On the DVD commentary, writer and director Bill Condon revealed that he wanted to include, in a montage, a clip from I Love Lucy (1951), in which a character makes a joking reference to Dr. Alfred Kinsey's research. Condon says that he was unable to use the clip because Lucie Arnaz (the daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz) denied him the rights, offering very little explanation, aside from claiming that her parents would never allow themselves to be associated with Kinsey.
Despite containing relatively few depictions of sexual behavior, the M.P.A.A. gave this movie an R-rating for all of the conversations about sex and verbal descriptions of sexual acts. However, according to writer and director Bill Condon, the M.P.A.A. members thanked him afterwards, because they had nonetheless found the movie very educational.
Tim Curry admitted that his casting in this movie as the conservative Professor Thurman Rice was ironic due to Curry's famous role as the sexually experimenting Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), and it was writer and director Bill Condon's intention to avoid portraying Rice as humorless.