Paramount Pictures paid a great amount of money to secure the rights to Alex Comfort’s sex manual just so they could use the title,[3] which they found to be highly commercial.

Grodin decided to use this exact situation as the premise: a Hollywood writer struggles to write a script based on a sex manual after a big studio acquires the rights.

[5] According to the book Wired, John Belushi was supposed to appear in this movie, but he died before filming began.

The producers wanted to have Belushi wearing diapers on the poster, even though no such scene appeared in Hughes' screenplay.

Martha Coolidge was fired from the movie,[8] for cutting many scenes of gratuitous nudity, but declined an opportunity to have her directing credit appear as Alan Smithee.

National Lampoon Inc. Chairman Matty Simmons said in a phone interview Wednesday that the move "may have nothing to do with (the quality of the picture).

Simmons is officially titled as executive producer of Joy of Sex but his active participation ended when the original Joy of Sex project, including screenwriter John Hughes (National Lampoon's Vacation) and director Bill Norton collapsed.

"[15]Director Martha Coolidge: "Paramount insisted on topless girls running down the hall because they thought the formula demanded it and it was totally gratuitous.

But when the film was previewed the audience, particularly young women and girls, hated the nudity so Paramount then asked me to cut as much of it out as I could!

"[16][17]Martha Coolidge was also quoted in a retrospective piece in the Los Angeles Times: "It’s a wrenching decision", explains Martha Coolidge, who considered taking her name off of 1984’s Joy of Sex after the studio reworked her version, "but it’s made when the director finds himself or herself answering yes to these questions: Will the film 'embarrass me, humiliate me, disgust me for the rest of my life?