George C. Scott and director Paul Schrader did not get along, so much that at one point Scott refused to come out of his trailer and threatened to quit the film. Scott only agreed to come out after forcing Schrader to promise that he would never direct again. (Obviously, Schrader went back on his promise.)
The movie was based on a real true-life story. As a high school student, writer-director Paul Schrader had heard about a local teenage girl in Grand Rapids, Michigan who went missing and was eventually found to have appeared in an adult movie. This local mini-scandal organically evolved into this picture's screenplay.
When location director Paul Pav was scouting porno shops for the film, he was stonewalled. Pav remembered, "That was the worst experience of my life. They're all scared to talk to you. If you say to a manager that you want to film in his porn shop, he says, 'Get out!' Then you have to go and find the owner of the shop. That's the most difficult thing. They're often lawyers and doctors. I'd have to leave my name, then someone would call me back. Often I wound up talking to people behind closed doors."
Jake VanDorn (George C. Scott) was a Calvinist. Director Paul Schrader once studied to be a minister in the Dutch Christian Reform Church. Schrader actually came from a strict Calvinist upbringing in a family that lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where part of this film is set.
Writer-director Paul Schrader used John Ford's classic western Der schwarze Falke (1956) as inspiration for this movie.