[2] It stars Alan Arkin and Sondra Locke (in her film debut, age 24),[3] who both earned Academy Award nominations for their performances.

He also tries to become friends with Jake Blount, a semi-alcoholic drifter, and Dr. Copeland, an embittered African-American physician who is secretly dying of lung cancer.

Meanwhile, Mick has an outdoor teenage party at her house, but is disgusted after some boy guests disrupt it by fighting and setting off fireworks.

Dr. Copeland leaves, and the film ends with Mick admitting out loud to John's open grave that she loved him.

Actress Bonnie Bedelia, four years Locke's junior, told the Los Angeles Times that "they decided I was too old" to play Mick.

[10] To mask the obviousness of Locke's age discrepancy, press releases containing a biographical sketch of the 1944-born actress omitted her time at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) as well as her residence in Nashville, where she had moved in 1963 after dropping out of college.

[11][12] In her final interview, conducted in 2015 for a podcast called The Projection Booth, Locke lied that she "was just graduating high school" when she started work on the film.

[18] Film critic Derek Winnert awarded the movie four stars, and Renata Adler of The New York Times praised the cast, especially Alan Arkin as Singer, whose performance she described as "extraordinary, deep and sound.

[19] Gregg J. Kilday of The Harvard Crimson criticized how some characters are "cardboard remains" of novel versions; he wrote that Spiros "is grossly overplayed", Blount "has been reduced to a drunken bum (someone was afraid to dirty their camera in politics)" and that Dr. Copeland and Portia's relationship "plays like a Black Power version of The Secret Storm.