Reportedly, Gene Hackman's salary for this movie has been estimated at being between 1.25 and 1.5 million dollars. According to Mark Litwak's 1986 book, "Reel Power: The Struggle for Influence and Success in the New Hollywood", talent agent Sue Mengers said that "it was almost obscene for him not to do the film" with the amount of money he was being offered.
Despite the fact that his last hit movie was in 1967, Stanley Donen kept getting hired as director of a long string of flops in the 1970s and '80s. Liza Minnelli, Burt Reynolds, and Gene Hackman were all critical of Donen's directing, editing, and general misunderstanding of this movie, an uneasy mix of comedy and violence. Three separate endings had to be filmed because Donen couldn't figure out what tone was needed.
Director Stanley Donen had such a hard time filming the boat sequences that he vowed to never work with boats again.
This movie originally had a ten million dollar budget with a twelve week shooting schedule. This blew out to a twenty-two million dollar budget and a twenty week shooting schedule.
Before this movie, Liza Minnelli had been asking director Stanley Donen for many years when they could do a movie together.