Havana

Actor Raul Julia appeared in a significant supporting role in the film without any credit or billing at all in the film. Julia chose to be uncredited because producers for contractual reasons could not accommodate Julia's request for him to be billed second alongside Robert Redford, as the top two above-the-title star-teaming credits had already been signed over to top first-billed Redford and second-billed actress Lena Olin, with the third billed credit already having been contracted to actor Alan Arkin. According to the "LA Times," Raul Julia's agent Jeff Hunter said: "Our usual above-the-title credit wasn't available. So, we decided not to take any credit at all." Director Sydney Pollack said told the same paper: "The only billing left for Julia was to be stacked with the rest of the names . . . his agent felt that would be a step backward" and there is a dilemma when there is "an actor on the ascendancy, like [Raul] Julia, and you ask the actor to do a role that's somewhat smaller [than their emerging star status]." Julia had found rising-star status since his performance in the Academy Award winning film Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985).

Many of the extras and background artists in the picture were exiled and political refugee Cubans who had migrated from Cuba to the Dominican Republic where the movie was shot. Director Sydney Pollack has said of this: "The atmosphere became quite emotional . . . They remembered the old days in Havana. Our set took them back 30 years".

Director Sydney Pollack originally wanted to film the picture in Havana itself. Reportedly, the reasons for why this could not be achieved were threefold: (1) American citizens could not legally go to Cuba at the time (2) United States of America law prohibited producers spending money in Cuba at the time and (3) International relations between Cuba and the USA at the time in 1989-1990 were politically sensitive and were inimical to shooting in Cuba. Alternately, therefore the film was shot somewhere else, and filmed entirely in the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean region of Central America.

One of seven pictures director Sydney Pollack made with actor Robert Redford.

The picture features approximately one hundred 1950s era vintage American buses, trucks and automobiles.