Most of the buildings in the little beach town of Avila Beach, as seen in the movie, no longer exist. In the late 1990s, due to leakage from the Union 76 petroleum tanks outside of town, (seen at the beginning of the movie), the ground under the entire beachfront area was contaminated. To clean it up, they had to tear down and rebuild the entire beachfront strip.
Old video copies of this film omit the title song (as performed by America), which was heard in its entirety during the closing credits (the Burton Cummings tune is heard instead). All the other tracks remained intact. America's version of The Mamas and the Papas classic is available on their greatest hits CD, as it was issued as a single one month before the film's release, failing to make the top 40 (it peaked at 56).
In his autobiography, John D. Hancock said that during filming Tanya Roberts seemed to cast a spell over John Calvin and most of the other guys in the cast. "The unvarnished truth is Tanya fucked nearly everybody on the film and drove them crazy. I'm not kidding. She fucked Calvin and made him crazy. She fucked James Van Patten and made him crazy. She didn't make me crazy because I didn't fuck her! Even though Tanya had let it be known she was open to us getting it on, I did not take her up on it. No, I resisted and kept my shit together, and not only because my wife was around. Tanya simply never had that effect on me, but, boy, did she have some of those guys completely losing their minds. I mean, she fucked Calvin and then, supposedly, she wouldn't anymore and that suddenly became a problem. John went a little nuts after she'd got inside his head like that. It was difficult for him as they still had several scenes to do together and Tanya was always there," Hancock said.
Stacey Nelkin had just turned eighteen when she was cast in her film debut as Marsha, and had her hair bleached blonde for her role as Marsha.
As Earl is driving through town, one of the ads on the side of his car is for the "Old Custom House", an actual restaurant in Avila Beach.