In the "road-tarring" sequence, the actors actually blacktopped a mile-long stretch of highway for the county.
Morgan Woodward remained in character during breaks. Between scenes, he would sit in his chair in mirrored sunglasses, and not speak to anyone.
Two hundred hard-boiled eggs were provided for one of the film's most famous sequences. Due to clever editing, Paul Newman only ate about eight altogether. The rest were consumed by the cast and crew, which led to extreme cases of flatulence the next day.
Originally, the scene where Luke plays "Plastic Jesus" as an ode to his mother was scheduled for the beginning of the shoot, but after Paul Newman insisted on learning the instrument, director Stuart Rosenberg delayed it a few weeks. When they tried it, and the playing was unsatisfactory, it was bumped until the next-to-last day of production. Newman and Rosenberg had a shouting match after Newman still couldn't get it down. In what George Kennedy remembered as a "tense, electrically charged, quiet" place, Newman tried again. When he finished, Rosenberg called "Print." Newman insisted he could do better. "Nobody could do it better," Rosenberg replied.
Stuart Rosenberg wanted the cast to internalize life on a chain gang, and banned the presence of wives on-set.
Donn Pearce: As a convict named "Sailor." Pearce wrote the novel on which the movie was based, after spending two years on a chain gang for safecracking.