According to DVD Talk, "The film sat around gathering dust, until Loucos de Dar Nó (1980) came out, made a ton of cash, and prompted the producers to re-shoot sequences and release the film. The end result is a film that was produced before and after Pryor's suicide by fire attempt (you can see a physical difference during certain parts of the movie)."
According to boxofficemojo.com, the picture is ranked in the top twenty movies at the American box office in the U.S. for the year of 1981, coming in at number twenty.
Six years after this film was released, the movie spawned the short-lived television series Bustin' Loose (1987).
When Cicely Tyson was offered the role, she originally turned it down because she was no fan of Richard Pryor's regular use of profanity. Ironically, a feature of Tyson's character is putting a stop to it.