"When I was going up the stairs / I met a man who wasn't there. / He wasn't there again today / I wish, I wish he'd go away." One character claims to have written this poem. It is really a poem titled 'Antigonish' by William Hughes Mearns. This poem was also turned into a popular song, giving it widespread attention.
Several endings were filmed in order to shroud the real conclusion in secrecy.
Some location shooting occurred in Lancaster and other places in Los Angeles County. But the majority of the movie was shot on an enormous sound stage at Sony Studios in Culver City--the same studio that once housed the set for the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz (1939).
James Mangold: [Cash] The character played by Jake Busey is humming lines of famous song by Johnny Cash: "I got stripes, stripes on my shoulders." The next Mangold movie was the Cash biopic Walk the Line (2005).