Star Jeff Bridges once said of working on this film: "I was turned on by the idea of working again with director Lamont Johnson, with whom I'd done Last American Hero (1973) ('Stock Car Racer'). And I was curious about the phenomenon that is Farrah Fawcett-Majors [Farrah Fawcett]. But I did worry that she was into being a personality, and not an actress. But whatever fears I may have had soon disappeared - she was great! By the end of the first week, I couldn't believe how good she was. After two weeks, I said to myself: 'You had better look sharp, Bridges!".
Actress Farrah Fawcett once said of her first big movie role in this film: "Franky, I was frightened. Here I was about to play opposite a two-time Academy Award nominee, and what had I done before? I know I was nervous the first time we rehearsed with Jeff [Bridges] because when I'm nervous, my voice goes up a full register and I laugh a lot. I sounded like a tape recorder working at the wrong speed!".
This was the cinema movie that Farrah Fawcett did after legal problems prevented her fulfilling her casting in Drôle d'embrouille (1978). Fawcett was in line for the role of Gloria in that movie. However, the studio opted for Goldie Hawn when Spelling-Goldberg Productions, the producers of Fawcett's hit TV series Drôles de dames (1976), warned all the studios that "they would be sued for damages if they employed me," Fawcett told The Associated Press in 1979. She was still under contract with Spelling-Goldberg when she left the show. Fawcett then went and made this film instead after the legal problems had been sorted out.
The venue of the movie's climactic sequence was the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade store facility. The picture actually filmed in the toy section of Macy's department store as well as at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
This movie was the penultimate time that actress Farrah Fawcett would be billed as "Farrah Fawcett-Majors". After Sunburn, coup de soleil (1979), due to her divorce from actor Lee Majors, she would be billed as Farrah Fawcett from the movie Saturn 3 (1980) onwards.