After the movie aired, CBS featured Read More About It segment with Richard Carpenter to recommend books associated with anorexia nervosa and bulimia.

The movie begins with the collapse of Karen Carpenter in the closet of her parents' home in Downey, California, on February 4, 1983.

She is rushed to the hospital by paramedics, and as the EMT is placing an oxygen mask over her face, "Rainy Days and Mondays", recorded by the Carpenters on their self-titled album, is playing.

The scene shifts to teenaged Karen singing "The End of the World" as she roller skates on the day the family moved into their home in Downey (they had previously resided in New Haven, Connecticut).

One of the scenes, which showed Carpenter fainting onstage while she was singing the song "Top of the World", was fictionalized.

The idea for a movie based on Karen Carpenter's life had been floating around after her sudden death from emetine cardiotoxicity due to anorexia nervosa in February 1983.

Once it had been approved by the studio and Richard Carpenter, there were daily script "rewrites or entire scenes were removed" according to co-stars Cynthia Gibb and Mitchell Anderson, in an attempt to soften the image of Agnes Carpenter by her son in real life.

[citation needed] It has never had an official United States VHS or DVD release, but was issued on LaserDisc in Japan.

I accept that parts of the lives of all celebrities are matters of public record but for somebody else to have done this without the family's blessing, well, it just wouldn't have been as well told.In 2004, he was much harsher about the project, calling it "90 minutes of creative license that give biopics in general a dubious tone."