The novel "Tender is the Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald is seen on the coffee table of Phil Winter's girlfriend. A character in the novel, Rosemary Hoyt, was inspired by Fitzgerald's affair with actress Lois Moran, who appears in this film as an airport hostess. It was Moran's last movie.
Writer and director Wim Wenders got inspiration for the film by his friend Peter Handke's experience as a single parent.
The section of Chuck Berry playing in the concert scene was actually shot by documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker at Toronto in 1969. Wenders himself had shot footage of Chuck Berry playing live in Frankfurt in the 1970s, but could not afford the hefty copyright cost to use it in the film. Pennebaker provided Wenders the clip of 1969 with much reasonable fee. Pennebaker's footage had to be transferred to B&W to match the rest of the film, but a slight quality difference is still visible. Pennebaker was not credited at the end of the film, and interestingly, his own 1969 Toronto concert film of Chuck Berry did not include the song (Memphis, Tennessee) which was used in Wender's film.
According to Wim Wenders, he became distraught upon learning of Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon (1973) as Wenders believed the plot to be too similar to his script. It was director and mentor Samuel Fuller who convinced Wenders not to cancel the production and to tell the story in his way.
Wim Wenders: Seen at about five minutes, in the café, as "Psychotic Reaction" is playing on the jukebox.
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