 |
WELCOME
TO LECTERMD.COM
THE HOME OF HANNIBAL LECTER, MD. |
|
NEWS
and CURRENT EVENTS @ LECTERMD.COM
For the latest on what's up with Lecter :: LATEST
NEWS |
 |
| LINER
NOTES from DVD Special Edition Release of "The
Silence of the Lambs" |
|
| THE
MASTER CHEF |
|  When
Thomas Harris’ novel, The Silence of the Lambs,
first made the rounds in Hollywood, director Jonathan
Demme wasn’t interested. “Young female FBI agent
hunts down serial killer with help of demented
psychiatrist … it wasn’t the kind of thing that
I find interesting,” he said.
But after Demme read the book and met and spoke
with screenwriter Ted Tally about the story, he
immediately signed on. “It was Clarice that got
to me,” he explained. |
|
“One of the great things about the script,” he continued,
“is its genre base. It’s a suspense movie with a
female protagonist who’s never in sexual peril.
It’s a slasher movie that’s devoid not only of slasher
scenes, but of the anticipation of them.” 1 |
| To
deliver the greatest sense of Clarice’s fear and
frustration, Demme felt it necessary to put the
audience right into her head. “In what was maybe
our daring stylistic conceit for this film, we had
the camera do a complete subjective point-of-view
shot for Jodie (Foster, who plays Clarice), without
fail, in every single sequence,” he said. “People
are always talking into the camera, the camera always
sees exactly what she sees. I felt it was imperative
that … Clarice be not only honoured but capitalised
by pulling the audience right into the maximum identification
zone with her.” 2 |
| |
| THE
RECIPE |
 Writer
Ted Tally was also enthralled with Harris’ novel
– so much so that he hounded his agent to get him
hired as the film’s sceenwriter. Tally, who won
1991’s Best Screenplay Academy Award 3
for his work, said: “A sort of streamlining always
goes on in an adaptation. But probably the most
important single choice in this adaptation was trying
to eliminate the multiple points of view.” In exploring
the novel to find the elements that would make the
movie work, Tally realized that “the heart of the
story was between Starling and Lecter, that strange
sexual power struggle, that chess game between this
young woman and this man – this monster.” 4
So he focused the screenplay on this premise … and
within only a year of beginning the script – breakneck
speed in Hollywood – the cameras were rolling! |
| |
| THE
GUEST OF HONOUR |
 Demme
felt that casting a mega-star like Robert De Niro
or Jack Nicholson in the role of Dr. Hannibal Lecter
would have focused the audience’s attention on the
actor’s performance rather than on the story, and
thus would have weakend the film. So he cast the
lesser-known but extraordinarily accomplished Anthony
Hopkins. Hopkins, who won Best Actor Oscar*
for this role, is so brilliant that the audience
finds itself rooting for Dr. Lecter in spite of
his nature. Legendary horror film director John
Carpenter offered another reason why Dr. Lecter
grabbed the world’s attention: |
|
“Someone like Hannibal Lecter is an interesting
character because he combines this brilliant mind
with an absolutely horrifying monster,” he said.
“We’re all frightened of the unknown and also of
the repressed people in our society. There’s a duality
that touches off sparks in all of us.” 5 |
| |
| THE
PREPARATION |
 In
the pivotal role of FBI agent Clarice Starling,
Demme sought the highly respected Jodie Foster,
who also went on to win the Best Actress Oscar*
for her portrayal. In preparation, Forster spent
time with Special Agent Mary Anne Krause, with whom
she developed a great rapport. “We went out to dinner
and my first and lasting impression was that [Foster]
was very sharp and eager to learn,” remembered Krause.
“Not just about the FBI, but about me. She really
wanted to get a picture of a female agent.” Foster
took her experiences with Krause directly to the
screen. “When it gets to be too much, and I’m on
my own, I just go and cry in my car,” continues
Krause: “In that one scene where she’s crying in
the car? I saw it and thought, ‘Now that’s like
me.” 5 |
 Scott
Glenn (FBI Agent Jack Crawford) also prepared for
his role with an agent, John Douglas, a criminal
profiler who has interviewed such notorious murderers
as Charles Manson and David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz.
From Douglas, Glenn found out more than he wanted
to know. To get the roughest feel for the job, Glenn
agreed to view crime scene photographs and listen
to FBI tapes of girls who were tortured in the backseat
of a Los Angeles van by a pair of rapist/killers.
“I thought it was important for him to sense that
this is an extremely stressful environment,” Douglas
said, “that it’s the type of work you cannot shut
down at the end of the day.” 5
As a result of the experience, Glenn feels he “lost
a certain degree of innocence. To this day I find
myself having unpleasant dreams about the things
I found out.” 5 |
| |
| INGREDIENTS
FOR DESTRUCTION |
 In
order to bring the real psychodrama of serial killer
Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb to life in the film, director
Demme and the filmmakers did careful research. As
a result, Buffalo Bill, played briliiantly by Ted
Levine, became a deadly hybrid of three real-life
serial murders, who, in the past, had captured the
public’s imagination. |
 The
first serial killer, Ed Gein, was also the prototype
for the charater Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s
Psycho. He lived in squalor, but, like Norman Bates
and Buffalo Bill, kept his late mother’s room and
clothes in immaculate condition. He apparently also
liked to wear the skins of his victims and look
at himself in multiple mirrors, a trait passed on
to Buffalo Bill. |
 The
second model for Buffalo Bill was Ted Bundy. A law
student who seem destined for a promising career
in politics, Bundy was executed in 1989 for the
murder of a 12 year old girl. He also confessed
to the murders of a score of other women before
he died. In the film, Buffalo Bill uses Bundy’s
technique of gaining sympathy from women by wearing
a phony cast on his wrist. |
 Finally,
the behaviour of a third model, Gary Michael Heidnik
of Philadelphia, inspired Buffalo Bill’s dark and
dingy basement dungeon. On a tip from a hysterical
young woman who reported that she had been held
captive in a nearby house, police investigated Heidnik’s
basement. They found three partially clad women
chained to pipes and two other women who had died
in the dungeon of suffocation and electrocution. |
| |
| ADDING
THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF REALITY |
 In
addition to training the actors in the ways of firearms,
law enforcement and serial killers, the FBI had
a few notes for Director Demme on his film. Douglas
commended Demme for the scene in which one of Buffalo
Bill’s victims cries, “I want my mommy!” from the
well in which she is detained. He said that “he
had seen girls in these situations and they revert
back to childhood.’ 5
The bureau objected, however, to Clarice’s unanticipated
discovery of Buffalo Bill. The Feds insisted they
would never send a rookie agent alone on such a
dangerous mission. As this conceit provided the
final climax of the movie, Demme couldn’t – and
wouldn’t – change it. So the FBI finally agreed
that it could be justified as the most unlikely
follow-up lead of all time. A rookie, the FBI reasoned,
could have been assigned such a task only if it
wasn’t expected to pan out. |
| |
| NIBBLES |
| •
Shooting began in November 1999 in Washington, D.C.
… in the office of then United States Secretary
of Labor Elizabeth Dole! The office, which overlooks
the Capitol, was used as the set for the FBI director’s
office. |
| •
A large part of the shoot
took place in Pittsburgh. The city was chosen for
its variety of landscapes and architecture, which
was necessary to portray various parts of the country.
All the film’s interiors were constructed and shot
in an abandoned Pittsburgh factory. |
| •
Gene Hackman was the original possessor of the rights
to the film. He intended to write, direct and star
in the movie. |
| •
To counteract the deeply felt horror and tension
of the storyline, the cast and crew kept the atmosphere
as light as possible. “Everything was a joke,” recalls
actress Brooke Smith, who plays abducted victim
Catherine Martin. “The crew ate lamb, and even made
the blueprint of the set into a gameboard called
‘The Gumb Game.” It had stuff like ‘liposuction
go back two spaces.’ The object was to save Catherine.”
5 |
| •
The tobacco horn worm moths used throughout the
film were given celebrity treatment by the filmmakers.
They were flow first class to the set (in a special
carrier), had special living quarters (rooms with
controlled humidity and heat) and were dressed in
carefully designed costumes (body shields bearing
a painted skull and crossbones)! |
| |
| OTHER
NIBBLES (not appearing in DVD Special Edition Text) |
| •
Originally, it was anticipated that Clarice Starling
would be played by Michelle Pfeiffer. Director Demme
had just recently directed Pfeiffer in the movie
Married to the Mob. |
| •
Hollywood came in for a bashing over the supposed
anti-gay feel of the movie. Their complaint: gays
or supposed gay characters are seldom enough portrayed
in movies / Hollywood, and when they do appear,
it is almost always in a negative light. The character
of Jame Gumb was seen as a continuation of this.
Director Demme and some of the movie cast (especially
Ted Levine who plays Jame Gumb in the film) hadn’t
anticipated this, and sought to point out that Buffalo
Bill wasn’t gay anyway. Besides which, Demme went
on to produce Philadelphia which could hardly
be said to be anti-gay in any sense. |
| •
Hackman
originally wanted to star in the film, but turned
down the role after reading Ted Tally’s script,
thinking it too violent. Ironincally, Jodie Foster
went on to turn down a reprisal of her role as Starling
in Hannibal, citing the violence of the script in
that film as a reason for not returning to the role
which won her the Oscar in 1991. |
| __________________ |
| *1991 |
| 1.Jonathan
Demme as quoted in The Village Voice, February 19,
1991. |
| 2.Jonathon
Demme as quoted in Interview, February 1991. |
| 3.Screenplay
based on material from another medium. |
| 4.Ted
Tally as quoted in The New York Times, January 31,
1992. |
| 5.Various
as quoted in People Magazine, April 1, 1991. |
| |
|
| |
|
| WEB
SITE AUTHOR :: Read
My Guestbook! ::
Sign
My Guestbook! |
