Six Feet Under

Rachel Griffiths had read the script and had indicated to the production that she was very interested in playing Brenda. The producers' only real concern was whether she could pull off a convincing American accent. When Griffiths flew over from Australia to meet them, she arrived complete with perfect accent, and got the part.

Alan Ball had 13 days to shoot the pilot episode, something which caused him a degree of anxiety, seeing as he had never directed before.

Nikolai's flower shop actually is a real flower shop at 14325 Ventura Blvd and was once a gas station. It was in fact the gas station that James Dean filled up at the day he left out of town on his way to the crash that would kill him (there is a color photo of him at the station about to get back behind the wheel in fact).