When the film was in a rough-cut state Scott McGehee and David Siegel held a private screening for Steven Soderbergh to try and raise enough money to finish it. The screening was a technical disaster: the wrong gate was in the projector, the reels were out of order, and the film stopped unexpectedly. Afterwards, Steven suggested they meet for coffee. They were sure they would get a polite brush off. Instead, he told them he had spoken to his accountant about mortgaging his house to help finish the film.
Scott McGehee and David Siegel came up with the idea of portraying twins Clay and Vincent with actors who were black and white in the writing phase. The idea was 'an associative springboard for thinking about the identity, the exterior, the fade of consciousness'. The more they worked on the script, the less they could imagine doing the film any other way.