When Nosey offers Bisson a bowl of stew, Michael Gough's voice on the soundtrack says "Buzz off!" but his lips form the words "Drop dead!" Presumably the line was changed when Mike Morgan died suddenly before the film was released.
Joyce Carey, the author of the novel which inspired the film, based the role of the self-destructive painter on his good friend, the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
Guinness felt that an educated accent for Gully Jimson would be suited to an artist but was not right for an eccentric. "So I tried to find a voice in which no one would be able to detect an accent of any sort, a kind of gritty, rough manner of speaking. When I found it, I felt myself free to just relax on that and say the lines as they came.
Miss D. Coker: Excuse me, Mrs. Monday, I'm Miss D. Coker, a friend of Mr. Jimson's and we want a few words with you, and not in the street, if you please.