Did You Know?
Writer-director Rudy Durand tried to get Orson Welles to play The Whale, but Welles was busy with other projects. Welles encouraged Durand to direct the movie himself, and he talked about the script on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, which helped Durand secure an investor.
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Writer-director Rudy Durand made potential crew members read the screenplay. He only hired people to work on the film whom he felt liked the script.
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Rudy Durand began pitching the idea for this film in the late '60s. He contracted others to write the screenplay but wasn't satisfied with the results, so he ultimately wrote it himself.
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Brooke Shields invited the film's crew to her house for dinner and prepared fettuccine. In a 1978 article, she revealed, "It came out like - well, remember the depression, those pictures of people lined up and getting slop from a big pot? That's what my fettuccine was like. For my next party I made chicken."
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The movie was scheduled to for a 1978 release by Warner Bros. Ultimately, they tested the film in 6 cities in early 1979 before shelving it, pending re-edits. The film's primary investor, Mel Simon, bought back the rights to the film from Warner Bros. in 1980 and writer-director Rudy Durand then re-edited it. They were unable to secure further theatrical distribution, but in 1981 it played in heavy rotation on Showtime and debuted on NBC. The longer Warner Bros. print inexplicably wound up being released on home video by Continental Video.
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