The first preview screening appeared to be a total disaster - the audience sat there stony-faced, never laughing once. It was only after the screening had concluded that a distraught Bruce Robinson discovered that the audience was comprised entirely of non-English speaking German tourists who were all staying at a hotel nearby.
It was this film that prompted the family of Jimi Hendrix to take back full control over the use of his songs. They had grown dismayed by the association of Hendrix with drug culture in general.
In 2010, Paul McGann said that he sometimes meets viewers who believe the film was actually shot in the 1960s, saying, "It comes from the mid-1980s, but it sticks out like a Smiths record. Its provenance is from a different era. None of the production values, none of the iconography, none of the style remotely has it down as an 80s picture."
When Bruce Robinson was appearing in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968), the gay director tried constantly to seduce him. Robinson incorporated many of Zeffirelli's chat-up lines into Uncle Monty's dialog as he pursues Marwood.
In the tearoom scene, Richard E. Grant breaks out laughing. This wasn't scripted, but every time he spoke, he could hear the snorting of the dogs belonging to the old ladies at the table behind. He thought that this was someone laughing and kept corpsing. After too many re-takes, the director gave up and kept the laughter in.
Bruce Robinson: The Barman in the London pub. He also doubles up for Richard E. Grant as the driver of the car on the way back from London (and can be seen at a couple of points) and Michael Elphick's poacher character in the long distance shots of him visiting Crow Crag.