Kurosawa had trouble getting financing from studios in Japan, blaming much on the political nature of his criticism of nuclear power in the film. He sent a copy of his script to Steven Spielberg, who liked it, and helped get a deal for the film through Warner Bros.
The house in the "Sunshine Through the Rain" sequence is a reproduction of Kurosawa's childhood home in Koshikawa, complete with a nameplate that reads KUROSAWA.
Kurosawa had envisioned the role of Vincent Van Gogh being portrayed by Martin Scorsese when he first wrote it, based on his first meeting with him seven years earlier.
The eight segments of the film were originally joined by three more that ended up being cut due to time restraints; one involved the main character flying with an angel through the air and into space, another involved a Buddhist deity punishing priests for protesting temple taxes, and the third focused on newscasters talking about a breakout of world peace.
"Dreams" was the first film Kurosawa had written by himself without a collaborator since "Those Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail" forty five years earlier.
Akira Kurosawa: [weather] The types of weather in each segment set the mood or have a symbolic meaning, be it the rain/rainbow in "Sunshine Through the Rain" and its traditional folklore-based meaning, the snowy tempest in "The Blizzard" representing difficult times in life when one needs to persevere to achieve his goal, the gusts of wind in "Mount Fuji in Red" setting the tone of chaos and turbulence of the segment, and finally the contrast between the heavy clouds of "The Weeping Demon" and the serene sunny weather in "Village of the Watermills".
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