The film was a critical and commercial failure, and in later years Klaus Kinski denied being in it. "The best thing for me about "Buddy Buddy" was that not very many people saw it," Wilder said. "It hurts to strike out on your last picture." Anxious to bounce back from the unhappy experience, he and Diamond immediately went to work on what they hoped would be their next project. "Iz and I had so many ideas, we'd work on one for four weeks, and then we'd start another. We'd been burned; we chose wrong with "Buddy Buddy", and we didn't want to make another mistake. We'd had some failures, so our confidence wasn't as good." Although the writing team continued to collaborate until Diamond's death in April 1988, none of their subsequent work ever reached the screen.