In an interview with San Francisco Examiner film critic Joe Leydon, Burns, who worked as an actor in Ryan, said he thought to himself, "If I went hand-held with available light, I could make my films for nothing."
He explained: "The reason I wanted to make it that way is, on my last film, No Looking Back, I had a tough time working with the studio I worked with. They made me change the title I wanted. And I made some compromises that I wish I hadn't made. And when the film was done, it came out and got bad reviews, and it bombed at the box office. ... What really sucks is, that movie is on a shelf now, and it's got my name on it -- but I don't feel much of a connection to it."
