she would rehearse on weekends with Dinner and McCarthy. Filming Filming took nine weeks. The Church of St. Michael (built 1921) and the (now closed) St. Michael's Parish School were used as the fictional St. Basil's Church and St. Basil's School, run by the factual Order of St. Basil. Filming used external and internal shots of this church and school, and around the neighborhood. An auditorium scene was filmed using students from Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx. John Heard later claimed an incident on the film led to him being unofficially blacklisted for a time. One afternoon when I was sitting there talking to another actor. I think it was Jay Patterson or somebody. I’m a Catholic, and I still hang around with guys I went to high school with... I leaned over and I said, “I don’t understand: Why in the world would they get a Jew to direct a Catholic boys movie?” And the director—Michael Dinner... —was sitting right behind me. [Laughs.] And then it turned out that I’m part Jewish! My grandfather was Jewish. I mean, it may have sounded like I was being anti-Semitic, but I was really just sort of being... Catholic boys are kind of vain. They think of themselves as being unique, so why would we want to be directed by a Jewish person? But I probably didn’t work again after that for two years or something. Release The film was originally shot as Catholic Boys, but due to HBO and Tri-Star’s fears of alienating viewers, the title was changed to Heaven Help Us. In European territories and in Australia, the film was released theatrically under its original title. To make the film more upbeat, there were changes made to a plot involving a disenchanted teacher, and the addition of a spoken epilogue. Reception The film received mixed reviews and was not a commercial success. In a review that awarded the film two and ½ stars, Roger Ebert expressed that while he found some scenes were funny and contain “moments of real insight and memory,” he found the tone to be inconsistent. Janet Maslin of The New York Times was more positive, writing the filmmakers “have an unusually good feeling for the time, the place, the characters as kids and the adults they later turned into”. McCarthy later called the film "a very lovely movie that twelve people saw" and described