Trivia / For Keeps

• Creative Differences: The crux of the film's Troubled Production can be best summed up as a free-for-all bloodbath between Ringwald, Avildsen, and the screenwriters over tone and direction. In a 2013 interview, Ringwald talked about the clashes she had with Avildsen over the film’s tone:
  ”I just remember the experience of making it and feeling like certain scenes that were important to me were just cut because the director [John G. Avildsen] didn’t feel like they were important. He said that I wanted a 90-minute condom commercial. Which I didn't! I just wanted something that really, authentically showed how difficult it is and how you don't necessarily get to do everything that you want to do when you make that choice.”
• Creator Backlash: For the film's screenwriters Tim Kazurinsky and Denise De Clue, and especially for Molly Ringwald, who admitted that the film glamorized teen pregnancy much to her dismay, since she originally signed onto the project thinking it would inform teens about the downsides of teen pregnancy:
  I feel like it glamorized teen pregnancy. And the original script that I'd agreed to do did not. But whenever you do a movie, whenever you do anything, it's a collaborative effort, and sometimes the script that you agree to do turns into something else. And I was pretty much a teenager at the time, and it was this runaway train that I didn’t know how to stop. And so I was very unhappy about that, and I felt like the movie was, I won’t say unfairly criticized, because I agreed. I really did feel like it glamorized teen pregnancy.
• Creator Killer: For director John G. Avildsen.
• Executive Meddling: One of the reasons the film turned out like it did.
• Missing Trailer Scene: A baby shower scene was cut, but still photos appear on the video box and promotional materials.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: Working with the baby actors posed numerous challenges for the production. Different children were needed to represent different stages in Thea's development, from newborn to infant to several months old. Each, accompanied by its entourage of mother, nurse, and welfare worker, could be brought to a location for a period of only two hours, during which time the baby could work for a total of no more than twenty minutes. Unlike the other professionals in the cast, the thespian tykes often proved unwilling to emote on cue. John G. Avildsen said:
  Babies take direction very badly. They also exhibited a tendency to grow out of their roles. You could see subtle changes in them from week to week but we were lucky that we had some cute ones and their mothers were very patient.
• Referenced by...:
  • Gilmore Girls: In the episode "Take the Deviled Eggs...", Lorelai is asked by her friends at a social gathering where she got her child-rearing advice from, and Lorelai says she learned it from a film she saw long ago:
  “For Keeps. Molly Ringwald, Randall Batinkoff - - - Really underrated post-John Hughes flick. She went to the prom fat. I found it really inspirational.”
• Star-Derailing Role: Molly Ringwald's career hasn't been the same since.
• Troubled Production: The film was, by many accounts, no baby-stroll through the park.
  • Fresh off the success of About Last Night..., screenwriters Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue were approached by producers Jerry Belson and Jeff Sagansky of Tri-Star Pictures about doing a film on teen pregnancy. According to Kazurinsky and DeClue, the film was intended to be, in their words, "a dark and funny cautionary tale". Producer Jerry Belson sent the script to Ringwald, who was enthusiastic about the project and saw it as an opportunity to gain more respectability as an actress.
  • However, things started to go south the moment John G. Avildsen was attached to direct. Known for his commercially-successful triumph films like Rocky and The Karate Kid (1984), he envisioned it as a uplifting love story and refashioned the story as such, much to the chagrin of Ringwald, Kazurinsky and DeClue.
  • Finding a leading male to star opposite Ringwald was another challenge. More than a couple of hundred young men auditioned, ranging from stars to complete unknowns. Adam Silbar was originally cast as the love interest, Stan, but at the last possible minute, he dropped out and was replaced by Randall Batinkoff.
  • Production was set to begin in April 1987. Since the film was set in and around Kenosha and called for wintry scenes, the spring date ruled out the possibility of shooting on location. Production designer William J. Cassidy was forced to scout for cities further to the north, ultimately settling on Winnipeg, Canada. When the production team arrived there, they were relieved to see the city covered in a blanket of fresh snow. Unfortunately, when filming began, a freak heat spell occurred, with temperatures rising to levels unseen in a hundred years. Trucks had to be dispatched to the outskirts of town, bringing back over a hundred tons of snow to replenish the set.
  • Working with the several babies used to portray the character of Thea proved to be a nightmare, which probably meant that Ringwald was literally pissed and shit on.
  • Ringwald and Avildsen constantly fought on set over the direction and tone of the film almost from the beginning, with Avildsen accusing her of wanting to turn the film into "a condom commercial".
  • The actor playing Stan's best friend, Chris, wound up in a coma after a drunk driving accident, delaying shooting. Because of this, and possibly due to the actor's negative attitude about the way the film was turning out, Avildsen greatly reduced his role.
  • Post-production proved to be equally hellish; as evidenced by production stills, footage from the trailer, and the novelization, many scenes were either recut or reshot.
  • Though the film made its money back, it was critically savaged, and subsequently left a lot of dead and dying careers in its wake. Ringwald, who views the film as a serious source of embarrassment, was the most prominent victim; combined with the evisceration of Fresh Horses that same year, her future as a leading girl was effectively destroyed, and since then, she's been reduced to direct-to-video and television roles. Batinkoff, whose performance was widely panned, hasn't really done anything since, and Avildsen's credibility as a director took a major dent, his last credit being the DTV Jean-Claude Van Damme film Desert Heat, on which he had his name removed.
• What Could Have Been: According to Kazurinsky and DeClue, the film was originally intended to be a dark, yet funny, cautionary tale about teen pregnancy. However, at director John G. Avildsen's suggestion, the script was rewritten as an "uplifting underdog story" (in fact, Kazurinsky described the new script as "Rocky Gets Knocked Up"). In addition, Kazurinsky mentioned that "[John G. Avildsen] had somebody rewrite the script, or just type in the changes he wanted. So those aren't our words on the screen".
• Working Title: Maybe Baby It kept this title for many international markets.

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