Deep Throat star Harry Reems was hired to play Coach Calhoun in the 1978 Paramount blockbuster Grease. It all unraveled, however, when studio executives caught wind of the plan and forced producer Alan Carr to fire the adult film star from the production.

That surprising detail came out on the latest episode of It Happened in Hollywood, the Hollywood Reporter podcast that revisits the making of classic films, told by the people who made them.

Joining the podcast this week is Grease director Randal Kleiser, who was 31 when he was tapped to helm the splashy Broadway musical adaptation at the urging of star John Travolta, then 23, whom Kleiser had directed in the ABC TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.

“[Alan] actually hired him,” recalls Kleiser of Reems. “And the studio said, ‘No no no. You can’t do that.’ And so they had to fire him.” Kleiser instead hired legendary comic and TV pioneer Sid Caesar to play the coach, a role that would introduce him to many new generations of fans.

Still, Reems was left hurting by the switch-up.

“Alan felt so bad that he gave Harry $5,000 out of his own pocket, but the poor guy was very devastated. Because it was his moment to move from porn to the real upscale world,” says Kleiser.

Here are five more amazing stories about the making of Grease revealed on the latest episode of It Happened in Hollywood:

Kleiser was in the same class at USC film school as George Lucas. The two became roommates, sharing a house in Beverly Hills, and even leaned on each other while making their student films.

“I was an actor in his very first film and he was a cameraman on my first film,” Kleiser reveals. Lucas’ film, 1966’s Freiheit, “was about a German student running across the Berlin border [from East to West Germany]. I was the student. I got shot by a machine gun and crawled through the grass. … That movie was a big winner at festivals and started George’s career.”

2. The Cinematographer of Grease Also Lensed Jaws

Bill Butler was the director of photography on Grease, having recently worked on a number of hugely influential Hollywood films, including Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) and Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975). “He was really great about guiding me and suggesting shots,” says Kleiser. “We screened [1961’s] West Side Story and looked at the musical number ‘Tonight’ where it was cutting between the Sharks and the Jets. We used that technique on ‘Summer Nights’ where we were cutting from the boys to the girls on movements.”

3. Grease “Teens” Could Be in Their 30s — Just No Crow’s Feet

Kleiser had no problem casting actors much older than teenagers to play the students of Rydell High. Stockard Channing, for example, was 33 when she was cast as Betty Rizzo, leader of the Pink Ladies. “I figured since we were doing this in a bigger-than-life way, we could get away with that,” he explains. Still, there was one stipulation: In this pre-CGI era, the actors could not have visible age lines around their eyes. “Crow’s feet on the eyes would really be too much for a high school kid. So I did check every actor for crow’s feet,” Kleiser says. “There were a couple people that didn’t get hired because of their crow’s feet.”

4. A Grumpy Coach Forced Grease to Film at Several High Schools — Including One Next to a Slaughterhouse

“We were planning to shoot the entire movie at the Venice High School,” Kleiser says. “The football coach didn’t want us there. He started sabotaging our productions — turning on sprinklers when we tried to shoot, things like that. The production designer thought, ‘Screw this. We’re going to move to another high school.’”

For the dance competition scene, that meant production moved to Huntington Park High School. “It happened to be right next to a slaughterhouse and it was August. The smell of the slaughtered pigs in our 100-degree gym — because we had no air conditioning because we couldn’t run it with the cameras,” says Kleiser. “When they’re all dancing around looking like they’re all having fun — they’re about to throw up and faint.”

5. Sandy’s Iconic Line — “Tell Me About It, Stud” — Was Thought Up on the Spot

Kleiser was not privy to the meetings about Sandy’s dramatic finale transformation into a leather-and-spandex-wearing bad girl.

“They all did it behind the scenes,” he says. “Costumer designer Albert Wolsky did the outfit. … When we were shooting the drive-in scene, that was when I first saw Olivia in that outfit. I had seen no sketches, no consulting, no talking about it. She just walked out of the makeup trailer and started walking towards me and she was backlit. I looked at this girl coming toward me and I went, ‘Who the hell is that?’ Finally when she got really close I went, ‘OLIVIA?!’ I knew it could work.”

When Sandy makes the same reveal to Travolta’s Danny in the finale, the original script called for a brief exchange between the two characters.

“I have my book here, Grease: The Director’s Notebook,” says Kleiser. “In it I have the script from that moment. It was written a different way. [Olivia] came up with changing it — or maybe it was the two of us, I don’t remember. Sandy: ‘How are you hanging, stud?’ Danny: ‘Sandy, what have you done to yourself?’ And Sandy says, ‘You noticed, huh? Well what’s it to ya?’ And we took all that out and just put, ‘Tell me about it, stud.’”

Listen to the full Grease episode of It Happen in Hollywood featuring director Randal Kleiser right now — and be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to catch every episode.