor is a screenwriter, usually someone with a particularly strong handle on story and structure, and often with a sharp wit, who gets hired by a studio to “perform surgery” on a screenplay that needs it badly. Sometimes they are able to save the screenplay, other times there’s not enough they can do, and the patient doesn’t survive. (The movie usually gets made anyway.)
Joss Whedon performed this task for years on movies like Speed, as did Quentin Tarantino on films like Crimson Tide. And during that same period, Fisher was also one of Hollywood’s most sought-after script doctors. Her work can be seen in movies like Sister Act, Hook, The Wedding Singer and several others. Whether or not Fisher’s work did enough to save those movies is a matter of opinion, but one thing’s for sure: good or bad, she never got any screen credit for her work. The work of a script doctor often comes with a fat paycheck, but no recognition.
Well, the folks over at the Mary Sue have decided that Fisher’s work as a script doctor deserves some praise after all this time, and have made a video documenting Fisher’s time as Hollywood’s secret weapon. You can watch the video in its entirety above, and you’ll learn that Carrie Fisher is much, much more than just a pair of cinnamon roll buns.
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HT: The Mary Sue
IMAGE: Lucasfilm
