Development Director
Nicolas Roeg was inspired to make a film about the 1943 murder of
Sir Harry Oakes after reading the nonfiction book
Who Killed Harry Oakes? by
Marshall Houts. Roeg pitched the project to
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)/
United Artists executive
David Begelman, and approached screenwriter Paul Mayersberg to write a screenplay adaptation of Houts's book. Commenting on Roeg's inception of the film, Mayersberg recalled: Over a two year period, Roeg and Mayersberg collaborated on a screenplay that at one point ran up to approximately 1,800 pages. The original draft used the real names of the individuals involved, which was cleared by MGM's legal department, despite the fact that Oakes's daughter, Edith Nancy Lewis, was still alive at the time. In order to avoid the potential of legal action, however, Roeg and Mayersberg opted to use fictional names instead. Roeg envisioned a narrative in which the lead character, Jack McCann, does not stumble upon his fortune of gold arbitrarily, but is instead led to it by
supernatural means; this plot element was incorporated through the introduction of a clairvoyant prostitute who directs McCann to the gold cache. Mayersberg noted that this lent an "
occult" dimension to the story as opposed to a straightforward
rags to riches narrative followed by interpersonal collapse. The film's original
working title was
Murder, Mystery. The title was eventually changed to
Eureka, inspired by the 1894
essay of the same title by
Edgar Allan Poe about the mysteries of the universe. In a 1983 interview, Roeg stated that he aspired to make a film that defied
genre expectations: "I wanted to make a film about ecstasy, the many forms of ecstasy. Ecstasy in individual people, and ecstasy as the mystic sense of life. How our actions are connected to everything and everyone around us. It's not a mystery film, it's not a thriller. And I hope you can't put it into a slot. There isn't a slot to put it in. To do so would make it a thing it isn't".
Casting Gene Hackman was cast in the lead role of Jack McCann in early December 1981. Hackman was drawn to the project partly due to his appreciation of Roeg's previous films, as well as the challenge of portraying a character in two different points in his life decades apart.
Theresa Russell, who had previously starred in Roeg's
Bad Timing (1980), was cast opposite Hackman portraying McCann's daughter, Tracy. The Mayakofsky character was loosely based on
Jewish mob member
Meyer Lansky. In the respective roles of Mayakofsky's henchmen Aurelio D'Amato and Pete,
Mickey Rourke and
Joe Spinell were cast.
Ed Lauter appears in the film as McCann's paranoid assistant, Charles Perkins, while
Jane Lapotaire portrays McCann's wife, Helen.
Helena Kallianiotes was cast in the role of Frieda, a mysterious brothel madam who directs McCann to his fortune. Annie Kidder, sister of actress
Margot Kidder, had a minor role in the film.
Filming Eureka was filmed between late 1981 and mid-1982 on a budget of $11 million, It also marked Roeg's first feature shot by cinematographer
Alex Thomson, after numerous collaborations with
Anthony B. Richmond. Roeg biographer Joseph Lanza observes that Thomson's cinematography exhibits a "harsher contrast" as opposed to the "dreamy look" captured by Richmond on Roeg's previous films, such as ''
Don't Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), and Bad Timing'' (1980). Lanza describes Thomson's cinematography in the film as "more conventional", but concludes that it "remains chilling". ,
British Columbia Location shooting began in the historic gold rush community of
Barkerville,
British Columbia between late October and late December 1981, with much of the same crew who had recently completed
Raiders of the Lost Ark. Additional filming took place in January 1982 at
Mount Robson in the
Canadian Rockies. During the Canadian shoot, the cast and crew encountered a major snowstorm—the worst the region had experienced in fifty years—which problematized the production, resulting in
snowdrifts exceeding and temperatures as low as . By late February 1982, location shooting was underway in
Jamaica at the
Roaring River Great House and Great Hope Estate. Additional photography occurred in the United States in
Miami, Florida, including at the
Beth Jacob Social Hall and Congregation in Miami Beach. For the film's
Voodoo ritual sequence, Roeg consulted
Haitian magicians in order for its depiction to appear authentic. Beginning in April 1982, During filming, Hackman and Roeg frequently clashed, with Hackman being significantly focused on elements of the film's art direction and cinematography. Roeg shot the film using a single camera and took time setting up and lighting each shot individually, often capturing multiple takes from different camera angles. Hackman disliked this method, preferring to work with multiple cameras rolling concurrently, and not completing more than two takes of a scene. Russell recalled of her casting and chemistry with Hackman: "I got along with him very well, but he was a difficult man. He was mean; he was an unpleasant person. He really was... He was driving Nic crazy when he always talked about his lines. I don’t know why, but some people just make everybody scared and crazy. So it was very tough. It was tougher on Nic because he needed him for that character. And Gene Hackman needed that negative energy in order to create, which is a really bad thing". ==Music==