Trivia

At one point, Harmony Korine had considered leaving the film on unmarked VHS tapes left in random locations as a mystery for the unsuspecting public to discover. Korine also considered distributing the film by mailing it to police stations, but this idea was abandoned when such a release strategy would mean that the film would not retain copyright.

The film was shot and edited entirely on VHS. Filming was near-constant and lasted only a couple of weeks. Korine claimed that once everyone was in costume, they did not take off the costumes until filming was done. Korine claimed: "We'd walk around and sleep under bridges or behind a strip mall somewhere. We'd get these big tractor tires and make a nest to sleep in." Once principal photography was done, Korine edited the film on two VCRs. In all, it only took Korine a month to shoot and edit the film.

The film originally started out as a group of photographs. Harmony Korine would go out late at night and dress his assistants in crude masks so they resembled burn victims. Using only the very worst cameras he could find, he would photograph them fornicating with trash and vandalizing various things. The photos came out looking creepy that he started thinking, "Maybe this could be a movie."

Harmony Korine claims that he did not want the look of the characters to be too realistic, so despite his actors looking like elderly people, he had them move the way they normally would. Korine said: "There's something horrifying about old people who move really well."

There were only four months between the start of shooting and the film's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in 2009.