Did You Know?

Woody Allen decided to make the film for two main reasons. One was because he had always wanted to do a "chamber piece", a film with a small cast (there are only six principal characters, and only nine in the entire film) in a single location. The other was for the location itself, Mia Farrow's Connecticut country house, which inspired Woody Allen to write the screenplay with the intention that it would be shot at the house. Unfortunately, by the time Allen finished the screenplay, it was winter and the location was unusable for a movie so firmly planted in September. The entire movie (which takes place in Vermont) was shot on a single soundstage at the Kaufman Astoria Studios in New York.

Allen's intention was that the production should feel like a play captured on film. For that reason, he generally shot in long, uninterrupted takes with very few close-ups.

In the re-shot version, Maureen O'Sullivan, Charles Durning and Sam Shepard were replaced by Elaine Stritch, Denholm Elliott and Sam Waterston respectively.

In Elaine Stritch's one-woman Broadway show, "At Liberty", she reveals that after the wrap party she had an attack of hypoglycemia at the door of her hotel room, and was rescued by the mini-bar attendant who gave her a Pepsi. This event caused her to completely give up alcohol.