To make the actors more comfortable, the director and the cameramen were stripped naked while filming the orgy scene.
During auditioning and casting, any interested actors were to submit a 10-minute video of themselves describing an important sexual experience. The director received approximately 500 tapes.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was going to fire Sook-Yin Lee when they learned that she was going to be participating in a film with explicit sexual content. Several prominent individuals came to her rescue, including Gus Van Sant, Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg and Julianne Moore, in successfully urging CBC to retain Lee as a member of their staff.
In Sofia's office, the large framed characters on the wall behind her spell 'Help Me' in Chinese.
In an act of solidarity with his cast, John Cameron Mitchell, despite being a gay man, made a cameo appearance in which he performed oral sex on one of the female performers. It was his first sexual encounter with a woman.