A news article noted that Mike Nichols urged producer/director Ernest Lehman to cast Richard Benjamin, who had acted in Nichols' Catch-22 (1970). Benjamin had three years previously shot to fame in Goodbye, Columbus (1969), another Philip Roth novel adapted to the screen.
It was a huge financial and critical failure, and was widely seen as ruining the career of its screenwriter and director Ernest Lehman. Although previously one of Hollywood's most admired writers, Lehman thereafter had only two film credits as writer, the second in 1977. He lived on into the twenty-first century, but he never directed again.
Though it was already rated R, The Broadcasting and Film Commission of the National Council of Protestant Churches objected to the "explicit and vulgar language" in the film, and suggesting it warranted an X rating.