(Sound) >> For
all you weirdos having fava beans and a nice Chianti on your Thanksgiving tables.
It's time to get into Jonathan Demme's 1991 masterpiece,
The Silence of the Lambs.
But if you're drinking a big Amarone,
we'll also be talking about Thomas Harris' 1988 novel of the same name.
I say Amarone because that's a difference between the two.
The most iconic line from the movie changed the wine Lecter chose to
pair with fava beans and some dude's liver.
Which is a real drag,
because apparently Amarone is a way better option to go with liver than a Chianti.
But we're getting way ahead of ourselves.
I'm Clint Gage.
>> And I'm Michael Truly.
>> And without further ado, and no restraint on spoilers, its time to ask-
>> What is it in itself,
what is its nature?
What does he do, this man you seek?
>> I wasn't ready for that!
>> No, no, that's weird, we'll just start by asking, what's the difference?
(Sound) >> To start with,
Silence of the Lambs is the second of four Hannibal Lecter books.
Following Red Dragon from 1981 and preceding Hannibal in 1999 and
Hannibal Rising in 2006.
And a small superficial difference is that Silence of the Lambs refers to
the events of the Red Dragon.
What happened to special agent Will Graham, in particular.
>> And while Michael Mann's Manhunter was an adaptation of Red Dragon released in
1986, five years prior to Jonathan Demme's film.
Silence of the Lambs makes no reference to Will Graham, or the events of Red Dragon.
Other than that, Silence of the Lambs is a remarkably faithful adaptation.
The story of FBI trainee Clarice Starling and the murdering genius, Dr.
Hannibal the Cannibal Lecter follows many of the same beats.
Like the exact same beats.
For example,
the film opens with Jodi Foster's Clarice running through an FBI training course.
An instructor interrupts her routine, sending her to meet with Jack Crawford,
head of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Division.
>> The books does the exact same thing.
Crawford then sends Clarice on a job.
>> It's not a job really, more of an interesting errand.
>> And the movie continues to do this for all of the key scenes.
Each time Starling interviews Lecter.
>> Do you know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes?
You look like a rube.
>> Nerdy lab guys flirting with Clarice.
>> Do you ever go out for cheese burgers and beer or the amusing house wine?
>> The way Lecter escapes in Memphis.
>> I'm ready when you are, Sergeant Pembry.
>> Even the tucking thing is pulled verbatim from the book.
>> So how are they different?
Just one way, one seemingly minor, but significant way.
Back story.
Well, two ways, the character back stories and the timing is a little different.
And even those two things are kind of connected, so you know what?
I'm sticking with it, just one way.
>> Let's start with Clarice.
In both the book and the movie, she's a young female trainee thrust into the male
dominated world of a major FBI investigation.
In the book, we have access to her inner monologue.
All the anger and resentment at the men around her,
constantly underestimating her.
>> In the movie, though, her struggle is set up with a brilliant visual scheme.
The movie literally starts with her struggling to run uphill,
and gives way immediately to direct address.
Men looking directly to camera making us feel as uncomfortable under the male gaze
as the film's hero.
Like, there's a ton of it.
It's a through line through the entire film that sets up a terrifying climax
in a way that, frankly, deserves its own video.
Let me know in the comments, by the way, if you want to see that.
The point here is,
Jonathan Demme's camera work adapts Starling's inner monologue perfectly.
The real difference with Starling is her back story.
Movie Starling, as part of her prid pro quo agreement with Dr. Lecter.
Reveals that she was orphaned when her father, a town Marshall,
was killed in the line of duty.
And after being sent to her mother's cousin's sheep and horse ranch,
she ran away with a lamb trying to save it from slaughter.
>> They were slaughtering these spring lambs.
>> And they were screaming.
>> The rancher was furious with her after she returned, so
he sent her to live in an orphanage.
>> Book Starling's story is the roughly the same, but for a few key elements.
First, her father was more of a nighttime security guard and
getting shot was sort of his fault.
He pumped his shotgun incorrectly allowing the burglars to get the drop on him.
Second, her mother was still alive, but
couldn't make ends meet enough to support all of her children.
So that's why she sent Clarice to live on the ranch.
Thirdly, Clarice was still haunted by the crying of the lambs.
But she ran away with a blind horse instead,
saving the horse from becoming either glue or dog food.
Half riding it, half leading it through the wilderness,
eventually, she wound up in an orphanage.
And instead of being returned to the ranch,
she was allowed to just stay there with her blind horse.
The horse actually ended up living a long and comfortable life, and
it let little orphans ride it, and it tilled a small garden.
It was just a year prior to the events of the book that it ended up dying in its
sleep, so all in all, a pretty happy escape for Clarice.
>> All of these changes add up to a difference in motivation between book and
movie Clarice.
Movie Clarice had a childhood in which she was left to fend for
herself at a young age, alone and powerless to save a lamb.
She grew up wanting to make her father, the capable town Marshall proud.
A motivation that very much informs how we watch her deal with all the dudes she's
stuck with on this case.
Meanwhile in the book,
she has a track record of successfully navigating tough situations.
She actually did save an animal from slaughter.
Her back story works more like another example of her overcoming obstacles.
To shed light on her drive to work around the political BS she encounters on
the Buffalo Bill case.
>> Book Clarice's story also has a subtly different ending.
It's unclear that she graduates, but
she does get a chance to make up the exams she missed.
While, you know, solving the case and
killing Jame Gumb in his pitch-black basement dungeon.
What is clear, though, is that she's sleeping with Dr. Pilcher.
The entomologist who helped ID the death's-head moth that was Buffalo Bill's
trademark.
The novel ends with her sleeping deeply and sweetly in the silence of the lambs.
>> Movie Clarice does get her badge and Pilcher is there as well, but
just as a guest at the ceremony.
Crawford also makes a point to tell her that her father would be proud, but
Crawford himself is also a little different.
Movie Crawford is a slick, well dressed, toothy white smiled operator,
an embodiment of the machine Starling is about to get thrown into.
In the book, though, Crawford used to be all of those things.
Now he's thinner, with tired, baggy eyes, and clothes that don't really fit anymore.
This is because he's not handling the stress of the case well, but
also because his wife is home dying.
Leaving Crawford's wife out of the film actually does more for
Starling's character arc then it does for Crawford's.
Particularly because of how it ends.
>> But the differences in the ending don't quite stop there.
>> Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?
>> Dr. Lecter.
>> Starling also receives a phone call from Dr.
Lecter from what appears to be a small airport in a remote part of the world.
He's got a real rad threadbare Panama Jack thing going,
and he confides to Clarice that he's not coming after her.
But instead he's going to eat Dr. Chilton, (Sound), the ever so
smarmy psychiatrist that tormented him for the past eight years.
>> This can be quite a fun town, if you have the right guide.
(Laugh) >> I see.
>> Anthony Hopkins' Lecter is obviously a brutal and murderous bad guy.
But he's also, well, let's just say it, he's charming, he's very, very charming.
So much so that you're rooting for him and Clarice to kind of be friends?
Maybe just like coffee on a weekend?
>> People will say we're in love.
>> Partly because he seems like the one man that actually gives her the credit
she's due.
We appreciate him because ironically he's the safest place for Clarice.
>> Book Lecter, on the other hand,
seems to be a little more arrogant than his big screen counterpart.
Bragging more overtly about the first rate nature of his work.
Much less of Anthony Hopkins strangely dangerous charisma comes across on
the page.
He's also got six fingers on his right hand in the book, so you know,
that's really the important difference between both of these.
But again, aside from pairing his liver and
fava beans with a different kind of wine.
The scenes with Lecter are so key to the story,
that they stay largely the same from page to screen.
Lecter's ending doesn't quite have the payoff of the movie's, however.
The combination of Dr. Chilton being so smarmy, and
Lecter being unnvervingly charming makes the ending of the film pretty satisfying.
In the book, after his escape, he drives to St. Louis.
And sets up shop in a hotel across the street from a hospital that specializes in
plastic surgery.
This way he can come and go with bandages fully covering his face and
not look out of place.
When last we see him,
he's suddenly changing the look of his face with silicon injections.
And writing a letter to Starling that basically mirrors the phone call.
There's no satisfying threat at the disgusting Dr. Chilton.
Just the uneasy feeling that the dangerous monster portrayed in the book is back on
the loose.
>> The other difference we talked about is the timing.
The best example of this is the connective tissue kind of scenes during
the investigation.
For example, after Starling and Lecter's first meeting in the book.
Lecter sends her looking for an old patient of his named Benjamin Raspail.
The tip ends up being sort of a wild goose chase before Clarice thinks it's
a dead end.
It's actually Crawford that sends her down the path that finally leads to finding
a severed head in a storage unit.
While that process takes some time in the book, in the movie,
Lecter gives Clarice a pretty oblique clue during their first meeting.
It's a clue hidden in an anagram that Clarice deciphers on her own,
which leads her to finding the head in the storage unit.
This change not only streamlines the narrative for
the practical purpose of condensing a book to a two hour run time.
But it also serves another purpose.
Clarice, who we've been told is a capable and driven investigator,
thanks to the rest of the changes to her character.
Is now shown to be one as well.
>> The same thing happens with the skin suit discovery.
Book Lecter tells Clarice that Buffalo Bill is making clothes out of his victims
by telling her that Bill wants a vest with tits on it.
Meanwhile, movie Clarice makes the connection when she sees a dress being
altered with the same pattern as the flaying on one of the victims.
While both the book and the movie feature that realization in the victim's home.
Movie Clarice doesn't have the benefit of getting the hint so
bluntly from Lecter earlier in the investigation.
It's another instance where Clarice is really smart in doing it all on her own.
>> And so because the book and the movie share a ton narratively.
Most of this adaptation is a fascinating study in direct translation from page to
screen.
Interpersonal dynamics revealed with inner monologues in the book become feelings
communicated to us through camera placement and eye lines.
And with storytelling short cuts that are also character driven.
A very good book becomes a very good movie that tells very much the same story.
That's all for this episode, so tuck into your liver and fava beans,
let us know which wine you're pairing with them, Chianti or Amarone.
And be sure to subscribe to Cinefix for more What's The Difference?
>> (Sound) That was good.