Orson Welles urged Peter Bogdanovich to photograph the film in black and white, but the studio balked at this idea. At the March 2008 Bogdanovich retrospective held at the Castro Theater, San Francisco, the director's cut of the film was presented in a black and white print.
Peter Bogdanovich wanted Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, John Ritter and Orson Welles for the lead roles.
For the Los Angeles premiere, all guests (and some critics) paid five cents to see the movie in honor of the film and early Hollywood ticket prices. However, reaction to the picture was poor and one critic, David Sheehan, reporting for CBS News, claimed it wasn't worth paying a nickel to see.
Ryan O'Neal's character Leo Harrigan is indirectly based based on the on-screen personas of Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton; however, the character is more directly based on the writer-director Leo McCarey (hence the first name), a lawyer who became a film-maker.
When the film went over schedule and over budget, director Peter Bogdanovich had to forfeit $500,000 of his $700,000 fee per his contract.
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