Michael Ironside said a highlight of the film was meeting composer Ry Cooder: "Ry had an ancient guitar-it was about 100 years old -that he was using for the soundtrack, and it got stolen off the set when we were shooting. That was a priceless guitar that he'd brought in because he was giving Walter ideas on what he wanted to do. We were shooting down on one of the old sets, at the studio where they shot the burning of Atlanta in Gone With The Wind, and there were a lot of other things shooting there, so there was a lot of traffic going through the studio. I remember him coming back at one point, and he was all panicked. I said, "What's the matter?" He said, "I can't find my guitar!" Someone had just picked up his guitar case and walked off. I remember he was so devastated by that. He said, "It's not that they stole it; it's that they won't understand the value of it." He was just gutted by that. It was such a sad day".
The scene in which Powers Boothe picks up a scorpion then crushes it with his bare hand was done in one take.
After filming of final shootout was done, Walter Hill was told to include more of it so he went back and shot more footage but in the end he cut it down because, in his words, "it got too big". This is probably why this scene has some continuity mistakes which are often thought to be caused by cuts made on violent scenes in order to avoid X rating.
Michael Ironside said in interview for A.V. Club in February 2015 that approximately 45 minutes were cut out of the original version of the movie. Andrew Robinson had a role which was completely cut out. Reason for that is because after seeing his first cut of the movie Walter Hill thought that "It looks like it's starring Michael Ironside, with Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, and Rip Torn supporting him, so we're gonna cut the whole Andy Robinson side of the film out." Ironside said that in deleted plot part he and Robinson's character were playing CIA agents trying to do whole covert op, and Ironside's character was the go-between between the military side of the story, the police side of the story, and the government side of the story.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
