Interviewed in 2016, Chalbaud remembers the idea for the film coming from when he was told by someone, in some tellings, a friend, about a brothel called "El Pez que Fuma", and how the name stuck with him so much he had to write a story about it. The filming took place in an actual La Guaira brothel, during the daytime — this brothel was destroyed during the
Vargas tragedy in 1999. Chalbaud spent time choosing the music over a two-month period he was stuck at home with a broken leg, which gave him the opportunity to carefully select which songs he needed. In an attempt to counter the poor quality of sound recording in Venezuela, a French sound engineer was brought on board, but in the 1980s
El País did say that the film "suffers from bad sound" despite this. In the 1960s, Chalbaud took stories from girls at El Canario, a brothel he visited when working in television, to write into the first version of
El Pez que Fuma, a play that he premiered with
El Nuevo Grupo in 1968. The film took several of the original theatre cast to reprise their roles. Chalbaud co-wrote the film with Cabrujas, saying the process was that he would write a scene, Cabrujas would write another, and sometimes they would write one at the same time. The auteur added that he would not change anything about the film. == Prizes ==