He's rather ineffectual." He gave the other male lead to Duilio Del Prete who had just been in Bogdanovich's Daisy Miller and who the director thought was going to be a big star. In March 1974, Fox agreed to finance the film. Filming started in August 1974. Resisting the urge to shoot another film in black and white, Bogdanovich had it art-directed as "Black and White in Color". He wanted the characters to feel like they were having a conversation using "greeting cards in the form of songs" like "they didn't know what to say to each other." The movies of Ernst Lubitsch with Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier such as One Hour With You, The Love Parade, The Merry Widow and The Smiling Lieutenant influenced Bogdanovich to have all of the song sequences be filmed live, as it would recreate the "kind of sad, funny, melancholy, silly," and "spontaneous" vibe of the films. However, all of the lead actors, especially Reynolds "weren't accomplished singers or dancers," resulting in a lot of delays and mess-ups during the shooting process. In addition, the cast had a tough time performing the sequences due to having to perform them in one take and deal with wonky receiver systems in order to listen to the instrumentals. Bogdanovich later said he "was very arrogant" during the making of the film, "but that arrogance was bought out of a frantic insecurity. I knew it was so possible I was wrong that I became tough about insisting that I was right." Versions The studio rushed the film into release, with only two previews in San Jose (which Bogadanovich recalled being "a total disaster") and Denver. Bogdanovich made more changes to the film to have it be more focused on Reynolds' character due to pressure from the studio, and the final version was never previewed. Following a premiere at 20th Century-Fox Studios in Los Angeles on March 1, 1975, the film opened March 6 at Radio City Music Hall to scathing reviews and poor box office returns. The chorus of critical attacks prompted Bogdanovich to have an open letter of apology printed in newspapers throughout the U.S. Bogdanovich later said once the film was released "I realized how I should have cut it after that and I immediately did cut it, they let me recut and I think I paid for that, and that version was then shown