In a 2012 interview with Proudly Resents, Bobcat Goldthwait detailed a story of one very famous director being a fan of the film: "Quite often it's wrongly quoted as Martin Scorsese saying, 'It's the Citizen Kane (1941) of alcoholic clown movies', but it was in the Boston Globe. Betsy Sherman called it 'The Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies'. But someone was interviewing Scorsese once and they said, 'Do you really think we should preserve EVERY movie? Would you preserve The Jerky Boys (1995)? Would you preserve Shakes the Clown?' He goes, 'Shakes the Clown, I love that movie.' And he proceeded to say all these really nice things about it and I remember reading that and just holding it and my daughter's like, 'Why do you keep reading that?' And I was like, 'Your dad will NEVER win an award, this is his award', the fact that Martin Scorsese even knows I exist. So the interviewer, he goes, 'It's a very dark movie, it's a very real movie', and the guy half-a**edly says, 'Well it's Citizen Kane of -' and Scorsese corrects him, he goes, 'No, it's the Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies. Get it right.'"
There were walkouts at this movie's premiere at a charity event.
The car that Shakes drives is a Nash Metropolitan.
The title of alternative rock band R.E.M.'s song "Binky the Doormat" off their album "New Adventures In Hi-Fi" is a reference to Binky the Clown's line "You should just call me 'Binky the doormat!'"