Trivia

Commenting on Martin Scorsese, who plays himself in one scene, Albert Brooks makes reference to the movie Taxi Driver (1976), in which he played a role.

In the 1970's, filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich divorced his wife Polly Platt to be with his discovery Cybill Shepherd. This incident loosely inspired the film Irreconcilable Differences (1984), where a director (Ryan O'Neal) divorced his wife (Shelley Long) to be with a starlet (Sharon Stone). While Platt said that the film "got more right than wrong," Shepherd denied that she was anything like the character that Stone played in the film. Both Stone and Shepherd appear in "The Muse" but not in the same scene.

The film cast includes four Oscar winners: Martin Scorsese, Jeff Bridges, Steven Wright and James Cameron; and four Oscar nominees: Rob Reiner, Sharon Stone, Albert Brooks and Jennifer Tilly.

Directors Brian De Palma and Steven Spielberg are both referred to in the film.

Jeff Bridges and Cybil Shepherd also starred together in the Peter Bogdanovich film La Última Película (1971).