Director Richard Rush has said of this movie in a 2001 interview with Paul Hupfield: "I was lecturing at a university film school to a bunch of potential film students and asked them if any of them had seen my films. I started with El color de la noche (1994), and I'd say about 80 hands went up out of a room of about 200 kids. Then I asked if anyone had seen El especialista del peligro (1980), the film I actually wanted to talk to them about, and only two hands went up. Two hands in a room of 200! I thought, 'Oh boy, my film is totally lost on this generation...'"
The film was a dream project for director Richard Rush. The film has frequently being publicized as taking nine years to get to the screen. However, Rush has rounded up that number, and hyperbolically said on the website for The Sinister Saga of Making 'The Stunt Man' (2000), that the picture took 10 years to make from inception to release, seven years to finance it and then three years to release it. The script was first written in 1970 when the rights were first sold. The film was shot in 1977 with post-production conducted in 1979. The picture had trouble getting distributed until 20th Century Fox picked it up and released it in 1980.
Stunt coordinator Charles Bail, who is frequently known as Chuck Bail, worked as an actor in the film playing a character, Chuck, also a stunt coordinator, who had the same first name as his own. Bail also worked uncredited on stunts for the picture.
On the film's DVD audio commentary, the picture's star Peter O'Toole said of the movie's distribution: "The film wasn't released, it escaped." while talking about the absolute struggle to get the film made from pre-production up through its limited theatrical rollout before an eventual Oscar nomination raised its profile.
During the long period of the making and release of this film, director Richard Rush suffered two heart attacks.