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Another donation!

Happy site news: Morrigan answered the call for donations and sent over some £! If you enjoy The CillianSite, we hope you too will consider making a wee contribution toward site costs.

Fanboy audio review of Sunshine

A cool podcast from the U.K. called Digital Cowboys reviewed Sunshine recently. It's fun to hear fanboys discuss the movie, and they have some great insights about Sunshine in comparison to its spaceship film predecessors. Give it a listen.

Paparazzi swarm Edge—but what's scripted and what really happened?

It could be that The Edge of Love star Matthew Rhys is to blame for the paparazzi swarming around the set, seeing as how he admits having been tipsy and exaggerating when he told The Daily Mail about the film's lesbian/threesome vibe, as we reported on 10 March. However the press got the idea that the popular female stars of the movie, Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller, could be making out on set, it's put the Wales shoot under siege by photographers. But are there really lesbian love scenes in the movie? And was a lesbian affair actually a part of the real historical events that led to William Killick (who Cillian plays) attacking Caitlin and Dylan Thomas' house with a machine gun?

As we reported on 29 April, screenwriter Sharman Macdonald says there is no explicit lesbian relationship in Edge. But that hasn't dissuaded the paparazzi, and hi jinx have ensued on location. The Observer reports:

A pap fell out of a tree last week, and this week two paps hired a boat to get close to the secluded beach where they could see the actresses lying in the sand. Filming had to be stopped when a commotion was seen out in the bay—the paps had started to sink, prompting a rescue by the local lifeguards. A source close to the film whispers: "Keira and Sienna think it's all a great laugh because there isn't a lesbian kiss in the script. Caitlin and Vera's relationship wasn't sexual. When they saw the paps sinking, they were giggling too much to keep filming."

Wales on Sunday trumpets that there was a kiss—but then admits that the stars supposedly only kissed as a joke on the paps:

Film publicist Emma Davie said: "Yes, it's true, Sienna and Keira have kissed but it won't be in the film. It was done as a joke on Monday, the first day of filming. Sienna and Keira thought it would be funny to do it and we cannot believe the press missed it. They did it at the end of the day when it began to rain. The paparazzi must have gone home by then."

Hmmmm. Well, it seems like someone may still trying to keep hope—and publicity for the film—alive:

However, a set insider believes Sienna's smacker for Keira is just a practice run for the real on-screen thing before filming moves to Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire next month.

Still, the article goes on to provide further evidence against that:

Film bosses also laughed off reports the girls had been offered up to £20m each to take part in a threesome scene with Rhys. Film spokesman Charles McDonald said: "For the record, there is no threesome planned, there never was, and there is no lesbian kiss in the film either. The claim that they have been offered £20m each is hilarious."

And what really happened between the real life people involved, back in the 1940s? The Independent reports that a drunken William Killick was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and was angry about other matters, including the fact that Dylan Thomas got to stay home and write World War II propaganda films while Killick's war heroics went unappreciated.

Paul Ferris, the author of a biography on Thomas ... said: "There was certainly tension between Killick, his wife and Caitlin and Dylan. But whether it was down to anything sexual would be seriously doubtful."

According to Mr. Ferris, Killick, who was angry when he found Vera had used his money to subsidise Thomas's drinking sessions, felt he was ignored when he encountered the poet and his entourage in a pub.

Mr. Ferris said: "It was claimed that Killick made an anti-Semitic remark to a Jewish woman, who objected and a scuffle broke out. Killick went away saying he would put the wind up them and show them what it was like in a real war."

Another piece of testimony against the sexual jealousy motive also reveals that Cillian doesn't physically fit the part of Killick (not that it really matters):

Gwen Watkins, the widow of the poet Vernon Watkins, who was one of Thomas' best friends, said: "It was nothing to do with infidelity or hanky-panky. Vera was very strait-laced about such matters and Caitlin was very, very jealous. She would not have allowed it and she had a fierce, if not psychotic, temper.

"But more importantly, Bill Killick was not interested in that. He was a big imposing man with a very quick temper who drank too much that night and was teetering on the brink of a breakdown. He was angry at Vera because she had spent all his salary and annoyed because he felt shunned by Dylan." (emphasis mine)

And what did Caitlin MacNamara Thomas have to say about the events in question in her autobiography, Caitlin: Life With Dylan Thomas? She tells of Killick's unfounded suspicions of a threesome between his wife and the Thomases. Here's what Caitlin wrote about the attack by Killick, whom she and Dylan had nicknamed Drunken Waistcoat "because he always looked so fancy and he liked his drink." Events began at the Black Lion pub in New Quay, and what transpired there probably explains the scratches on Cillian's face in the arrest scene. (Skip this if you don't want to be spoiled for the movie.)

A lot of drinking was done, and at some point the Russian secretary made several remarks that upset Drunken Waistcoat, who lost his temper. He was very rude and made some stupid comments about her being Jewish, which, in 1944, was rotten timing. She clawed at his face and he hit back, whereupon Dylan and other men present threw him out of the pub. What none of them knew was that Drunken Waistcoat had recently returned from a very hazardous mission as a Commando officer, and he was more than a little battle-weary. What's more, he had brought some of his weapons back, including a Sten gun and several hand grenades.

Drunken Waistcoat was also nursing a grudge: he was convinced that his wife had been living with us in a ménage à trois (which was a ridiculous thought) while he had been away, and that we had been drinking too much of their money (there may have been some truth in that). Anyway, he went off to another pub and brooded while we carried on drinking.

We ...[went home and]... settled down in front of the fire with some bottles of beer that Dylan had brought back from the pub. Suddenly we heard shouting outside the house and then a violent commotion, followed by a hail of bullets which ripped through those paper-thin walls. ...I dived into the room next door to see if the children were all right (they were fast asleep), and, moments later, the front door was kicked down and in burst Drunken Waistcoat, with his Sten gun under his arm.

Somehow, Dylan—who was unusually calm on this occasion—managed to take the gun away from him, at which point Drunken Waistcoat produced a hand grenade and threatened to blow us all to smithereens unless his gun was returned to him immediately. When he was later asked at the trial what he did then, Dylan replied, "Naturally—I handed it back to him."

There needn't have been any trial. Peace had been restored and tempers had cooled, and we were all settling down again when the police suddenly arrived (one of the neighbours had heard the shots and dialed 999). So then, of course, there was a big investigation and Drunken Waistcoat was charged with attempted murder and we were all required to give evidence. It was one of those crazy things that happen in wartime; poor old Drunken Waistcoat was obviously in a bad state because of what he had been through, and none of us said very much against him. We all went to court and gave fairly weak evidence. I said that he had appeared very nervous and out of control. Eventually, he was found not guilty on the grounds that the provocation had been such as to temporarily deprive him of his reason.

The incident distressed Dylan, who didn't like any kind of violence. He was calm at the time, but he realised afterwards that we could all have been killed, and our friendship with Vera petered out after that.