After one viewing of La Dolce Vita (1960), Weisman dropped out of Syracuse University's School of Fine Arts to design film-posters in Rome – where, by learning fluent Italian, he managed to meet Federico Fellini, create the poster for Otto e mezzo (8 1/2) and work for Pier Paolo Pasolini.

[5] Weisman's gift for languages (with fluency in French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, German, and Dutch) made him an "incurable nomad"; by the early 1980s, while in Brazil, he met and befriended fellow expat Manuel Puig.

[6] Weisman developed the film over several years, engaging Leonard Schrader to write the screenplay and William Hurt (replacing Burt Lancaster in the role of "Molina") to star opposite Raul Julia as "Valentine".

Spike of Bensonhurst, directed by Paul Morrissey and starring Sasha Mitchell and Ernest Borgnine, and Shogun Assassin, a compilation of Japanese Samurai films (dubbed in English), released by Roger Corman's New World Pictures.

[17] In 2012, Weisman hired Paul Schrader to write a screenplay entitled Little K about legendary ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska, notorious femme fatale of the Romanov era and mistress to last Tsar Nicholas II, the film to be financed by the V.Vinokur Fund for the Support of Russian Arts and Culture under auspices of the Kremlin.