In 1954, John Cassavetes went into the health food restaurant that Paul Mazursky was working in at the time, and told him that they were looking for juvenile delinquent types for the feature film Blackboard Jungle (1955) and Mazursky got cast as Emmanuel Stoker, his second as an actor in a cinema movie. Twenty-seven years later, Mazursky returned the favor and cast Cassavetes in the lead role in this movie.
Susan Sarandon introduces herself to John Cassavetes and Molly Ringwald as "Aretha Tomalin". Tomalin is Sarandon's real last name (Sarandon is her married name from her marriage to Chris Sarandon).
Writer-director Paul Mazursky had been fascinated by William Shakespeare's play "The Tempest" all his life and had mulled over this film project for a decade.
The setting of "Phillip's Island" was in real life the remote private Greek beach location of Alypa Beach in Mani, Kardamili, Greece.