Shared with you
The production shoot of this movie featured a closed set with many security precautions implemented to protect John Travolta from the media. Travolta had mandated no publicity during filming and was at the time known to have become reclusive. This movie though garnered much negative publicity during principal photography anyway with Producer Robert Evans once exclaiming "the press relations on this film stink and there's nothing I can do about it."
Robert Evans sent Debra Winger back from location because he did not think she was attractive enough for the lead; it was only at the insistence of Director James Bridges that she did the role.
After initial box-office returns were surprisingly low, a newspaper poll was taken in the summer of 1980 to figure out why teenagers were not flocking to see the film. One of the main complaints from kids was that they did not know what the word Urban meant.
John Travolta had a mechanical bull installed in his house two months before production began. He became so good that he was allowed to dismiss the stunt double and do the takes himself.
At the time the film was shot, Gilley's, used as the film's main nightclub location, was the largest nightclub in the world in terms of available space for the patrons, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. This was later overtaken quite substantially by Billy Bob's Texas, in Fort Worth. It is so large that it does not have a mechanical bull. It has real ones that are ridden in an indoor arena at the northeast corner of the building.
In the early scenes of the movie, John Travolta as Bud sports a beard. According to Director James Bridges, Travolta wanted to keep the beard throughout the film but, after a lunch-date with the actor in a very popular restaurant failed to attract even one autograph-seeker, Travolta was convinced to shave it off.