Whoopi Goldberg – Site

Director: Emile Ardolino

Writer: Joseph Howard

Cast: Whoopi Goldberg, Maggie Smith, Harvey Keitel, Bill Nunn, Kathy Najimy, Wendi Makkena

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Buy the movie:  USA CAN UK FRA DEU AUT

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Tagline: No booze!  No sex!  No drugs! … No way!

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See the trailer:

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The movie opens at a Catholic elementary school in 1968. A young girl, revealed to be the film’s main character, is warned against heading down the wrong path due to her behavior in class.

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The girl is Deloris Van Cartier, a struggling lounge singer in Reno, Nevada, dating a married mobster, Vince LaRocca, and she is oblivious to his criminal activities. But the relationship sours after an argument, and later Deloris witnesses him shoot his limo driver, who had been supposedly giving information to the police.

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Deloris manages to escape to the police and informs them that she is willing to testify against Vince; Lt. Eddie Souther is put in charge of keeping her safe.

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Deloris reluctantly goes into hiding as a nun in a Catholic convent in San Francisco, California, where she wears a habit and is given the name “Sister Mary Clarence”.

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Reverend Mother, who takes an instant dislike to Deloris, is only pacified by promises of funds for the neglected church, while Deloris herself chafes at the austere lifestyle of the convent and grates on the nerves of the Abbess, who puts her in the convent’s (lackluster and off-key) choir to keep her out of trouble; but this is where she shines, taking over the choir and putting a new touch on old songs.

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She has the choir swinging and singing to gospel renditions of hymns (“Hail Holy Queen”), and soul music adapted to have religious themes (for example, Mary Wells’ “My Guy” changed into “My God”). Despite Reverend Mother’s protests, she brings new vigor into the convent and leads it in cleaning up the surrounding neighborhood. Her efforts draw a lot of attention, even from Pope John Paul II himself. Meanwhile, Deloris is finding peace and purpose.

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The scheme is uncovered by Vince and Deloris is kidnapped by Vince’s goons, to Eddie’s dismay; but after explaining the situation to the other nuns, they agree to help. Meanwhile, Vince orders Deloris killed; she remains calm, making Vince and company rattled, and subsequently escapes.

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The group of nuns survive the final conflict with Vince and he is arrested. The victorious nuns return to San Francisco for the Pope’s concert. Deloris eventually returns to her successful singing career.

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The first performance of the nun’s choir undir the direction of “Sister Mary Clarence”:

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Trivia provided by The Internet Movie Database:

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• The role of Deloris was originally written for Bette Midler; however, she turned it down.

• One of the teenage girls that Deloris befriends is played by Desreta Jackson, who played Whoopi Goldberg’s character Celie in The Color Purple (1985) as a young girl.

• An opening scene shows Deloris as a young girl, played by Isis Carmen Jones. Jones had previously played a “de-aged” version of Goldberg’s character Guinan, in an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”.

• Later in the year of the film’s release, Whoopi Goldberg and the film “nuns” performed at a Democratic fundraiser for Bill Clinton.

• Screenwriter Paul Rudnick wrote the original script back in 1987 and Bette Midler was supposed to be cast for the role of Dolores. After Midler had left the project, the script underwent several re-writes by screenwriters Carrie Fisher, Eleanor Bergstein, Nancy Meyers, Jim Cash, Jack Epps Jr. and Robert Harling. As Rudnick did not consider the final draft of the movie as his own work, the pseudonym ‘Joseph Howard’ was chosen by him after his own suggestion for the writer’s credit (‘Screenplay by Goofy’) had been rejected.

• The church in which Whoopi Goldberg takes refuge is St. Paul’s Catholic Church located at 221 Valley Street (near Church St.) in San Francisco’s Outer Mission district.

• The school exterior shown in the opening shot is St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School in Reno. It was not operating as a school when the picture was made.

• The Reno police station shown is actually the main post office in downtown Reno, with some (real) patrol cars parked outside for set dressing. The patrol cars were driven by officers working security on the set. The real police station in Reno didn’t look as much like a police station to the film’s director.

• The Mother Superior dubs Deloris “Sister Mary Clarence”. She states that the “Clarence” part of the moniker derives from “Saint Clarence of Concord”. While there is no St. Clarence from Concord in conventional Roman Catholicism, there is a St. Clarence from Vienne who is, coincidentally, the patron Saint of prisoners.

The song “My God”:

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Memorable quotes from the movie:

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Sister Mary Patrick: We did it! We actually sang a chord!
Sister Mary Clarence: Yeah. You sang a chord for two seconds. The next thing you have to do is listen to each other. That’s a big key. Big key, you must listen to each other if you’re going to be a group.
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Eddie: Where are you going?
Delores: I’m going to the little nun’s room, nosy!
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Delores: Are you looking for me?
Eddie: How come I saw you on TV?
Delores: That was not my fault, these people just showed up but it’s been really good for the convent.
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Biker #2: Wanna dance, sister?
Sister Mary Clarence: Why? You don’t have any rhythm.
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Delores: [at her first choir rehearsal, the choir sings a chord badly with Mary Patrick singing an octave above everyone else] Okay! Okay! Okay! Very nice!
[to Mary Patrick]
Delores: Um, sister can you just slide over here please? That’s a powerful instrument you have there!
Sister Mary Patrick: Thank you.
Delores: But I think it’s probably a good idea if we bring you down out of the rafters, everybody wants to be close to God I’m just not sure you can do it vocally so I need you to sing an octave below where you’ve been singing.
Sister Mary Patrick: Okey dokey!
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Delores: What am I gonna do here? I’m gonna go crazy! There’s nothing but a lot of white women dressed as nuns! What am I gonna do here?
Eddie: Pray.
Delores: Pray?
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Delores: What are you gonna do? Stick me in a bag and bury me? Forget it!
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Dolores: Don’t worry, we will always be together.
Mary Lazarus: That’s what Diana Ross said.
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Delores: [prays] Bless us, oh Lord, for these Thy gifts which we are about to recieve. And yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of no food, I will fear no hunger. We want you to give us this day, our daily bread. And to the republic for which it stands, and by the power invested in me, I pronounce us ready to eat. Amen.
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Sister Mary Robert: I’m so nervous. What if I forget the words?
Sister Mary Clarence: You’re gonna go straight to hell.
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Eddie: Nice church, huh?
Delores: Yes, very nice. Look, what am I gonna be? Quasimodo in the belfry? What is this?
Eddie: I want you to stay here for a while.
Delores: Where?
Eddie: In the convent. It’s the safest place in the world. You think Vince is gonna look for you in a convent?
Delores: Wh… in the what?
Eddie: The convent.
Delores: You must be out of your… You know what? I’m gonna go back and work this out with Vince. You’re a lunatic! I’m not gonna be in no damn convent with these people. These people don’t even have sex!
Now the church is full of people listening to the choir sing: “I will follow him”:

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Goofs for the movie:

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* Continuity: The crystal glass on Mother Superior’s desk when she meets Deloris.

* Continuity: During one song, Mary Robert is praying with her hands in the praying position. In the very next shot, her hands are instantly by her side.

* Continuity: During the singing act at the beginning of the movie, wireless microphone colors keep rotating between the three singers.

* Continuity: During the credits at the end of the movie, the spelling of Deloris’s name rotates between Delores and Deloris on the magazine covers. The first two magazines (People and Newsweek) show “Delores,” while the second two, Time and the National Enquirer show “Deloris”.

* Continuity: As Delores is sitting on her bed in the convents. admiring the daisy clock, she hears motorcycle engines. Still sitting on the bed, she turns to look out the window at the bar across the street. When she turns back around, we see that the window’s edge is higher than her head. She would have to be standing on he knees to look out the window, but she only moved her head.

* Continuity: When Sister Mary Roberts gives Sister Mary Clarence the clock to help her wake up in the morning, you see Sister Mary Clarence’s hand reach out for clock. In the next shot, Mary Clarence’s hand reaches out for the clock again.

* Continuity: During “Pope” performance, stage medium shots reveal microphone stands stage left and stage right to the choir. During wide shots, the microphone stands disappear.

* Crew or equipment visible: When Sister Mary Clarence/Dolores is meeting with the Mother Superior in her office right after the first choir performance in which she is choir mistress a crewmember’s hand can be seen trying to get the pigeons to stay on the window sill.

* Crew or equipment visible: Crew visible in patrol car door window as it is opened outside the casino in Reno.

* Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Mary Roberts gives the daisy clock to Mary Clarence, she says it is set at five but the hands of the clock are set at 7.

* Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In the first scene, young Delores’ teacher asks her to write the names of all the apostles on the blackboard, alphabetically. Delores writes “John, Paul, Peter, Elvis.” Until she writes “Elvis” the teacher is nodding in approval. Two things are wrong with this. First, Paul (though considered an apostle in a different context) is not one of the original twelve apostles. Second, when the apostles are written alphabetically, “Andrew” is the first. Any Catholic school teacher would have corrected her long before she added “Elvis” to the list.

* Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In a Catholic order in which all the Sisters’ names religious names begin with “Mary” (i.e. Mary Robert, Mary Patrick) it is inconsistent that a “Sister Alma” belongs to the same order. Unless her name is “Sister Mary Alma” and that detail is simply not mentioned in the movie, this is an error.

* Factual errors: When Delores was singing in the nightclub she had two back-up singers, but the back-up chords had three notes. Delores was singing the solo, so that would be impossible.

* Miscellaneous: Toward the end of the film, as the nuns are looking out of the airplane window at Reno, it is quite obvious that they are merely looking at a string of Christmas lights.

* Revealing mistakes: When Sister Mary Clarence/Dolores is escaping from Joey and Willy, towards the end of the film, she is shot at. We hear the shot but, although the pistol is on screen at the same time, we don’t see it being fired.