Trivia

The original play was inspired by an actual Code Red at Guantanamo Bay. Lance Corporal David Cox and nine other enlisted men tied up a fellow Marine and severely beat him for snitching to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Cox was acquitted and later honorably discharged. In 1994, David Cox mysteriously vanished, and his bullet-riddled body was found three months later. His murder remains unsolved.

Tom Cruise's Jack Nicholson impersonation (when his character is quoting Colonel Jessep) was not scripted. Demi Moore's and Kevin Pollak's reactions are genuine.

Writer Aaron Sorkin got the story idea from his sister, who in real life experienced a very similar incident at Guantanamo from the "Lieutenant Commander Galloway" perspective as a female JAG attorney. In that incident, the victim was similarly assaulted by nine Marines and was badly injured, but did not die. Sorkin initially turned the idea into a play, and then this screenplay, which was his first.

Aaron Sorkin said he enjoyed working for Rob Reiner, even though the director ordered him to make countless, rigorous revisions of his screenplay. One major revision: unlike in the play, where a doctored logbook is the smoking gun that gives Lt. Daniel Kaffee the break he needs, Reiner insisted that Tom Cruise's Lt. Daniel Kaffee win the case on courtroom skills alone.

A recent college graduate, Aaron Sorkin was working as a bartender at NY Broadway shows, and wrote the entire play on cocktail napkins during Act 1 of "La Cage Aux Folles."

According to Sorkin, "...you work during the walk-in, and you work during intermission. But you're not doing anything during the first act, and there's an unlimited supply of cocktail napkins."

Aaron Sorkin: He appears as a lawyer in a bar talking to a woman about one of his cases.

Charles Erwin: The marching band in the beginning is The Capital Band, and has a brief mention in the closing credits. The man in black is former Assistant Conductor and solo cornet for the President's Marine band.