Actor Michael Ontkean not only declined to be interviewed for the documentary but also attempted to prevent clips from his film Making Love (1982) from being shown in it. He was unsuccessful.
The filmmakers originally planned a sequence discussing how gay historical figures were portrayed as heterosexual in films, including Cole Porter in Night and Day (1946) and Lorenz Hart in Words and Music (1948). The sequence was aborted when Richard Burton's estate denied the rights to Alexander the Great (1956), MGM denied use of Hans Christian Andersen (1952) (fearing that the filmmakers were trying to 'out' Danny Kaye) and Charlton Heston declined use of The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) (claiming that Michelangelo was heterosexual).
This documentary, which was based on the eponymous book by film scholar Vito Russo, was narrated and co-executive produced by Lily Tomlin. Russo, who died of AIDS in 1990, did not live to see the documentary. Russo and Tomlin were close friends; Russo wrote some material for her comedy shows, and, while Russo was writing the book, Tomlin let him stay rent-free in a house she was not using at the time.
A moving bonus from this film is the fact that gay-identified artists such as Farley Granger and Arthur Laurents (a real-life couple in the late 1940s) finally felt comfortable enough in their autumn years to candidly discuss the homoerotic undercurrents of their joint venture Rope (1948), which for many years could only be whispered.