Frank D. Gilroy based the Hollywood-related portions of his script on his traumatizing experience working on the ill-fated film version of his stage play The Only Game in Town (1970), which was filmed in Paris at star Elizabeth Taylor's insistence.
In one of several jabs Frank D. Gilroy takes at the studio system - in particular the cast and crew of Fox's The Only Game in Town (1970) - the chauffeur looks around at the writer's cramped hotel room and remarks "Elizabeth Taylor's closet was bigger than this."
The character of director Lars Brady is based on Hollywood legend George Stevens, who helmed The Only Game in Town (1970), which would be his final film.
As of 2018, this film has not been released on home video since the 1984 Media Home Video VHS and Beta issues.
Though Frank D. Gilroy depicts the production team as French - giving the impression that Michael is script-doctoring a foreign film --the executives at the helm of The Only Game in Town (1970) were American. It has been argued that, with this decision, Gilroy robbed himself of a comic plot point that this film could have sorely used: the fact that the leading lady forced the studio to shoot the film in France, which saddled the art department with the hopeless task of trying to pass off Paris as Las Vegas.