Production
The title refers to the Biblical story of Jacob's Ladder, or the dream of a meeting place between Heaven and Earth (Genesis 28:12). The film's alternative title is Dante's Inferno, in a reference to Inferno by Dante Alighieri. Screenwriter and co-producer Bruce Joel Rubin perceived the film as a modern interpretation of the Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State, the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Rubin said: "The inspiration in a sense is my entire spiritual upbringing. Once you have a meditative life you start to see that the world is really far different than what it appears to be. What appears to be finite is really couched in the infinite, and the infinite imbues everything in our lives." Before writing Jacob's Ladder and Ghost, also released in 1990, the Jewish-born Rubin spent two years in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Nepal. Previously, he had also written the afterlife-themed films Brainstorm and Deadly Friend.
Rubin began work in 1980, inspired by a nightmare in which he dreamt about being trapped in a New York City Subway station. For several years, he failed to sell the script. He was given offers from studios specializing in low-budget horror productions, but waited for better funded studios and directors. The script began attracting attention after American Film named it as one of the top ten unproduced screenplays. Thom Mount of Universal Pictures said he "loved it, but it was not for his studio". Directors Michael Apted, Sidney Lumet and Ridley Scott all expressed an interest, but still no major studio was ready to invest in Rubin's "too metaphysical" stories as "Hollywood does not make ghost movies". Eventually, after Deadly Friend was filmed by Wes Craven in 1986, Rubin's screenplays for Jacob's Ladder and Ghost were picked by Paramount Pictures.
In 1988, Adrian Lyne, who described the script as one of the best he had read, decided to direct Jacob's Ladder instead of an adaptation of The Bonfire of the Vanities as he had originally planned. The project was canceled following ownership and policy changes at Paramount; the executives had doubts about the ending and the scenes in Vietnam. The independent film studio Carolco Pictures took over the production, giving Lyne a greater creative control and a budget of $25 million. Rubin became the co-producer, along with Mario Kassar, Alan Marshall and Andrew G. Vajna.
Lyne, who downplayed Rubin's "intimidating" Old Testament themes, prepared by watching documentary films about the war in Vietnam and reading chronicles of near-death experiences. The plot device of a long period of subjective time passing in an instant was inspired by Robert Enrico's 1962 short film An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, one of Lyne's favorite films. Lyne said Jacob's Ladder depicted "a man's dying process ... while he remembers his wife and kid and while he imagines a life with Jezzie that he's never had. So it's his memory and imagination and essentially the whole film is just in his mind." The cinematographer Jeffrey L. Kimball based the dream sequences on the art of Francis Bacon.
Tim Robbins and Elizabeth Peña were among the first to audition for the roles of Jacob Singer and Jezzie Pipkin but Carolco Pictures demanded more established stars. Dustin Hoffman, Richard Gere and Al Pacino were considered for Jacob, while Andie MacDowell, Julia Roberts, Demi Moore and Madonna were considered for Jezzie. Lyne cast Robbins and Peña anyway. Robbins said the film presented for him "a great opportunity to go in a different direction. I love doing comedy, but I know I can do other things as well."
Filming began in New York City on September 11, 1989, on location in Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn. Jacob and Jezzie's apartment was filmed on a soundstage on West 23rd Street, while the subway dream sequences were shot on an abandoned level of Bergen Street station. The Seaview Hospital of Staten Island; the Essex County Veterans Courthouse of Newark, New Jersey; and Madison Square Garden were also used. The military advisor was Vietnam veteran Captain Dale Dye, who provided a five-day boot camp training for the actors playing soldiers in the Vietnam storyline (including Robbins, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Eriq La Salle and Ving Rhames). The war scenes were filmed in the jungles near Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, featuring the UH-1 helicopters provided by the Puerto Rico National Guard. Filming concluded at Tortuguero Lagoon in January 1990 with a $40 million budget.
The special effect sequences were filmed in camera, without post-production effects. In several scenes, Lyne used a body horror technique in which an actor is recorded shaking his head around at a low frame rate, resulting in horrifically fast motion when played back. Lyne said he was inspired by the art of the painter Francis Bacon when developing the effect. In his screenplay, Rubin used traditional imagery of demons and Hell. However, Lyne decided to use images similar to thalidomide deformities to achieve a greater shock effect. After many heated arguments, Lyne persuaded Rubin. Lyne and Rubin were influenced by the work by the artist H. R. Giger, the photographers Diane Arbus and Joel-Peter Witkin, and the Brothers Quay's 1986 stop motion short film Street of Crocodiles.
At the end of the film, a message is displayed saying the Pentagon denied that the Army tested BZ, a hallucinogen, on its soldiers during the Vietnam War. Lyne said a part of the inspiration for this motif was Martin A. Lee's book Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and Sixties Rebellion, but noted that "nothing in the book suggests that the drug BZ ... was used on U.S. troops". According to Lyne's audio commentary, test audiences found the first version of the film overwhelming, and so about 20 minutes of disturbing scenes, mostly from the last third of the film, were removed.
