[Beaches] is a pretty picture and I just liked having somebody like Bette [Mudler] who can be flying in the big comedy scenes and have her do more like a realistic part.

I was very proud of that, of taking women and making them vulnerable and so I continued doing that. Right after Beaches I did "Pretty Woman", then I did "Frankie and Johnnie" and then I did "Other Sister" and "Princess Diaries" so that helped me get into the vein there of understanding women and trying to make them very pretty and very interesting.

I directed fourteen movies. Every movie had Hector Elizondo. He didn't like Beaches. I don't know, it was originally not a happy movie at all, it was much sadder than that. And they brought me in to kind of make it a little more 'warm', I guess you might call it. The original ending was a whole messy thing.

In the middle of Beaches there's a scene from the "Laverne & Shirley" TV show so they see some history of my work in each film.