Hi, Mom!

The opening scene in which the landlord (Charles Durning) is showing Jon Rubin (Robert De Niro) around his crummy new apartment is a parody of a then-contemporary television public-service announcement for the New York Urban Coalition, in which a similarly-slimy landlord shows off a dilapidated apartment to a black man. The movie scene follows the commercial closely, and both De Niro and the unnamed black renter accept the apartment with the same words: "I'll take it," but the commercial is in black-and-white. (The public-service campaign, titled "Give A Damn", was also responsible for the same-named 1969 hit single by the pop group Spanky & Our Gang.)

When Jon Rubin is finally about to seduce Judy Bishop in her apartment, a microphone is visible, 'peeping' into the room several times from behind the sofa where she is lying down.

Featured in Scene by Scene: Brian De Palma (1998)