audition for the film. Patricia Charbonneau was the first actress to be cast and went to Los Angeles with Deitch so she could audition with those reading for the role of Vivian Bell. Deitch noticed the chemistry between Charbonneau and Helen Shaver immediately. She persuaded actors to work for scale, and after casting completed, the film was shot on location in Reno in 31 days. Limited funds often necessitated filming two scenes in one day, with little room for retakes. Renting space in a real casino was out of the question and a dressed set in a room of an abandoned hotel served as the gambling casino in the film. Desert Hearts was Patricia Charbonneau's film debut. The contract with Charbonneau and Shaver obligated them to perform the sex scene in the hotel room without body doubles and to be nude on camera from the waist up. The scene was shot on the second-to-last day of filming, with cinematographer Robert Elswit and a boom operator as the only crew members present. The Samuel Goldwyn Company insisted in having the scene cut down but Deitch refused. In a 1986 Los Angeles Times interview, Helen Shaver described it as being "profoundly intimate". Deitch became the first lesbian director to have a sex scene between women seen by general movie theater audiences. She was surprised to learn 20 years after the film's release that Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau were told by their friends and agents that the film would ruin their careers. In a 1986 Globe and Mail interview, Shaver said that she was being considered for a role in Joshua Then and Now, which would have promoted her career much farther than Desert Hearts. Donna Deitch assured her over the phone that she was right for her movie and told her she refused to hang up the phone until she got an answer. After five minutes, Shaver accepted the role. Shaver explained her feelings about the film. "I was scared, not about the lesbianism — the script said, 'The passion builds' in the love scene, so once I knew how the passion built and where the camera would be, that was fine — but because someone wanted me to do what I'd wanted to do all along, and here it was, and all I had to do was say yes. I had always wanted to carry a movie. Now, if I