It began snowing near the end of shooting, when the church fire and the standoff were the only scenes left. Beatty did not want to start shooting in the snow, as it was in a sense dangerous (expensive) to do so: to preserve continuity, the rest of the film would have to be shot in snow. Altman countered that since those were the only scenes left to film, it was best to start since there was nothing else to do. The "standoff" scene—which is in fact more a "cat and mouse" scene involving shooting one's enemy in the back—and its concurrent church fire scene, were shot over nine days. The heavy snow, with the exception of a few "fill-in" patches on the ground, was genuine; the crew members built snowmen and had snowball fights between takes.