One major change concerned the film's ending, which involves Oberlus committing suicide by walking into the sea holding his newborn son: "The novel ends with Oberlus not walking out into the ocean but dashing the baby on the rocks and then they all go sailing off in the little boat, with many more adventures. Carmen lives to a ripe old age. I forget how Oberlus dies, but he doesn't walk into the ocean. I don't remember how we came up with this ending. I'm sure it came out of discussion between David and Steve and myself, and I don't know who came up with this idea, but I think it's very poetic and it's much better than in the book. I think this is one case when I can honestly say I feel we improved on the book."7
Everett McGill, a fine character actor perhaps most familiar from his work with David Lynch, was cast as Oberlus: "He was my first choice for the role. However, at one point it seemed he wouldn't be available, and I offered the role to Alan Rickman. From that point on, I couldn't seem to get Alan out of my mind."8 Other cast members included Fabio Testi as Gamboa, Maru Valdivielso as Carmen, Michael Madsen as Sebastian, Tim Ryan (son of Robert Ryan) as George and Joseph Culp (son of Robert Culp) as Dominique ("He was brought to me by our casting director, and he was a great find.'"9)
Much of the film was shot on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands: "Lanzarote is an amazing place, because it's a volcanic island that has been inactive for a couple of hundred years, but it has a history of the volcano erupting every hundred years or so, and it's just completely covered in this black rock and black ash and it's like being on the surface of the moon. The original story, even the book Iguana, is set on the Galapagos, which is the setting of the historical character in the Melville story, but Figueroa himself has a home on Lanzarote and he sugested Lanzarote as a location. We tried to find a cave in Lanzarote. They had some wonderful caves, gigantic caves that would have been a nightmare to light, but they were tourist attractions and we would have had to lay thousands of feet of cable and then remove it all every morning for the tourists. We decided to shoot those cave scenes in Rome in a natural cave fairly close to Cinecitta Studios. And so all the cave scenes are in Rome and the bedroom scene was at a villa that was south of Rome. Most of the other exteriors and interiors are on Lanzarote."10
Unfortunately, Franco Di Nunzio's penny-pinching approach stretched the film's schedule from six weeks to nine weeks: "It was the single worst experience I've ever had making a film. It was horrible, because we had a producer who was unable to part with a single dollar. One day we needed a rowboat on the set at 8 o'clock in the morning. He found somebody to supply the boat, and he was supposed to pay them the night before so that they would be there at 8. Instead, he said, 'I'll meet you tomorrow morning and I'll give you the money then.' And by then they had gone off fishing somewhere. For the scene involving a feast on the beach, he had gone to the local grocery store and brought on the set one bunch of bananas, three oranges and a pineapple. I said, 'I'm sorry, I can't shoot the scene,' and actually went on strike. I left the set and went back to the hotel and refused to work. We would eat lunch in a restaurant that could only seat half the crew, so we would have to eat in two shifts and lunch would take two hours instead of an hour, and then they would argue for 15 minutes about who had an ice cream because they had to pay for it themselves. There was just no sense that time was money and how valuable time was. We didn't have lights for three weeks. They were being sent from Europe and they just never arrived on time because, I guess, they hadn't been ordered on time. So we had no lighting for any of the scenes for the first three weeks of shooting. It was a little bit like making a production of Our Town which takes place on a bare stage and two ladders represent the two houses. We had so little that it became the style of the film. It became a movie about minimalization."11
During the editing, Hellman decided that Iguana should be dedicated to Warren Oates (identified simply as "Warren"). As is common with European co-productions, some of the credits were determined by quota demands; Franco Campanino is credited with both composing and arranging the music, but "did not write one note of the music in this film. He was just one of those contractual obligations."12 The actual score consists of traditional pieces performed by Joni Mitchell ("Wayfaring Stranger," heard over the beginning and end credits)13, and actors Amaya Merino ("Oh, Love"14) and Joseph Culp ("Women's Delight").
Hellman's cut of Iguana ran 100 minutes and was screened at the Venice festival. Franco Di Nunzio insisted on removing 8 minutes from the European version (shown at Cannes): "The producer became obsessed with the idea that the movie should be no longer than 90 minutes. He didn't speak English, and never understood a word of the film. He made cuts that destroyed the rhythm and logic of the film, and made it incomprehensible, as well as seemingly longer. I'm reminded of the American 2-hour version of Seven Samurai, which is unbearably long, compared to the 31/2 hour version, which is over before you know it. Not that I'm comparing myself to Kurosawa."15 In the end, neither version had any real distribution: "It didn't get released because this crazy producer had made a $10,000 shocker (Cannibal Holocaust) that he sold to Japan for $50,000, and the picture wound up doing $27 million. And so he felt he'd been really screwed and demanded such exorbitant sums for Iguana that he never sold it. We had many offers of sales throughout the world that were refused by the producer. Every offer was too small."16 Although one of the principal sources of finance had been Media Home Entertainment,17 Iguana was eventually sub-licensed to Imperial, which released Hellman's original cut on video in the U.S., but distributed it so sparsely that Steven Gaydos claims fewer than ten cassettes were in circulation. According to Gaydos, "I always believed in the film, which was hard, given that everybody, including every friend and associate, thought it was a complete disaster. There were notable exceptions: Bill Krohn of Cahiers Du Cinema and Richard Jameson of Film Comment. And the folks at Venice who took the film, then whoever gave us the RAI "Best of Fest" award. And strangely, powerfully, Joni Mitchell. I sat with her when I screened the movie for her and her husband to see if she'd do the music. When the film was over she turned to me and said, 'It's a poem. I'd love to do the music.' God bless them. Then Quentin Tarantino, on the set of Reservoir Dogs, said the magic words to me: 'Are you done with the interview? Okay. Now I have a question for you. Are you the guy who wrote Iguana? Wow. That movie should have made Monte a household name.' Then he proceeded to recite the dialogue, line by line, from the beheading scene. Everyone else challenged me for defending it."18 Hellman also feels justifiably proud: "Iguana is a very special film. It's a very hard film, a very difficult film for the audience. It's a film that disturbs people tremendously."19