Actor Tom Berenger described this film as being about "that period in life when you're beginning to realize you have limitations, that you will never accomplish certain goals and dreams . . . Suddenly, you know you're not a kid anymore".
Flashback scenes with Kevin Costner as Alex Marshall were filmed, then cut out of the movie. Costner is still visible as the body being dressed at the beginning of the film. Costner, born in 1955, would have been the youngest member of the friend group; all of the other actors were born in the late 1940s or early 1950s.
Fans have long clamored to see Kevin Costner's footage for several sequences showing Alex Marshall's life, but Lawrence Kasdan has never shown anything more than still photographs from the location shoot. Kasdan has also refused to do any sort of "director's cut," saying that the version of the film as it has stood since 1983 is his director's cut.
Before actual shooting was to begin, Lawrence Kasdan wanted the cast to spend some significant time rehearsing together. As they travelled from California to Atlanta, Georgia and ultimately Beaufort, South Carolina, the actors had nearly three weeks of rehearsal time before the cameras rolled--something extremely rare for a film. JoBeth Williams believed it was partly due to the studio not wanting to spend a lot of money on the actual shooting process. More importantly, however, Kasdan wanted to give the cast and crew a chance to work out how they would play their scenes together and get to know each other well enough to achieve the effortless camaraderie that comes with the close long-time friendships depicted in the story. It was a strategy that all of the actors found extremely helpful in making their characters' relationships believable. "It's like playing on a wonderful team," said Kevin Kline at the time, "and it's fun being part of that team. It's a sharing, like sharing a victory when you've won. There's a beautiful exhilaration in team play, which is about as apt a parallel as I can make to this ensemble."