"It's about a polygamist who deeply loves each of his three wives and families but keeps them secret from one another," Jarmusch told Indiewire in 2005. "The man works his ass off to maintain the secret, but it wears him down. /---/ I reread the script and thought, this is a great story -- this isn't a great script. It's overwritten, it needs work. I don't rewrite scripts. I didn't want to spend two years of my life fixing it."
From "Jarmusch shows 'the Money'", by Roger Ebert in Chicago Sun Times, July 31, 2005:
"He always wanted to work with Bill Murray, Jim Jarmusch said. "He's got a big-brush style where he's a comic genius. But he can also paint with a one-haired brush." That was the Murray that Jarmusch wanted, the one he had seen in "The Razor's Edge," "Mad Dog and Glory," "Ed Wood," "Rushmore" and "Lost in Translation." So it should have been simple. Jarmusch worked on a screenplay for four or five months, went to Cannes in 2002 to raise the money for it, and came home with most of the financing in place.
"I have some good news and some bad news," the director told his star.
"Good news?" said Murray.
"I have most of the money."
"Bad news?"
"I don't really want to do this script."
The script was titled "Three Moons in the Sky." Doesn't much matter what it was about, since it will not be made. Murray nodded at the bad news, and said, "Well, what are you thinking of doing?"
"I have this other idea," Jarmusch said. He told him the story of "Broken Flowers." It was a project that had been accumulating for years, in notes and jottings and two and a half complete scenes, about a man who is told that he had a son 20 years ago. Now the boy may be coming to find him."