The film stars Jacqueline Bisset, Martha Plimpton, Nick Stahl, Amy Madigan, Seymour Cassel and Frankie Faison.

Part of her search takes her to a Daytona Beach, Florida, radio station where Frances worked years ago as a late-night disc jockey under the moniker of the Sleepy Time Gal.

Munch shot the film over a two-and-a-half-year period, and he later told an interviewer the extended stop-and-start shooting schedule was dictated by the lack of finances.

[3] After its television broadcast, The Sleepy Time Gal had several commercial theatrical screenings across the U.S.[3] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 82% based on 22 critics’ reviews.

The site's consensus states, “A thoughtfully assembled drama brought to life by sensitive performances, Sleepy Time Gal offers an intriguing glimpse of a woman at a crossroads.”[4] When the film screened in New York City in May 2002, film critic Dennis Lim of the Village Voice praised Bisset's acting as a “candid and complex performance that for all its gossamer, death-haunted poetics…conveys the irreducible weight of a singular life.”[5] Of a Chicago screening in November 2002, Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert praised Munch's screenplay for being “tenderly observant of his characters” and awarded the film 3+1⁄2 stars out of 4.