The first movie ever to include scenes in the Helsinki underground, opened in 1982.
'Aki Kaurismaki' said in an interview that this is the only film he has made where he either was drunk or had a serious hangover while shooting.
The lengthy monologue of Matti Pellonpää is an exact rendition of the poem "La grasse matinée", written by poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert.
Near the end of the movie, a character says: "The mother's sure going to forgive us yet." Exactly the same dialogue line is heard in Mika Kaurismäki's film "Klaani", which premiered a few months before this one.
Kaurismäki said in an interview he felt the need to make this after his first film as a "true" debut feature, and to represent low-budget and underground filmmaking and to be an intentionally bad film.