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Prior to the production of the film, the key actors -Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, Tom Cruise and others - were required to participate in a 45-day-long period of orientation with the students of Valley Forge Military Academy. They were given uniforms, borrowed from their real life counterparts at the school and given authentic military haircuts. They slept in campus barracks and were subjected to the same rigors and hardship that all Valley Forge cadets went through. While most of the actors enjoyed and excelled at their orientation, Cruise opted to leave the training for the comforts of a nearby hotel until filming began.
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The uniforms in the movie were the normal uniforms worn by cadets. The embroidered shoulder badges of "Valley Forge" were changed during filming to "Bunker Hill". Then, the cadets of the Academy had no camouflage fatigues as a uniform. Filming continued into the summer after cadets' school year was over.
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Foley recording of cadets was done during filming during normal daily activities. Cadet marching was recorded during parade practice, requiring extra marching by cadets and adding to the disruption of daily life.
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Due to the 1980 Screen Actors Guild writer's strike, filming on the campus of Valley Forge Military Academy took much longer (60 days) than originally planned. It caused such a disruption that the commandant of the school subsequently advised his colleagues not to allow film productions at their schools. The next year both Valley Forge and the Citadel military academies denied filmmakers of The Lords of Discipline access to their grounds, leading it to be filmed in England instead.
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More than 2000 actors auditioned for Sean Penn's role, which he won after being discovered in fiery performance in an off-Broadway play by casting Director Shirley Rich.
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The rainy weather caused numerous problems during filming. Director Harold Becker had to create four sets of call sheets for each day's shooting in case a scene taking place outdoors would be rained out and interior shoot would take its place. It also was very noticeable in the editing of the film, as cadets are seen wearing ponchos in one scene and none the next.
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Ronny Cox was Harold Becker's original choice to play Colonel, but another unnamed actor was chosen and then fired two days into shooting his scenes. Producer Stanley R. Jaffe immediately called Cox, who flew down the very next day to begin shooting his scenes.
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Tom Cruise was originally going to play a background character in the film, but Director Harold Becker was so impressed by the way he conducted himself as one of the military cadets during rehearsals that he was offered the part of David Shawn. At first Cruise refused and then was finally convinced by Becker and Producer Stanley R. Jaffe play the role.
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Timothy Hutton accepted his Academy Award for Ordinary People immediately after shooting on Taps begin.
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The film was originally developed at Columbia Pictures by Producer Stanley R. Jaffe, but ran into a series of creative problems with the studio and it was one of many projects that went into "turnaround" under their banner. Jaffe was passionate about the project and then took it to Twentieth Century-Fox, who bought the script and immediately green-lit the project.
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One of many projects that were delayed by the 1980 strike by the Screen Actor's Guild, which was finally settled late that year. Taps immediately started filming in January 1981.
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The scene where Timothy Hutton and Ronny Cox's characters are discussing terms was shot with three to four cameras, one of them operated by Director of Photography Owen Roizman. Roizman made a bet with Director Harold Becker for $75.00 that his close-up shots would make the final cut of the film. It was Roizman's tight close up shots that made the final cut of the film, and Roizman who is $75.00 richer.
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The gate seen at the end of the quad area was built specifically for the film and was dismantled after filming ended.
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The exterior shots of the film were shot at Valley Forge, but the interiors (including General Basche's office) were shot on sets built in Vally Forge's massive polo field by Alfred Sweeney and Stan Jolley.
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Sean Penn and a handful of other actors received military horsemanship training for the scenes as the leader of the school's mounted cavalry. He later stated "It's not like riding out on a backwoods trail-The trick is to salute, control the horse, keep in step with the other riders and try not to fall off."
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The film was originally going to be filmed at Riverside Military Academy, in Georgia, but the producers changed their minds after a tour of the campus, by which they decided that it "didn't have enough walls." RMA officials countered by saying that allowing production would have caused too much disruption of the cadets' daily lives. After the movie was released, it seems that this held true.
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Most of the battle names mentioned during the film are well-known. Two lesser-known ones are from the Viet Nam War. The first, Pleiku, is a town in the central highland region of Vietnam, the site of an USA base during the Vietnam War. It was the scene of a major Viet Cong attack in early 1965. The second, Plei Me, was a camp, 40 km south of Pleiku city, attacked and besieged in October 1965 by 33rd Regimant of the North Viet Namese Army.
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One of the cadets is nicknamed "Pigpen", a reference (most likely) to the characters of the same name in the "Peanuts" comic strip by Charles M. Schulz.
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The Roosevelt quote, "All men who feel any power of joy in battle know what it is like when the wolf rises in the heart...", is from ''Rough Riders", published in 1899.
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Actor Brendan Ward became a New York City Police Officer in 1989, retiring in the rank of Sergeant in 2010.
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The film was originally going to be filmed at Carson Long Military Academy in New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania. However, after learning that the school's gymnasium would be destroyed during filming, the president of the school rejected the offer, despite the fact that a new and better gymnasium would be built in its place, at the expense of the film's budget.
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