The film's budget was so low that the makeup budget was only $250. The makeup artists were able to work with that amount, and the film won the Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
Matthew McConaughey lost forty-seven pounds (21kg) for his role as an AIDS patient. Newspapers said he was "terribly gaunt" and "wasting away to skin and bones."
Over the course of its twenty years in circulation, the script was turned down over one hundred times.
The film took only twenty-five days to shoot.