Miller's Crossing - Production

Production

While writing the screenplay, the Coen brothers tentatively titled the film The Bighead—their nickname for Tom Reagan. The first image they conceived was that of a black hat coming to rest in a forest clearing; then, a gust of wind lifts it into the air, sending it flying down an avenue of trees. This image begins the film's opening credit sequence.

Because of the intricate, dense plot, the Coens suffered from writer's block while working on the script. They went to stay with a close friend of theirs at the time, William Preston Robertson in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the hopes that a change of scenery might help. After watching Baby Boom one night, they returned to New York City and wrote Barton Fink (in three weeks) before resuming the Miller's Crossing screenplay.

The budget was reported by film industry magazines as $14 million, but the Coens claimed in interviews that it was only $10 million. During the casting process, they had envisioned Trey Wilson (who played Nathan Arizona in their previous film Raising Arizona) as gangster boss Leo O'Bannon, but two days before the first day of principal photography he died from a brain hemorrhage. Finney was subsequently cast.

The Coens cast family and friends in minor roles. Finney also appears in a very brief cameo as an elderly female ladies' room attendant. Sam Raimi, director and friend of the Coens, appears as the snickering gunman at the siege of the Sons of Erin social club, while Frances McDormand, Joel Coen's wife, appears as the Mayor's secretary. The role of The Swede was written for Peter Stormare, but he could not be cast since he was playing Hamlet at the time. J. E. Freeman was cast and the name of the character was changed to The Dane, while Stormare went on to be featured in Fargo and The Big Lebowski.

The city in which the film takes place is unidentified, but was shot in New Orleans as the Coen Brothers were attracted to its look. Ethan Coen commented in an interview, "There are whole neighborhoods here of nothing but 1929 architecture. New Orleans is sort of a depressed city; it hasn’t been gentrified. There’s a lot of architecture that hasn’t been touched, store-front windows that haven’t been replaced in the last sixty years."

During filming, the New Orleans police would arrive semi-regularly to assess fines for permits the film crew had already procured. Joel Coen commented to Premiere during shooting, "They are acting precisely like the cops that we're depicting in the movie, and they don't even care!"