Trivia / Colors

• Cast the Expert: Producer Robert H. Solo hired real gang members as guardians as well as actors. Two of them were shot during filming.
• The Danza: Robert Duvall, playing a character named Bob Hodges.
• Deleted Scene: There are a few. For a while, just about the only way to view them was to find an old VHS copy; they're not on a single DVD print or anywhere online. This was remedied with Shout Factory’s Blu-ray release.
  • There is a scene of a random man and his family at the beach being accosted and harassed by a group of Chicano gangsters for apparently no reason whatsoever. When the man tells them to piss off, he gets stabbed in the ribs.
  • Another scene has McGavin visiting Luisa's neighbourhood one night after they've already had their talk about more or less breaking up. A group of Chicano homeboys, including the kid McGavin spray painted earlier, accost and threaten him. The one kid even keys the hood of McGavin's car. Luisa intervenes and basically rescues him from, at the least, a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, and maybe worse, as the pair get in his car and drive off.
• Enforced Method Acting: Glenn Plummer claimed in an interview that Sean Penn would deliberately rough him up while in character, to that point that Plummer threatened to not pull his punches during their climactic fight scene. Subsequently, the fight scene was changed.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original script by Richard Di Lello took place in Chicago, and was more about drug dealing than gang members. Dennis Hopper ordered changes, so Michael Schiffer was hired, and the setting was changed to Los Angeles, and the focus of the story became more about the world of gang members.
  • After working alongside Mickey Rourke on Rumble Fish, Hopper was so impressed with his abilities, that he told Rourke he wanted him as his leading man for his next two directing projects, which would have started with this movie, with Rourke in the lead role as Officer Danny McGavin. Although it was informally agreed to by Rourke, when time came for filming, Rourke was immersed in other projects, and so Hopper cast Penn instead.

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