One of the earliest known episodes of sexual harassment by producer Harvey Weinstein happened during the pre-production of Playing for Keeps (1986): "In 1984, when Tomi-Ann Roberts was a 20-year-old college junior, she waited tables in New York one summer and hoped to start an acting career. Mr. Weinstein, one of her customers, urged her to audition for a movie that he and his brother were planning to direct. He sent scripts, then asked her to meet him where he was staying so they could discuss the film, she said in an email and a telephone interview. When she arrived, he was nude in the bathtub, she recalled. He told her that she would give a much better audition if she were comfortable "getting naked in front of him," too, because the character she might play would have a topless scene. If she could not bare her breasts in private, she would not be able to do it on film, Ms. Roberts recalled Mr. Weinstein saying. (...) Ms. Roberts remembers apologizing on the way out, telling Mr. Weinstein that she was too prudish to go along. Later, she felt that he had manipulated her by feigning professional interest in her, and she doubted that she had ever been under serious consideration. (...) Today she is a psychology professor at Colorado College, researching sexual objectification, an interest she traces back in part to that long-ago encounter." [New York Times, Oct.10, 2017]
First film directed by Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein. It's the only director credit for Bob, while Harvey would direct another feature, the animated La gran aventura de los gnomos (1987).
Inspired by the boyhood experiences of Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein, the story is partly based on Harvey's stint at the Century Theater in Buffalo, New York. In 1974, he purchased the facility with a friend named Horace "Corky" Burger, and ran it as a rock and roll venue until its 1978 demolition.
Mary B. Ward's debut.