The film includes numerous references to well-known Australians. As the camera pans around the room during the hippie party scene, it focuses on a large poster of Jimi Hendrix, painted by renowned Australian artist Martin Sharp. The scene in which Kerry Walker's character talks to a homeless woman in the park includes references to two famous Sydney characters of the post-war period. As the camera tracks towards the two women talking, the word "Eternity" is seen written on a rock face - a reference to Arthur Stace, a.k.a. "Mr Eternity", who walked the Sydney streets at night writing the word "Eternity" in copperplate script on footpaths and walls. The homeless woman (played in a cameo by famous Australian author Dorothy Hewett) is closely based on legendary Sydney eccentric Bee Miles, who (like Hewett's character) lived on the streets and regularly wore a large overcoat and a celluloid tennis visor.
During the 1970s, Jim Sharman, this film's director, directed on the stage a few of Patrick White's plays and as such the two collaborated together a number of times. These plays included 'A Season at Sarsparilla', 'Big Toys' and 'A Cheery Soul'. White is this film's source short-story writer and screenwriter.
Patrick White won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. White is the only ever Australian writer to win this award. White won it for his ninth novel, 'The Eye of the Storm'.
During the 1970s, author Patrick White once said to this film's director, Jim Sharman, that he thought that two of his short stories, 'The Cockatoos' and 'The Night The Prowler', would be suitable for adaptation for films, which Sharman could possibly direct. Sharman, who had directed The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), felt that it was 'The Night The Prowler' that was the more cinematic and adaptable for a feature film. White then agreed to write a film screenplay and consequently wrote the film script for this film. Surprisingly, Sharman was contacted by White just a couple of months later to advise him that he had completed the screenplay.
This picture was one of fifty Australian films selected for preservation as part of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia's Kodak / Atlab Cinema Collection Restoration Project.
Dorothy Hewett: The Australian authoress as an alcoholic woman who strikes up a friendship with the prowler Felicity. Hewett was awarded the A.M. (Member of the Order of Australia) in the 1986 Queen's New Years Honours List for her services to literature.