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Although Spike Jonze had never acted in a film before, David O. Russell wrote the part of Conrad Vig specifically for him, and the two practiced Conrad's Southern accent over the phone, while Jonze directed Being John Malkovich (1999). Although Russell had to convince a wary Warner Brothers to cast an inexperienced actor in such a large role, he eventually won out. Russell said Jonze's lack of previous acting work was beneficial to the film, citing the "chaos that a nonactor brings to the set...he really shakes things up."
Sayed Moustafa Al-Qazwini, who plays an Iraqi defector, who sells Major Gates cars stolen from Kuwait, was, in real life, tortured and kicked in the eye by Saddam Hussein's security forces, blinding him in that eye. Like many advisors and extras in the film, he is an actual refugee from Iraq.
One scene tracks a hypothetical bullet entering Mark Wahlberg, which came about from David O. Russell asking a doctor friend about what a bullet does to the body. "I said, 'What's the weirdest wound?' and he described that particular wound (used in the movie). You can get a wound that doesn't kill you. A bullet goes through your lung and you can walk around, but the air is leaking out of your lung every time you breathe, so your own breathing can kill you, because your own breathing will crush your organs. It will turn into a balloon in there, and they have to puncture it to let the air out. So he told me those two things, and I said, 'God, that's never been in a movie. I'd like to do that.'"
The movie was filmed in the deserts of Casa Grande, Arizona, California, and Mexico, with many of the extras played by actual Iraqi refugees. According to David O. Russell, two of the cast members had "personally defaced three hundred murals of Saddam." After one of the military advisers to the film died during production, Russell said the death was "perhaps due to chemicals he was exposed to in the Gulf."
In the celebratory scene in the tent back at base camp, several soldiers drink what appears to be mouthwash. During the Gulf War, soldiers followed General Order number 1, which prohibits consumption of alcohol (and currently affects soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan). In this case, they asked loved ones to send them vodka, with blue food coloring, in mouthwash bottles. The same trick was used by the students in Toy Soldiers (1991).
The film was banned in Iraq.
David O. Russell: The "Hollywood actor" George Clooney strangles in the epilogue sequence. He also provides the singing voice of the helicopter pilot near the beginning.