Orson Welles urged Peter Bogdanovich to photograph the film in black and white, but the studio balked at this idea. At the March 2008 Bogdanovich retrospective held at the Castro Theater, San Francisco, the director's cut of the film was presented in a black and white print.
Peter Bogdanovich wanted Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, John Ritter and Orson Welles for the lead roles.
For the Los Angeles premiere, all guests (and some critics) paid five cents to see the movie in honor of the film and early Hollywood ticket prices. However, reaction to the picture was poor and one critic, David Sheehan, reporting for CBS News, claimed it wasn't worth paying a nickel to see.
On March 20, 2024, TCM played this movie in black and white, because the late Peter Bogdanovich had originally wanted it that way.
Three generations of the O'Neal family appear in this film: Ryan O'Neal, his daughter Tatum O'Neal, his son Griffin O'Neal (the boy delivering the film reels), and his mother Patricia O'Neal (one of the fans outside the movie theater). This movie is the only one that the four have all appeared in together.