Danny Elfman was hired to compose the film score because Warren Beatty was impressed with his work on Batman (1989). On working with Beatty, Elfman has said "Warren was insane".
Al Pacino has stated in interviews that he enjoyed working on this film, saying that Warren Beatty made ''a wonderful, artistic film, even though now it's like it doesn't even exist'', alluding to the notion that it is a movie that is barely talked about after all these years.
A 2-hour 15-minute version of the film exists, as confirmed by Warren Beatty in a 2002 interview. He said Jeffrey Katzenberg, then-chairman of Walt Disney Pictures, forced him to cut the film to 1 hour 45 minutes before release.
Make-up designer John Caglione Jr.'s final design of Big Boy Caprice matches the intended design conceived by Al Pacino. Since then, Caglione became Pacino's personal make-up man in all of his films.