The Silence of the Lambs is undoubtedly one of the most iconic horror films of all time.
But even diehard fans might not know about the real-world research, on-set pranking,
and bizarre costume choices that went into its production. Here's the untold truth of
Hannibal Lecter's finest hour.
Although Dino de Laurentiis bought the rights to the name Hannibal Lecter when his studio
made 1986's Manhunter, the very nature of the beast kept other filmmakers away for years.
It makes sense, after all: A cannibal psychiatrist is a tough sell for a movie. That is, until
Gene Hackman and Arthur Krim of Orion Pictures teamed up to buy the rights. Hackman was originally
interested in directing, and wanted to play Lecter at the same time, but he later dropped
out after his daughter read the book and objected to the story's heavy violence. Krim bought
Hackman's half of the rights, and Jonathan Demme, intrigued by the unusual story, signed
on as director.
Demme initially considered a number of actresses to play Clarice Starling, including Michelle
Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan, and Laura Dern. But Jodie Foster, who had just won an Oscar for The
Accused, lobbied hard for the part. Her grit, talent, and intelligence shone through, and
ultimately landed her the role.
For Hannibal Lecter, almost every single prestige actor of the day was on the table. Sean Connery,
Robert De Niro, and Dustin Hoffman were all under consideration. By now, of course, it's
impossible to picture anyone but Hopkins wearing that infamous muzzle.
By the end of The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling has taken down Buffalo Bill and saved
Catherine Martin's life. As she officially receives her FBI credentials, however, she
gets a phone call. It's an escaped Dr. Lecter, telling her not to expect him, and to return
the courtesy by leaving him alone.
"I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world's more interesting with you in it."
Lecter is revealed to be living in a tropical paradise. As she begs him to tell her where
he is, he delivers one of the most famous lines in movie history.
"I do wish we could chat longer, but…I'm having an old friend for dinner."
Lecter ambles off down the road, following his former abuser Dr. Chilton, who has no
idea he's next on the menu.
Originally, screenwriter Ted Tally had planned a much more elaborate and disturbing closing
shot. In Tally's ending, Lecter comments on Clarice's outfit, indicating he'd been stalking
her earlier that day. The camera pulls back to show Dr. Chilton, trussed up and ready
to be slaughtered. Lecter than asks "Shall we begin?", and the screen cuts to black.
Ultimately, the filmmakers decided to rework the ending, much to Tally's chagrin. In the
final movie, Chilton's fate is merely implied, even if it's still just as horrific.
When you think of The Silence of the Lambs, one of the first images that likely pops to
mind is Dr. Lecter in his iconic mask, strapped to an upright stretcher. In the movie itself,
he has been restrained to meet Catherine Martin's mother, so he can pass on the information
he's been withholding about Catherine's kidnapper. The grille over the mouth allows him to speak
and be heard, but not bite, as he's often fond of doing. Of course, this provides the
opportunity for some striking imagery, too.
The Criterion Collection has released some terrifying behind-the-scenes footage of Hopkins
trying on a number of different masks, before settling on the one that appears on screen.
One example is modeled after a baseball umpire mask. Another is a full knight's helmet that
makes Lecter look more like a Monty Python character than one of the most chilling killers
of all time. Yet another makes him look like a beekeeper. Luckily, the choice that ended
up on screen is perfectly horrible, and gives the audience the chance to stare a little
longer into Lecter's hypnotic peepers.
The majority of The Silence of the Lambs is seen from Clarice Starling's perspective.
One of the most haunting moments of the film, however, happens through a very different
pair of eyes. Catherine Martin, the girl kidnapped by Buffalo Bill, is trapped in a well in his
home. Up above, Buffalo Bill himself applies makeup and dances around his dressing room,
in pretty much the creepiest way you can possibly imagine.
But this dance wasn't actually scripted, nor were some of Bill's adornments, like the tattoo
on his chest. Screenwriter Ted Tally got quite a shock when he finally saw these moments
unfold on screen. Buffalo Bill actor Ted Levine, who had done copious research to develop the
character, was so nervous to film this scene that he actually took shots of tequila to
get through it. But it all paid off. Producer Edward Saxon said about Levine's performance:
"The scene took a lot of courage. It wasn't in the script, and for me it's a very moving
scene, it identifies the pain and twisted psychology of this character."
As anyone who's seen this movie will know, Buffalo Bill is a doozy of a serial killer.
He kidnaps women, starves them, and eventually kills them, all in an effort to create a "woman
suit" out of their skin. And it was the real life Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein, upon
whom Psycho is also based, who served as inspiration for Buffalo Bill's particular obsessions.
Ted Bundy's infamous methods were incorporated into Bill's kidnapping technique, too: He
too wore a fake cast to feign disability, then used said cast to knock his victims out.
The third source of dark inspiration for Buffalo Bill was Gary Michael Heidnik, a Philadelphia
nurse who had a penchant for kidnapping women and shackling them in his basement. These
three real killers, alongside a few others, contribute to the terrifying composite that
is Buffalo Bill.
But he's not the only character rooted in real-world figures. Jack Crawford is based
on real-life criminal profiler John Douglas, who is also the inspiration behind the Netflix
series Mindhunter. Jodie Foster also worked with FBI agent Mary Ann Krause, who provided
invaluable insight into Clarice Starling's circumstances. The moment when Clarice cries
in the privacy of her car after her first encounter with Dr. Lecter rang particularly
true to Krause, who says:
"I saw it and thought , 'Now that's like me.'"
The Silence of the Lambs commands a great deal of respect among movie fans. But it has
also come under fire over the years for its presentation of members of the LGBTQ community.
Critics decry Buffalo Bill as a twisted caricature of gay and transgender people, capable of
doing real damage to a vulnerable population.
"Caterpillar into chrysalis, or pupa, and from thence into beauty. Our Billy wants to
change, too."
Jonathan Demme has addressed these criticisms, saying:
"[Buffalo Bill] wasn't a gay character. He was a tormented man who hated himself and
wished he was a woman because that would have made him as far away from himself as he possibly
could be."
"Billy is not a real trans-sexual, but he thinks he is. He tries to be. He's tried to
be a lot of things, I expect."
Unfortunately, this doesn't necessarily come across as clearly as Demme would have liked
in the film, especially considering some of the problematic language the movie uses to
talk about transgender people. Ted Levine agrees with Demme, however, saying:
"Here's a guy who imagines himself with this kind of feminine power, you know, this spiritual
kind of mother power...Serial killers all pursue that feminine energy, that female persona.
They get both [masculinity and femininity] wrapped into someone, and that's like perfection,
real power, and that's what Gumb is after."
The Silence of the Lambs is pretty much as dark and suspenseful as a film can get, so
you can imagine that filming it might not be a barrel of laughs. To keep spirits up
in the midst of such intensity, games and pranks became the norm on set. As Brooke Smith,
who portrays kidnapped Catherine Martin, told People magazine:
"Everything was a joke."
Even though she and Hopkins had no scenes together, he would often come up to her in
character as the fearsome Hannibal Lecter and give her flowers and chocolates. The crew
also made a board game based on a blueprint of the set that they called "Gumb's Game,"
the aim of which was to save Catherine.
Jonathan Demme also liked to play pranks on his actors, including leading lady Jodie Foster.
One memorable gag took place as Foster filmed a now-deleted scene of Clarice picking up
her rental car. Demme had the car rental agent really test Clarice about who she was before
giving her the keys, demanding ID Foster could not, of course, provide. Being the consummate
professional she is, Foster didn't break character...until she realized what was going on.
The movie poster for The Silence of the Lambs prominently features Clarice Starling's face,
with her mouth covered by the death's head moth that Buffalo Bill likes to insert into
his victims' throats. But only the most eagle-eyed fans might have noticed the skull on the moth
isn't actually a skull at all. The image is lifted from surrealist painter Salvador Dalí's
1951 photo, "In Voluptas Mors." "In Voluptas Mors", or "Voluptuous Death," portrays a human
skull formed out of naked women's bodies. Dalí, posed to the left of the women wearing
a top hat and an intense expression, rounds out the piece.
Obviously, for The Silence of the Lambs' poster, Dali was removed. Only the women remain, in
an artful nod to Buffalo Bill's modus operandi. While there isn't a whole lot of Dalí's characteristic
surrealism in The Silence of the Lambs, in many ways, Buffalo Bill's project is a horrible
exercise in absurdity of Dalí-esque proportions.
You might think that releasing a bestselling novel might make any author happy, especially
when it's turned into a widely beloved film. Funnily enough, though, Silence of the Lambs
author Thomas Harris has never, and will never, watch the movie, or any of the many other
adaptations of his work that have graced the big and small screens.
Jonathan Demme has said this is because Harris heard an anecdote about author John Le Carré
seeing an episode of the BBC's adaptation of Smiley's People, his classic spy novel,
which featured Sir Alec Guinness as his leading man. Le Carré was so astounded by Guinness'
performance that he came to consider Smiley as belonging to the actor instead of him.
Harris feared that seeing Hopkins as Lecter would produce the same effect, loosening the
character from his grasp as an author. This is despite the fact that the Lecter of the
books is Lithuanian, and has red eyes and a sixth finger on his left hand. But that's
the power of Anthony Hopkins, for you.
Like his colleagues, Scott Glenn did a great deal of research when working on his character,
FBI agent Jack Crawford. He spent a lot of time with John Douglas, the profiler on whom
his character had been based, and Douglas didn't pull any punches in showing Glenn the
kinds of things he'd seen in his long career. As Glenn told People magazine:
"I lost a certain degree of innocence. To this day I find myself having unpleasant dreams
about the things I found out."
In fact, Glenn's time at the FBI training facility in Quantico was so profoundly upsetting
that he changed his political stance from being against capital punishment, and now
broadly agrees with it. As Glenn himself says:
"The experience in Quantico changed my mind about that for all time."
A disgraced Clarice Starling makes her second appearance in the 2001 The Silence of the
Lambs follow-up, Hannibal. But Jodie Foster elected not to return for the role, and Julianne
Moore was cast instead. This was a smart move on Foster's part, as Hannibal ended up being
one of the weakest links in the Hannibal Lecter franchise.
However, in early 2020, CBS announced its series commitment to a dedicated Clarice Starling
show entitled Clarice, that will take place one year after the events of The Silence of
the Lambs. Clarice is said to be a deep dive into Starling's career as a profiler of serial
killers, as she simultaneously navigates the sexism of the FBI. But this news shocked fans
of Bryan Fuller's arthouse horror series Hannibal, which was abruptly cancelled after just three
seasons. Hopefully, Clarice will satisfy fans of the franchise, with a searing look into
the life of The Silence of the Lambs' unforgettable heroine.
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