Carson Jones was working on set as a production assistant when the actor originally playing Douglas Porter had to drop out due to a family emergency. When the director learned of Carson's previous acting experience, he reluctantly took the role and developed the dialect with around an hour of preparation time.
Most of the major actors in this film have already been cast in the follow-up Serial to either reprise their roles or play new characters.
Production was fraught with transportation issues. Nearly every set day was plagued by a missed train, car trouble, or other incident. During one production day, 5 different vehicles were stuck in snow, several became stuck when trying to retrieve the other vehicles.
The house the was used for Trenton's home as a child was also used as Porter's home. When Patti and Don Ehrenhaft were decorating the set, a radiator pipe on the second floor burst and began flooding the house, causing a waterfall in the living room. If they hadn't been on set that day in that uninhabited house, the entire set would have flooded and thousands of dollars in equipment would have been ruined.
During a fight scene in the movie, a pool cue was cut in order to break easy. When the pool cue was cracked over the back of the actor the first time, a section of it flew and landed perfectly vertical on a nearby windowsill. During the second take, a section of it flew off and speared into a speaker hanging on the wall.