[1][2] In Reading, Pennsylvania, former high school basketball star Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is dissatisfied with both his failure to find a career and with his loveless marriage to Janice, an alcoholic who is pregnant with a child neither of them wants.

For a time, they live in relative harmony, but Janice's insistence on a less active sex life leads to bitterness, and Rabbit again takes off.

Janice resumes her solitary drinking, this time with tragic results; while in a drunken stupor, she accidentally drowns the baby.

James Caan later said he did this film instead of M*A*S*H, adding, "I was at odds — not screaming or fighting — with this guy, writer Howard Kreitsek...

[2] The film poster reads, "3 months ago Rabbit Angstrom ran out to buy his wife cigarettes.

"[6] The reception by the Reading audience was poor and Warner Bros. aborted a wide release for the film, which didn't even play in New York City.