![]() Even the idea of using a killer to catch a killer comes from reality. Lecter and Buffalo Bill are composites of some of the worst examples of humanity ever to grace the planet. ![]() No one can say Harris didn’t do his homework before writing his book. She enlists the aid of another notorious killer, the psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, who is in prison for eating his victims. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 29 years, The Silence of the Lambs follows Clarice Starling as she helps senior FBI agents hunt down a serial killer, Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb (Ted Levine), who has been abducting heavyset young women and skinning them. Roles like Starling and Lecter, in a story like this, if you go into them with the slightest bit of trepidation, will eat you alive…with fava beans and a nice Chianti. I’m glad he said no, too, and I’ve crushed him since I was 17. Hannibal Lecter was offered to Sean Connery first, but honestly, I’m pretty sure every role for a man of a certain age in 1991 was offered to Sean Connery first. ![]() No offense to either of them (particularly Michelle, whom I love with all my soul), but I’m glad they abstained courteously. The film was too dark for them, they said. According to a retrospective NME piece, Demme first went to Michelle Pfeiffer and Meg Ryan, and both of them turned it down. From Jonathan Demme’s direction to Ted Tally’s screenplay to the brilliant performances by Hopkins and Jodie Foster, there’s precious (good dog, Precious) little that doesn’t hold up about this film, even this many years later.Īpparently, despite Foster having recently won a Best Actress Oscar for The Accused, Demme was hesitant to give her the role of FBI agent-in-training Clarice Starling, though she lobbied hard for it. I’m not sure if this film/book was responsible for my whole true-crime thing that took me through most of the ‘90s, but it definitely was a factor. ![]() My relationship with Harris’s writing is a long and passionate one, and this film was the thing that started me on that road. The Silence of the Lambs was based on the book by Thomas Harris. It’s so rare that scary movies get the critical acclaim that The Silence of the Lambs did but then, it’s also rare that scary movies are this damn good. I love this movie right from the Twin Peaks-ish font of the opening credits (ah, 1991) to the fly crawling on Sir Anthony Hopkins’s forehead as he nonchalantly talks on the phone about having an old friend for dinner. ![]()
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