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Reviews
Grace of My Heart (1996)
Comments from Leslie Gore
Interviewer: I wanted to ask you about Grace of My Heart. I've read that Bridget Fonda's closeted lesbian teen character Kelly Porter was based at least partially on you.
Leslie Gore: Well, I think that's what they were trying to intimate. Was it true? I don't know, everyone seemed to be based on somebody and yet the stories weren't absolutely carved in stone. There was sort of a Carole King character, sort of a Brian Wilson character. So I think that was their intent.
Interviewer: Did you have any input when they were developing that character?
Leslie Gore: You know, I really didn't. They called me up to write one of the songs and I felt good that they called me, and then the next thing I knew, I received a song in the mail written by two guys, whose names I can't even remember, and I was so disappointed that I wasn't brought in on the ground level.
And basically when I heard the song, I thought it was kind of terrible, so what I wound up doing is what I call doctoring, which is making some changes to make it a little more palatable. There were things that were totally unmelodic, and there were some lyrics that were just horrible, and I wound up making it, to my mind, a little bit better, and then I got a third writer's credit. And then they had the nerve never even to invite me to the opening when it premiered in New York. So I say screw them. So if it was meant to be me, they didn't handle it very well. There may have been some exploitative motive there--I won't second guess it--but that's what I suspect.