The film follows a young woman who takes a job at a New York City pornographic theater and becomes increasingly obsessed with a wealthy patron who may or may not be involved with the mafia.

Gordon also collaborated with the burgeoning New York film scene: "The film is a sort of Who’s Who of downtown street cred: music by John Lurie, cinematography by frequent Jarmusch collaborator Tom de Cillo, script by former sex worker and Pushcart Prize-winning feminist novelist Kathy Acker, and roles played by Spalding Gray, Luis Guzmán, Mark Boone Junior and photographer Nan Goldin, who also took production stills,"[2][3] which were published in 2009.

[5] The film was produced with an initial $80,000 budget, provided by ZDF West German Television,[6] Great Britain's Channel 4, and the New York State Council.

Contemporary reviews were mixed; while New Statesman's John Coleman disliked Acker's "dreadful dialogue,"[10] Amy Taubin championed the film in The Village Voice, describing how "the editing alternates conventional Hollywood action cutting with sequences that forcibly distance the viewer.

"[11] Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times that the film had a "painfully underwritten screenplay (by Kathy Acker) and a static, uncommunicative directorial style.