Desert Hearts - Production Notes

Production Notes

It took director Donna Deitch (who makes a cameo appearance as a heavily accented woman playing two slot machines at a time. Her line: "If you don't play, you can't win.") four years to raise the $1.5 million for the film and eventually had to sell her home to make it. She also encountered difficulty finding actors who would portray lesbians so explicitly.

Deitch was surprised to learn 20 years after the film's release that both actors were told by their friends and agents that this film would ruin their careers. In a 1986 interview, Shaver told the story that she was up for a role in Joshua Then and Now, which would have promoted her career much farther than Desert Hearts. Donna Deitch assured her over the phone that she was right for her movie and told her she refused to hang up the phone until she got an answer. And after five minutes, Shaver accepted the role. Shaver explained her feelings about the film. "I was scared, not about the lesbianism — the script said, 'The passion builds' in the love scene, so once I knew how the passion built and where the camera would be, that was fine — but because someone wanted me to do what I'd wanted to do all along, and here it was, and all I had to do was say yes. I had always wanted to carry a movie. Now, if I never make another one, I've done this. For the first time, I feel I've done a complete work on film."

Patricia Charbonneau discovered the day before filming began that she was pregnant, although it mostly didn't show since the filming took 35 days. In an interview in 1986, Charbonneau said, "When I first read it, I thought, 'Well, everything that I've done so far people have taken a risk with me. I wanted to do something that at least people would talk about. Even if they hated it, they'd be talking about it." Commenting on doing such an explicit love scene, Charbonneau said, "Kissing Helen wasn't the hard part, really. The hard part was just walking out on the set naked and just standing there."

Deitch insisted that the lesbian sex scene, rated by many viewers as the best in cinema, not be edited or altered in any way. When producers of The L Word began production of that television show, they required the actors to view Desert Hearts to show them a well-made lesbian love scene.

Deitch mentioned in the director commentary of the 20th anniversary DVD release that approximately 20% of her budget went to obtaining the rights to the original music in the film. The soundtrack included songs by Patsy Cline, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Ella Fitzgerald, Patti Page, Kitty Wells, Johnny Cash, Ferlin Husky, and Jim Reeves. Deitch asked the studio to extend the rights to the music to release a soundtrack on record or cassette, but the studio declined.

Helen Shaver met her husband, key grip Steve Smith, on the set of this film. They have been married since 1988 and they have a grown son.