go into hiding. He wipes her fingerprints off the gun, replaces them with his own, and allows himself to be arrested in her place. A few months later, Dil visits Fergus in prison and asks why he took the fall for her. He responds, "As a man once said, it's in my nature," and tells her the story of the Scorpion and the Frog. Cast Stephen Rea as Fergus Miranda Richardson as Jude Forest Whitaker as Jody Jaye Davidson as Dil Adrian Dunbar as Peter Maguire Tony Slattery as Deveroux Jim Broadbent as Col Birdy Sweeney as Tommy Ralph Brown as Dave Andrée Bernard as Jane Joe Savino as Eddie Breffni McKenna as Tinker Jack Carr as Franknum Production Neil Jordan first drafted the screenplay in the mid-1980s under the title The Soldier's Wife, but shelved the project after a similar film was released. A 1931 short story by Frank O'Connor called Guests of the Nation, in which IRA soldiers develop a bond with their English captives, whom they are ultimately forced to kill, partly inspired the story. The original draft had the character Dil as a cisgender woman, but Jordan decided to make the character transgender at the premiere of his film The Miracle at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival in 1991. Jordan sought to begin production of the film in the early 1990s, but found it difficult to secure financing, as the script's controversial themes and his recent string of box office flops discouraged potential investors. Several funding offers from the United States fell through because the funders wanted Jordan to cast a woman to play the role of Dil, believing that it would be impossible to find an androgynous male actor who could pass as female. Derek Jarman eventually referred Jordan to Jaye Davidson, who was completely new to acting, and was spotted by a casting agent while attending a premiere party for Jarman's film Edward II. Rea later said, "'If Jaye hadn't been a completely convincing woman, my character would have looked stupid'". The film included full-frontal "male" nudity on Davidson's part; he was filmed nude in the notable bedroom scene in which Dil's sexual anatomy was revealed. The film went into production with an inadequate patchwork of funding, leading to a stressful and unstable filming process. The producers constantly searched for small amounts of money to keep the production going, and the unreliable pay