When singer Roberta Flack was asked by Hotspots Magazine if she was nervous about recording the film's title theme song, even after knowing what it would be about, she responded, "Afraid of singing a song about love? Never. I was so glad when that song charted. People who did not know that the song was about love between two men loved that song. I would talk about it in my shows, and about how love is love. Between a man and a woman, between two men, between two women. Love is universal, like music."
For the "making love" scene in the film, actors Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin only agreed to kiss and be in bed together, but refused to do the simulated sex sequence, which was a last minute addition by director Arthur Hiller; therefore the film's screenwriter, Barry Sandler, and a location manager went to West Hollywood and found two similarly-built extras for the scene.
The film's producer, Daniel Melnick, said of it in the documentary The Celluloid Closet (1995) that he "had the unpleasant task of running the rough cut of the film" for a man who was not of "the film world, nor the intellectual world, nor the world of letters and arts." Visibly uncomfortable during the screening, at the scene in the film when the two men kiss, the man "jumped up and said, "You made a Goddamn faggot movie!" and stormed out." The man in question was rumored to be Colorado oil tycoon Marvin Davis, the then-new owner of 20th Century Fox at the time.
Screenwriter Barry Sandler attended a packed opening night screening of the film in 1982, and was confused by the makeup of the audience in line. His idea that the studio sold them without telling them it was a gay-themed film came true when screams and walkouts occurred after the first kiss 45 minutes into the film.
Inside joke: Cast as a TV network executive fighting to bring quality series to television, former Charlie's Angels (1976) star Kate Jackson looks disdainfully at a script for a TV series titled "Callahan's Dolls".