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".
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.
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.
Actress Mary Kay Place said of what she thought this film was about: "When you're in college, you think you can do anything, be anything, accomplish anything . . . Then suddenly you reach a point where you're settled into what you're going to be and once you realize it, everything stops. Then the questions begin".