the film was shot in london between february and may 1969. the cast was headed by sellers (as guy grand) and ringo starr as his son youngman grand (a new character created for the movie), with cameo appearances by spike milligan, christopher lee, laurence harvey, raquel welch, roman polanski and yul brynner. as with "dr strangelove", sellers habitually improvised on the script during filming. during production mcgrath and southern discussed a future project based on the life of gangster dutch schultz, to be made in collaboration with william burroughs and alexander trocchi, but nothing came of it.